FRENCH CURATE.

During the French revolution, the inhabitants of a village in Dauphiny had determined on sacrificing their lord to their revenge, and were only dissuaded from it by the eloquence of their curate, who thus addressed them. "My friends," said he, “the day of vengeance is arrived; the individual who has so long tyrannized over you must now suffer his merited punishment. As the care of this flock has been entrusted to me, it behoves me to watch over their best interests, nor will I forsake their righteous cause. Suffer me only to be your leader, and swear to me that in all circumstances you will follow my example." All the villagers swore they would. "And," continues he, "that you further solemnly promise to enter into any engagement which I may now make, and that you remain faithful to this your oath." All the villagers exclaimed, " We do." "Well, then," solemnly taking the oath," I swear to forgive our lord." Unexpected as this was, the villagers all forgave him.

BISHOP PORTEUS.

In one of the debates in the House of Peers in 1794, a noble lord quoted the following lines from Bishop Porteus's Poem on War.

"One murder makes a villain;

Millions, a hero! Princes are privileged
To kill, and numbers sanctify the crime.
Ah! why will kings forget that they are men;
And men,
that they are brethren? Why delight

In human sacrifice? Why burst the ties

Of nature, that should knit their souls together
In one soft bond of amity and love?

They yet still breathe destruction, still go on,
Inhumanly ingenious to find out

New pains for life; new terrors for the grave.
Artificers of DEATH! Still monarchs dream
Of universal empire growing up

From universal ruin. Blast the design,
Great God of hosts! nor let thy creatures fall
Unpitied victims at Ambition's shrine."

The bishop, who was present, and who generally voted with the minister, was asked by a noble earl, then accustomed to stand alone in the discussions of the house, if he were really the author of the excellent lines here quoted? The bishop replied, "Yes, my lord; but they were not composed for the present war!"

TILLOTSON.

The published sermons of Tillotson rank among the best in the English language; and it is probable there would not have been a bad one from his pen to complain of, had his ability in delivering his sermons, been equal to his ability in writing them. But it happened to Tillotson (too much after the manner of the pulpit orators of his country) that he once preached his king asleep; and by way of making amends for the sleeping draught, he was ordered to publish what, had it been heard, neither king nor subject could have wished but to forget. In 1680, an extreme dread of popery induced him to deliver

before the king the sermon which bears in the published collection of his works the title of "The Protestant Religion vindicated from the charge of Singularity and Novelty." The king dropped asleep, and slept nearly all the time the archbishop was delivering it. When the preacher had finished, and the king rose to depart, a nobleman who was with him said, " It is a pity your majesty was asleep, for we have had the rarest piece of Hobbism that ever you heard in your life." "Have we ?" replied Charles; "then, odds fish, he shall print it." And so his majesty was pleased to order, to the no small mortification of the archbishop, who knew that, designed for a temporary purpose, the sermon rested on none of those eternal principles which could enable it to appear with credit in the eyes of posterity.

FLECHIER.

“Slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers.”

SHAKESPEARE.

"The funeral orations of Flechier," says D'Alembert, ". were not only pure and correct in style, but full of sweetness and eloquence. Nothing could be more truly pathetic; they exceeded every thing, when delivered by the author himself. His serious action, and his slow and sometimes feeble voice, brought the hearers into a disposition of sympathetic sorrow; the soul felt itself gradually penetrated by the simple expressions of the sentiment; and the ear by the soft cadence of the periods. Hence he was sometimes obliged to make a pause in the pulpit, that he might leave a free course to plaudits, not of the tumultuous

kind which resound at profane spectacles, but expressed by that general and modest murmur which eloquence arrests even in our temples from an audience deeply moved; a kind of involuntary enthusiasm which not even the sanctity of the place can repress."

The most admired of Flechier's orations, was that on Marshal Turenne. Mark Antony, with the dead body of Cæsar before him, could scarcely have produced a more vivid impression on his hearers, than Flechier did by the following noble exordium.

"Do not expect, my friends, that I shall set before your eyes the tragic scene of this great man's death; that I shall exhibit the hero stretched lifeless on his own trophies; that I shall point to the pale and bloody corpse still enveloped in the smoke of the thunderbolt which struck it; that I shall make his blood cry out like that of Abel; or that I shall afflict your sight with the melancholy spectacle of religion and patriotism leaning over his remains, all drowned in tears."

The following similitude is of a still higher order of eloquence; it is an example of sublimity of the very tenderest description. "The man who defended the cities of Judah; who subdued the pride of the children of Ammon and of Esau; who returned charged with the spoils of Samaria, after having burnt upon their own altars the gods of the heathens---that man whom God had set around Israel as a wall of brass, against which the forces of Asia were broken to pieces, who, after having defeated numerous armies, disconcerted the ablest and the proudest generals of the kings of Syria---came every year in common with the meanest of the Israelites, to repair with his trium

F

phant hands the ruins of the sanctuary; and wished to have no other recompense for the good he had rendered to his country, than the honour of having done it some service. This valiant man pursuing, with a courage invincible, the enemy whom he had compelled to a shameful flight, received at last his death's wound, falling, as it were, overwhelmed in the triumph he had achieved. On the first report of this disastrous event, all the cities of Judah were deeply affected; rivers of tears flowed from the eyes of their inhabitants; they were in one moment overcome, mute, immoveable. After a long and mournful silence, they at last cried out in a voice broken by the sighs which sadness, pity, fear, forced from their hearts, How, is the mighty fallen who saved the people of Israel?' At these words, all Jerusalem wept more and more; the roofs of the temple shook; the Jordan was troubled, and all its banks re-echoed the mournful strains, How, is the mighty fallen who saved the people of Israel?'"

In 1686, Flechier was nominated to the bishopric of Lavaur; on which occasion, Louis XIV. paid him the following handsome compliment. “I have," said he, "made you wait some time for a place which you have long deserved; but I was unwilling sooner to deprive myself of the pleasure of hearing you."

EXCOMMUNICATION.

When the court of Rome, under the pontificates of Gregory IX. and Innocent IV., set no bounds to their ambitious projects, they were opposed by the Emperor