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curious as that of Menot or Maillard, of both of whom he speaks at some length.

A doctor of the Sorbonne, who went one day to hear little Andrew preach, was astonished to hear him compare the four great fathers of the Latin church to the four kings of the suits of our gaming-cards. We must give the passage in French; for though the designs and figures are the same, we call the cards by different names, and thus the sense would be lost in English.

"Saint Augustin (disoit-il) est le roi de cœur, par sa grande charité Saint Ambroise est le roi de trèfle, par les fleurs de son eloquence; Saint Jerôme est le roi de pique, par son style mordant; Saint Grégoire est le roi de carreau, par son peu d'élévation."

On another occasion, when Anne of Austria, the mother of Louis XIV., came into church after the sermon had begun, he turned round in the pulpit, and addressed her in these not very complimentary words: " Madam, you are welcome, but we shall not put an extra pot on the fire on your account."

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This merry-Andrew, though a at the expense of other monks. the convent of the Carmelites. merciful to those good fathers," said he, “in only sacrificing their library, in which there was not a single monk. If the lightning had fallen upon their kitchen, they must all have been in danger of perishing!"

He was once engaged to preach in a parish church at Paris, and he availed himself of that opportunity to punish the curate, who had given him some cause of offence.

Little Andrew began by speaking of the duties of curates and ecclesiastics in general. He said, that according to the language of Scripture, they might be compared to dogs which guard the shepherds' flocks. He next divided them into dumb dogs that never bark, and dogs that bark with all their might whenever it is necessary. The first, he said, were of no use to their master, and not worth their keep; but the second drive the wolf from the fold, and are valuable animals. "It is in this

second class, or species," he continued, "that I must place your curate, who by his constant vigilance, and his lively and pathetic discourses, defends his flock against the arch-enemy that is always seeking to devour it. And thus, my brethren, you may say that you have the best little dog of a curate to be found in the whole Catholic church."

Ménage relates the next ancedote, which, with several others, proves that the little monk had no fear of great men. He was preaching on Twelfth-day, or the Epiphany, at Nancy, where an oppressed and impoverished people had filled his ears with complaints of the rapacity of the Marshal de la Ferté, who commanded in that province. The Marshal, with his staff, was present at the sermon, and Andrew determined to hit him hard with a bit of Church Latin. He made his discourse turn on the thanksgivings and offerings men ought to make to God, the source of all their prosperity, "Afferte filios arietum, afferte aurum et argentum, afferte omnia quæcunque habetis" and he so accentuated the verb "afferte" as to make it sound like à Ferté (the name of the Marshal), and to make the sense of his phrase," Unto Ferté, the young of your rams; unto Ferté, your gold and your silver; unto Ferté, all that you possess." He repeated his "afferte," or "à Ferté," so often, that some of his suite called the Marshal's attention to so odd an affectation. The great man, who had been dreaming about other things, is said to have blushed when he was made to understand the monk's meaning. Another curious story told of little Andrew is, that one day when he was preaching at Paris against the vices of gallantry and intrigue, he threatened to name a lady present as being one of the guilty; that he, however, corrected himself, saying, in Christian charity he would only throw his calote, or skullcap, in the direction where the lady sate; and that as soon as he took his cap in his hand every woman present bobbed down her head, for fear it should come to her. But this anecdote does not rest on good authority, and a story of precisely the same nature, and we believe much older, is told of an Italian monk that was preaching on the same vices at Venice.

Gueret says that he one day heard little Andrew in the pulpit compare the poor man to a peasant's fowl that lives on what it can pick up; and the rich man, to a luxurious poodle-dog. "The rich man," cried the monk, "is treated, whilst alive, like ladies' lap-dogs, whose mistresses share all their tit-bits with them, feed them only on the choicest delicacies, and cover them with ribbons from head to tail. But the dog dies, and then what becomes of him? Why they throw the poodle on the dunghill! Now, on the other hand, the fowl is a poor creature whilst it lives, scratching and pecking for the commonest of food; but after her death she is served up with honour at her master's table. In the same manner the rich man is happy whilst he lives, but after his death he goes-whither, you all know; whereas the poor man is placed in Abraham's bosom."

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The analogy here is not very close, nor is the fate of the fowl so very enviable, for, after all, it is eaten, and goes into the belly, and not the bosom of its master; but the familiar illustration was probably well suited to the ignorant audience of peasants the friar addressed. It is quite clear that although le Père Petit André occasionally turned the batteries of his wit to good purpose, he was no joker, nor intentionally a buffoon in the pulpit." On the contrary, he was most earnest in his vocation; his life was austere, and he held the world in no sort of consideration. He studied such things as would strike; and his humour, which was natural and spontaneous, was used in most cases only to arouse attention, and keep it awake to his religious and moral lessons. He was descended from a highly respectable, if not noble family he belonged to the Augustine order, and had received a good education; but he knew the danger of talking over the heads of his popular congregations, and thence arose his fondness for common sayings and proverbs, and for broad and familiar illustrations. He was

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a very different man from another preacher, a village curate mentioned by Ménage.

His name was Boulanger. The Boulangers had been distinguished lawyers. Andrew died 1675, aged 80 years.

This worthy curate, who had just been taking a drop too much with some friends, on being suddenly called to christen an infant, could not find the baptism service in his ritual; and he said, as he kept turning over the pages of his book, "This is a very difficult child to baptize !"

In the rural districts in Italy it is still the common practice of the curates to address their flocks in the style of little Andrew, and to use comparisons and illustrations which, however homely and ridiculous they may appear to us, have no such effect on their hearers.

A few years ago we heard a preacher of this sort holding forth in a village church situated on the hills behind Sorrento. He was speaking of grace, and the care necessary to preserve and keep it alive in the heart.

"The grace of God," said he, in the patois of the country, "is like a charcoal-fire just lit on your kitchen hearths. If you don't puff and blow and fan, and fan and blow and puff, that fire will go out, and leave you nothing to cook your cabbage soup by,* or your maccaroni, should it be a holiday.'

On another occasion we heard a reverend father, of much higher pretensions than the village curate, and who was preaching to a more refined audience on the pangs of a guilty conscience, make use of the following very familiar simile :

"An evil conscience is like a quarrelsome wife. Yes! Saint Augustine says, Conscientia mala, mulier rixosa est."" But he did not stop there; he continued to draw out every possible thread of his illustration to its full length.

A quarrelsome wife, my brethren, will not let you rest at home or abroad, at dinner or at supper, in bed or even out of bed! Her litigious temper and loud tongue (which is worse than thunder to the wine-cask) take all the juices and savouriness out of the ragouts you eat; all the sugar and sweetness out of the coffee you drink. Whether you go forth on foot or on horseback, or in a coach drawn by four galloping horses, is all one;

*Minestra verde.

she is always at your skirts, and the memory of her, which, like an indigestible dish of bad eels, is even more troublesome to the stomach than it was noisome to the palate, following you whithersoever you may go, to the Corso, to the

But we are afraid to shock "ears polite" with the further details of the worthy monk, who discoursed as if he had a full connaissance de cause, and a mulier rixosa of his own.

Yet, in addressing ignorant and uncivilized audiences, the very coarseness of these preachers stood them in good stead, where a refined and classical style of oratory would have been unintelligible and utterly thrown away. There have been several remarkable instances of this in the city of Naples. On many occasions when the Lazzaroni existed in all their might of number, after the voice of the law, and the threats of the government force had been vainly applied to check their turbulence, the famous Padre Rocco, by getting on a wooden bench in the market-place, and thundering at them in their own coarse but expressive dialect, never failed in reducing them to order.

LII. THE PREACHER OF CLIMAXES.

THE late Rev. Robert Hall was remarkably happy and apt at hitting off in conversation, by a few bold strokes dashed occasionally with sarcasm, the peculiarities of his acquaintance, whether they happened to lie in their style, their manners, or their character. We have not seen the following instance in print. It was told us by the gentleman to whom it was addressed. When talking of the Rev. one of the most popular preachers of the day among the Dissenters, in whose sermons there is a striking contrast between the plainness with which they begin, and the flights of metaphor in which they end, our friend asked Mr. Hall how he liked this style of eloquence? He replied, "Not at all, sir; at all. Why, sir, every sentence is a climax, every para

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