He preached no more. He was not yet fifty—still in the full vigour of his powers—but the day of discussion, of agitation, of eloquence was over, and Lacordaire, with instinctive wisdom, seems to have perceived the expediency of submission. It is a strange conclusion to a singular career. After the chivalrous pugnacity of his earlier years; after his steady struggle all his life through, by every possible means to link together democracy and Catholicism, the old unmoving Church and the new ever-varying world; after ‘L’Avenir’ of his youth, with its daring hopes and efforts—the brilliant youthful future which he and his colleagues were to work out of revolution and anarchy—and ‘L’Ere Nouvelle’ of his later years, which had less of the future, less of hope, yet was still a new beginning;—it is a strange sight to see the champion suddenly drop his arms and stand silent, arrested for ever before this new, strange, silent figure of absolutism which has suddenly erected itself against the agitated firmament. When this unlooked-for apparition rises between him and the skies, the great preacher has nothing more to say. All is over in a moment. “I have never feared but one thing—the absolute triumph of an individual,” said his friend, Madame Swetchine. And when, at last, after a world of controversy and discussion, that dreaded event arrived, the public life of the great orator came to an almost instantaneous conclusion. He retired not by compulsion, but by some internal sense of necessity. “He had no violence, no persecution to complain of,” says his biographer, “and I only render homage to truth by declaring that I have never seen in him the least trace of bitterness or of animosity against the new power. This power inspired him only with the sentiment of neutrality, dignified and a little disdainful, which existed in his nature in respect to all powers.” But whatever his sentiment might be, the fact is certain. Before all other developments of power the orator had held up bravely the banner of the Church, and kept his place. Before this new potency he gave way and yielded. It is one of the strangest acts of homage ever done to an unquestionable strength—“Le prince de la parole sacrée dût donc se taire.” He gave up that right over which he had rejoiced in the fervent days of his youth as “something inalienable, divine, eternally free”—the right of speaking of God. He made neither resistance nor public protest. The shadow of the new Empire fell over him in sudden chill and silence, and the words died upon his fervid lips. He who had spoken so freely, laboured so hard, spent himself so liberally for the service of his Church and country, was in himself, as he expresses it, “a kind of liberty”—a personified freedom; and, as with other freedoms, the day was over for him. He saw by intuition that resistance was useless. The silent despot overawed, as by a species of fascination, the eloquent priest, who, in his heart, was