There is tenderness as well as irony, poetry as well as tragedy, deep compassion mixed with a half-reluctant disapproval in the eloquence of M. Barrès, as he relates the downfall of the schismatic--his follies, his errors, his sufferings, his long martyrdom, his final reconciliation with the Church. _Melius est ut pereat unus quam unitas._ Yet if that one be Pascal, or Fénelon, or Father Tyrrell, or even an Abbé Léopold Baillard (so mere a peasant in his harsh materialism, so nearly a saint in his inspired spirituality), how shall one not admire the ardour, the grandeur, the genius, the generosity of a soul superior to the docile flock? The lost sheep (depend upon it) was the fairest of the fold--and was, as we know, the dearest to the immortal Shepherd. The sympathies, if not the convictions, of the author are evidently with the vanquished prophet. For a religion, says our author, is made of two elements, with difficulty conciliable, yet equally vital: on the one hand, enthusiasm, inspiration; on the other, discipline, authority. ‘Eternel dialogue de ces deux puissances! À laquelle obéir? Et faut-il donc choisir entre elles? Ah! plutôt qu’elles puissent, ces deux forces antagonistes, s’éprouver éternellement, ne jamais se vaincre et s’amplifier par leur lutte même. Elles ne sauraient se passer l’une de l’autre. Qu’est-ce qu’un enthousiasme qui demeure une fantaisie individuelle? Qu’est-ce qu’un ordre qu’aucun enthousiasme ne vient plus animer?’ _Est aliquid hominis quod nec ipse scit spiritus hominis qui in ipso est_: there is more in man than the soul of man conceives. This line of Saint Augustine (which serves as an epigraph to _La Colline Inspirée_) might be inscribed above all Maurice Barrès’ later writings: they are all laid on the altar of an Unknown God. Nothing in the eyes of this barely orthodox critic is more sacred, more moving than a village church, whose narrow chancel has echoed the prayers, the praise, of countless spirits straining to approach the secret Reality which sustains the world of Appearances. The stones have witnessed the tears of generations many times renewed as they consigned their dead to the keeping of God; before the same altar fathers and children have plighted their troth; and the font served to christen the grandsires of to-day. A village church is, to an imaginative mind, a thing which revives the sacred memory of our country and our dead. And so--not in a spirit of narrow orthodoxy--but in the largest and most human movement of generosity--Barrès takes up his pen to plead for the churches of France, falling into ruin since the separation of Church and State.