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of a lively and imaginative intellect, and gifted with a peculiar power of epistolary eloquence, she was regarded as one of the most useful and distinguished of the sisterhood. She was not content, however, to wait for the honours that might have gradually fallen to her. Her ambition outran her sense and veracity. She began to try to advance her interests by pretended miracles. She became frequently ill, and made sudden and astonishing recoveries. She kept a picture of St. Cyran in her cell beside that of Jansen, both of whom she professed to regard with the greatest reverence; and on a Christmas-day, when the ground was covered with snow, she exhibited a full-blown rose, which she pretended had budded and expanded on a branch apparently lifeless only a few days before when suspended before the likeness of St. Cyran. The Mère Angelique penetrated her deceit and reproved her sharply; but this seems only to have turned her restless ambition into a new channel. She opened negotiations with the enemies of Port Royal, professing that she had been ensnared unwarily into the errors of Jansenism, and that she was ready to deplore her fall and accept the formulary. Eager to embrace any advantage, the Jesuits welcomed her as their tool; and by her advice active measures of force were employed against the refractory nuns. The Archbishop of Paris proceeded first to Port Royal de Paris, and finding his demand to subscribe the formulary resisted, he imprisoned the Mère Agnes and fifteen of her principal nuns. Immediately afterwards he carried out a course of similar violence against the chief nuns of Port Royal des Champs. The recluses were also driven from their peaceful retreat, and many of them condemned to imprisonment. Every where the Port Royalists were subjected to a harsh and wearying persecution. The integrity of the establishments was broken up, and new and more passive nuns mixed with the old communities, which were placed under usurped and treacherous rule, with the view of gradually destroying their old spirit of faith and obedience.

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For some years this persecution continued. At length in 1668chiefly through the mediation of the Duchess de Longueville-an act of pacification was obtained from the new pontiff, Clement IX. The signature of the formulary was conceded on the understanding accepted by the Pope, that it merely implied submission in matters of faith.

The prison doors were immediately opened. M. Arnauld was introduced at Court. The recluses returned in peace to Port Royal; the nuns were released from their long confinement. The confessors and directors were restored.' A new era of prosperity dawned upon Port Royal-an era of yet brighter and more extended fame before its final and irretrievable overthrow.

During this period the number of nuns and recluses greatly increased. Many persons of fortune were attracted to the famed retreat, and considerable sums were expended in enlarging the monastery and gardens. Port Royal des Champs became one of the most spacious abbeys in all France. It contained no fewer than two hundred nuns, besides a number of ladies who lodged in the abbey. Numerous families of distinction and affluence, moreover, built themselves country houses in the valley of Port Royal, in order to enjoy its pious and learned society.

The society at this epoch presented three aspects, or was divided into three, classes-the nuns, who formed the original society, and who followed a strictly religious rule; the recluses, who led a life practically separate from the world, devoted to their several callings of active benevolence or study, but who were bound by no vows; then the friends and patrons of the society, who had established themselves in houses in the neighbourhood-such as the Duchess of Longueville, the Duke and Duchess of Luynes and of Liancourt. The Mère Agnes survived to witness the restored peace and usefulness of the institution so dear to her. She entered anew with ardour upon her old duties of administration and devotion; but the sufferings which she had endured had left their permanent trace upon her, and she

sank after a few years, and died in 1671.

.

The cares and honours of the abbess's office in the course of a few years descended to the Mère Angelique de St. Jean, the daughter of Mère Arnauld d'Andilli, and therefore a niece of the two previous abbesses. She had been educated in the monastery from the early age of six years, and in the firmness and elevation of her character, and the strong and undaunted spirit which animated her, she somewhat resembled her elder aunt. The characteristic family talents for government had descended to her, and during the dark period after the death of the Mère Angelique she had been the great support of the whole community. She was the very soul of the house, for the wisdom of her counsels, the solidity of her replies, and the force of her writings. In all the tempests which shook Port Royal, a truly sublime faith enabled her to remain in a perfectly steadfast course of conduct.' She attained to the head of the monastery in 1678, and ten months later the Duchess of Longueville died, and with her the favour which during ten years had been extended to Port Royal. No sooner was this powerful patroness gone than the storm of persecution burst forth afresh against the devoted sanctuary. The Jesuits had paused but never abated in their enmity, and as the King was now entirely on their side, and the only obstacle removed which prevented his interference in their behalf, they resolved to gratify their enmity to the full by the extirpation of the hated sect whose activity and piety had so long opposed their machinations.

The recluses were finally banished by royal order from their beloved retreat, and most of them died in poverty and exile. A persecution less summary but perhaps still more cruel was instituted against the nuns. They were interdicted from receiving novices or scholars, their revenues were seized, and their lives made bitter to them by many oppressive interferences. In addition to these outward trials, they were tried by the loss of the distinguished men who had guided them in their perplexities,

and who had written and laboured in their defence. De Saci, after years of imprisonment in the Bastille and temporary refuge at Port Royal, retired to Pomponne, near to the residence of his cousin, the brother of the Abbess Angelique de St. Jean, where he expired on the 4th of January, 1684. His death was deeply felt by the sisters of Port Royal, whose spiritual director and minister he had so long been. Then Arnauld, Tillemont, Claude Lancelot, and Fontaine successively departed, and the glory of their reputation only survived; while constant litigations with the alienated nuns of Port Royal de Paris, who by persevering efforts and machinations had been seduced from their Jansenist allegiance, and the ever-renewed oppressions of the Jesuitical Court party, tended always more to depress and weaken them. Under all, however, the remnant of nuns in the valley of Port Royal maintained their old constancy and fidelity. They cherished with a proud faithfulness the traditions of their order, and waited with a quiet heroism the events of the future.

These events developed not very rapidly, but surely. The Jesuit party, favoured by Madame de Maintenon, continued to gather strength at court; and no longer content with the harassing warfare which they had carried on for many years against the remnant of Port Royal nuns, they at length resolved on their complete dispersion. Cardinal Noailles was the unhappy instrument of this final act of cruelty. On the 11th of July, 1709, he passed the decree for the suppression and extinction of the monastery of Port Royal des Champs, and on the 29th of the following October active measures were taken to carry it into effect. Early on the morning of that day, and while the nuns after mass were still met in chapter according to their wont, a hurried messenger announced to them that a train of carriages and a troop of horsemen were approaching. The Marquis d'Argenson led the armed force which had been sent on the cowardly errand of dispersing the few feeble women that lingered in the precincts of the hallowed valley.

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Having summoned the nuns before him, he announced to them the stern decree which he had come to execute and the authority under which he acted. He required them to deliver up to him all their papers and title-deeds. He met with no resistance. A murmur indeed rose when they heard the cruel close of the decree that they should be immediately separated from each other and dispersed in different religious houses out of the diocese of Paris'; but with trembling steps they hastened to make their brief preparations and depart. As they passed forth, most of them aged and infirm,from the dear seclusion where they had hoped to lay their bones with the sainted dust of those whom they revered, the peasantry surrounded them with cries of lamentation; the poor wept aloud and threw themselves upon their knees before them with frantic gesturesa heartrending and pitiable sight! Some of the nuns had passed their eightieth year; no a few of them were invalid, struck by paralysis or weakened by sickness; but all were hurried off in the carriages to distant and widely separate monasteries. Some died from the fatigues of the journey, and others languished still for some years in solitary confinement. Port Royal was left desolate. The long conflict was at length terminated, and triumph seemed to crown the persistent enmity of the Jesuits and the dissolute intrigues of the court. D'Argenson sent a special message to Versailles to inform the King and Madame de Maintenon that his task was accomplished; but even in the hour of victory perhaps some whispers were heard of the coming vengeance which ere long was to overtake king, mistress, and cardinal, the three great perpetrators of this flagrant wrong.

In the meantime, royal and priestly cruelty raged with unsated fury against the very dust of the place. Further decrees were issued for the total destruction of the buildings of Port Royal, and

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finally for the exhumation of the bodies whose presence still imparted a consecration to the spot. This inhuman order was carried out in 1711 in the most revolting manner. Workmen of base character were prepared for their horrible task by intoxication, and excited to madmen they executed it with the most scandalous indecency, amidst profligate jests, vociferation, and blasphemy. At length the work of destruction was complete, and the desecrated spot became a waste and unattractive desert. The ruined chapel, the fountain, and the dovecot, with the decayed walls and the farmhouse on the crown of the valley, are all that now attest that it was once the crowded abode of the wise, the learned, and the good.' The silence of desolation reigns around; and the lean and hungry peasant rests from his mid-day toil, and eats his crust amid its solitude.

In these brief notes on the Port Royalists we have confined ourselves in the main to Mrs. Schimmelpenninck's narrative, which, originally published many years ago, has recently invited public attention in a new edition. Desultory and uncritical, and with a tendency to gossip which suggests the necessity of more fresh and thorough investigation at many points, it is yet lively and interesting, while it remains the only detailed account in our language of their eventful history. Reuchlin has written in German an extended but somewhat prolix History of Port Royal; and M. Saint Beuve has devoted to the subject his free, fertile, and glowing pen. His Lives of the Port Royalists, when completed, will form the most comprehensive and connected view of this grand and heroic chapter in the history of the Church. The subject would well reward the research and study of some English writer who would bring to it at once critical penetration and sympathy, spiritual insight, and a faculty of vivid and dramatic narration.

J. T.

VOL. LX. NO. CCCLVIII.

KK

IT

at present about the future of Italy. We know not what the future may be that Emperors think they can prepare for Italy: it were better to consider how Italy is prepared to take her part amidst the unknown events that await her. It is only in a secondary sense that congresses can set a nation free: unless a nation is prepared for freedom, the wisest constitutions will do her no good; if she is prepared, she will make even of the worst a stepping-stone to something better. Amidst the confusions of the day, never had we so strong a hope for Italy as at present -a hope, not founded on what may be done for her by others, but on what during the last ten years she has done for herself. Never before was she so united, so unanimous in the perception of her wants, so modest in her wishes, so practical in her aims. The distaste with which the English public regarded the commencement of a war in which Sardinia was the ally of a Bonaparte, led many to do scant justice to the motives with which Sardinia entered upon it, and to make, too little excuse for her natural eagerness to seize any opportunity of delivering the oppressed members of the Italian nation: let not this blind our eyes to the progress that Italy has made in those qualities which are the strength of a people, and which may now enable her to reap whatever advantages the present peace offers.

We cannot perhaps mark this progress better than by comparing the conduct of the Northern Italians in 1849 and 1859, and pointing out the lessons they have learnt by experience.

That constitutional liberty was so long delayed, after a large body of the people were prepared to exercise it, was the cause of not a few of the difficulties which beset Piedmontese action in 1848. However suitable the soil, the new institutions had not had time to take root before the storm began. If Carlo Alberto had granted on his coming to the throne those moderate concessions which he made in 1847, Piedmont might

have entered upon the constitutional stage of her history with greater success. If municipal privileges had been conferred earlier, they might already have borne some of the fruit the King expected from them, and 'accustomed the people,' in the words of the preamble, to the discussion of public affairs.' A further misfortune was, that in consequence of the events that followed upon the Revolution at Paris, Piedmont was obliged to strike for Italian independence (always the leading idea in Carlo Alberto's mind), and to develope internal liberty at the same time. The revolt of Milan and Venice, which had taken advantage of the embarrassments of Austria, was at once a challenge to Carlo Alberto to redeem his promise and an opportunity for indulging his own desire. Resources were not wanting for such an enterprise, though he much miscalculated the efficiency and constancy of his allies, with whom he ought at once to have entered into a league. His economy had brought the finances into an excellent state; the personal care he had bestowed upon the army had made it, for its size, one of the best in Europe; but the new w-born liberties of the country, whilst they had made the people enthusiastic for the war, hampered the King in the direction of the campaign. The Parliament, filled with a high sense of its own importance, and impatient of control, was allowed to sit during the military operations. The members not only canvassed the tactics of the war, but even appointed commissioners to attend the camp, that they might be informed of what was going on. Amongst Italians, who had not yet learnt to trust one another, this was a fruitful source of suspicion. What was a misfortune in the field was often regarded as treachery in the Chambers; and the King, knowing that he was still distrusted by many, instead of following the dictates of a wise military policy, was guided by what would be said in the Chambers-as when he retreated, for instance, on Milan instead of on Piacenza or Pavia. Add to this the voice of a press recently emancipated and liberally supplied