LAMENNAIS.

I.

AMONGST the leaders of the Catholic reaction of the present century, Lamennais stands in an exceptional position, as one who possessed sympathies too wide for his cause, and by them was carried into opposition to his party, his dearest friends, and his former self. It is peculiarly difficult to do justice to such an intellectual life as his in a short sketch like the following, since there is not one system of thought to be dealt with, but several systems, each distinct from the other, elaborate, and fully conceived. A skilful hand might, no doubt manipulate these so as to construct a kind of unity out of the ultimate principles of all; but in reality, while Lamennais's changes of opinion are easy to account for, and by an observer of clear insight might even, in great degree, have been predicted, a genuine unity is to be sought for rather in the moral character of the man than in any of his intellectual beliefs. There it is that we discover the actual centre of all he thought and felt and did.

Much that is true may be conveyed by saying that Lamennais possessed, in a high degree, the prophetic character. What was the Hebrew prophet as we find him represented to us in the books of the Kings and Chronicles, and self-revealed in the writings of the prophets themselves? Primarily, a man of God". a man elevated by his mass

of character and fervour of moral feelings above the common level of the race. Yet at the same time, in the deepest sense, a social man-not social, indeed, in the vulgar meaning of the word-no lover of salutations in the street or greetings in the market-place-but in all his solitudes, upon the mountain and in the desert, and in kings' palaces, and in the solitudes of thought or of vision, impassioned by the highest interests of society. A man of the people, therefore, as well as a man of God. Eagerly watching the movements of society, with small critical discernment and little play of intelligence, but with much fierce insight; crying aloud against its sins, and crying aloud against the sins of its oppressors and blind guides; indignant, disdainful, pitiful, exultant, forlorn for its sake; haughty and humble because alone with God; hating nothing so much as moderation and worldly compromises; with his mouth full of blessing and of curses, the same spring sending forth sweet water and bitter; and with his soul ever possessed by a vision of a shining future to be realised through unknown instruments, but, as a sure moral instinct testified, not without confusion and garments rolled in blood. a prophet was Lamennais.

Such

But, if a prophet, he was yet a prophet in our logical western world, and Bacon and Descartes had lived before him. Paris, with its scientific methods and practised intellects, differed a good deal from Jerusalem, and a simple "Thus saith the Lord" would have been received with a peculiar expression of the lips and eyes by the children of Voltaire not to be found upon the faces of the children of Abraham. Notwithstanding this, a

"Thus saith the Lord " is often on the lips of Lamennais. He however attempts, again and again, to give his perceptions of truth a logical basis. For the last twenty

years of his life he paid homage always more and more to the scientific movement. But the system of Lamennais, as developed in his "Esquisse d'une Philosophie," is less a philosophy than a vast philosophical epopee, such as we might imagine to have been chanted ages ago in some Indian grove; and, while doing homage to the scientific movement, Lamennais certainly possessed little of the scientific intellect. "Un esprit si absolu," M. Renan well says, ne pouvait être curieux."

There is another side of the character of Lamennais very different from that which has been brought under notice, but not inconsistent with it. In the austere solitudes of mountains, and in rocky angles drenched by the spray of water-falls, we are surprised by beautiful and tender flowers. But the surprise in such cases is without just cause. An atmosphere of purity is favourable to all delicate growths. It is not hard to picture to one's self the wild, Bedouin-like Elijah repeating rhymes to a child of Jezebel upon his knee. Certainly Lamennais (who had something of Elijah in him) possessed a nature the boldness and elevation of which were not unfavourable to gentleness and tender feeling. He was, in a remarkable degree, sensitive to the beauty of the external world, and of art. His immense need of repose-such a need as is proper to great natures— sought satisfaction in the Breton woods for days and weeks, and in the society of persons whose simplicity of character invincibly attracted him. His conversation

was often full of play, and so are many of his letters, though it must be acknowledged the play sometimes becomes laborious. His poetical writings (if we may so style such compositions as "Les Paroles d'un Croyant" and "Une Voix de Prison") pass in swift transitions from scenes of horror, conclaves of deceitful and tyrannical kings, tortures, and gloom, and blood, martyrdoms and terrible victories, denunciations and prophetic wrath, to gracious presences of childhood and womanhood, interiors of cottage life, whispers as of quiet seas, radiance as of summer dawns, and comfortable words of hope and love.

II.

Félicité Robert de la Mennais, the fourth of six children, was born at Saint Malo, in Brittany, on the 19th of June, 1782. M. Pierre-Louis Robert. his father, a merchant and shipowner of Saint Malo, for important services rendered to the Government, and for acts of munificence to the poor in times of scarcity, was ennobled by Louis XVI. a few years after the birth of Félicité, and took his title from a small estate called La Mennais. The Robert family was characteristically Breton, determined, energetic, attached to the past, apt to extreme views and feelings. Through his mother's family, some Irish blood entered into Féli's veins. Of his childhood we are told little, but enough to make us understand that much physical delicacy, and an excitable nervous temperament, made it irritable, capricious, and rebellious against restraint. We read of his being tied to the school-bench to be kept quiet, and he would

defiance to the sea.

himself tell how one day, in a boat secretly seized, he pushed off from shore, and with what feelings he gave Nor was it only the spell of animal gladness which nature laid upon the child. At eight years old, gazing upon a stormy waste of waters, "he thought he beheld the infinite and felt God," and said to himself of those beside him, with a sense of pride which afterwards shocked him in one so young, "They are looking at what I am looking, but they do not see what I see." There is much of the future man in these anecdotes, and when we add the picture of the boy lace-making in an upper room at home, or tending lovingly his flowers, we have already his life in miniature.

While Lamennais was still a child, the thunder-clouds of the Revolution burst. A pious Breton family, clinging to an ancient cause with the provincial tenacity, and attached to the Crown by recent favours, could not but be deeply sensible of the changed circumstances. Lamennais would often, in after years, tell with undiminished emotion how at times a proscribed priest stole, disguised and under cover of darkness, to his father's house; how in a garret, with two candles flaring upon a table which served as altar, the family would assemble, while a servant kept watch without; how mass would be said, little Jean de la Mennais, the elder brother, assisting, and the blessing be given to the old people and the children; and how the priest would depart before the dawn. In 1796, in the time of the Directory Government, a visit was paid to Paris, and the young royalist, with the pride of authorship at fourteen years of age, saw articles of his own appear in