purpose and desire to receive it. God has no desire for the sinner's death. Jansenism has done great harm on this subject, by inspiring a sort of despair which is most dangerous." I observed that purgatory was the necessary complement of such a doctrine. "It is so," he said, "and though God is alone the judge of the sufficiency of those acts of the dying, yet we may hope that a great number come within the terms of salvation, whatever purifying process they may afterwards require." I asked if Jansenism was not well nigh extinct? "It is, in France," he said, "but it is still strong in Piemont and in Portugal." He then reverted to the Primacy, and spoke of the force of that superiority which is discernible through every century in the Papal See. Not one passed in which, even from the East, some appeal was not made to it. M. de Maistre spoke of a "présence réelle" of the Papacy being sensibly felt throughout the whole history of the Church. I said I rested our defence entirely on the difference between Primacy and Monarchy. There were two great powers in the Church of divine origin--the Papacy and the Episcopate. In the earlier centuries the latter had been most sensibly felt: but in modern times the former. "With regard to discipline," he said, "I might allow that; but as to the hierarchy, and as to dogma, the relation has always been what it is now: the hierarchy, even the Eastern patriarchs, always were as strictly bound to the Roman chair as the bishops now. They felt the Pope was their superior." I said I had been unable to see that. I had searched far and wide for evidence of it. The patriarchs of Alexandria, in their own district, and, later, the patriarchs of Constantinople, throughout the East, had judged as absolutely as the Pope in the West: independence was a wrong word to use; but they seemed to enjoy as complete a liberty of action in their sphere as the Pope in his. He observed, with regard to Bossuet's Gallicanism, "We have been preserved from the ultimate consequences of those principles, but they might have conducted to a sort of Anglicanism--the two touched each other. But," he added, "Le cœur et la prière vous éclairera. L'étude est souvent difficultueuse; ce n'est pas que l'esprit n'ait pas ses propres fonctions. But light comes from the heart. I shall often think of you, and pray for you." I said I thought of leaving Paris on Thursday, and should like to pay him a last visit on Wednesday. "I fear I shall be ordered out of town by my physician; but I will try and return on Wednesday." "You must not think of it," I said; "but are you not well?" "My throat is unwell, which prevents me from preaching." "That is just it," I said: "I should have thought myself most fortunate if I could have heard you preach." He embraced me at parting; and wished to call on me, which I would not hear of. Certainly, if ever there was a heart of Christian kindness, it is that of the Père de Ravignan.