the service of the Church, and attached them to him with a kind of passion, seems to have exercised no subduing influence over the young men whom he associated with himself in the work of ‘L’Avenir.’ They tilted frankly at the world with an inexhaustible delight in their work. “Neither the old clergy nor the new Government were disposed to receive this new doctrine,” says M. de Montalembert, with unconscious humour, in explanation of this work; “but the violence and mistakes of the latter might be counted upon to enlighten, little by little, and bring back the former. It was necessary, then, at once to point out the arbitrary acts of certain functionaries against religion, and to teach Catholics to draw, from liberal institutions and ideas, arms which the fall of a dynasty could no more break in their hands. This was the double task to which the young Henri Lacordaire devoted his untried, and till then unknown, talent.” Into this enterprise the young Abbé rushed with all his joyous youthful forces. Violent Radicalism and lofty High-Churchism, both the one and the other of a more fiery character than are known in our tamer atmosphere, here took hands together and defied the world. The young champion went to the wildest extremities in his vivid and rash eloquence. The French priest even, in the inspirations of his genius, antedated the equally fiery priests of Scotland, and loftily suggested to his brethren of the clergy—while discoursing to them of the sacrilege committed by a sous-préfet, who had forced an entrance into a country church for the corpse of a man who had been refused the rites of burial—an expedient which has only been adopted on the northern side of the Tweed. “You will make him grow pale” (to wit, the sous-préfet), cries the young orator, “if, taking your dishonoured God, with staff in hand and hat on head, you bear Him into some hut made with fir planks, swearing not to expose Him a second time to the insults of the State-temples.” “These words,” says Montalembert, “indicate the extreme, unjust, and dangerous conclusion from which ‘L’Avenir’ drew not back. It said to the clergy that they should be prepared to renounce the _budget du culte_, sole remnant of their ancient and legitimate patrimony, sole guarantee of their material existence, to give up even the churches of which the State assumed to be owner, to enter into full possession of the invincible powers and inexhaustible resources of modern liberty.” Nor did these bold assaults end in mere words. “A series of contests,” continues the biographer, “the details of which would encumber this narrative, but which were all designed to promote the emancipation of the priests and the Catholic citizens, took him more than once to the court of the _police correctionelle_, sometimes as the accused, sometimes as client, sometimes even as advocate; for until he was interdicted by a decision of the Council of Discipline, he still