her in proportion as they had become more culpable. A woman can never form a passion for an eunuch, but she may retain her passion for her lover after his becoming one, if he still remains amiable.

The case is different with respect to a lover grown old in the service; the external appearance is no longer the same; wrinkles affright, grizzly eyebrows repel, decaying teeth disgust, infirmities drive away: all that can be done or expected is to have the virtue of being a patient and kind nurse, and bearing with the man that was once beloved, all which amounts to-burying the dead.

LOVE OF GOD.

THE disputes that have occurred about the love of God have kindled as much hatred as any theological quarrel. The jesuits and jansenists have been contending for a hundred years which party loved God in the most suitable and appropriate manner, and which should at the same time most completely harrass and torment their neighbour.

When the author of Telemachus, who was in high reputation at the court of Louis XIV., recommended men to love God in a manner which did not happen to coincide with that of the author of the " Funeral Orations," the latter, who was a complete master of the weapons of controversy, declared open war against him, and procured his condemnation in the ancient city of Romulus, where God was the very object most loved, after domination, ease, luxury, pleasure, and money.

If madame Guyon had been acquainted with the story of the good old woman, who brought a chafingdish to burn paradise, and a bottle of oil to extinguish hell, that God might be loved for himself alone, she would not perhaps have written so much as she did. She must inevitably have felt that she could herself never say anything better than that; but she loved God and nonsense so very sincerely, that she was imprisoned for four months, on account of her affectionate attachment;-treatment decidedly rigorous and unjust.

Why punish as a criminal a woman whose only offence was composing verse in the style of the abbé Cotin, and prose in the taste of the popular favourite Punchinello. It is strange, that the author of Telemachus and the frigid loves of Eucharis, should have said in his "Maxims of Saints," after the blessed Francis de Sales," I have scarcely any desires; but, were I to be born again, I should not have any at all. If God came to me, I would also go to him; if it were not his will to come to me, I would stay where I was, and not go to him."

His whole work turns upon this proposition. Francis de Sales was not condemned, but Fenelon was. Why should that have been? the reason is, that Francis de Sales had not a bitter enemy at the court of Turin, and that Fenelon had one at Versailles.

The most sensible thing that was written upon this mystical controversy, is to be found perhaps in Boileau's satire "On the Love of God," although that is certainly by no means his best work.

Qui fait exactement ce que, ma loi commande,
A pour moi, dit ce Dieu, l'amour que je demande.

Ep. xii. 99.

Attend exactly to my law's command,
Such, says this God, the worship I demand.

If we must pass from the thorns of theology to those of philosophy, which are not so long and are less piercing, it seems clear that an object may be loved by any one without any reference to self, without any mixture of interested self-love. We cannot compare divine things to earthly ones, or the love of God to any other love. We have an infinity of steps to mount above our grovelling human inclinations before we can reach that sublime love. Since however we have nothing to rest upon, except the earth, let us draw our comparisons from that. We view some masterpiece of art, in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, or eloquence; we hear a piece of music that abolutely enchants our ears and souls; we admire it, we love it. without any return of the slightest advantage to ourselves from this attachment; it is a pure and refined

feeling; we proceed sometimes so far as to entertain veneration or friendship for the author; and were he present should cordially embrace him.

This is almost the only way in which we can explain our profound admiration and the impulses of our heart towards the eternal architect of the world. We survey the work with an astonishment made up of respect and a sense of our own nothingness, and our heart warms and rises as much as possible towards the divine artificer.

But what is this feeling? A something vague and indeterminate an impression that has no connection with our ordinary affections. A soul more susceptible than another, more withdrawn from worldly business and cares, may be so affected by the spectacle of nature, as to feel the most ardent as well as pious aspirations towards the eternal lord who formed it. Could such an amiable affection of the mind, could so powerful a charm, so strong an evidence of feeling, incur censure? Was it possible in reality to condemn the affectionate and grateful disposition of the archbishop of Cambray? Notwithstanding the expressions of St. Francis de Sales, above given, he adhered steadily to this assertion, that the author may be loved merely and simply for the beauty of his works. With what heresy could he be reproached? The extravagances of style of a lady of Montargis, aud a few unguarded expressions of his own, were not a little injurious to him.

Where was the harm that he had done? Nothing at present is known about the matter. This dispute, like numberless others, is completely annihilated. Were every dogmatist to say to himself, a few years hence no one will care a straw for my dogmas, there would be far less dogmatising in the world than there is. Ah! Louis the fourteenth! Louis the fourteenth ! when two men of genius had departed so far from the natural scope and direction of their talents, as to write the most obscure and tiresome works ever written in your dominions, how much better would it have been to have left them to their own wranglings!

Pour finir tous ces debats-là,
Tu n'avais qu'à les laisser faire.
To end debates in such a tone

'Twas but to leave the men alone.

It is observable under all the articles of morality and history, by what an invisible chain, by what unknown springs, all the ideas that disturb our minds, and all the events that poison our days, are bound together and brought to co-operate in the formation of our destinies. Fenelon dies in exile in consequence of holding two or three mystical conversations with a pious but fanciful woman. Cardinal Bouillon, nephew of the great Turenne, is persecuted in consequence of not himself persecuting at Rome the archbishop of Cambray, his friend: he is compelled to quit France, and he loses his whole fortune.

By a like chain of causes and effects, the son of a solicitor at Vire detects in a dozen of obscure phrases of a book printed at Amsterdam, what is sufficient to fill all the dungeons of France with victims; and at length, from the depth of those dungeons arises a cry for redress and vengeance, the echo of which lays prostrate on the earth an able and tyrannical society* which had been established by an ignorant mad-man.

LOVE (SOCRATIC LOVE).

Ir the love called Socratic and Platonic is only a becoming sentiment, it is to be applauded; if an unnatural licence, we must blush for Greece.

It is certain as the knowledge of antiquity càn well be, that Socratic love was not an infamous passion. It is the word love which has deceived the world. Those called the lovers of a young man were precisely such as among us are called the minions of our princes— honourable youths attached to the education of a child of distinction, partaking of the same studies and the same military exercises-a warlike and correct

VOL. IV.

*That of Jesus.-T.

K K

custom, which has been perverted into nocturnal feasts and midnight orgies.

The company of lovers instituted by Laius was an invincible troop of young warriors, bound by oath each to preserve the life of any other at the expense of his own. Ancient discipline never exhibited anything more fine.

Sextus Empiricus and others have boldly affirmed, that this vice was recommended by the laws of Persia. Let them cite the text of such a law; let them exhibit the code of the Persians; and if such an abomination be even found there, still I would disbelieve it, and maintain that the thing was not true, because it is impossible. No; it is not in human nature to make a law which contradicts and outrages nature itself—a law which would annihilate mankind, if it were literally observed. Moreover, I will show you the ancient law of the Persians as given in the Sadder. It says, in the article or gate 9, that the greatest sin must not be committed. It is in vain that a modern writer seeks to justify Sextus Empiricus and pederasty. The laws of Zoroaster, with which he is unacquainted, incontrovertibly prove, that this vice was never recommended to the Persians. It might as well be said, that is recommended to the Turks. They boldly practice it, but their laws condemn it.

How many persons have mistaken shameful practices, which are only tolerated in a country, for its laws. Sextus Empiricus, who doubted everything, should have doubted this piece of jurisprudence. If he had lived in our days, and witnessed the proceedings of two or three young jesuits with their pupils, would he have been justified in the assertion that such practices were permitted by the institutes of Ignatius Loyola?

It will be permitted to me here to allude to the Socratic love of the reverend father Polycarp, a carmelite, who was driven away from the small town of Gex in 1771, in which place he taught religion and Latin to about a dozen scholars. He was at once their confessor, tutor, and something more. Few have had more occupations, spiritual and temporal. All was dis