THE IMPRISONMENT OF POPE PIUS VII.

THIS day of miracles, in which the human heart has been strung to its extremest point of energy, this day, to which posterity will look for instances of every crime and every virtue, holds not in its page of wonders a more sublime phenomenon than that calumniated Pontiff. Placed at the very pinnacle of human elevation, surrounded by the pomp of the Vatican and the splendors of the court, pouring forth the mandates of Christ from the throne of the Cæsars, nations were his subjects, kings were his companions, religion was his handmaid; he went forth gorgeous with the accumulated dignity of ages, every knee bending, and every eye blessing the prince of one world and the prophet of another. Have we not seen him, in one moment, his crown crumbled, his sceptre a reed, his throne a shadow, his home a dungeon! But if we have, Catholics, it was only to show how inestimable is human virtue compared with human grandeur; it was only to show those whose faith was failing, and whose fears were strengthening, that the simplicity of the

patriarchs, the piety of the saints, and the patience of the martyrs, had not wholly vanished. Perhaps it was also ordained to show the bigot at home, as well as the tyrant abroad, that though the person might be chained, and the motive calumniated, Religion was still strong enough to support her sons, and to confound, if she could not reclaim, her enemies. No threats could awe, no promises could tempt, no suffering could appal him ; mid the damps of his dungeon he dashed away the cup in which the pearl of his liberty was to be dissolved. Only reflect on the state of the world at that moment! All around him was convulsed, the very foundations of the earth seemed giving way, the comet was let loose that "from its fiery hair shook pestilence and death," the twilight was gathering, the tempest was roaring, the darkness was at hand; but he towered sublime, like the last mountain in the deluge-majestic, not less in his elevation than in his solitude, immutable amid change, magnificent amid ruin, the last remnant of earth's beauty, the last resting-place of heaven's light!

It is not unworthy of remark, that the last day of France's triumph, and the first of her decline, was that on which her insatiable chieftain smote the holy head of your religion. When the man

now unborn shall trace the story of that eventful day, he will see the adopted child of fortune borne on the wings of victory from clime to clime, marking every movement with a triumph, and every pause with a crown, till time, space, seasons, nay, even nature herself, seeming to vanish before him, until in the blasphemy of his ambition he smote the apostle of his God, and dared to raise the everlasting Cross amid his perishable trophies!

CHARLES PHILLIPS,

Speeches.

9

CHATEAUBRIAND.

IT was in the disastrous days of the French Revolution that Chateaubriand arose, and bent the force of his lofty mind to vindicate the persecuted but imperishable faith of his fathers. In early youth, he was at first carried away by the fashionable infidelity of his times; and in his "Essais Historiques," which was published in 1792, in London, while the principles of virtue and natural religion are unceasingly maintained, he seems to have doubted whether the Christian religion was not crumbling with the institutions of society. But misfortune, that great corrector of the vices of the world, soon changed these faulty views. In the days of exile and adversity, when, by the waters of Babylon, he sat down and wept, he reverted to the faith and belief of his fathers, and inhaled in the school of adversity those noble maxims of devotion and duty which have ever since regulated his conduct in life.

The great characteristic of the French author is the impassioned and enthusiastic turn of his

mind. Master of immense information, thoroughly imbued at once with the learning of classical and catholic times; gifted with a retentive memory, a poetical fancy, and a painter's eye, he brings to bear upon every subject the force of erudition, the images of poetry, the charms of varied scenery, and the eloquence of impassioned feeling. Hence his writings display a reach and variety of imagery, a depth of light and shadow, a vigor of thought, and an extent of illustration, to which there is nothing comparable in any other writer, ancient or modern, with whom we are acquainted. All that he has seen, or read, or heard seem present to his mind, whatever he does, or wherever he is. He illustrates the genius of Christianity by the beauties of classical learning, inhales the spirit of ancient prophecy on the shores of the Jordan, dreams on the banks of the Eurotas of the solitude and gloom of the American forests; visits the Holy Sepulchre with a mind alternately devoted to the devotion of a pilgrim, the curiosity of an antiquary, and the enthusiasm of a crusader, and combines, in his romances, with the tender feelings of chivalrous love, the heroism of Roman virtue, and the sublimity of Christian martyrdom. His writings are less a faithful portrait of any particular age or country, than an assemblage of all that is