No; the only hold he has upon our indulgence is that time and suffering at length awakened in his heart a tardy tenderness for Eloisa, and inspired him with something like an appreciation of her unrivalled goodness. He handed over to her his refuge of the Paraclete; and when she wrote to him for comfort, for counsel, for spiritual explanations, he did not withhold them. He could not be so blind, or so unmindful of the past, as not to read between the lines, and not to perceive that under the exposition of the difficulties she was experiencing in directing the community of which she had become the head, there still palpitated the recollection of the earliest instruction she had received at his hands. Then he expounded Ovid. Now he comments on the Scriptures. But the master was the same, and the same the pupil; and over and over again the Abbess of the Paraclete recalls the niece of Fulbert. We feel that she almost invents doubts, that she multiplies scruples, and that she entangles herself in perplexities, in order that he may solve them. In a word, she is as unchangeably in love with him as ever. He is measured and circumspect in his replies; but a certain vein of spiritual tenderness underlies them, and we feel that his nature has grown nobler, and his heart is, at last, less pre-occupied with self. Perhaps he had discerned now, when it was too late, the value of a woman’s love, and the worthlessness of worldly notoriety. Before he died, he begged that his body might be carried to the Paraclete. Thither, accordingly, it was secretly transported and lovingly interred by her who, as the Chronicle of Tours says, “_était veritablement son amie_.” For twenty years more, Eloisa lived on, a model of sanctity and wisdom. Even Villon, in one of his ballads, speaks of her as “la très sage Heloïse.” When she died, her sole request was that she might be laid by the side of Abelard. Her injunction was obeyed; and as her body was being lowered into the grave, that of Abelard was for an instant reanimated, so tradition affirms, and he opened his arms to receive her.—_National Review._ THE UNITY OF THE EMPIRE. BY THE MARQUIS OF LORNE. Lord Beaconsfield called the English an enthusiastic people, and there is some danger that we may hastily infer that if our fit of enthusiasm for new schemes of Imperial Federation be not at once caught up by the colonies, a permanent union with them is impossible. It must be “either a closer union or disintegration,” say some. But let us not be too hasty in assuming that sudden developments are necessary.