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heaped on my early life. God converted me whilst you were diverting yourself in the salon: you saw me not at that moment; you could not see the blow which struck me; you could not hear the voice which called me. There was no hand-writing, my mother, against the wall, although the lights of the many lamps, and the rejoicing, and the pride, and beautiful women, made that night to me like as it was to the king in his palace-a night of self-glorying and luxury. I am now in my cell, which is very dear to me: hear me tell the events of that night. You gave it in my honour, you and my father, and you gathered all my friends and acquaintance, and spared no expense to make it delightful to me: I can speak of it now, that two years are passed since; but I dreaded to write sooner, lest I had not strength to dwell on these remembrances. The world is never conquered suddenly; but now I have conquered all its love. When it drew near midnight, I had first danced, as you may remember, with the Comtesse whom you.

wished me to think of as a wife, and whom I then preferred to all other women. I will never speak any more of this; even for this speaking of it I shall suffer in my secret thoughts: and it would be culpable, but that in my first letter it was necessary to call these circumstances to your mind. For a few moments I stepped aside from the crowd, and leaning against the wall, I looked on it earnestly, on the faces of so many familiar to me, bright with joy-on the dancers, on the groups so elegantly dressed; and while the music and the many voices filled the room, the thought suddenly darted into my mind-it was irresistible-to devote myself to Heaven; and there sprung up such a contempt for a frail and fleeting world, that I retired to my chamber, to reflect in silence on what seemed to be an impulse from above-it grew stronger every moment-it urged me to fly instantly, to be firm and quick to execute-else all was lost. I would not join the party at supper-I would not trust myself to see you again. I went that night to see the Abbé Augustin, Superior of the Trappists; he was greatly surprised at my resolution, but promised not to reveal it. He gave me a letter to Avignon, to a seminary, where I continued some time: thence I retired some leagues from the city, into one of his monasteries. Is it not said, he that quits the world for the love of God shall receive a hundred fold, and whosoever shall forsake his father or his mother, wife or children, shall receive a hundredfold here, and life eternal? St. Gregory explains this passage. The ravishment I taste in my cell is often very great-in my prison in Russia I despaired. O the anguish of mind I suffered, because my ambition was wrecked! Address me as Irenæo, which is the name I have taken."

Twenty years have now tried the firmness and constancy of the spirit of Irenée, as his family call him, and found it steadfast as a rock into his cell of Monte Giové, the Camaldule, or the Corona, he threw talent and feeling, his whole life, without any infirmity of purpose. And yet this gifted and energetic spirit could so deceive itself as to its real motive and hope! When the mother dwelt on the heroism of his resolve, on the fervour of his piety, which could enable him to renounce so much, and to be happy in so great bereavement and self-denial, I did not express my belief that the veil was not yet taken away from his heart. The forsaking the world was one of those sudden and powerful impulses to which the highly imaginative mind is open, but is

rarely if ever open without a previous preparation of thought or of fancy. In the conversations with the Abbé Augustin, he had no doubt revived the subject of his disappointments, and the former had probably expatiated on a religious life, on the nobleness of contemning the fascinations of the world. "O, the anguish of mind I suffered because my ambition was wrecked!" This was the subtle and almost unconscious feeling that bade him take so decisive a step,—that he might rise high in a religious order, and be eminent for talent, piety, and self-abandonment. He trusted to his own energy and devotedness to follow this career, this straight and narrow way," even to perfection, and he did not trust in vain. As free from hypocrisy as he is from the love of obscurity, fervent in his profession, he is now St. Irenée, a pride and ornament of his order. The second letter is from Monte Giové.

"Do not think, my mother, that the life of a hermit injures the health; on the contrary, it contributes to make it more firm and robust. We have each a little garden, rather a diversion than a fatigue, which we cultivate with our own hands; we plant there hyacinths, narcissus, tulips, ranunculus, and fine pinks, which I place in vases, and then place on the altars of our church, to offer to the Holy Virgin and her Son as the homage of our hearts. Tell me in confidence, my mother, do you recreate yourself still in those soirées where they play at bouillote, or do you retire? How much happier would you feel not to enter into diversions so frivolous, where you cannot play without offending God! I willingly believe you have long since bid adieu to them."

After a few years he removed to the monastery della Canonica de Lodi, and writes in the year 28,-" I find myself much better in the hermitage of the Canonica; there are not such fogs as on the mountains of Ancona: it is very hot in summer, but the winters are not so cold." Six years were passed in this retreat, during which the austerities and watchings of his hermit-life seem to have impaired his constitution: could the parent now behold the ascetic, she would scarcely recognise her son; could the friends of both sexes who last saw him in the ball-room, look at the cell of Lodi and its pallid tenant, they would think he had as well have stepped at once into the grave: to the Parisian, solitude, self-denial, not death, is the real king of terrors.

"1834. I have to tell you that I have been ill three weeks, that I have brought up blood, with frequent faintings, that I have fallen helplessly down, with lightness in my head, and have kept my bed with fever. Why will not the body keep pace with the efforts of the mind? I remember when wounds and sickness in Russia made my spirit weak as that of a child, it was crushed like a bruised reed, when I knew that Napoleon was gaining battles, and that I should join his standard, perhaps, no more. And now my body is nearly as weak as then; but my soul, how strong! It has no feebleness, for the future is all bright before me; and the things that are to come have ever been dearer than those that are with me. Much too dear they were once; I worshipped them, and my prayers were never heard: but now— -Beautiful future! thou wilt never more deceive me: I contemplate it-I converse with it -I hear its voice every hour, like that of the waves of the sea, which

send their melancholy music when afar off. God called me to retire into a hermitage."

He was induced to remove from the Canonica to the monastery of Camalduli de Monté Corona, a long day's journey from Florence, where the air was more soft and genial, the territory more lively, and shaded with ancient forests. Here his failing health was restored. He was now known in the monastic world as a man of talents and genius; his many years of seclusion had been devoted to divinity, and the severe and often dry studies of the writers and fathers of the church. In the following letter, in which he relates the manner of his life, there is a tone of sincerity and simplicity, fresh from the heart. The hermit had not yet conquered: high imaginations still lurked in his cell, but chastened by a holier influence.

"1st June. You ask me what is the established order of my hermitage?—The monastery is situated a good distance from the city, on a height amidst forests; the air is very pure; we have each our cell, separated one from the other by a garden 20 feet long, which we cultivate. We are thirty Religious; we live like hermits; on the days of grand fêtes we unite and eat together. We have a handsome church, containing four chapels; we rise an hour and half after midnight, and go to sing matins and psalms, which last two hours and a half; at four o'clock primes; between matins and primes, he who wishes to sleep asks permission of the Superior; after primes we have a half-hour of mental prayer; then say the first mass; manual work succeeds; each hermit, at sound of bell, goes to the place destined for him by the Superior; to dig or till the earth, carry stones, weed the convent paths. We are clad in a shirt, a tunic, a large cloak, a scapulary, a straw hat to keep us from the sun's rays; the colour of our clothes is white, that we may have always before our eyes a model to indicate that we ought to keep our heart pure. Tierce at half-past six; this being said, sexts -nones; at nine, after noues, we retire to dine. We pass six months of the year in fast; from September to Easter we take no meat; on Fridays we eat, on the ground, bread and water, with naked feet. The other part of the year, which we pass without abstinence, they give us fruits on the Fridays when we fast. I have forgotten to tell you that in the midst of our fatigues we enjoy a vivid gaiety, a great peace, and we are more content than the kings and the great men of the age in the midst of their pomps and festivals. When we are working on the earth, if they came to offer us the finest crown and the richest palace in the world to inhabit-we should prefer our shovel and our little plough. Never in the bosom of the world have I been so happy. If I was again present in the salons of Paris, and was master of the hearts of the gay and luxurious, how fast would I draw them to charge themselves with the light and gentle yoke of the amiable Jesus and Mary! On the days that we are permitted to speak, the recluses meet together, and converse on the blessedness of the redeemed in heaven, for one hour. I assure you I never felt so much pleasure in the promenades of the Tuileries. But in our walks, in our prayers and orisons, we are so full of joy. And you, my parents, how go affairs? According to your wish? I know that you have religion-seek its supports: all that I suffer for the love.

of God is welcome, is sweet to bear. My brother-does he think of death? Does he reflect that death comes in the night-that time passes like the lightning? Imagine, my mother, the years we are separated: it is terrible. Are they not fled like a dream? Are not all moments, all years, like them? Pardon your child the freedom of his expressions -his thirst for your salvation. O full of majesty, power, and glory is the presence of God! On a throne more brilliant and beautiful than your son's, shall I then behold you ?-Say, my mother! Oh, how I long for the moment! Ireneo, hermite Camalduli de Monté Corona."

He was now tried in his spirit's weakest point. At the desire of the Superior he had lately preached several times in the neighbourhood. Eloquence is a rare gift in a monk or hermit; and that of Irenée was scarcely due to the inspiration of his subject, for he always possessed it. It is no wonder that the man who could charm in the circles of Paris, going forth full of zeal to the hamlet, should fascinate his hearers. His fame as a preacher spread fast through the surrounding country; and he was invited to settle as curé in a town, and take the charge of the congregation. Had he complied, he would unquestionably have been now one of the most popular ministers in the Romish church; but he absolutely refused the offer, and said, "That he would not again expose himself to the power of vanity, which had caused him too much suffering." This was a fine instance of self-denial; and at this point we may not withhold esteem, and even admiration, from the man: to his early, his late, and darling passion the gate was thrown wide open; he might drive his chariot wheels through it gloriously-he would not. Perhaps the stern and pitiless judge of human nature may say, that this denial was not inconsistent with his still quenchless thirst of greatness, less as an orator than a saint; that nothing gives a surer claim to this title, than the sacrifice of the heart's best love! But this is probing the heart too deeply; charity and mercy alike forbid it. Was it a light thing to pass twenty years in a cell with such memories, and with no other hope to the end of life? He is now forty; the father is taken; the widow and brother alone survive, both in broken health; when they also are gone, when the " sere and yellow leaf" falls on Irenée, and his thoughts of the living shall be of the dead-how will he then bear loneliness? No home-the home of his youth; none to love him, nor to weep for his presence. Irenée had a warm heart, and was very fond of his mother. Often to men of wild and ungoverned fancy, the broken tie, unfelt at the moment, returns in after life, even to anguish, and the lost features die no more.

[His last letters shall be given in a subsequent paper.]

A FRAGMENT.

"Good luck to your fishing."-The Monastery.

Ir, as "Thomas Best, Gent., late of his Majesty's Drawing-room in the Tower," saith, "Patience is highly necessary for every one to be endowed with, who angles for carps, on account of their sagacity and cunning," that virtue is still more essential as an endowment to the angler who goes after the great Thames trouts. He must be content to spend much time in dropping down from stream to weir, from pool to stream, and from stream to weir again, and to burn all the skin off his face many times before he has even a run: moreover, unless he wears gloves-and no one handles his tools with mittens so well as he does without-he will have to present a pair of hands at the dining-table only to be rivalled in their nut-brown hue by those of the gipsy or the graveldigger. But when he does get a nine or ten pounder into his well, the look-down upon the fish, after all the hair-breadth hazards of losing him when hooked, is worth the weariness of many blank days, and the production of those unpresentable hands to boot.

To be sure, it does sometimes happen, even to the best of sportsmen, that, after the struggle is apparently over, and the fish is close to the boat's side, something will give way, leaving the unhappy Piscator with a straight rod and suddenly slackened line, and also with a sensation as if he had been suddenly deprived of his back-bone.

But for a lover of nature, even when fortune smiles not, this kind of fishing has many charms :-the bright river, the continual change of scene, the rich beauty of the highly cultivated and picturesque country through which it flows, and the exhilarating (freshness of the air as it comes laden with the perfume of the new-mown hay, or of the honeysuckle blossoms from

"the cottage of thatch,

Where never physician has lifted the latch,"

make mere existence a pleasure.

Then there is always something to be seen by one who has eyes and knows how to use them. There are the wild flowers that enamel the banks, the insects, the fish-it requires a practised eye to see them-the birds. Here, a king-fisher shoots by like a meteor-there go the summer-snipes-the swift darts by close to the boat, like

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That back-water is positively carpeted with the green leaves and snowy star-bloom of the water-lily-and the nightingale hard by, in shadiest covert hid, fairly sings down all the host of day-songsters, though the blackbird and thrush make melody loud and clear.

On one of these expeditions not long ago, we observed below Lock, just as a thunder-storm was coming on, a pair of swans with seven young ones. There was evidently something more than usual going on-some sensation, as the French say, among them. The young were collected between the parents, and the whole party pushed up

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