published for "the comfort and support of an injured, vilified, and oppressed people."

"Genuine faith is sometimes inactive in bodily diseases; for example, in the commencement of a sick headache, the individual appears to be without faith, and incapable of devotional feeling."

We would just throw out a hint here, which is capable of much enlargement, as applicable to this work. Are not sick headaches the direct result of over-eating? If so, the Christian has another argument for temperance.

Of hope, Dr. Cheyne says—

"No sentiment more frequently influences, or is influenced by, the state of the health, than hope. We have known many, who in health were hopeful, desponding under disease. Depression of spirits will soon injure digestion. Indigestion, from physical causes, will produce despondency, even when there is no moral cause to account for the destruction of hope.

"Moods of melancholy, of which the chief characteristic is hopelessness, are produced in some nervous females by changes of weather, so that they are unerring barometers."

The following is very sad :—

"These sufferers, who often meet with but little sympathy, are erroneously supposed to be yielding to caprice, when perhaps they are in a state of great distress, without natural affection, objects of selfreproach, perhaps feeling deserted of God, left without spiritual aid in their struggles with pride, or unfounded jealousy. Those unhappy moods of the mind have destroyed the love of relatives and friends, who, had they understood the true cause of such perverted feeling, would have had their attachments to the sufferer strengthened by generous pity. We have reason to believe, that by such a state of uncertainty of feeling, sad inroads upon conjugal happiness have been made. When hope is altogether inactive, the imagination is often in a state of inordinate activity; and thus there is a power, not only of magnifying the real evils of life, but of creating unreal evils."

The last essay is "on the presence and absence of devotional feeling." Here Dr. Cheyne remarks—

"It is necessary to remember, that much of the enjoyment which is derived from the exercises of religion depends on the temperature of the mind and upon the association of the feelings."

In his philosophy, therefore, the cathedral, and its services and pomps, are taste, and not religion. For he adds—“ Let it never be forgotten, that it is not a lofty and sublimated imagination, and natural and cultivated taste, but a broken heart and a contrite spirit, that constitute the acceptable worshipper of God."

There is one important point connected with religious feelings which we are thankful to see put on the right footing, as, though we could not prove our opinion, we have long suspected the soundness of the practice; we allude to religious diaries. The following extract is from a nameless one :-" Much sweetness of prayer this morning. In the afternoon, was sunk and depressed; seemed a poor, miserable, useless wretch." Dr. Cheyne satisfactorily proves that this is physical, and needs not be Christian, experience. He hopes, in which we heartily unite, that such things will not be repeated in future publications. But we must stop, though we would gladly have said

more.

Upon the whole, we think this work cannot be without good effects. In our own particular estimation, it surpasses all recent works in importance and instruction. It can hardly be without consequences to the science of metaphysics-it has, at least, improved our own. It proves the inestimable importance of cultivating the health of the body, and thus attacks the destructive luxuries of the day. We see now the value of the direction of the catechism, that we should "keep our bodies in temperance, soberness, and chastity." We say nothing about the author's peculiar views of religion; at all events, he is thoroughly sincere. We remark, too, that there is nothing like effort in the book: it shows the hand of a thorough masterno hard words, and no professional mystification: it is easy reading.

ART. IV.-- Vie De Rancé. Par MONSIEUR LE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND. Paris: H. L. Delloye, Editeur. 1844.

ON the 9th of January, 1626, a second son was born to the almost ducal house of Bouthilier de Rancé; and in the month of May, in the following year, the infant heir of many honours was held at the baptismal font by the Cardinal de Richelieu and the Marchioness d'Effiat, whose son the same cardinal very soon after judicially murdered. The young Bouthilier with his godfather's patronage received also his godfather's Christian names; and Armand Jean, the founder of La Trappe, subsequently achieved a greatness of a different complexion indeed, but scarcely inferior to that of the elder Armand Jean, the sovereign of the sovereign of France, and the assassin of her best nobility. The death of the elder brother of de Rancé opened to the latter the inheritance both of family and ecclesiastical titles; and before he could walk he was already abbé-commendataire of La Trappe. He was as precocious as young Cyrus; ere he

had well assumed the dress of boyhood, he puzzled the king's confessor by his acquaintance with Homer in the original Greek; and at the early age of twelve he gave to the world an edition of "Anacreon," with editorial commentaries, for which the learned world returned him empty praise, and his godfather a valuable piece of church preferment.* He several times, during his childhood, escaped narrowly from death; at four years of age he almost sank under an attack of dropsy; at fourteen he had well nigh been cut down by the then dreaded small-pox, and on various other occasions his wild and reckless daring on horseback exposed him to perils certainly fatal, and narrowly escaped. He was nursed in the lap of the great and unfortunate victim of Richelieu's enmity-the Queen Marie de Medicis, from whom he derived titles as playthings. One fortunate day saw him Canon of Notre Dame de Paris, as well as Abbé de la Trappe; the priory of Boulogne, near Chambor, was flung to him to quiet his childish importunities; two abbeys were conferred upon him, like toys, for good behaviour; and other priories, and not less valuable archdeaconries, were tossed to him for the mere trouble of asking. He had the care of hundreds of thousands of souls before he rightly understood the possession and the responsibilities of his own.

As he grew towards manhood he undertook a few of its entailed duties; he preached occasionally in his quality of priest; but his heart was surrendered to the enjoyment of the wildest delights which were placed within his reach, from his social position as a noble. The society of his day monopolized the vices of all ages; and into the abyss the young priest flung himself, without any other care or thought but that of acquiring reputation by excelling in dissipation. The sole quality of the men of his day was courage; they were everything but honest, honourable, dignified, or respectable. The women of his day were remarkable for their beauty, their amiability, and their murderous wit; they wanted nothing but the virtues of chastity and truth to make them the fair things they only seemed. In the circles of his time, if de Rancé preserved the superiority of his judgment, he made shipwreck of his morals; he became a duellist, and such a character, in the age in which he bore it, implies that he became a demon also. It was then that we find this glittering priest the most renowned dissipateur, the most exquisite fat, among the most foolish and vicious of his day; he appears to have acknowledged no serious worship, but the sad frivolities which he offered to

* Campbell's translation of "The Clouds" of Aristophanes was made at the same age, and published by a twopenny subscription of his schoolfellows,

"Les belles Montbazons, les Chatillons brillantes,

Les piquantes Bouillons, les Nemours si touchantes." With Madame de Rambouillet, and her powdered and perfumed pedants, he talked euphuistic nonsense; to the more wicked Montausier he made disgraceful worship. He shared in the bloody braggadocio of Condé; jested with the young actor and author, Moliere; flirted with Mademoiselle de Nemours; had what was called a grande passion for a crowd of sylph-like sinners; and precisely because he had no character of his own, was he selected to unite two people in marriage who were equally poor in any similar property that was at least worth anything; no respectable ecclesiastic would do the work which the laws would not sanction; and the hunting, fighting, love-making, drinking abbé is said to have performed the ceremony of marriage between le grand monarque and the widow of a mountebank; upon which, however, we must be allowed to remark, for our own sakes, that if that very obstinate witness called "chronology" does not, yet circumstances seem to give a testimony adverse to the deposition of M. de Chateaubriand.

De Rancé passed through the murders and mockeries, the mingled vices and virtues, the ferocity and frivolity, the dancing and destruction of the Fronde; and when that terrible and comic drama had closed, and Paris in particular afforded no more of frightful horrors for him and his companions to make epigrams upon, he retired to his splendid estate at Veretz, where, at the head of a society, of which he was the worthy chief, he spent his time in the invention of pleasures, giving brilliant fêtes and sumptuous festivals, and dreaming of delights that defied realization. Among other mad things, he resolved, with three young gentlemen of his own age, to undertake a wandering expedition, after the fashion of the errant Knights of the Round Table. The four embryo cavaliers furnished a common purse, and laid out a plan for "running adventures," as it was called; but luckily for themselves, and not less so for certain dames and damosels of France, whom these self-dubbed knights would not have condescended to respect, the affair ended with its projection, and de Rancé, from a wandering knight, became a fixed astrologer. He drew instructions from the stars concerning his future conduct; and emulating the knowledge of the ancient observers of sidereal revolutions, he was acquainted with every hill in the moon, while he was yet profoundly ignorant of the mountains of the earth. His most favourite studies at this period were stars and birds; he pursued the former with his telescope, and brought down the latter with his fowling-piece. But though an excellent shot himself, he occasionally fell in with those who

were not equally dexterous. Once we read of his receiving the charge of an unskilful sportsman against the steel chain of his gaming-bag; and at other times we find him routing bands of lawless pursuers of the young priest's pheasants, falling on them as though they had been highway plunderers, rather than gentlemen as good as himself.

De Rancé obtained full orders in 1651; and here M. de Chateaubriand, in noticing his elevation to the priesthood, breaks out into what is meant for very fine writing, while he details the feelings and the consciousness of responsibility which he thinks now, for the first time, seizes the hero of his story:

"L'imposition des mains (says he) etant faite; il ne restait plus qu' une cérémonie redoutable. J'ai entendu au pied des Alpes Vénitiennes, carillonne la nuit en l'honneur d'un pauvre lévite qui devait dire sa première messe le lendemain. Pour Rancé les ornements et les vêtemens préparés à la lumière du jour, étaient magnifi... ques; mais soit qu'il fut saisi des terreurs du ciel, soit quil regardät comme des licences sacriléges celles qu'il avait obtenues, soit qu'il ressentit cette épouvante qui saisissait un trop jeun coupable quand la Rome paienne lui delivrait des dispenses d'âge pour mourir, Rancé s'alla cacher aux Chartreux. Dieu seul le vit à l'autel. Le futur habitant du désert consacré sur la Montagne, â l'orient de Jérusalem, les prémices de la solitude."

It is difficult to separate M. de Chateaubriand's hyberbolisms from the simple truth, but we suppose all that is intended to be conveyed here is, that the newly-ordained priest celebrated his first mass in solitude. If, however, any admiration be excited by his modesty and scrupulousness, it is not permitted to enjoy a very prolonged existence; for we find, in the next page to that recording these virtues, that shortly after his ordination he proudly refused the bishopric of Leon, for the sole reasons that its revenues were not worth his acceptance, and that its locality in Brittany was at too great a distance from the magic circle of the court. He esteemed at a much less value the honours to be gained so remote from the fountain-head of pleasure, than he did the reputation to be acquired from his dexterity in bringing down birds and supporting theses. He hunted, preached, and disputed with the energy of a giant; his greatest pride was to defeat a fencing-master with his own foils, and his greatest annoyance was to have to say mass. He walked abroad, at this period, a perfect muscadin, attired in a tight fitting dress of violet, made of the most precious materials; his cuffs were buttoned by emeralds, his fingers glittered with diamonds, and his hair hung in long curls down his back. When mounted, he carried a sword at his side and pistols in his holsters. His dress