Lacordaire was equal to it, and his first series of sermons caused a sensation such as no similar discourses had caused within the century. The boldness of statement, the luxuriance of imagery, the introduction of all sorts of topics, political, educational, financial, - railroads, banks, and battles, the utter defiance of all recognized rules of pulpit oratory, while they attracted crowds to the services, alarmed the guardians of the Church, and they sought how they might "chain this lion." It was impossible to calculate the extravagances of such an erratic genius. Another freak of Lacordaire soon relieved the Church of this difficulty. He determined to go to Rome, to renounce the regular priesthood, and to become a Dominican friar, vowing himself so the more firmly to the work of preaching, while he released himself from episcopal authority. After a reasonable noviciate in the Convent of the Minerva, in which Lacordaire was able to write a splendid biography of the Saint whose name he assumed, "Father Dominic" came back to his place at Notre Dame, and revived by new "conferences" the fame of his former eloquence. He had changed in form and countenance, so that they hardly recognized him; and his meagre body scarcely needed the additions of the tonsure and the white robe to take the guise of sanctity. But his weak voice grew stronger as he went on, his fiery eye kindled, and the wondering audience could see that change of vocation had not changed the man. Repeating his discourses in several of the provincial cities, everywhere he made the same impression; and it is said that at Nancy the people for sixty miles around came to hear him.

In spite of his rupture with Lamennais, Lacordaire retains many of the obnoxious ideas of the school of thinkers with which he was formerly associated. His most recent sermons, not less than his speech as a member of the Constituent Assembly in 1848, show that he is a republican at heart, and a romanticist in style. The ecclesiastical rulers dread his influence, while they are proud of his eloquence. The characteristics of his oratory are brilliancy of coloring, copious illustration, an intense force of expression, an extraordinary command of vast resources, and a love of sudden turns and startling paradoxes. He has in excess what the French call

esprit. One of his critics says of him, that he has this "des pieds à la tête, sur les lèvres, et jusqu'au bout des ongles; s'il osait, il en mettrait à toutes les lignes de ses discours." His manner is extemporaneous. He begins slowly, in a low tone, and with no animation or gesture; but warms as he proceeds, until his voice becomes strong and sonorous, and his whole frame quivers with passion. He loves controversy, and is never more at home than when conscious of pleading a difficult cause, or arguing against some popular fallacy. The five volumes of sermons which he has printed have no value as expositions of a system, or as specimens of close and consistent reasoning; but they are models of earnest, effective, and magnetic preaching. They remind us in more than one respect of the discourses of a preacher of our own body, whose views concerning the Theatre, the Suspense of Faith, and the Broad Church, have given rise of late to so much inquiry and debate.

Next to Lacordaire, perhaps the most remarkable living French preacher is the Jesuit Combalot. Few would imagine that the quiet occupant of a second-story chamber in the Rue Madame at Paris, living a half-romantic cenobite life with an only sister, and now rarely appearing in the pulpit except in the annual carême, was for ten years the rival of the great Dominican, justifying by his vehemence and his power the phrase of "a lion roaring against hell." He is the son of that Louis Combalot who saved his father's life before the Revolutionary tribunal, in 1793, by offering to die in his father's stead. The Abbé Theodore, born in August, 1798, and now sixty-one years old, was a preacher even in his childhood. At eight years of age he used to delight his schoolmates by off-hand sermons from the top of the staircase. His studies all tended to this vocation. At seventeen he received the tonsure; at twenty-two, by a special dispensation, he was ordained priest; and at twenty-four he was at the head of the Seminary at Grenoble, and widely known for his prodigious learning and his precocious genius. All at once he gave up his chance of preferment in the Church, and amazed his friends by joining the Order of Jesuits. He did this that he might have more time and freedom for missionary labor; and for five years he travelled as an itinerant preacher all over

France, announcing the regeneration of faith, and confuting atheism. The influence of Lamennais, whom he adored, was visible in his ideas and his manner alike. The bishops were charmed to win such a coadjutor; the fame of his multiplied conversions came before long to the ears of the king, and he was sent for to preach the Lenten sermons in the chapel of the Tuileries. This series of discourses added to his renown; and when the Revolution of July broke out, many looked to him as a master spirit of the new order of things. But the excommunication which the Pope had fulmined against Lamennais was repeated by the Bishop of Grenoble against the friend of the heretic; and the Jesuit, who had furnished to L'Avenir some of its sharpest articles, was frightened, arrested in his course, and driven to more than concessions,— to base and servile treachery. More contemptible vituperation and insult cannot be found in literature than the letters which Combalot addressed to his former friend. They show, indeed, in the words of his biographer, an "ulcerated" heart, and are in strange contrast with the pretended "charity" of this apostle. As the reward of his servility, Combalot has preached before the Pope, and has the honorable title of Apostolic Vicar." He has published very little, — only a volume or two of dogmatic philosophy, and one volume of "Conferences upon the Attributes of the Virgin;" and his fame as a pulpit orator would suffer, if judged by this volume. His sermons so says his biography- would not stand the test of printing. His power is in his delivery, — his voice, rich, deep, and varying in its tones, his imposing presence, his magnificent head, and his air of profound conviction. He seems in the pulpit a "Christian athlete." Sometimes he shocks his delicate hearers by vulgarities which are allowed by no models, and sometimes he alarms them by the fierceness of his oratory. This violence of expression has more than once brought him into trouble; and it gave him, on one occasion, a month's imprisonment. He keeps more closely to the Scriptures than Lacordaire, and has far less of fantastic imagery. His last public course of sermons which we have seen noticed was at St. Sulpice, in the Lent of 1855.

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A preacher of a quite different order is Peter Louis Cœur,

Bishop of Troyes, surnamed by one writer "the Cyprian of the nineteenth century." Few prelates of France have received more honors or won more praises from the cultivated classes. A fastidiously pure taste, close logical arrangement, and careful preparation, mark all his pulpit performances. He is never betrayed into any extravagance, and his manner is conversational rather than declamatory. Though his annual Lenten courses extend over a period of thirty years, he has published nothing but a few fragments of a work on "Rationalism and Mysteries," and the estimate of his gifts as a pulpit orator must come from the enthusiastic testimonies of those who have heard him. His address is to the educated and the refined, and not to the multitude. Poujoulat says of him: "When the Abbé Cœur discourses of God and heavenly things, you imagine yourself listening to a wandering archangel who has stopped on his journey for a moment among men." Cœur's mind is philosophic, and he has a strong antipathy to the pretensions of extreme Catholicism. He defends the Gallican against the Ultramontane Church, and has said many brave words in favor of liberty. The questions which he loves most to treat are the relations of reason to faith, of science to theology, and of God to the universe, speculative rather than practical questions. In discussing these topics, if he is not always original, he is never superficial. Beneath his refined and classic diction there is a tone of pathos, indicated, indeed, by the grave and sad expression of his countenance. He owes little to external" graces. His gesture is awkward and his voice not musical, but there is a dignity in his bearing which overcomes these natural defects. He is the child of a trading family in the district of Lyons, and is now in his fifty-fifth year.

The Abbé Deguerry, curate of the Madeleine Church in Paris, has for thirty-five years been known as one of the most distinguished of French preachers, though he too has published very little. A natural orator, he has improved and perfected his style by the use of approved rules, till the critics are able to find hardly any flaw in his method. He knows how to set off erudition and subtile pleading by all the charms of effective delivery. His eloquence keeps a sustained flow, which,

if it does not excite, never tires the hearers. His teachers prophesied his future eminence from his singular facility and insight in the lessons of theology and philosophy, which made him victor in all scholastic contests. After one of these contests, the venerable Abbé Jacques of Lyons, who presided in it, could not restrain the ardent exclamation, "Quis putas puer iste erit?"- an exclamation which the subsequent eminence of his pupil has amply justified. Such judges of oratory as Chateaubriand, Villemain, and Berryer have assigned to Deguerry the highest rank. Soundly orthodox in his theology, his appeal is to the heart rather than to the reason; and he has abundance of what the French term la sensibilité. His most celebrated discourse is that which he preached in the palace before Charles X. in 1829, in which he pleads with a boldness worthy of Massillon for the rights of humanity, for the essential equality and brotherhood of men, denounces despotism as an insult to God, and maintains that no government can be stable which is not founded upon the Divine law, and guided by Christian precepts. It was a timely discourse, and, if it had been heeded by the king, might have saved him from his near downfall. Another discourse, on Joan of Arc, given at Orleans in 1825, excited vehement opposition, from its theory that the truth of God ought to be fully preached, without concealment or compromise. The City Council debated whether they should publish such an imprudent manifesto. Their hesitation, however, like the hesitation of similar bodies in our own land, only served to advertise the discourse and to benefit the orator. They even went so far as to doubt whether they ought to invite him to the public dinner. But a sensible man of their number made them see, qu'il était essentiel de distinguer entre le sens du cru qu'ils avaient, et le sens commun qu'ils n'avaient pas, par la raison qu'ils avaient l'autre."

Deguerry has refused many lucrative and honorable offers, preferring to remain a simple preacher. He has had charge of the parish of Notre Dame, and is honorary canon of several cathedrals. He is sixty-two years of age.

The "Augustine of the French Church" is Plantier, Bishop of Nismes. He is still in the prime of life, in his forty-seventh