questioning, disappear into that Italian cloister, is to us the strangest anticlimax—the most wonderful apparent contradiction; but it was the calm conclusion of his mind—a mind ripe and well able to judge, unimpassioned and sensible. We do not attempt to offer any explanation of the act, nor do we profess ourselves competent to understand the convictions that led to it; but strange as it is, here is the fact, let us draw what conclusions we will. According to Lacordaire’s deliberate and thoughtful decision, he could serve God best as a monk, and a monk accordingly he became. Five years afterwards he reappeared in the pulpit of Notre Dame, “with his shaven head and his white tunic.” He preached with his usual eloquence upon _La Vocation de la Nation Française_, and spoke only in passing of his own monastic vocation. He made but one appearance, contenting himself apparently with “inaugurating in France,” as M. de Montalembert says, “the monastic frock, which she had not seen for fifty years.” He disappeared from Paris after this for two years more, dividing his time between the Italian cloister and the southern provinces of France, until in 1843 a new war began to rage in the French world, on that old question of liberty of teaching, for which the young ‘L’Avenir,’ years ago, had fought so stoutly, and for which its editors had made their appearance at the bar of the Chamber of Peers. Under the influence of this strife, and just as the Government awoke to alarm, and began to regard with apprehension the appearance of the Dominican frock in the pulpit and in the streets, the new Archbishop invited Lacordaire to resume his lectureship in Notre Dame. The Frère Prêcheur took his place again in the metropolitan pulpit: it was at once a defiance of the alarmed Government, and a re-proclamation of those principles of religious liberty on which the preacher had long ago taken his stand. For this question “de la liberté d’enseignement” involved also the question of liberty of association, the power of forming communities—a power nominally accorded to the French nation by its charter, but which had never been actually granted to it. The Church, wise as a serpent, seized upon this public right. She, too, had bethought herself of the long disused and valuable instrument of monasticism. Without monks no thorough hold could be got upon popular educational institutions; but without the power of forming corporations and organising bodies of men, the invasion of a new race of monks was impossible. On the other hand, alarmed statesmen and the public in general foresaw, with this power in the hands of the Church, an immediate inroad of the dreaded Jesuit and his brethren, to lay insidious hold upon the education of the people. “While the bishops and Catholic publicists,” says M. de Montalembert, “claimed the liberty promised by the charter with all its consequences, the numerous orators and writers of the University party defended its