knelt in prayer before and after the victory, and where the story of her blameless life and heroic deeds will henceforth be perpetuated from generation to generation, rekindling in the souls of her descendants the vital sparks of faith and patriotism which glowed so fervently in her breast, which made her what she was-a patriot and a martyr, and which have inspired the noble and eminently patriotic thought of glorifying the deliverer of France in the three predestined places where the Divine light beamed brightest upon her brow-Domrémy, Orleans and Rouen. It was at Orleans that honours were first paid to her memory; it was Orleans originated the annual commemorative processions and panegyrics which have kept her memory green in men's souls; and it is "Felix, Bishop of Orleans," who, of all her countless panegyrists, has most closely identified his name with her and with the cause of which she was the divinely-appointed defender. Improvisation was a gift Mgr. Dupanloup possessed to a remarkable degree, and he not unfrequently utilized it in the pulpit. One day, during the Lent of 1834, when he was dining with the curé, a messenger abruptly announced that the priest who was to preach that night at Notre Dame was taken suddenly ill. "Are there many persons in the church?" he asked. "The church is full," was the reply. "Very well, I'll replace him." "But the subject was announced yesterday," objected the messenger. "Reason the more to give me the points to be treated." Ten minutes after he was in the pulpit, and, it is said, he was never more eloquent. Indeed it has been remarked, that he was always best when he improvised. By the advice of two senators of the Right, he wrote his last speech to the Senate, and was much less effective than if, instead of reading it-he was then very short-sighted-he had improvised from the tribune. His well-stored mind was such an inexhaustible treasure of knowledge, adapted to every great question of the hour, questions, many of which he had taken so much to heart, and so thought out as to make them his own, that he was fully equal to any the Meuse; Joan of Arc's house and garden; the church; first voices from heaven. 2. Vaucouleurs; Joan, accompanied by peasants, parting from John of Metz; the Sire de Baudricourt. 3. Chinon; Joan presents herself to Charles XII. in the midst of his court. 4. Entry of Joan into Orleans; she approaches the Cathedral, followed by the whole people. 5. Taking of Tournelles and deliverance of Orleans. 6. Joan returning thanks to God in the Cathedral. 7. Coronation of Charles VII. at Rheims. 8. Joan taken at Compiegne. 9. Joan of Arc in prison. 10. Joan of Arc on the stake. Mgr. Dupanloup, in his appeal to France last July, in aid of this great national work, than which, he declared, he never undertook any work with more hopefulness, proposed to throw the competition open to all the artists and glass painters in France, whose designs should be exhibited for a month in Paris, after which a jury should pronounce upon their respective merits, and select the artist to whom the definitive execution of the work should be confided. Although the list has been open only a few months, the sum required has been already subscribed, the appeal, to use the bishop's own words, having "found an echo throughout all France.' occasion which might present itself, and those occasions were not wanting. "You have all the noble passions of our old soil," said M. de Salvandy, in the words of greeting he addressed to him on his entrance into the Academy. "We feel a heart beating under your every word, a soul ascending and soaring to other skies in every thought of yours, an eloquence always true, facile and brilliant. In fine, to speak to this country of all that awakens its emotions-faith, fatherland, virtue, justice, gloryyou have a language of exceptional strength, power and brilliancy." His reputation as a pulpit orator had grown with such rapidity, that six years after the inauguration of the Notre Dame Conferences, he was called to fill the chair of sacred eloquence at the Sorbonne; honours having crowded so thick upon him that he was successively first vicar of Saint Roch, then the most fashionable church in Paris (if the word "fashionable" be allowable in such a connection); honorary vicar-general of the archdiocese, in which quality he had been charged by Mgr. Affre with a difficult mission to the Holy See, whence he returned with the additional distinctions of Roman Prelate, Prothonotary Apostolic, Doctor of Theology, and Grand Cross of the Order of Christ; having had the refusal of two of the principal parishes in Paris, that he might become first prefect of studies, and subsequently director of the Seminary of Saint Nicholas. Indeed, throughout his long life, honours sought him—not he them. "Queen Maric Amélie," says a writer in the Gaulois, "was one of his most fervent admirers. She attended his sermons for a whole Lent at Saint Roch. If the young priest had been ambitious, it was a fine opportunity for solicitation. But not only did he ask for nothing, but he obstinately refused propositions made him. He wanted neither dignities nor honours. It needed nothing less. than a formal order of the Archbishop of Paris to induce him to place himself at the head of the petit seminaire of Saint Nicolasdu-Chardonnet. Still, despite the enormous labour his new position imposed upon him, he contrived to continue his preaching, to prepare books of Christian apologetics, and to follow the movement of his epoch in everything." One of the movements of his epoch, the first and the last that he assailed with a voice that never faltered and a pen that, in hands such as his, became a powerful weapon, was the resuscitated Voltaireanism introduced into the schools by Michelet and Edgar Quinet. It was the 27th of May, 1842: "Voltaire," says M. Hairdet, whose narrative of the incident is the most graphic and concise I have met "Voltaire was placed so high in the opinion of those young men, that when the new professor read a quotation from the philosopher of Ferney, there was something like a murmur of surprise, then of anger. This scene was repeated afterwards. The professor was speaking of the eighteenthcentury philosophy: he ended with this quotation from a letter of Voltaire to Thiriot (October 21st, 1736) Falsehood is only a vice when it does evil; it is a very great virtue when it does good. Be then more virtuous than ever. It is necessary to lie like a devil, not timidly, not for a time, but boldly and always. Lie, my friends, lie; I will pay it back to you when opportunity offers.' 'What do you say to that?' continues the Abbé Dupanloup. 'Was it not of those men still more than of those Spinosists and pantheists of his time, that Fenelon spoke those words I have just quoted for you: "It is not a sect of philosophers but of liars?" Should not what you have just heard excite the indignation and contempt of every one who, in the midst of prejudices and passion and troubles, has any sentiment of honesty?' Frantic applause greeted this first cry of indignation. But, at the moment when M. Dupanloup was about to resume, a hiss, one prolonged hiss, was heard. They all rose to their feet. The indignant orator, with that prodigious presence of mind which always stood him so well, uttered that proud response of Cicero's- Nihil me clamor vel sibilus iste commovet, sed consolatur, cum indicat esse quosdam cives imperitos, sed paucos. Quin continetis vocem, indicem stultitiæ, testem paucitatis.' (Neither this clamour nor hissing disturbs me. It consoles me; for it shows that some citizens are ignorant but few. Why do you not restrain your voices which show your folly in revealing your paucity of numbers?) The plaudits redoubled. The press laid hold of the incident. The Courrier français, the National, the Constitutionnel, and the Phalange, on one side; on the other, the Univers, and the Union Catholique, renewed the contests of the Sorbonne auditorium. Ministers grew uncasy; and the Gazette de France reproduced a notice posted on the 10th of June on the door of the lecture-hall'The Abbé Dupanloup will not resume his course of sacred eloquence at the Sorbonne on this day, Friday.' The Government which was to fall by the Revolution, was afraid that one should combat the Revolution." But the Abbé was determined to have his say upon the subject, and when the Siècle afterwards proposed that a statue should be erected to Voltaire, he promptly denounced it as an insult to religion and to France, and was barely dissuaded by Augustin Cochin from rushing into print with those admirable letters, then actually begun, in which, a decade later, he pilloried for ever the author of La Pucelle. "Ce singe de genie Chez l'homme en mission par le diable envoyé " as infamy personified. It was one of the last blows the great Christian athlete struck in defence of the Church, and Europe could The statue was unveiled at Paris on the 13th of August, 1870. In less than a month after, the downfall of the Second Empire was prociaimed, 80,000 soldiers surrendered at Sedan, and Louis Napoleon was a prisoner in the hands of the victorious Germans. judge by the rebound that his arm had not lost its power, nor his hand its cunning. The idea, however, was at first little relished by the Bishop's entourage, who thought that the demonstration* would fall through of its own accord, and that it would be only magnifying its importance to take it au serieux. Mgr. Dupanloup, we are told, went to Paris to consult a young Frenchman whom he desired to engage in the struggle, submitted his plan to him, asked his advice as to the fittest time for publishing, the best title to adopt, the advantages or disadvantages of bringing it out in book-form, or issuing it in instalments in the shape of letters.† Still all his most attached friends were opposed to the publication; but he combated every objection, and the "Letters to the Members of the Municipal Council of Paris," who had given the strongest impulse to the movement, were published last May in the Défense, immediately arrested public attention, were commented on in every paper in Europe, and produced such a rcaction that what was avowedly meant to be "a grand international demonstration against Christianity"—the apotheosis of the man who had assailed its dogmas with an astuteness, a virulence, an audacity, and a pertinacity truly satanic-dwindled down into a very poor affair at the Gaité Theatre. It was a startling revelation, not only for France but for other countries. Men who had been taught to regard François Marie Arouet de Voltaire as a large-hearted, high-minded benefactor to his species, were shown what a heartless, soulless, time-serving, fawning sycophant was the revolutionary fetish they had been worshipping; while others, in the words of Cardinal Guibert, admired the conduct of Providence in permitting the design of some impious fanatics to The Centenary project originated in 1876 with the Droits de l'homme, a journal famous, or rather infamous, for the rabid war it made upon the Church and social order; and the 30th of May, the day fixed upon, happened to have been the anniversary of the burning of Joan of Arc at Rouen. + The habit Mgr. Dupanloup had of, so to speak, only regarding the ensemble of a question so as to be able to take a better grasp of it, and form a higher and more competent judgment of it, sometimes, M. Hairdet says, embarrassed him very much. Thus, in his last polemic àpropos of the Voltaire Centenary, his notes were taken very carefully upon separate slips. All Voltaire's works had been carefully examined, and the extracts classified in the order of the projected publication. Mgr. Dupanloup then took some large sheets of blue paper, which he doubled up, and attached the notes thereto with wafers. All these notes bore beneath, with the greatest precision, the indication of the volumes, the work and the page from which they had been taken. The Bishop, while classifying these notes, followed the train of his thoughts, cutting off the bottom of the slips containing the indication of the sources, and collecting the clippings in a corner of his desk. When he had finished his classification, he then perceived that it was impossible to range the notes alongside the text. With a little patience, as he used the scissors rapidly and irregularly, it might have been possible to recover the trace of at least the greater part of these extracts, and check them with the help of Voltaire's works. But, to complete his distraction, at a late hour, one night, the Bishop, in place of ringing for his valet-de-chambre, stooped down near the fireplace and took up the very note-clippings with the indication of all the sources to light the fire. He had to recommence all his researches, of which some idea may be formed from the fact that Voltaire's works are comprised in seventy octavo volumes. assume a certain consistency in order that the friends of truth might be afforded an opportunity of enlightening public opinion upon a man, whose name had become a rallying cry for the enemies of religion, who thought he was making profession of philosophy in declaring war to the death against a religion whose dogmas contain the sublimest of all philosophies, and which, by its maxims and its institutions, has borne humanity to moral heights unknown to ancient civilization. (To be continued.) R. F. O'CONNOR. THE COMBAT OF PERSEUS WITH THE GORGON.* By T. C. IRWIN. The thunder of departing gods still rolled through distant night, As thus with wings, shield, sword, accoutred stood he; but when the helm Was donned, no more could mortal eyes behold him in the realm; * The adventures of Perseus, son of Jupiter and Danae, form one of the most interesting subjects to be found in the earlier heroic period of Greek mythology. Polydectes, who was King of Seriphus, one of the Cyclades, where Danae and her son had been shipwrecked, wishing to seize the former, yet dreading the vengeance of the young hero, gave a banquet to which she was invited, and from which all male guests were excluded who did not present the monarch with a horse. Perseus, who had none to offer, told the king that instead he would present him with the head of Medusa, the only one of the terrible Gorgons who was mortal. The deities favoured the dangerous expedition which Perseus had undertaken. Mercury lent him his wings; Minerva her shield, resplendent as glass; and Pluto his helmet, which had the power of rendering its wearer invisible. The habitat of the Gorgons is placed by ancient writers in various places. In harmony with Ovid, we have selected the Atlas range-the north-west mountainous domain of Africa. After vanquishing the monster, Perseus arrived in Seriphus, where Danae, assaulted by Polydectes, had taken refuge in the temple of Minerva, and, turning the terrible head of the Gorgon on the king and his associates, turned them into stone-the eye of the Gorgon, it is unnecessary to remark, having the fatal power of petrifying all objects on which it was turned. The above lines refer chiefly to the combat of Perseus with Medusa. The account of his subsequent adventures at the feast given in honour of his nuptials with Andromeda, and his destruction, by a similar agency, of Phinias and his riotous band, are painted in the fine flowing Latin and rich natural colouring of Ovid. |