age, the forcible type and symbol which antedate all arguments is, after all, the thing most wanted; and that the apparition of the monk, self-denuded of all possessions, even of his own will, for the glory of God and the service of his neighbour, may startle the confused intelligence into a belief of that work and its importance, which no philosophy could give. Such at least seems to have been the conviction of Lacordaire. Like his great contemporary Irving, the French preacher felt the inefficacy of common means for the work on which his heart was set. To both the world came open-mouthed, wondering and admiring; but neither in the London modern church, nor under the noble arches of Notre Dame, was the report of the prophet believed as he felt in his heart it ought to be. This uneasiness in the passionate heart of our great countryman gave rise, by some subtle magnetic influence, to a wild dream of miraculous aid and voices from heaven; and in the self-controlled and unimpassioned soul of the French priest it wrought an issue almost as strange—the restoration, to some extent, of monasticism in his country, and the dedication of his own life to that disused and discredited vocation. No two men could be more unlike, but here both met in a strange concord and agreement. Something had to be done beyond the ordinary routine of evangelism to seize upon the dull ear and sluggish heart of the time. Supernaturalism, or monasticism, or any other martyrdom—what matter, so it did but startle that slumbering generation to some thought of its evil ways? Let us build the sepulchres of those prophets whom our fathers, by their apathy and indifference, drove into such a noble desperation. We too, doubtless, will do our share of the same work. Yet it is a kind of penitence of humanity for its ever-recurring mistakes and misconceptions, which prompts one generation to decorate the tombs into which the sins of a former generation have urged and driven the not perfect yet noble dead. LADY MORGAN’S MEMOIRS.[4]