BEING in Paris last summer, we called upon the Abbé Lamennais, immediately after the insurrection of June, in which he was supposed by many to be deeply implicated. He then lived near the Barrière de l'Etoile, in the Rue Byron, leading out of the Avenue Châteaubriand. This is one of the most quiet neighborhoods in Paris.

The Abbe's appearance is at first unprepossessing. He is little and old, and looks older than he is. He is usually dressed in a grey morning gown, with a common check neckerchief; everything else about him being much of the same order. He stoops, moreover, and his whole figure suggests the idea of a man in feeble health-an impression which is confirmed by the weakness of his voice. But as he begins to converse, all your notions undergo a complete change. You soon forget whether he is short or tall, young or old. As his countenance kindles with enthusiasm, it becomes altogether radiant and beautiful.

We had heard in Paris and elsewhere numerous evil reports uttered against this man, which, though at variance with the spirit of all his writings, were so steadily persisted in, that an incredulity less pertinacious than our own, might ultimately have given way on the point. But in the Paroles d'un Croyant we fancied we could perceive the true beating of his heart. The warmth which pervades that little book, and constitutes its vitality, could not, we are persuaded, be artificial. It seemed to have been caught from the highest source of inspiration, and to be as incompatible with the coldness of scepticism, as with the fierce ebullitions of a vindictive temper; and our personal intercourse with Lamennais left deep in our mind the conviction, that whatever might be his faults, he is a genuine apostle of humanity; loving the poor, sympathizing with the distressed, and anxious

above all things to render his own protracted existence a blessing to other men.

With Lamennais' precise age we are not acquainted. He is said to have been born. at St. Malo, in Bretagne, in 1782, though this date by no means agrees with other facts mentioned in his biographies. He applied himself diligently in his youth to the study of theology, but would seem afterwards to have laid it aside, and transferred his affections to the mathematics-a too exclusive application to which led probably to religious indifference. He was not eager for premature reputation in literature; but when Napoleon was arranging the affair of the Concordat with the Pope, he published a book entitled "Reflections on the State of the Church during the Eighteenth Century," which gave so much offense to the master of France, that its author resolved to come no more before the public during his tyranny.

Meanwhile he continued to discharge the duties of a mathematical teacher at St. Malo, but having conscientiously reviewed his religious opinions, he emerged from a state of indifference, and, with characteristic ardor, rushed to the opposite extreme of enthusiasm. He imagined that he discovered in Catholicism the only power by which society could be preserved and regenerated. His own experience had taught him the evil of indifference, and he saw around him, in the intellectual lethargy of the French, irresistible proofs that the absence of religious faith is indissolubly connected with moral and social degradation. Taking Catholicism, therefore, as he found it, or rather as it existed in his own transcendental conception of it, he sought to awaken his contemporaries, through its means, to a true sense of the dangers which he beheld encircling society. On all sides he witnessed material tendencies co-operating to check the development of

truth. In the recesses of his mind, perhaps, | there always lurked the suspicion that Catholicism would prove unequal to the demands which the conditions of his religious and political theories made upon it. But in the whole range of the actual and the possible, he could then discover nothing better, and prudently, as far as his light went, he resolved to build with the materials at his command.

It is of course easy for us, who stand beyond that circle of intellectual activity in which Lamennais's mind then moved, clearly to discern the errors into which he fell. Nor would it be less easy to sketch them in caricature for the enlivening of our readers. But we prefer looking to the causes that produced them; these will be most instructive to ourselves, and may serve for Lamennais's apology, both as to what he did then, and as to what he afterwards condemned when advanced and enlightened.

When the tempest of the great revolution of 1789 had passed away, the religious party, which had always existed, though in obscurity, sought, through a systematic return to spiritual studies, to resuscitate Catholicism, and to render it once more predominant. There is a sort of stately chivalry in attachment to old creeds-in fidelity to forsaken dogmas. When you see all the world mad after novelty, you are sometimes tempted to stand up and inquire whether, after all, the new thing be really better than the old-and even without reason, or in spite of it, you are betrayed by your polemical instincts into an internecine war with the prevalent theory. Everybody felt that society could never fulfil its high destinies, with the dead weight of materialism hanging at its skirts. There was therefore a necessity for reaction. Some religion, however poor and imperfect it might be, was better than none at all; and Lamennais, in the zeal of the moment, imagined that Catholicism, with its gauds and trappings, its forms and ceremonies, its rights and traditions, might be elevated into the regenerator of society.

He was mistaken, but the mistake was pardonable. The attacks to which he now stood exposed, confirmed him in his error. He found himself in a perfect storm of controversy. Pamphlets and replies hailed in upon him from all sides; but with that warm, flexible, and magnificent style which constitutes the most powerful and dangerous of an author's weapons, he parried the blows of his assailants, and overthrew them in heaps right and left. It soon, nevertheless,

became evident that the waters of Lamennais's mind could not settle and degenerate into a standing pool, but must purify themselves, and go on flowing for the benefit and refreshment of mankind. He visited England, and went afterwards to Rome, where he was offered a bishopric and a cardinal's hat. He then probably saw through the weakness of the papal system, and politely declining the honors intended him, returned to France, in order to finally emancipate himself from the trammels of the priesthood. He now ceased to be a Roman Catholic, and became a Christian in the more primitive sense of the word. The evils which afflicted humanity made his heart bleed. He beheld almost everywhere the church allying itself with the state, not for the deliverance of mankind, but for the effecting of their more complete enthralment. He had once made himself the apostle of legitimacy, as well as of Romanism-had combatted the benevolent but wild theories which he saw springing up under various names around himhad denounced democracy, and invoked a ban upon republican institutions. But as in his system of philosophy the principle of development constitutes the central point round which the whole revolves, so in his own conduct development was everything. With the rapidity of a most active intellect he passed through ages, as it were, in so many years, cast off one prejudice after another, and rising first to the level of his own times, and then above it, he attained, or thought he attained, glimpses of those great truths which are hereafter to regulate the movements of society, though we at present only witness their feeble beginnings. He now conceived the idea of writing that remarkable work, entitled "Les Paroles d'un Croyant." It is in style biblical. Lamennais's mind had, as we have already observed, been from the earliest period imbued with the spirit of the Scriptures, which, as Voltaire remarks, had impressed on the English writers of the seventeenth century that oriental pomp and sombre grandeur for which they are chiefly distinguished. Lamennais's sympathies have generally led him to eschew grandeur of every kind. He aims at touching the heart by tenderness, by sweetness, by awakening all the gentler emotions, and showering down the prolific seeds of truth in dews of eloquence, profuse and refreshing as those of Hermon.

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In the Words of a Believer," there is, properly speaking, but one leading idea-that of utterly annihilating every form of des

potism, and substituting the rule of justice and charity in its place. There may be room for doubt respecting the strict orthodoxy of his creed. His interpretations may be incorrect or defective. He may believe too much or too little, and present to us his faith in alliance with peculiar notions which we may not be inclined to adopt. His object, however, is not to make proselytes, in a religious sense, or to disturb any man's hereditary beliefs. All he desires is to employ the weapons of revealed truth to bring down the strong-holds of tyranny; and we think it would be difficult for the coldest and most prejudiced to peruse that book attentively without finding himself further removed than before from every tendency in the direction of cruelty or oppression.

In criticising a popular production, we are aware that those who are already familiar with it, will consider your observations superfluous, while the persons who are not placed in the same advantageous position, think you much too sparing of your remarks. It is to this latter class that we must here address ourselves; our object being to make Lamennais known among those, to whom he has been hitherto known only by hearsay or not at all. To these the "Paroles d'un Croyant" will form the best preface to his other writings. Looking backwards, it

will reconcile them to the intolerant catholicism of his "Essai sur l'Indifference en Matière de Religion," and looking forward, it will induce them perhaps to look with forbearance even on the bold and daring speculations which appeared last year in the "Peuple Constituant." This work is full of pictures-of allusions to passing events--of predictions of fierce philippics against despotism-of brief narratives and apologuesdesigned to enlarge and strengthen the sentiment of good will towards men.

Among the principal beauties of the work is its extreme simplicity. A child may understand it. Sometimes, as in the “Dialogue of the Young Soldier," and the "Lamentation upon Exile," the form of composition is so infantine as to be almost comic. You, in fact, do sometimes smile at first, at what appears to you a ludicrous repetition. Here is a passage in illustration:

"He departed, a wanderer over the face of the earth. May God be the poor exile's guide!

"I have travelled among the nations of the world; they have gazed on me, and I have gazed on them; but without recognizing each other. The exile is everywhere solitary.

"When, towards the close of day, I have beheld in the depths of some valley the smoke ascending from a cottage, I have murmured to myself, How happy is he who returns at evening to his domestic hearth, and finds himself surrounded by those who love him! The exile is everywhere solitary!

"Whither go those clouds, which the tempest impels before it? It impels me like them, and it signifies not whither. The exile is everywhere solitary!

beautiful; but they are not the flowers and trees of my native land. They address no language to my heart. The exile is everywhere solitary!

"These trees are majestic, these flowers are

"This brook flows gently through the plains, but its murmur is not that to which my infancy listened; it awakens no remembrance in my soul. The exile is everywhere solitary!

"Those songs are sweet; but the sadness and the joy they awaken are not my joy or my sadness. The exile is everywhere solitary!

"Strangers have asked me, Why dost thou weep? And when I have opened my breast to them, they have shed no tears with me, because they have understood me not. The exile is everywhere solitary!

the olive is encircled by its tender shoots; but "I have beheld old men encircled by children as

none of these old men called me son-none of their children called me brother. The exile is everywhere solitary!

"I have seen young maidens smile, with a smile as pure as the morning's first breath, on those whom they had chosen to be their husbands; but

not one of them smiled on me. The exile is everywhere solitary!

"I have seen young men embrace each other in affection, as if they would have become one; but no one has pressed my hand. The exile is everywhere solitary!

"There is no friend, wife, father, or brother anywhere but in your native land. The exile is everywhere solitary!

Unhappy exile! cease to afflict thyself, all men are banished like thee, and behold father, brother, wife, friend pass away and disappear.

"We have no country here below; in vain man searches for it. What he mistakes for it is only resting-place for the night.

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"He departs, wandering over the earth. May God guide the unhappy exile!"

But, true to his original conception, and in the full confidence of genius, the author proceeds in this fashion until the very monotony which excited your merriment recalls you to yourself, and begets solemn reflections. Upon the same principle, the paintings in the royal tombs of Egypt have been arranged. On descending the long flight of steps which leads to the sepulchral chambers, you behold on the ceiling one black eagle with outspread wings, and then a second, and a third, and so on, till you grow weary of reckoning, and fancy you are look

ing at an interminable procession of eagles extending from time to eternity. So it is with Lamennais, in his elegiac dithyrambic, if we may be allowed the expression, on exile. He concludes each stanza, if there can be stanzas in prose, with the words, "L'exilé partout est seul," until the incessant iteration wrings your heart, and leaves, as it were, a perpetual echo of compassion in your memory. You have been made to realize to yourself all the loneliness of an exile; you have beheld him cast off from home, and parents, and friends, and driven by the winds of persecution, like a grain of chaff over the surface of society, rejoicing with no man's joy, and sympathizing with no man's sorrow, but everlastingly solitary, and tortured by the longing to return to that domestic circle from which he feels he has been cast forth for ever.

In drawing this touching picture, Lamennais had obviously in view the condition of those men whom Louis Philippe's government had chased from France. Of all exiles, the French exile is most to be pitied. He knows not how to accommodate himself to the exigencies of any country but his own. The Englishman, wherever he may be cast, strikes, and takes root in the soil, and with indomitable force of character builds up a new home, and sanctifies it with all the spontaneous charities of the domestic hearth. But the Frenchman, in the first place, is an unmarrying animal, and is therefore deprived of those finer and more delicate fibres which put forth so easily from the Englishman to attach him to new localities; and secondly, he has an intolerance of strange languages, to the pronunciation of which his organs will not accommodate themselves, and all but an insurmountable aversion to make friends anywhere but at home.

Here and elsewhere in the later writings of Lamennais, we discover a tendency to interpret the doctrines of Christianity in a manmer differing from the received standard. This is chiefly apparent in his "Esquisse d'un Philosophie," and in his little volume, entitled, "De la Religion," where he rejects the doctrine of original sin, and teaches that all the religions of the earth form but parts of one great system, and partake more or less of truth. In support of this view, it may be observed, that where there is no truth, there is no vitality, and that consequently the mere existence of any creed proves that it cannot be composed entirely of error.

gions must be more or less protracted in proportion to the amount of truth they contain. The central idea of Lamennais' system is God; and his philosophy may be regarded as an exposition, more or less successful, of our relation to the divinity. But in metaphysics, there are, properly speaking, no discoveries to be made; and when, therefore, men are said to have invented a new system, the meaning is, that they have given a new arrangement to the hereditary truths of philosophy, and cast upon them the color of their own idiosyncracies. For this reason, we

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may, without much difficulty, excuse ourselves for not entering into a critical analysis of Lamennais' metaphysical theories, the chief object of which is to "vindicate the ways of God to men." This is especially visible in his treatment of the stupendous question of moral and physical evil. would preserve us from a world of perplexities and difficulties if we would consent to acknowledge with Locke that there are subjects which lie altogether beyond the reach of the human understanding. The question of evil is one of these. All the labors of man, from the birth of philosophy to the present hour, have not removed one ray of obscurity from it, or enabled us to comprehend how anything should exist in opposition to the will of an omnipotent Creator. That evil does exist, we know; that it is in opposition to his will, we presume; but it would be better and wiser for us to avoid the presumption of entering unbidden into the councils of God, and obtruding the reasons of the finite upon the Infinite. Lamennais' mind, subtle and penetrating as it is, necessarily fails here. He supposes evil to be an inevitable consequence of creation—that is, of the calling into existence of innumerable wills and intelligences, all free, all capable of independent action, all equally exposed to the accidents of birth, growth, and decline. As far as our reason enables us to judge, there is a radical error here. The result of perfect wisdom and unlimited power would, in our apprehension, be a perfect universe. But evil is disorder, and disorder is imperfection. On this subject, we cannot venture to sit in judgment. All we can do is, in obedience at once to our instincts and our reason, to believe firmly in the perfection of the great First Cause, and leave the origin of evil among the problems which humanity is unable to solve.

the systems or confuting the reasonings of his predecessors, he avoids all special references and the mentioning of names. Useful in certain forms of composition, this practice is highly inconvenient and wrong here. We like to know with what enemy we are fighting, who it is to whom we are opposed, and what is the precise language which he, in his own person, employs. It by no means contents us to be presented with the exposition of an antagonist, who, however candid and conscientious, may, unknown to himself, understate the objection he means to demolish, and exaggerate the absurdity he desires to expose.

The present age, however, is not in any sense an age of theory; a fact which may be regarded with alarm by those who believe in the indefinite progress of humanity. Our cry has long been for the practical. We wish to realize, to convert ideas into things, opinions into constitutions, speculations into active principles. Whether we ought on this account to congratulate ourselves or not can scarcely be decided now. That is a point on which it will be for posterity to determine. Meanwhile nothing is more certain than that the whole civilized world is eager for enjoyment, for setting aside the dreamy and the poetical, and taking up with those palpable results which the principle we call common sense recommends to us.

Now it happens, singularly enough, that Lamennais, though belonging pre-eminently to the present generation, is not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a partisan of common sense. All his reasonings are intended to prove that the happiness of mankind does not at all consist in the production of wealth; that, on the contrary, mediocrity of fortune is best for states as well as for individuals; and that, therefore, instead of living perpetually in an industrious Babel, charmed by the jargon of the factory and the exchange, we should allow ourselves considerable leisure for the cultivation of the affections, and the enjoyment of what we possess. He believes, moreover, in the possibility of emancipating men from the empire of selfishness, and inducing them to take an interest in the welfare of their neighbors a doctrine pre-eminently unfashionable. They who would learn his ideas on this subject should read his "Amschaspands and Darvends," where, through the instrumentality of Persian machinery, he dissects, with great vigor and boldness, the alleged defects of society in Europe, and more especially in France. Possibly the idea of this work was

suggested by Montesquieu's "Persian Letters.' But Lamennais has worked out the plan after his own fashion, developing everywhere his sympathy for the weak and the oppressed, and lavishing the fiercest anathemas upon those who derive their gratification from the practise of tyranny, or rise to opulence by grinding the faces of the poor. We regret the form into which his materials have been cast. Out of France, readers must always find it difficult to follow the course of the author's thoughts, and even in France, the employment of uncouth and barbarous names, the arbitrary invention of myths, and the perpetual reference to a system of fable, which no art or eloquence can render popular in Europe, immensely detracts from the utility of the performance.

We have remarked above, that Lamennais' system is little in harmony with the received interpretation of the principle of common sense; and we may add that still less does it agree with some of the doctrines to be found in his own earlier writings. He looks upon society as at present constituted to be rather an evil than a good, since, in his view, it afflicts hundreds with misery for one to whom it is productive of happiness. He is, therefore, the advocate of indefinite change, or of revolution, if we prefer the term.

Many writers in France, among whom Lamennais holds a conspicuous place, have rejected the received notions with respect to property. Some would recommend for the management of it one class of rules, some another; but all regard it as an instrument in the hands of the state, to be employed as may be considered most convenient for the benefit of the community. Lamennais' ideas on this subject are not to be found in any of his larger works; but in an unedited chapter of his " Esquisse d'une Philosophie," which found its way to the press during the heat of the violent discussions which took place in France under the Provisional Government. Perhaps the public on this side of the channel are too little familiar with this class of inquiries properly to appreciate Lamennais' views. He does not mean to advocate the invasion of those rights which society, in the very act of its formation, establishes, still less does he desire to advocate principles which could not be brought into play without arresting the progress of civilization. But whatever he may intend, it is clear that he contemplates all property as in some sense the property of the state, and maintains that it belongs to the state to re