embraces a description of all their sepulchral and other ancient

monuments.

Five folio volumes of this vast compilation were finished, and the last was about to appear, when the life and labours of Mabillon were brought to a painful and a sudden, though not an immature termination. Ruinart meditated, though in vain, the completion of the work. He lifted (perhaps unwisely)

the veil which would otherwise have concealed the last fearful agonies of its great author. He has, however, shown, with the most artless and genuine pathos, how the tortures of the body were soothed and dignified by the faith, the hope, and the serenity of soul of the sufferer. With no domestic ties and no worldly ambition to bind him to earth, and with no anxious forebodings to overcast the prospect before him, he entertained the last enemy as a messenger of good tidings, and a herald of approaching joy and freedom; and then breathed out his spirit in an unhesitating affiance on Him, whom, beneath the shade of many superstitions and the burthen of many errors, he had loved and trusted, and obeyed from childhood to the grave.

Mabillon was a perfect model of monastic perfection; and however much inferior the produce of the conservatory may be to those hardier plants which germinate amidst the frosts and the scorchings of the unsheltered day, yet they have a value and a delicacy peculiarly their own. He had quitted the world without a sigh, and probably never breathed a sigh to return to it. If compelled to revisit and to tread the highways of mankind, he would have resembled the lifelong prisoner of an aviary, driven out to the bleak uplands for shelter. Meekly bowing his head to Holy Obedience,' he yielded himself without reluctance, to be moulded into whatever form the Genius of the place' might prescribe. Nor was this a painful sacrifice. The graces of the cloister, - docility, devotion, and self-discipline, -were his by an antenatal predestination. Mabillon lived and died in an uninterrupted subjection to positive laws and forms of man's devising. Even in his interior life, rule and habit exercised an inflexible dominion over him. He worshipped indeed with fervent piety; but with such a mechanical exactness of ceremonial, time, and place, as might seem, to a careless selfobserver, fatal to the life of spiritual exercises. To his daily routine of divine offices were added other forms of private worship, scarcely less immutable; of which some were appropriate to his entrance on any literary work, some to the arrival of the first proof sheet from the press, and some to the commencement of the studies of each succeeding day.

-

To this constitutional and acquired acquiescence in the will

of his superiors and the rules of his convent, was added the most profound lowliness of spirit. Permit me, Sire,' said Le Tellier, the archbishop of Rheims, to Louis XIV., 'to present to your Majesty Dom Mabillon, the most learned man in your Majesty's 'dominions.' Sire,' rejoined Bossuet, who stood by, the archbishop might also have said the most humble man in France.' It is supposed that the plumage of the eagle of Meaux was not a little ruffled by the superlative adjective which derogated from his own claims to the first place among men of learning. But the applauses both of the archbishop and of the bishop, in whatever temper given, were perfectly just. The proofs of Mabillon's learning are, at this moment, among the noblest monuments of the age of Louis XIV. The proofs which his eulogists adduce of his humility have not been very judiciously selected.

A humble man is one who, thinking of himself neither more highly nor more lowly than he ought to think, passes a true judgment on his own character. But the great Benedictine neither entertained nor suggested a truth, when among titled men, and learned men, and superficial pretenders to knowledge; he bore himself as if he had been undeserving of their notice, and unworthy to communicate with them on equal terms. There is no genuine self-abasement apart from a lofty conception of our own destiny, powers, and responsibilities; and one of the most excellent of human virtues is but poorly expressed by an abject carriage. Torpid passions, a languid temperament, and a feeble nature, may easily produce that false imitation of humility; which, however, in its genuine state, will ever impart elevation to the soul and dignity to the demeanour. This part of Mabillon's portrait has been ill drawn; because the artists drew rather from a false image in their own minds, than from the great original.

In the conventual merit of bodily self-discipline, so far as it could be reconciled with his studious habits, Mabillon was emulous of the Trappists. His food, sleep, clothing, warmth, social intercourse, and other personal gratifications, were measured by the indispensable exigencies of nature; and his admirers describe his austere mortifications of the flesh with the fond delight of a Hindoo recounting his sacred legends of the spontaneous endurance of more than human sufferings. • Holy • Obedience' dictated to her favourite child abasements and selfdenials, which it is difficult to reconcile with decorum or with sincerity. If she had been wise, she would have summoned him to the nobler office of asserting that intellectual rank, and those. claims to the reverence of mankind, which, like all the other

good gifts of Providence, are designed for noble uses by the wise and gracious Author of them all.

Although the virtues of the convent, even in the person of Mabillon, excite but a reluctant admiration, and a still colder sympathy, yet his simple tastes, his devout spirit, and his affectionate nature, would, under a more genial discipline, have rendered his character as lovely, as his diligence, his critical sagacity, and the extent of his knowledge, were wonderful. For, soaring, in these respects, immeasurably above vulgar ascetics, he obeyed to the letter the command of his great patriarch Benedict, and devoted every moment of his life to some useful and energetic occupation.

In these pursuits Mabillon was not merely an indefatigable student, but a laborious traveller. In his time the treasures of which he was insatiably covetous, were not accumulated in the Royal Library of Paris, but dispersed in the conventual, episcopal, and other public archives of France, Belgium, Germany, and Italy. The journeys necessary for examining them had all the terrors of an exploration of the Nile, to one whom (all Frenchman as he was) not even the enchanted gardens and terraces of Versailles had, during a period of twenty years, been able to seduce, for a single morning, from his seclusion at St. Germain des Près. But what antiquarian worthy of the name would be arrested by the Loire, the Meuse, the Rhine, or the Alps, when beyond these distant barriers a whole harem of virgin manuscripts wooed his embrace, glowing, like so many houries, with immortal youth, and rich in charms which increased with each revolving century? Sometimes alone, but more commonly attended by a Benedictine brother, he accomplished several Capitulary or Diplomatic tours through Flanders, Burgundy, Switzerland, the south of Germany, and the whole of the Italian peninsula. The earlier of those expeditions were made on foot, at the cost of his Order; the later with the equipages becoming an agent of the Grand Monarque, employed by Colbert to collect or to transcribe manuscripts for his royal master. The results of these expeditions were various learned itineraries (such as his Iter Burgundicum' and his Museum Italicum'), and a prodigious accession to the wealth of the royal library. His services were rewarded by Louis with a seat in the Academy of Belles Lettres and Inscriptions. But the whole republic of letters united to confer on the learned traveller honours far exceeding any at the disposal of the greatest of the kings of the earth.

His journeys, especially his Italian journey, resembled royal progresses rather than the unostentatious movements of a humble

monk. Monasteries contended for the honour of entertaining him as their guest. Fêtes celebrated his arrival in the greater cities of Italy. His society and correspondence were courted by the learned, the great, and the fair. The Pope, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Cardinals, and Queen Christina, vied in rendering courtesies to their illustrious visitor. At the Catacombs, at Loretto, at Clairvaux, and, above all, at Monte Casino, the devout assembled to witness and to partake of his devotions. All libraries flew open at his approach; nor did the revolutionary sçavans of France traverse the same regions, or examine the same repositories, with an authority comparable to that of the poor Benedictine, as he moved from one Italian state to another, powerless except in the lustre of his reputation, the singleness of heart with which he pursued his object, and the love with which he was regarded by all his associates.

In M. Valery's three volumes will be found an ample and curious diary of Mabillon's Italian expedition. He commenced it on the 1st of April, 1685, having selected as his companion Dom Michel Germain, another member of the congregation of St. Maur. Germain had himself written some essays on monastic history; but his chief title to literary honours was derived from his having ministered to the production of the Acta Sanctorum 'Ordinis Sancti Benedicti,' and of the treatise De Re Diplo

'maticâ.'

The travellers had engaged to maintain a correspondence with four of their monastic associates. One of these was the faithful and affectionate Ruinart, of whom we already know something. Placide Porcheron, the next, seems to have been a member of the Dryasdust family, so celebrated by Walter Scott and Thomas Carlyle; his two great performances being a commentary on an obscure geographical book of the 7th century, and notes on a treatise on Education written by Basil the Macedonian, who, two hundred years later, had been Emperor of the Greeks. Claude Bretagne, the third of the Committee of Correspondence at Paris, was the author of some devotional works, but was more eminent as the intimate friend of Nicole, and as a companion of infinite grace and wit, and of the most captivating discourse. The last, Charles Bulteau, was not a monk, but 'Doyen des Secretaires du Roi,' and was famous for having, in that capacity, vindicated, with great learning, the supremacy of the King of France over the sovereigns of the Spanish monarchies.

When devout men, profound scholars, or still more profound antiquaries, engage in a prolonged epistolary intercourse, the reader is not without preconceptions of the mental aliment

awaiting him. He has probably gone through some volumes in which Protestant divines interchange their religious experiences. The style in which Salmasius, Budæus, and Scaliger entertained their friends is not wholly unknown to him; and how the Spelmans of old, and the Whitakers of recent times, wrote their letters, may be learnt at the expense of a transient fatigue. But let no one address himself to M.Valery's volumes, with the hope or the fear of being involved in any topics more sacred, more crabbed, or more antiquated than befits an easy chair, a winter's evening, and a fireside. Reading more pleasant, or of easier digestion, is hardly to be met with in the Parisian epistles of Grimm, Diderot, or La Harpe.

Our pilgrims first take up the pen at Venice. They had ransacked the Ambrosian Library, examined the Temple of Venus at Brescia, admired the amphitheatre at Verona, and visited the monastery of their order at Vicenza; though, observes Germain, Ni là ni ailleurs, nos moines ne nous ont pas fait 'goûter de leur vin.' Some gentlemen of the city having conducted them over it, 'On ne saurait,' adds he, faire attention sur le mérite et les manières honnêtes de ces messieurs, sans réfléchir sur nos moines et admirer leur insensibilité. Aussi 'n'étudient ils pas; ils disent matins avant souper; ils mangent gras; portent du linge, pour ne rien dire du peculium, et de leur 'sortie seuls.' In short, there is already peeping out, from behind our good Germain's cowl, one of those Parisian countenances on the quick movable lines of which flashes of subacid merriment are continually playing.

6

On reaching Florence, the migratory antiquarians form a new acquaintance, alike singular and useful, in the person of Magliabechi, the librarian of the Grand Duke. Another man at once so book-learned, so dirty, and so ill-favoured, could not have been found in the whole of Christendom. The Medicæan Library was his study, his refectory, and his dormitory; though, except in the depth of winter, he saved the time of dressing and undressing, by sleeping in his clothes and on his chair; his bed serving the while as an auxiliary book-stand. Fruit and salads were his fare; and when sometimes an anchovy was served up with them, the worthy librarian, in an absent mood, would not unfrequently mistake, and use it for sealing-wax. Partly from want of time, and partly from the consciousness that an accurate likeness of him would be a caricature on humanity at large, he would never allow his portrait to be taken; though what the pencil was not permitted to do, the pens of his acquaintance have so attempted, that he would have judged better in allowing the painter to do his worst. Michel Germain describes him, as