blessed. In his presence how difficult it is to loosen the family tie! What completes marriage and the family? the child, the object of their hopes. Who maintains the family? the child they possess. He is the aim and the end, the mediator I had almost said the whole.

true

We cannot repeat it too often, for nothing is more woman is alone. She is alone, if she has a husband, she is also alone, even with a son. Once at college, she sees him only by favour, and often at long intervals. When he leaves college, other prisons await the youth, and other exiles.

A brilliant evening party is given: - enter those well-lighted rooms, you see the women sitting in long rows, well dressed, and entirely alone. Go, about four o'clock, to the Champs-Elysées, and there you will see again the same women, sad and spiritless, on their way to the Bois de Boulogne, each in her own carriage, and alone. Others, at the further end, are from their shops; but they are also alone.

There is nothing in the life of women, who have the misfortune to have nothing to do, that may not be explained by one single word — loneliness, ennui. Ennui, which is supposed to be a languishing and negative disposition of the mind, is, for a nervous woman, a positive evil impossible to support. It grasps its prey, and gnaws it to the core *: whoever

*Love itself remedies it much less than is supposed. Our fine novels of the day have had a totally contrary effect to

suspends the torment for a moment is considered a saviour.

Ennui makes them receive female friends, whom they know to be inquisitive, envious, slandering enemies. Ennui makes them endure novels in newspapers, which are suddenly cut short, at the moment of the greatest interest.* Ennui carries them to concerts, where they find a mixture of every kind of music, and where the diversity of styles is a fatigue for the ear. Ennui drags them to a sermon, which thousands listen to, but which not one of them could bear to read. Nay, even the sickening half-worldly and half-devout productions, with which the neo-catholics inundate the Faubourg Saint Germain, will find readers among these poor women, the martyrs of ennui. Such delicate and sickly forms can support a nauseous dose of musk and incense, which would turn the stomach of any one in health.

One of these young authors explains, in a novel, all the advantage there is in beginning gallantry by

what was supposed. The passions are lessened. Real passion often loses much, in spite of what is said to the contrary, in presence of these powerful pictures; it suffers by the comparison. Woman very soon finds her own personal romance, weak and insipid, in presence of Indiana and Valentine. Love soon grows pale, and loses its charm in the eyes of a woman of sense, whose experience is enlightened by this pitiless light. *This is said only against the form; and by no means against the admirable talent that some writers have shown in them.

M

gallant devotion. The proceeding is not new.

All

I wish is, that those who borrowed it from Tartuffe would not give it to us, without its fair portion of wit and humour.

But they have no great need of it. Women listen to their disguised declarations and ambiguous endearments, as a matter of conscience to earn their salvation. The woman, who, with the most sober friend, would be offended at the very first word of friendship, suffers patiently this double-meaning language of the young Levite. The intelligent woman of experience and the world, who has read and seen much, shuts her eyes to the mischief. If he has but little talent, if he is heavy and uninteresting, yet his intentions are so good! Father such a one answers for him; he is an excellent young man.

The fact is, that whilst he pretends devotion, he speaks of love; this is his merit. Even though it be spoken of in a weak and insipid manner, it is still a merit with her who is no longer young. The husband, however distinguished he may be, has the fault of being a positive man, entirely taken up, as they say, with worldly interests. It is very true, he is working for the interest of his family; he provides for the future welfare of his children; he consumes his life to support the luxury in which his wife lives, and beyond his fortune.

Perhaps this husband would be justified in saying that all this, however material may be the result, is

also for him a moral interest, an interest of the heart. Perhaps he might add, that in being engaged with worldly interests in our assemblies and tribunals, besides a thousand other different positions for the profit of others, we may show ourselves to be more disinterested, and consequently more spiritualised, than all those brokers of spirituality who turn the Church into an exchange.

Let us here point out a contrast which is not sufficiently noticed.

In the middle ages the priest was the spiritual and mortified man. By the studies to which he alone. devoted himself, by nocturnal prayers and vigils, by the excess of fasting, and by monastic privations, he mortified his body. But in these days very little remains of all that; the Church has softened down every thing. The priests live as others do: if many pass a mean and pitiful life, it is, at least, generally unattended with risk. We see it, moreover, in the freedom of mind with which they engage the leisure of women with interminable conversations.

Who is the mortified man in the present day, in this time of hard work, eager efforts, and fiery opposition? It is the layman, the worldly man. This man of the world, full of cares, works all day and all night, either for his family, or for the state. Being often engaged in details of business or studies, too thorny to interest his wife and children, he cannot communicate to them what fills his own mind. Even

at the hour of rest, he speaks little, being always pursuing his idea. Success in business and invention in science, are only obtained at a high pricethe price that Newton mentions, by ever thinking of it. Solitary among his fellows, he runs the risk, in making their glory, or their fortune, to become a stranger to them.

The Churchman, on the contrary, who, in these days, to judge of him by what he publishes, studies little, and invents nothing, and who no longer wages against himself that war of mortifications imposed by the middle ages, can, coolly and quietly, pursue two very different occupations at the same time. By his assiduity and fawning words, he gains over the family of the man of business, at the very moment that he hurls down upon him from the pulpit the thunders of his eloquence.