“I will be pardoned for lingering upon the events of that year, so memorable for us,” says Montalembert, with touching grace. “There is no one, however obscure and useless may have been his life, who, at the decline of his days, does not feel himself drawn by an irresistible current towards the moment when the first fires of enthusiasm were lighted in his soul and on his lips—no one who does not breathe with a sort of intoxication the perfume of these recollections, and who is not tempted to boast beyond measure their charm and their brightness,—days at once happy and sad,” he says—“days devoured by labour and by enthusiasm—days such as occur but once in a life.” The apology is beautiful, but it is unnecessary. Few will read the history of those young days and friends, differing so totally from ourselves, yet so entirely in accord, without feeling their hearts warm to the historian, whose own youth rises so fair before him as he writes, and of whom the world is fully advised that his maturer days have well borne out the promise of that youth. We, too, are tempted to linger, but must not, space and time preventing. ‘L’Avenir’ came at last to a sudden check, as was inevitable. After it had affronted the clergy, the bishops, and the Government, united its own little band of retainers in such bonds as unite men “under the fire of the enemy,” and fought its way for thirteen months through all manner of prosecutions and oppositions, the daring little journal came to a close in a manner as remarkable and Quixotic as had been its career. “In announcing the suspension,” says M. de Montalembert, “we announced at the same time the departure of the three principal editors for Rome, in order to submit to the Pope the questions in controversy between us and our adversaries, promising beforehand an absolute submission to the Pontifical decision.” Strange mission of the three—two of whom only had youth to excuse them in this mad embassage—to persuade wise Rome to embroil herself, and compromise her infallibility, in the decision of questions so complicated, for the satisfaction of the editors of ‘L’Avenir!’ The two young men went lightly upon their mission, not without natural excitement in the prospect of visiting the sacred city; but matters were different with Lamennais, whose genius and lofty intention seem to have been shipwrecked by that spirit of unmaturing youthfulness, always sanguine of its own triumph, expecting everything to yield to its will, absolute and petulant, and incapable of contradiction, which is as undignified as it is unnatural in a man of mature age. The confidence which led Lacordaire and Montalembert to state their difficulties to his Holiness, and beg his decision upon them, was sufficiently romantic and high-flown. “But how explain or excuse it,” says our author, “in a distinguished priest, already mature in age, as was the Abbé de Lamennais, who was then more than fifty, and