object; and they had placed this flesh, in certain hymns, after the Trinity, as a fourth person. Priests, women, and young girls have all, since then, vied I with one another in this devotion. I have before me a manual, much used in country places, in which they teach the persons of their community, who pray for one another, how they join hearts, and how these hearts, once united, "ought to desire to enter into the opening of the heart of Jesus, and be incessantly sinking into that amorous wound."

The brotherhood, in their manuals, have occasionally found it gallànt to put the heart of Mary above that of Jesus (see that of Nantz, 1769). In their engravings, she is generally younger than her Son, being, for instance, about twenty, whereas he is thirty years old, so that, at first sight, he seems to be rather her husband or lover than her Son. This very year, at Rouen, in the chapel of the Sacred Heart at Saint Ouen's, I saw, on a drawing, (which the young ladies had made with the pen, and which bears at the foot, the approbation of the ecclesiastical authority,) the representation of Jesus on his knees before the kneeling Virgin !

The most violent satire against the Jesuists is what they have made themselves their art, the pictures and statues they have inspired. They are at once characterised by the severe sentence of Poussin, whose Christ did not appear to them pretty enough:"We cannot imagine a Christ with his head on one

side, or like Father Douillet's." Yet Poussin saw the best days of the Jesuit art: what would he have said, if he had seen what followed? all that decrepid coquetry, that thinks it smiles whilst it grimaces, those ridiculous glances, dying eyes, and such like deformities. The worst is, they who think only of the flesh, know no longer how to represent it. As the thought grows more and more material and insipid, the form becomes defaced, degraded from picture to picture, ignoble, foppish, affected, heavy, dull that is to say, shapeless.*

We may judge of men by the art they admire; and I confess it is no easy task to augur favourably of the souls of those who inspire this art, and recommend these engravings, hanging them up in their churches, and distributing them by thousands and millions. Such taste is an ominous sign. Many immoral people still possess a sentiment of elegance. But willingly to take to the ignoble and false, discovers a sad degradation of the soul.

* In 1834, being busy with Christian iconography, I looked over the collections of the portraits of Christ in the Royal Library. Those published within the last thirty years are the most humiliating I have ever seen, both for art and human nature. Every man (whether a philosopher or a believer) who retains any sentiment of religion will be disgusted with them. Every impropriety, every sensuality and low passion, is there : the childish, dandified seminarist, the licentious priest, the fat curate who looks like Maingrat, &c. The engraving is as good as the drawing-a skewer and the snuff of a tallow candle.

An undeniable truth is here made manifest; which is, that art is the only thing inaccessible to falsehood. Being the offspring of the heart and natural inspiration, it cannot be allied to what is false, it will not be violated; it protests, and if the false triumphs, it dies. All the rest may be aped and acted. They very well managed to make a theology in the sixteenth and a morality in the seventeenth century; but never could they form an art. They can ape the holy and the just; but how can they mimic the beautiful?-Thou art ugly, poor Tartuffe, and ugly shalt thou remain : it is thy token. What! you reach the beautiful, or ever lay a finger upon it? This would be impious beyond all impiety! The beautiful is the face of God!

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PART II.

ON DIRECTION IN GENERAL, AND ESPECIALLY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER I.

RESEMBLANCES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SEVENTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES.

CHRISTIAN ART.

-IT IS WE WHO HAVE RESTORED THE CHURCH. WHAT IT ADDS TO THE POWER OF THE PRIEST. THE CONFESSIONAL.

THERE are two objections to be made against all that I have said: they are as follows:

First." The examples are taken from the seventeenth century, at a time when the direction was influenced by theological questions, which now no longer occupy either the world or the Church; for instance, the question of grace and free-will, and that of Quietism or repose in love." But this I have already answered. Such questions are obsolete, dead, if you will, as theories; but, in the spirit and practical method which emanate from these theories, they are, and ever will be, living: there are no longer to be found speculative people, simple enough to trace out expressly a doctrine of lethargy and moral

annihilation; but there will always be found enough quacks to practise quietly this lethargic art. If this be not clear enough, I will, in a moment, make it clearer than some people would desire.

Secondly. "Are the examples you have shown from the books and letters of the great men of the famous age sufficiently conclusive for our own time? Might not those profound and subtle men of genius, who dived so deeply into the science of directing souls, have entered into refinements, of which the common herd of confessors and directors cannot now conceive any idea? Can you fear any thing of the sort from the poor simple priests whom we have now? Pray, where are our St. François de Sales, our Bossuets, and our Fenelons? Do you not see that not only the clergy no longer possess such men, but that they have degenerated generally, and as a class. The great majority of the priests are of rustic families. The peasant, even when he is not poor, finds it convenient to lighten the expenses of his family, by placing his son in the seminary. To nursery education, that which we receive from our parents before any other, they are total strangers. If we judge by those who come from the hands of the Sulpicians, Lazarists, &c., we shall be inclined to believe that there has been a deep plan laid among the upper leaders, to form none but indifferent priests, who would be so much the more dependent, and blind to