Chapter II: ART (7)

And we will go, and the great and dear bishop will come with us;--we {303} will go and ask, and learn all that we lack, near that grave opened on the barren heath in Bretagne, at the foot of an unrecognized cross, where lie the remains of the immortal chief of those victims--of him who, as Duguesclin, Duguesclin his countryman, had well deserved to sleep among the kings at Saint-Denis. So long as there shall be a Christian France, that distant and solitary tomb will appear to the soul clothed with a solemn grandeur and a touching majesty. Far from the intoxications of the battle-field, far from the theatre of his struggles and his successes, under that mound of earth which will cover to the day of judgment that brave heart and that victorious arm,--there, there with love it will go to invoke that great soul, betrayed by fortune and magnified by sacrifice. It is there that it will admire without reserve the warrior, the statesman, who preserved unstained his honor--the honor of the soldier, of the citizen, and of the Christian. It is there that it will be needful to go to learn the emptiness of human hopes, and at the same time that there is even in this world true greatness and real virtue. That grave will tell us how necessary it is to despise iniquitous victories, and to serve in the army of justice against the army of fortune; to protest against enervating indolence, against servile compliances, against the idolatry of Success; to place above the poor tinsel of a false greatness fidelity to convictions deserted, to the torn flag of liberty denied, to friends persecuted, to the proscribed, and to the vanquished. That tomb will teach us, in the confusion and instability of the present, to preserve before all things integrity of character, which makes all the power and all the value of the man here below. But from that tomb will come forth at the same time a harder and a more necessary lesson still. It will teach us how to be gentle and strong in adversity; to find calm and joy in suffering; to bear it without depression and without sourness; to consent, where need is, to be only a useless servant, and to gain thus eternal life. Yes, all this will be revealed by the grave of him who will not be forgotten, because he united in his life things too often separated; because he was not only a great captain, a great servant of his country, a faithful soldier of liberty, an honest man, a great citizen, but also a great Christian, an humble and brave Christian, who loved his soul, and has saved it.

CH. DE MONTALEMBERT.

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From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.