CHARLES DICKENS

MR. CHARLES DICKENS (leading Article, Friday, June 10, 1870.)

One whom young and old, wherever the English language is spoken, have been accustomed to regard as a personal friend is suddenly taken away from among us. Charles Dickens is no more. The lossof such a man is an event which makes ordinary expressions of regret seem cold and conventional. It will be felt by millions as nothing less than a personal bereavement. Statesmen, men of science, philanthropists, the acknowledged benefactors of their race might pass away, and yet not leave the void which will be caused by the death of Dickens. They may have earned the esteem of mankind ; their days may have been passed in power, honour, and prosperity ; they may have been surrounded by troops of friends, but, however pre-eminent ш station, ability, or public services, they will not have been, like our great ana genial novelist, the intimate of every household. Indeed, such a position is attained not even by one man in an age. It needs an extraordinary combination of intellectual and moral qualities to gain the hearts of the public as Dickens has gained them. Extraordinary and very

original genius must be united with good sense, consummate skill, a well-balanced mind, and the proofs of a noble and affectionate disposition before the world will consent to enthrone a man as their unassailable and enduring favourite. This is the position which Mr.Dickens has occupied with the English and also with the American public for the third of a century. If we compare his reputation with that of the number of eminent men and women who have been his contemporaries, we have irresistible evidence of his surpassing merits. His is a department of literature in which ability in our time has been abundant to overflowing. As the genius of the Elizabethan age turned to the drama, so that of the reign of Victoria seeks expression in the no vol. There is no more extraordinary phenomenon than the number, the variety, and the general high excellence of the works of fiction in our own day. Their inspirations are as many as the phases of thought and social life. They treat not only of love and marriage, but of things political and ecclesiastical, of social yearnings and sceptical disquietudes ; they give us revelations from the empyrean of fashion and from the abysses of crime. Their authors have their admirers, their party, their public, but not the publio of Dickens. It lias been his peculiar fortune to appeal to that which is common to all sorts and conditions of men, to excite the interest of the young and the uninstructed, without shocking the more reiined tasto of a higher class and a more mature age. Thus the news of his death will hardly meet the eye of an educated man or woman who has not read his works and who has not been accustomed to think of him with admiration und friendly regard.

To the survivors, at least, there is something terrible in sudden death, and when we hear that Digress is gone we cannot but recall howThackeray died before him, also in the vigour of age, and apparently in the fulness of health. Dickens has lived longer than his great rival, for he was born only a year after, and he has survived him several years. But he has been cut off while still in what may be called middle age. He was born in February, 1812, and has consequently not long attained his fifty-eighth year. As men live and work now, this is an age which would give the hope of many years of successful exertion, to be succeeded by a period of honoured repose. But we have this consolation, that the life of Dickers has been long enough to allow full scope for his genius, and to enable him not only to earn, but to enjoy his fame. In this respect his career has been extraordinary. Ho was one whose marvellous powers were developed early, and he attained the highest eminence in the first years of his literary career. It is certainly a wonderful phenomenon that a book like " Pickwick," the pages of which overflow with humour, and are marked in every sentence with the keenest observation of men and things, should have been produced by a young man of 24. After the light but clever " Sketches by Boz," Dickens began " Pickwick" in 1836, and finished it in the course of the succeeding year. \Ve are inclined to think that this, the first considerable work of the author, is his masterpiece ; but, whatever may be the world's decision on this point, it can hardly be doubted that the prize must be given to one of the group of fictions which he produced within the first ten or twelve vears of his literary life. " Nicholas Kickleby " teems with wit, and the characters, with one or two exceptions, are life-like in the extreme. " Oliver Twist "

everybody knows ; " Martin Chuzzlewit " is excellent, and the American portions are not only the most amusing satire that has been published in the present age, but fill us with wonder that the peculiarities of thought, manner, and diction of a people should be so surely seized and so inimitebly expressed by a young writer who had been only a few months in the country.

In this marvellous precocity of genius Dickens formed a contrast to some of those with whom a comparison naturally suggests itself.Scott was 34 years old before he published his first great poem, the " Lay of the Last Minstrel," and it was nearly ten years afterwards, in 1814, that he made his experimentas a novelist with " AVaverley." So, too, Thackeray, though known for some time in the field of literature, made his first great success with " Vanity Fair" when no- longer a young man. Of Dickens it may be said, also, that his early books show no signs of juvenility. When young in years he showed the mental balance of an experienced writer. And yet what freshness and vigour there were in those wonderful serials which, about the time the present Queen came to the throne, changed the popular literature of the day ! When that young, unknown author appeared on the field he was at once hailed as the new chiof of popular fiction. It is a long time ago, but our older readers will remember the excitement caused by the " Pickwick Papers." The shilling numbers of "Boz". carried everything before them. They were read here by tens of thousands, though the reading public 30 years ago was not what it ie now ; and they were reprinted in every possible form in America. In fact, half the newspapers in the States transferred them to their columns bodily the day after their arrival. This, popularity they fully deserved. They are among the few books of the kind that one can return to again and again, or, having' opened at any page, can read straight on, carried forward by a sense of real enjoyment. The best characters stand out in real flesh and blood, and in this respect are superior to those of Thackehay,' which, though excellently designed, show too much the art of an able sketcher from artificial types. For this reason, Thackih Ray, though he has always maintained Ilia hold on the London world in which his personages figure, has never come near to Dickens in popularity with the great mass of the people. The characters of Dickens have been accepted by all men's discernment as the true reflection of human nature ; not merely of manners or costumes. Squeeks is to everybody the low, tyrannical schoolmaster ; Bumble the representative of parochial pomposity ; Mrs. Gamp is the type of her vulgar, hardhearted sisterhood. Perhaps a more signal proof of the genius of Dickens is the manner in which his style and diction have penetrated into the ordinary literature of the country. So much has become naturalized and isusedquito unconsciously that it is only by re-reading those earlier Works which most impressed his contemporaries that one becomes aware how great has been their influence. в- We cannot conclude these remarks •witlibut paying a tribute to the moral influence of the writings of which we have •poken. Mr. Dickens was a man of an eminently kindly nature, and full of sympathy for all around him. This, without being paraded, makes itself manifest in his works, and we have no doubt whatever

that much of the active benevolence of the present day, the interest in humble persons and humble things, and the desire to seek out and relieve every form of misery is due to the influence of his works. We feel that we havejost one of the foremost Englishmen of the age. There are clever writers enough, but no one who will take the place, literary and social, that belonged to him. It was but the other day that at the Ноз'а! Academy banquet he made the best speech of the evening, in matter, language, and manner. His powers as an actor are well known, though, of late years, they have been only exhibited in the narrower field of public readings. He was made to be popular, and, even irrespective of his literary genius, was an able and strong-minded man, who would have succeeded in almost any profession to which he devoted himsalf. We can but condole with the public on his sudden and premature loss.

(obituab.y Notice, Saturday, Juke 11, 1870.)

The mere announcement that Charles Pickens is dead repeats the common jjentence passed on all humanity. Death tas once again demanded its own, and made a claim which all men must sooner or later meet. We forget how many mortals i>reatho their last in every minute according to the calculations of statistical authorities. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and Thursday, the 9th 'йау of June, 1870, will be an evil day in the memories of all who can appreciate true genius and admire its matchless works. We have had greater writers both in poetry and prose, but they were not of our day and generation. For us gust now this loss is our gréâtes*. It Would have been great at any time from the moment when he turned with averяоп from the drudgery of a solicitor's office, amid the forebodings of his friends, And thenceforward rose in the clear light of literature, until he soared in the sunehine of success far above all his fellows. ¡There are minds of such jealous fibre that the very merits of an author, his mightiest ^gifts and his most special talents, only serve as food on which to nourish their ¡prejudices. Such are they who, while iorced to admit the wit, humour, and «ower of Charles Dickens, always added, '*' but he was vulgar." Yes, in one sense be was vulgar ; he delighted in sketching the characters not of dukes and duchesses,

but of the poor and ;lowly. He had listened to their wants and sorrows, seen them in their alleys and garrets, had learnt their accents and dialect by heart, and then, with a truth and liveliness all his own, he photographed them in hia immortal works. In that sense alone was Charles Dickens " vulgar." He was of the people, and lived among them. His was not the close atmosphere of a saloon or of a forcing house. In the open air of the streets, and woods, and fields, he lived and had his being, and so he came into closer union with common men, and caught with an intuitive force and fulness of feature every detail of their daily life. His creations have become naturalized, so to speak, among all classes of the community, and are familiar to every man, high or low. How many fine gentlemen and ladies, who never saw Pickwick or Sam Weller in the flesh, have laughed at their portraits by Charles Dickens. How many have been heartbroken at the sufferings of Oliver, been indignant at the brutality of Bill Sykes, wept over the fallen Nancy's cruel fate, and even sympathized with the terrible agony of Pegin in the condemned cell, whobutfor Charles Dickens would never have known that such sorrows and crimes, such cruel wrongs, and such intensity of feeling >, existed in those lower depths of London life, far above which, like the golden

gods of Epicurus, they lived in careless ease till this great apostle of the people touched their hearts and taught them that those inferior beings had hearts and äouls of their own, and could be objects o£ sympathy as well as victims of neglect.

We have heard it objected also by gentlemen that Charles Dickens could never describe " a lady," and by ladies that he could never sketch the character of " a gentleman " ; but \ve have always olserved that when put to the proof these male and female critics failed lamentably to establish their case. We are not sure that Charles Dickens's gentlemen were all as well dressed as those who resort to Poole's temple of fashion, or that his ladies were always attired in the very last fancy of Worth. Dress is no doubt what may be called in the catechism of gentility the " outward and visible sign " of a gentleman, just as the outward fashion of a lady is shown by her dress ; but even these are nothing if that " inward and spiritual grace " which is characteristic of the true gentleman and real lady be wanting, and in that grace, however negligent they may be in their attire, the ladies and gentlemen in Charles Dickens's works are never deficient. \Ve are not denying that" the true type of gentle life is to be found in the upper classes. Far from it. We only insist, when we are told that Charles Dickens could not describe either a lady or a gentleman, that there are ladies and gentlemen in all ranks and classes of life, ar.d that the inward delicacy and gentle feeling which we acknowledge us the only true criterion of the class may be found under the smockfrock of the ploughboy aa well as beneath the mantle of an earl.

When a* great writer, on his deathbed, was with his last breath instructing his children in the secret of his success, he said,—" Be natural, my children, for the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art." And this was pre-eminently the case with Charles Dickens. His great characters hare struck fast root in the hearts of hie countrymen, for this, above all other reasons, that they are natural— natural both relatively to the writer who created them and to the station in life in which they are supposed to live. Like the giant who revived as soon as he touched his mother earth, Charles Dickens was never so strong as when he threw himself back on the native soil of the social class among which he had been born and bred, whose virtues, faults, and foibles he could portray with a truth and vigour denied to any other man. That he was

eminently successful may be proved by his works. He it gone, indeed, but they remain behind and will long s¡ eak for him. Every day will only add to the universal feeling that he wrote not for this age alone, but for all time, and that this generation, in losing sight of him, will hardly look upon his like again.

That he was eminently truthful, trustworthy, and self-denying can be gainsaid by none. But, of the man himself, apart from the writer, it is as yet too soon to speak. We live too close to the man to be able to discriminate his excellence, which will live for ever, from his faults, which will be forgotten ere the year is out. In this the world is very charitable. It has no memory for small errors ; they wane arid perish while the pearl which they encrust and perhaps conceal grows day by day more truly orient, and increases with value as generation after generation vanishes away.

Nor do we know why we should repine at the manner of his death. It was said of old that those whom the gods love die young. If it cannot be said that Charles Dickens died young, he has departed from among us at least at an earlier age than many who were at least not more than his equals in fame. Happy, no doubt, he was in that he was snatched away in a moment of time. Ho died without a pang, and tha victim to no lingering disease. That still and solemn voice to which we must all one day listen whispered to him " Come," and he went. His work was done on earth ; and in the fulness of his labours, though not of his years, he obeyed the summons, and departed from among us without a murmur. In this working country, and especially in this working age, which incessantly proclaims the worth of labour as its watchword, it is something to mark the career of one who still toiled on, and not the less patiently and earnestly for his triumphs, till, when the shout of victory was ringing in his ears, he was cut off in an instant, like a flower of the field, ко that when people rose up and looked to see the news of the morning, a sudden affliction fell upon them ая they read that a great master of English had passed away fron» them at nightfall, and that the magic pen of Charles Dickens would write no more.

During the whole of Wednesday Mr. Dickens had manifested signs of illness, saying that he feltdull, and that the work on which he was engaged was burdensome to him. He came to the dinner table at 12

С o'clock, and his sister-in-law, Miss Hogarth, observed that his eyes were full of tears. She did not like to mention this to him, but watched him anxiously, until, alarmed by the expression of his face, she proposed sending for medical assistance. He said, " No," but said it with imperfect articulation. The next moment he complained of toothache, put his hand to the side of his head, and desired that the window might be shut. It was shut immediately, and Miss Hogarth went to him, and took his arm, intending to lead him from the room. After one or two steps he suddenly fell heavily on his left side, and remained unconscious und speechless until his death, which came at ten minutes past 0 on Thursday, iust 24 hours after the attack. As soon

as he fell a telegram was despatched to his old friend and constant medical attendant, Mr. F. Carr Beard, of Wei beckstreet, who went to Gad's-hill immediately, but found the condition of his patient to be past hope. Mr. Steele, of Strood, was already in attendance ; and Dr. Russell Reynolds went down on Thursday, Mr. Beard himself remaining until the last. The pupil of the right eye •was much dilated, that of the left contracted, the breathing stertorous, the limbs flaccid until half an hour before death, when some convulsion occurred. The symptoms point conclusively to the giving way of a blood-vessel in the brain, and to consequent largo hemorrhage, or, in other words, to what is called apoplexy.

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COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT

COUNT DE MONTALEMBERT.

(obituary Notice, Mondat, March 14, 1870.)

The generation of men -who illustrated the" literary and political history of France for no inconsiderable portion of the present century is fast disappearing, îlot long since Berryer, full of years, but •with mental powers hardly impaired, was taken away ; soon after Lamartine, who had, however, long survived himself, was laid in his grave ; and now we have to record the loss of another gifted person, younger than either, but who for nearly 30 years filled a high place in the public eye as a writer and an orator.

Charles, Count de Montalembert,whose long sufferings have just terminated in death, sprang from an ancient family of provincial nobility for centuries settled in Poitou. One of his ancestors, André de Montalembert, Sire d'£sse, the companion in arms of Francis I., fought at Landrecy. on the Sambre, against Charles V., and fell before Therouanne. His great uncle, Marc Kent', Marquis de Montalembert, had served with much distinction in the Seven Years' War, and, in spite of the opposition of the military engineers of the periodj'succeeded in introducing important improvements in the art of fortification. Ho died in 1800, senior General in the French Army.

Count Reno de Montalembert quitted France, with so many others of his order, in 1792, and joined the corps of emigrants commanded by his father. "When the army of Conde was broken up, after Haguenau and Bratheim. he entered the English service, and took part in the campaigns of Egypt, India, and Spain, where he obtained the rank of Colonel. He returned to France on the second Restoration ; was raised to the peerage in 1819 ; and was sent in 1826 as Ambassador to Sweden, where ho remained till the overthrow of Charles X. He survived the July Revolution but one year. His son Charles was born in England in 1810, his mother being a Scotchlady, named Forbes. When quite a young man he formed an intimate acquaintance with the Abbé Lamennais, then the ardent advocate of an alliance between Catholicism and Democracy, and started a journal, the Avenir, as their organ. They entered npon a fierce content with the University of Paris.

denounced its monopoly of education, and, to prove the superiority of their system, Montalembert, in conjunction-' with Lacordaire, opened a " free school " without the licence of the authorities.' Lacordaire, who had given up the Bar and taken orders four years previously—the Council of Advocates not having acceded to his request to be allowed to act at once as a priest and a barrister—was then! chaplain to the College of Henri IV. The' Avenir, which the three friends conducted, had for its device " God and Liberty, the Pope and Liberty," and defended not only religious, but civil and political freedom, as perfectly compatible with Catholicism. The paper was not destined to a long existence. The vehemence of its animadversions brought it into trouble. It was prosecuted, and the principal editor, Lamennais, then Ultramontane, had to appear before the Assize' Court of Paris, where he defended him-| self. On the other hand, Montalembert had to answer in the Correctional Police' Court for the heinous offence of setting up a school without the Minister's per-' mission. Before the proceedings com-; menced his father died, and Montalembert succeeded to the peerage. He claimed his right to be tried by the Chamber of, which he was a member, and pleaded his' own causo in a speech giving promise of future excellence. The law, however,! was precise ; he was guilty of having' taught children their letters without official permission, and was condemned to' pay theminimum fine of lOOf. On attaining the legal age he took his seat as a' Peer of France (1835),and the first speech' he made in the Chamber brought him' into collision with the Ministry ; it was1 against the laws restricting the liberty of the Press, known as the Laws of SepJ tember, introduced by the Cabinet oc which M. Thiors was a member iiurao-j diately after the Fieschi attempt, as that " exceptional laws "were by the Imperial Government after the crime of Orsini. i The doctrines which Lamennais/ Lacordaire, and Montalembert defended! •with so much energy and eloquence in ther Avenir—the union of Catholicism andi Demoo.ranv—found hiit little favour at_Borne in those times of revolution, and the friends resolved to proceed thither and plead their cause in pei'son. After some delay the doctrines which Lamennais exaggerated were reprobated by Gregory XVI. in the Encyclical' of Juno, 1835, as they had been three years before. Lacordaire and Montalembert submitted to the judgment of the Pope ; but Lamennais revolted, and from that day all intercourse ceased between him and his two friends. Montalembert—the first-of his race, as ho has more than once said,whose weapon was the pen—betook himself with characteristic ardour and perseverance to itudy the ideas and manners of the Middle Ages, which always had a great charm for him. In 1836 ho published his first important work, " The Life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary," and, with reference to the animated debate in the Chamber of Peers on the relation's between Church and State, produced an elaborate pamphlet, the " Manifesto Catholique." The following year he made his three famous speeches in the Chamber of Peers against a Bill introduced by M. Villemain, then a member of the Cabinet, on the liberty of the Church, the liberty of instruction, and the liberty of the monastic orders. It 'was on this occasion that he declared himeelf the defender of the Society of Jesus ; and in his last speech on that occasion he uttered the words which have been since ?? often quoted by adversaries as well as friends as indicative of his aristocratic and religious predilections,—"We are the eons of the Crusaders ; and the sons of the Crusaders will never, never give way before the sons of Voltaire. "

• In 1845 he founded the " Committee of Keligious Associates " with a view to the elections, and exerted himself to the utmost to procure the return of candidates of his own way of thinking. Long before the easy sxibversion of the Orleans Monarchy he predicted the triumph of Badicalisin as the result of the contest between the Government and the nation, and, as its inevifable consequence, the loss of French liberty. The catastrophe of February completely justified his warnings. Montalembert, who, with all his family traditions, was not, strictly speaking, a Legitimist any more than an Orleanist or a Republican, but a lover of liberty, had no alternative but to accept the new Government as the only one .which at that moment had a chance of re(storing order. In the General Elections 'of 1848 he presented himself as ^candidate in the department of the Doubs, where

his family possessed considerable property. He was returned the last on a list of eight, by 23,000 ; and, as every one expected, took his place with the Conservative majority. Generally supporting the majority, he yet voted against the decree banishing the Orleans family. On the other hand, he voted with the Left against there-establishment of the money guarantee exacted by the Republican Government from the journals ; against martial law while the Constitution was under discussion ; against the impeachment of Louis Blanc ; and, finally, he refused his approbation to the elaborate Constitution of 1848. Among his happiest efforts at that time was his speech on ihe despatch of the Duke d'Harcourt, then Envoy to Rome, giving an account of the murder of the Pope's Minister, Rossi, on the steps of the Roman Assembly \vhila that Assembly continued its deliberations and affected not to notice it in its Minutes, as if it were an unimportant and ordinary incident. It is hardly necessary to say that he gave his haarty approbation to French intervention in favour of the Pope, and to the military expedition to Rome. When the elections for the Legislature which succeeded the Constitutional Assembly came on, Montalembert was returned at once in two departments, the Doubs and the Côtes du Nord. In the Legislature he often came into collision with Victor Hugo, who had just been elected the tenth representative on a roll of 28, from the Seine, and who, after being made a Peer of France by Louis Philippe, had taken up Democratic and Socialistic doctrines. The contest was unequal ; Montalembert, who had his resources always at hand, was ever ready for either attack or defence, whereas his antagonist required a long time for preparation. One of the most brilliant speeches made by Montalembert in those days was on the moi« propriooî the Pope. It was while a member of the Commission charged with preparing the law of the 31st of May, which placed certain restrictions on the exercise of universal suffrage, that he used the words of which he was so often reminded afterwards, that " a Roman expedition " was indispensable to the interests of France. In- the beginning of 1851 the hostility which had long existed in a latent state against the President of the Republic became aggravated. Montalembert, whose nature revolted against what he thought injustice, from whatever quarter it came, voted frequently against his own party in defence of Louis Napoleon, disclaiming at the same time all ide is of being either his adviser or his confidant. He was simply, he said, an impartial witness in his behalf, and he strongly denounced the conduct of those who were undermining his legitimate authority as a " stupid and inexcusable ingratitude." He was one of the promoters of the plan for revising the Constitution, and was named on the Commission charged with preparing it. M. de Tocqueville was the reporter.

It is certain that a Cvwp d'Etat had been expected by Montalembert. When it did come, however, he protested against the arrest and imprisonment of the representatives. He was named by the President member of the Consulting Commission preliminary to the Council of State, and at once elected Deputy for the Doubs to the new Legislative Chamber. He was, however, grieved and indignant at the decree confiscating the property of the Orleans Princes ; and that act, and perhaps also the influence of his political friends, soon detached him from the Government and drove him into opposition. The same year he was elected to the French Academy in place of M. Droz. His address, which was replied to by M. Guizot, was an eloquent eulogy on his predecessor, and as eloquent an invective against the revolution. In 1854 a confidential letter which he wrote to M. Dnpin, commenting severely on tho subserviency of the Chamber, was by some strange indiscretion published in the Belgian papers. It gave great offence to the Chambers ; authority to prosecute him was demanded and granted, but it came to nothing. In the General Elections of 1857 Montalembert, who was now looked upon a« the declared adversary of the umpire, was defeated in his own department. This defeat closed his Parliamentary career. His exclusion from an arena for which he was so eminently fitted, and the tame submission of men who, not long before, were reckless agitators, aroused in him a bitterness of feeling which he rarely restrained. The laws of the Newspaper Press prevented him from openly criticizing the Government, but his feelings found vent in an article on the Indian debates in the English Parliament, published in the Correspondant, a monthly periodical, the organ of the Liberal Catholic party, and through the thin veil of insinuation the praises of English institutions were in reality a satire on thosa of France. He was prosecuted on the usual ground of having used language

tending to excite hatred against the Imperial institutions, bringing the laws into contempt, and attacking the rights which the Constitution had conferred upon the Sovereign. He was convicted, and sentenced to six months' imprisonment and a fine of 3,000f. An appeal was lodged in the Superior Court ; but tho judgment was confirmed as regarded the first two counts, the fine was maintained, and the term of imprisonment was reduced to three months. No one believed that either for six or for three months the Emperor would allow such a man to be sent to prison for such an offence. Immediately after tho first Court pronounced judgment, a few lines in the Moniteur announced that His Majesty had remitted all the penalties. Montalembert was jusl the man to be deeply mortified at what ha considered a design to "dishonour "him ; and it was not without difficulty that he was dissuaded from declaring publicly that he would accept no favour of the sort. Not long afterwards he was again prosecuted for an article in the same periodical on the Imperial policy towardi the Pope.

Montalembert's first work, " La Vie da Sainte Elisabeth de Hongrie," published in 1830, has gone through eight or tea editions, has been abridged, and illustrated several times. A work on Ar( (1829), a pamphleton the duties of Catholics and on the liberty <5f>Ëncydopédit Catholique and thé Correspondant, to which he was, when his health permitted, an assiduous contributor. But the work to which he devoted all his energy, for which he had laid up large stores of erudition, and which he hoped would 4ake a prominent place in the literature of his country, is his history, " Les Moines de l'Occident depuis Saint Benoit jusqu'il Saint Bernard," of which five volume« have alreadyappeared. The two countries for which he ever felt deep sympathy and affection were Poland and Ireland. The cause of Poland he had pleaded from the first moments of his appearance ?? ? public character. He visited Warsaw a short time before the last insurrection, and recorded his impressions of what he •witnessed in the Correspondant. Ireland he had visited many times. The first was when quite a young man, and a mind like his could not fail to be struck by the desperate fidelity of the Irish people to the faith of their fathers. He was touched, too, by the reception he met with during his lengthened tours, wherever he presented himself. «-* -«••

With some passing outbreaks of irritation at certain acts of her foreign policy, Montalembert felt the highest admiration for England and English institutions. Edmund Burke he looked upon as the greatest philosophical statesman of ancient or modern times, and as a giant in intellect. Indeed, the feeling he cherished towards the great Irishman was one of enthusiastic veneration. Those who visited him in the Rue de ??? may have remarked the engraving of Burke which hung in his study, and from which he

seemed to draw inspiration. In some parts of his own speeches one is occasionally reminded of the compass, copiousness, flexibility, and fire which he so admired in the author of " Reflections on the French Revolution."

The first symptoms of the malady which has ended fatally he attributed to the anxiety of mind and the worry and fatigue he was exposed to in his efforts to stem the revolutionary torrent of 1848. A fewyears ago he contemplated a visit to the United States, but he was compelled to forego that pleasure. For more than five years he was, with some intervals, a sufferer ; but during these intervals he received the visits of his friends, and conversed with his usual animation. He had lately lost all hcpe of a permanent cure, but he bore his long illness with fortitude, and he contemplated the result with quiet submission to the will of Providence. All the consolation that the tender affection of his family, the sympathy of numerous friends, and even of political adversaries, could give, he had.

Source: Eminet persons: Biographies, reprinted from the Times, 1880.
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