found it out without her assistance. This exclusive cultivation of sensibility, whatever be the virtues that ennoble it, ends infallibly in tormenting the soul, and reducing it to a state of excruciating suffering. We cannot, with impunity, allow our will, the very essence of our strength and reason, the guardian of our tranquillity, to be absorbed by an all-devouring love.

I have spoken elsewhere* of the few but splendid examples exhibited throughout the middle ages in the persons of learned nuns, who combined science with piety. Their instructors seem to have entertained no apprehension in developing both their reason and their will. But science, it is said, fills the soul with uneasiness and curiosity, and removes us from God. As if there were any science without Him; as if the divine effulgence, reflected in science, had not a serene virtue, a power diffusing tranquillity in the human heart, and imparting that peace of eternal truths and imperishable laws, which will exist in all their purity when worlds will be no more.

Whom do I blame in all this? Man? God forbid! I only censure the method.

This method, which was termed Quietism when once it was reduced to a system, and which, as we shall see presently, is, generally speaking, that of

* In a fragment on "The Education of Women in the Middle Ages," reprinted at the end of my "Introduction to Universal History," 3d edition, 1844.

the devout direction*, is nothing else than the developement of our passiveness, our instinct of indolence; the result of which, in course of time, is the paralysis of our will, the annihilation of the essence of man's constitution.

St. François de Sales was, it would seem, one of the most likely persons to impart animation to this lifeless system. Nevertheless it was he, the loyal and the pure, who introduced the system at this period; it was he who in the seventeenth century pointed out the road to passiveness.

We are, as yet, in the earliest dawn of the century, in all its morning freshness, and invigorated by the breeze from the Alps. Yet see, Madame de Chantal sickens and breathes with difficulty... How will it be towards evening?

The worthy saint, in a delightful letter, describes himself as being one day on the lake of Geneva, "on a small raft," guided by Providence, and perfectly obedient "to the pilot, who forbids him to stir, and very glad at having only a board three fingers thick to support him."

The century is em

barked with him, and, with this amiable guide, he sails among breakers. These deep waters, as you will find out afterwards, are the depths of Quietism; and if

So inherent is it in the devout direction, that you meet with it even among the adversaries of Quietism. See Bossuet's Letters to the nuns whom he directed.

your sight is keen enough, you may already perceive Molinos through this transparent abyss.

*

* The principle is the same with St. François de Sales, and all the Quietists of whatsoever degree: the annihilation of the will is held up as the ideal of perfection. St. François does not recommend annihilation for the habitual state of the soul; but the others wish that this state, which is that of perfection, should become habitual, if it can (says Fenelon), or even perpetual (says Molinos). Bossuet hunts for, and finds in St. François, some few passages contrary to his general doctrine: they prove only that the saint is not consistent.

CHILDREN ADVANTAGEOUSLY MADE USE OF.-WAR OF THIRTY YEARS, 1618-1648. GALLANT DEVOTION.

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HITHERTO We have spoken of a rare exception-the life of a woman full of action, and doubly employed; as a saint and foundress, but especially as a wife, the mother of a family, and prudent housewife. The biographers of Madame de Chantal remark, as singular thing, that in both conditions, as wife and as widow, she conducted her own household herself, directed her dependents, and administered the property of her husband, her father, and her children.

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This indeed was becoming rare. The taste for household and domestic cares which we find every where in the sixteenth century, but especially among citizens and the families of the bar, grows much weaker in the seventeenth, when every one desires to live in great style.

The absence of occupation, being the taste of the period proceeded also from the state of things. All society is ever idle on the morrow of religious wars, each local action has ceased, and central life, that is to say, court life, has hardly begun. The nobility

have finished their adventures, and hung up their swords; the citizens have nothing further to do, being no longer engaged in plots, seditions, or armed processions. The ennui of this want of occupation falls particularly heavy upon woman; she is about to become at once unoccupied and lonely. In the sixteenth century she was kept in communication with man by the vital questions that were debated, even in her family, by common dangers, fears, and hopes. But there was nothing of the sort in the seventeenth century.

Add to this a more serious circumstance which is likely to increase in the following ages; namely, that in every profession the spirit of specialty and detail, which gradually absorbs man, has the effect of insulating him in his family, and of making him, as it were, a mute being for his wife and kindred. He no longer communicates to them his daily thoughts; and they can understand nothing of the minute intricacies and petty technical problems, which occupy his mind.

But, at least, woman has still her children to console her? No; at the time we are now speaking of, the mansion, silent and empty, is no longer kept alive by the noise of children; instruction at home is now an exception, and gives way daily to the fashion of collective education. The son is brought up among the Jesuits, the daughter by the Ursulines, or other nuns; the mother is left alone.