this debate that, according to the Benedictine arguments, he best employs the leisure of a religious state, who most successfully devotes it to the diffusion among mankind of divine and human knowledge: while, according to the Trappist, such labours are at best but the fulfilment of the written, positive, and categorical commands of Scripture or of the Church,-an obedience of incomparably less excellency than that which is due from those communities, or from those individuals, who are called to the state of sinless perfection; for to them it is given, not merely or chiefly to conform to absolute rules of duty, but to listen to those inarticulate suggestions which, from the sanctuary of the Divine presence, descend into the sanctuary of the human heart, and to dwell amidst those elevations of soul to which such heaven-born impulses are designed to conduct them.

They who thus contended could never come within the reach of each other's weapons. But Mabillon and De Rancé could never get beyond the reach of each other's love. After the close of the debate they met at La Trappe; and separated-not without much unreserved and affectionate intercourse,—each in possession of his own opinion, and of his antagonist's esteem. The sentences of Innocent XII. and Clement XI., awarded the victory to the author of Les Etudes monastiques ;' and without the gift of infallibility, the same result might with safety have been predicted, from the different tempers in which the controversialists had encountered each other. Mabillon descended to the contest in the panoply of a humble, truth loving spirit. De Rancé (if we may rely on those who knew him well) was not emancipated, even in his retreat, from that enervating thirst for human sympathy which had distinguished him in the world. His disputations and his self-tormentings, are both supposed to have been deeply tinged by his constitutional vanity; and it was believed that he would have been far less assiduous in digging his grave and macerating his flesh, if the pilgrimage to La Trappe had not become a rage at Paris; and if the salons there had not been so curious for descriptions of that living sepulchre, that the very votaries of pleasure were sometimes irretrievably drawn, by a kind of suicidal fascination, within those gates impervious to all sublunary delights, and scarcely visited by the light of day.

From the depths of his humility Mabillon gathered courage. In his days the altars of the Church were every where hallowed by the relics of saints and martyrs; of which the catacombs at Rome afforded an inexhaustible supply. To watch over this precious deposit, and to discriminate the spurious article from the true, was the peculiar office of a congregation selected for

that purpose from the sacred college. But though the skill and the integrity of cardinals were remote from all suspicion, who could answer for the good faith of their subordinate agents, and what was the security that the Dulia appropriate to the bones of the blessed, might not be actually rendered to the skeletons of the ungodly?

When teaching the art of discriminating between the osseous remains of different mammalia, Cuvier never displayed a more edifying seriousness, than was exhibited by Mabillon in laying down the laws which determine whether any given bone belonged of yore to a sinner or a saint. The miracle-working criterion, though apparently the best of all, being rejected silently, and not without very good reasons, Eusebius Romanus (such was his incognito on this occasion) addressed to Theophilus Gallus a letter De Cultu ignotorum Sanctorum,' in which he discussed the sufficiency of three other tests. First, he inquired, are we sure of the sanctity of a bone extracted from a sepulchre on which an anagram of the name of Christ is sculptured in the midst of palms and laurels? The answer is discouraging; because it is a well ascertained fact, that the body of one Flavia Jovina was found in this precise predicament, and yet she was a simple neophyte. Then, secondly, are we safe if a vase stained with blood be also found in the tomb? Nothing more secure-if only we could be quite certain that the stain was sanguineous, and was not produced by the perfumes which the ancients were accustomed to heap up in such vessels. But thirdly, what if the word Martyr' be engraven on the stone? In that case, all doubt would be at an end, were it not for a sophistical doctrine of equivalents which the relic dealers have propagated. Thus, for example, at the abbey of St. Martin, at Pontoise, the devout had long been honouring the corpse of one Ursinus, in the quiet belief that the words of his sepulchral inscription were equivalent to a declaration of martyrdom, whereas, on inquiry, it turned out that they were really as follows: Here lies Ursinus, who died on the 1st of June, after living with his wife Leontia 20 years and 6 months, and in the world 49 years, 4 months, and 2 days.' Thus his only recorded martyrdom was the endurance of Leontia's conjugal society for twenty years and upwards.

Abandoning then all these guides, whither are we to look for assurance as to the title of a relic to the veneration of the faithful? To this grave inquiry, the learned Benedictine gravely answers as follows: Be sure that the alleged saint has been authentically proved to have been a saint. Be sure that his sanctity was established, not merely by baptism, but by some illustrious deeds, attested either by tradition or by certain proofs.

Above all, be sure that the apostolic see has ordained that homage be rendered to his remains. Admirable canons, doubtless. Yet, to an unenlightened Protestant, it would seem that they afford no solution of the problem-Did this jawbone before which we are kneeling, sustain, while yet in life and action, the teeth of a martyr, or the teeth of one of those by whom martyrs were slain, or the teeth of any one else?

To assert that any such question was debateable at all before the tribunal of human reason, was, however, an overt act of liberalism; which Mabillon was of course required to expiate. Long and anxious were the debates in the congregation of the Index, whether the book should 'not be condemned, and the temerity of the author rebuked; nor would that censure have been averted, but for the interference of the Pope in person; who made himself sponsor for the willingness of Eusebius to explain in a new edition whatever might be thought objectionable in the first. The pledge was redeemed accordingly; and then the letter De Cultu sanctorum Ignotorum' was not only acquitted of reproach by that sacred College, but even honoured with their emphatic approbation.

Mabillon gave a yet more decisive proof that he was not blinded to truth by any extravagant scepticism. In his days, as in our own, there was living a M. Thiers, a man of singular talents, and of no less remarkable courage; who had accused the Benedictine fathers of Vendôme of an egregious imposture, in exhibiting at their convent one of those tears which fell from the eyes of Jesus when he wept at the grave of Lazarus. An angel (such was the legend) had treasured it up, and given it to Mary, the sister of the deceased. It passed some centuries afterwards to the treasury of relics at Constantinople; and was bestowed by some Greek emperor upon some German mercenaries in reward for some services to his crown. They placed it in the abbey of Frisingen, whence it was conveyed by the emperor Henry III., who transferred it to his mother-in-law, Agnes of Anjou, the foundress of the monastery of Vendôme, where she deposited it. Mabillon threw the shield of his boundless learning round this tradition; maintaining that the genuineness of the relic might at least be reasonably presumed from the admitted facts of the case; that it had a prescriptive claim to the honours it received; and that his brethren ought to be left in peaceable enjoyment of the advantages they derived from the exhibition in their church at Vendôme of the Holy Tear of Bethany.

Passing from fables too puerile for the nursery, to inquiries which have hitherto perplexed the senate, Mabillon undertook to explain the right principles of Prison Discipline, in a work

entitled Réflexions sur les Prisons des Ordres Réligieux.' He insisted, that, by a judicious alternation and mixture of solitude, labour, silence, and devotion, it was practicable to render the gaol a school for the improvement of its unhappy inmates, in social arts and in moral character. After discussing to what extent solitary confinement would be consistent with the mental and bodily health of the sufferers, and how far the rigour of punishment ought to be mitigated by exercise and active employments, he concludes as follows:

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To return to the prison of St. Jean Climaque. A similar place might be established for the reception of penitents. There should be in such a place several cells like those of the 'Chartreux, with a workshop, in which the prisoners might be employed at some useful work. To each cell also might be ' attached a little garden, to be thrown open to the prisoner at 'certain hours, for the benefit of labour, and exercise in the open air. They should attend public worship, at first in a separate lodge or compartment, and afterwards in the choir ' with the congregation at large, so soon as they should have 'passed the earlier stages of penal discipline, and given proofs of penitence. Their diet should be coarse and poor, and their 'fasts frequent. They should receive frequent exhortation, and the master of the gaol, either in person or by deputy, should 'from time to time see them in private, at once to console and to strengthen them. Strangers should not be permitted to enter the place, from which all external society should be strictly excluded. Once establish this, and so far from such 'a retirement appearing horrible and insupportable, I am convinced that the greater number of the prisoners would scarcely regret their confinement, even if it were for life. I am aware that all this will be considered as a vision of some new Atlantis; but let the world say or think what it may, it would be easy to render prisons more tolerable and more useful, if 'men were but disposed to make the attempt.'

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So wrote a Benedictine monk in the age and kingdom of Louis XIV. The honour which one of his biographers, M. de Malan, challenges for him, of being the very earliest of those who have addressed themselves to this difficult subject in the spirit of philanthropy and wisdom, is strictly his due. To the enlightened reformer of prisons may be cheerfully forgiven his sacred osteology, and even his defence of the Holy Tear of Vendôme. Though in bondage to the prejudices of his own age, he was able to break through the bonds which have shackled so many powerful minds, in later and more enlightened times.

In the midst of these and similar employments, Mabillon had

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reached his sixty-second year, but the great project of his life was still unfinished and unattempted. In the belief that the end of his days was drawing near, he desired to consecrate them to a devout preparation for death. But being roused to the task by the instances of Renaudôt and Baluze, and his affectionate pupil Ruinart, he engaged, with all the ardour of youth, in collecting materials for his long-meditated history of the Benedictine Order. In studying and methodising the vast collections at his disposal, the aged scholar displayed, though without a shade of scepticism, an acuteness which the subtlest sceptic might have envied, and, without a tinge of philosophy, a luminousness of mind worthy of the most illustrious philosopher.

At that period the more ardent sons of the Church regarded her as no less infallible when she asserted historical facts, than when she proclaimed dogmatic truths. On the other hand, the Centuriators of Magdeburgh, Du Pin, Richard Simon, and even the great Arnauld, had presumed to interrogate ecclesiastical traditions, and to controvert the authority of popes and synods, fathers and saints, whenever it touched on topics beyond the articles of the Christian faith. This audacious freedom was rebuked by the contemptuous and withering eloquence of Bossuet; and Mabillon presented himself as the great living model of an historian, employing the most profound and varied knowledge, under the severe restraints of this intellectual docility. By day and by night he laboured, during the last fourteen years of his life, on the annals of his Order; without so much as a solitary departure from the implicit submission which he yielded to the Church, as to all matters of fact attested either by her own authoritative voice, or by the decision of her accredited doctors. The result was, that, instead of a history of what had actually occurred, he produced a chronicle, from which it may be learnt what are the occurrences, the belief of which the Church has sanctioned, or has silently left to the investigation of her obedient annalists.

It is, however, a book which irresistible evidence establishes, and which without such evidence could not be believed, to be the work of a single man between his sixty-second and seventysixth years. It comprises a biography of the Benedictine saints in a form more compendious than that of his Acta Sanctorum. It contains an account of every other illustrious member of the Order. It includes a careful review of every book written by any eminent Benedictine author. All the grants and charters under which the property and privileges of their monasteries were held, are recapitulated and abridged in it. Finally, it