juventutis et formæ gratia præeminebam, ut quamcunque feminarum nostro dignarer amore nullam vererer repulsam,” that he was so celebrated, so young, and so good-looking, that he had no fear of being repulsed by any woman whom he honored with his love! The repugnance inspired by such language would be great, even if he had afterwards appreciated the prize he had begun by coveting so basely. It is not easy to forgive Saint Augustine for his conduct towards the mother of Deodatus. But he, at least, describes the passions of his youth with sincere humility and profound remorse; whilst Abelard recalls without a pang the colloquies and correspondence he planned in order to influence Eloisa. In the same spirit he narrates the tender, passionate passages that ensued. He is equally ignoble when Fulbert discovers their attachment. He excuses himself by reminding her uncle “quanta ruina summos quoque viros ab ipso statim humani generis exordio mulieres dejecerint,” how many of the greatest men, from the beginning of time, have been ruined by the seductions of women. By way of compensation, he tells us that he offered to marry Eloisa on condition that their union should be kept secret, _ne famæ detrimentum caperem_, lest, forsooth, his fame should suffer detriment. If, instead of hiring a couple of bravos Fulbert had taken him by the heels and flung him into the Seine, one’s sense of justice would have been better satisfied. Turn we a moment from the composed reminiscences of this circumspect dialectician, to the woman _per faciem non infima_, whose heart he had broken and whose life he had ruined. In obedience to his wish she had taken the veil, and writes to him from the Convent of the Paraclete, made over to her by him, and of which she was now the Lady Abbess. She has read his letter “To a friend,” of which she says, with unconscious irony, that though it was composed to soothe that friend’s sorrows, it is full of the sorrows of the writer himself. She finds this the most natural thing in the world; and all she asks is that to her, too, he will write, and that he will instruct her, who gave herself entirely to him, how to direct those who have given themselves entirely to God. She reminds him, not reproachfully, but in order to convince him that she has need of him still, that at a word from him she had completed her own ruin, and that, though he was the only object of her love, she had promptly taken the veil at his bidding, “ut te tam corporis mei quam animi unicum possessorum ostenderem,” in order to show that she belonged to him, and to him alone, body, heart, and soul. “God is my witness,” she goes on, “that in loving you I loved yourself only, not anything you could give or bring me.” Then, going to the utmost limit and horizon of feminine love and self-sacrifice, she adds: “Et si uxoris nomen sanctius ac validus videtur, dulcius mihi semper extitit amicæ vocabulum; aut, si non indigneris, concubinæ vel