“It was in November 1830 that I saw him for the first time in the cabinet of the Abbé de Lamennais,” he writes, “four months after a revolution which seemed for a moment to confound in a common ruin the throne and the altar, and one month after the beginning of the journal ‘L’Avenir.’ The motto of this journal was—_Dieu et la liberté!_ It was intended by its founders to regenerate Catholic opinion in France, and to seal its union with the progress of liberalism. I hastened to take part in this work, with the ardour of my twenty years, from Ireland, where I had just seen O’Connell at the head of a people whose invincible fidelity to the Catholic faith had worn out three centuries of persecution, and whose religious emancipation had just been won by the free press and freedom of speech. A very small number of laymen shared the convictions of M. de Lamennais, with a still more limited number of priests. Among the latter, the Abbé Lacordaire, whom as yet no one knew, was named to me. Not only was he not of those who had made themselves a name by reproducing the doctrines of the celebrated author of ‘L’Essai sur l’Indifference,’ but he could not even be called his pupil.... There needed nothing less than the Revolution of July and ‘L’Avenir’ to engage in a common work two natures so profoundly distinct. I saw them both for the first time: dazzled and swayed by the one, I felt myself more sweetly and more naturally drawn towards the other. If I could but paint him such as he appeared then, in all the radiance and the charm of youth! He was twenty-eight. He was dressed as a layman, the state of Paris not then permitting priests to wear their proper costume. His graceful figure, his fine and regular features, his sculpturesque forehead, the commanding carriage of his head, his dark and sparkling eye, an indescribable something of pride and elegance, as well as of modesty, in all his person—all this was but the cover of a soul which seemed ready to pour itself forth, not only in the free encounters of public speaking, but in the overflowing of affectionate intercourse. The flash of his eye disclosed gleams at once warlike and tender; it sought not only enemies to combat and to overthrow, but hearts to fascinate and conquer. His voice, already so nervous and energetic, frequently assumed accents of an infinite sweetness. Born to fight and to love, he already bore the seal of the double royalty of the soul and talent. He appeared to me charming and terrible, as a type of the enthusiasm for good—virtue armed for the support of truth. I saw in him one of the elect, predestined to all that youth adores and desires the most—genius and glory. Yet he, still more attracted by the gentle joys of Christian friendship than the distant echoes of fame, made us understand that the greatest struggles moved us only by half—that they