of a deplorable error, and her superior confined her in a dungeon, where she lay upon straw, scarcely nourished by an insufficient ration of bread, and praying for death as a rescue from suffering. Fléchier heard of it, hastened to the convent, and after encountering much resistance, obtained admission into the wretched cell where the unfortunate creature languished and despaired. On beholding her pastor, she extended her arms as to a liberator sent by divine mercy. The prelate cast a look of horror and indignation at the abbess. "I ought," he said, "if I obeyed the voice of human justice, to put you in the place of this unhappy victim of your barbarity; but the God of clemency, whose minister I am, bids me show, even to you, an indulgence you have not had for her. Go, and for sole penance, read daily in the Evangelists the chapter of the woman taken in adultery." He released the nun, and caused every care to be taken of her, but she was past recovery, and died soon afterwards, blessing his name. How can we, after reading such traits as this, criticise with any severity the occasional levity displayed in the _Mémoires_? How dwell invidiously on the small frivolities and flippancies of the Abbé, whose after life was a pattern of Christian virtue and charity? Short of a degree of perfection impossible to humanity, we can scarcely imagine a more charming character than that of Fléchier, whose very failings "leaned to virtue's side." His sincere benevolence and gentle temper display themselves in each page of his book, in every recorded action of his life. His professed principles--from which we can nowhere trace his practice to have differed--breathed a very different spirit to that usually attributed to the Roman Catholic priesthood. "Violence and oppression," he says, in a letter to M. Vignier, "are not the paths the gospel has marked out for us." His smallest actions were inspired by the same kindly maxims, by a spirit of tolerance and compassion for human frailty. The vein of satire we have exemplified by extracts is tempered by a tone of good-humoured _bonhomie_; and such sallies, moreover, could not have been intended to wound the feelings of persons in whose lifetime, it is pretty evident, Fléchier did not destine his book to publication. Neither can fault be fairly found with the occasional freedom of his language and peculiarity of his topics. What we esteem license in these strait-laced days, was regarded as decorous, and passed without censure or observation in those in which he wrote; and the most rigorous will admit the absence of all offensive intention. The Abbé is a chronicler; as such he puts down facts, unmutilated and unabridged. If the words in which he clothes them have sometimes more of the courtier's easy pleasantry than of the churchman's grave reserve, we must make allowance for the spirit of the age, look to intention rather than form, and we shall admit that his