when we consider the passion of the French people for anecdotes about men, for biographical sketches, for personal criticisms, and for reminiscences. In no nation are portraits, of pen and pencil, so abundant or so popular. Every novelist, dramatist, poet, or politician, every celebrity or half-celebrity, is sure to be described by some other, who himself gains celebrity by this description. The upper gallery at Versailles, and the Biographie Universelle, are alike monuments and symbols of this national spirit. But in the pulpit, almost without exception, the portraits are of those whom the Church has canonized. The Protestant preacher says as little about Guizot as the Catholic about Montalembert. The portraits of the one are of the ecclesiastical heroes, the portraits of the other, of the Biblical worthies.

And in the directions of the French treatises, preachers are especially cautioned against so describing the sins of individuals in their congregations that the men shall be recognized. They are to speak of sin positively, but not in such a way that one or another may be singled out as the offender. They are to be personal in their rebukes only as the conscience of the sinner may appropriate these, and not as the eyes of the faithful may see at whom these rebukes were pointed. Particularly objectionable is satirical description. Fond as is the French nation of satire, keen as is its sense of the ridiculous, very rarely does this appear in the performances of its pulpit. Father Ventura, in his sarcastic harangues, has introduced a style which the books will not justify. Everywhere else but in the pulpit the absurdity of men or things is made more conspicuous than their sin or folly; but here, even those who are most stern against the sinner spare him their sneer and gibe. Doubtless this antipathy to sarcasm is strengthened by the fact that it is the favorite and formidable weapon of sceptics and infidels; the preacher, when he is tempted to satirize some folly, remembers Voltaire, and his seriousness returns.

There is a less reasonable aversion to local scenery and history in the illustration of French discourses. Nature is freely used, but the works of man not so freely, except as they are connected with sacred legends. It is not often that the names of towns or cities are mentioned, or of trades and professions,

or of mechanical processes. The most copious source of illustration which the American pulpit so abundantly uses is wholly passed by. On the Sundays following the supposed completion of the oceanic telegraph, hundreds of sermons in England, and thousands in America, made that wholly or in part the theme of their discourse. In France, it is not probable that one sermon was preached on that theme, as certainly not one has been printed, although the French journals took even more notice of it than the English. The comet, being a heavenly body, and the floods, a catastrophe of Divine displeasure, would receive full attention, and their significance would be pressed home to the souls of the alarmed and the suffering. But in vain will you look in French sermons for allusions to scientific discoveries, or for suggestions drawn from the methods of labor or the works of art. Paris, beyond all cities of the world, is crowded with materials for various illustration, for exhibiting by symbol, moral and religious truth. Such galleries, museums, workshops, structures of every kind, from the Morgue to the Palace, from Père la Chaise to the Arc de l'Étoile, from the book-stalls on the quays to the Imperial Library, no other spot of earth has brought together. Yet the Sunday sermon of a respectable New England village preacher is more copiously illustrated from labor and life, than the special efforts of a canon of the Cathedral of Nôtre Dame. He must have an eye for the sins of men around him, but no eye for the fashion of their handiwork. He must bring some ancient passage to describe the modern need and duty.

If called to choose between a purely imaginative illustration and one drawn from some actual work of men, the French preacher, in most instances, would prefer the former. If fancy will answer his purpose, he will take that instead of fact. And though the French sermons are usually far from fanciful, and deal in exact statements rather than in far-fetched imagery, they are not wanting occasionally in pleasant conceits of style. They are fond of imaginary situations and cases, and work these up with a good deal of ingenuity. Occasionally, too, the union of lively fancy with exact statement makes that impression which is best described by the untranslatable word bizarre, as in the curious argument of Father Felix for moral progress:

"I will suppose," says he, "that each Christian century produces, on the average, a million of saints, not of saints actually canonized at Rome, but of saints who have realized perfection in a superior degree, whose virtues God has known, whose influence humanity has felt, and of whom Rome canonizes a few, to keep always blazing before the eyes of the nations the image of sanctity. Behold, then, in the Christian centuries, about twenty millions of men, who have borne in themselves human perfection in eminent proportions."— Vol. III. p. 79.

French sermons have much to say of the delights of heaven and the horrors of hell, but they indulge very moderately in the luxury of epithet and imagery which American revivalists use in these fascinating descriptions. They are impressive and thrilling, but seldom become terrific. We have not found any French picture of the infernal state, that would spoil the appetite of the average sinners in any congregation. The French style in this particular is like the French costume, positive and firm in cut and color, yet without that contrast which one sees in the Italian variegated dress. Neither the hopes of the believer nor the fears of the sinner are strained to an extravagant pitch. To purify the soul rather than to alarm it, to arouse rather than amaze, to encourage rather than enrapture, is the preacher's aim. The figure of antithesis is very much employed, but always within bounds, antithesis which states all that it suggests. The enthusiast is content to stop at the third heaven, satisfied to find God and the angels there. As themes of discourse, indeed, grandiose subjects are preferred; general sin, rather than special evils; eternity with its mysteries, rather than time with its facts; the kingdom of God more than the kingdoms of men. French preachers always consult dignity in their choice of subjects; and such titles as many sermons in English volumes bear would seem to them frivolous, not to say profane. Nor do they deface their discourses by the choice of odd texts, which shall surprise and bewilder the hearer at the outset. However liberal may be their opinions, they respect the letter of the Scripture, and will not, for accommodation, tear passages from their context, or wrest them from their proper meaning.

The French pulpit, in general, is not lavish in its quotations of Scripture, nor is it thought essential that every opinion ex

pressed should be rounded by some sounding sentence of the Sacred Volume. Yet, as an ornament of style, Scriptural quotations are preferred to figures of rhetoric. Usually the quotations which are made are in good taste, and have a fitness of sense not less than of sound. If the Latin of the Vulgate be used, as it is in most Catholic sermons, it is the common practice to give a translation with it, so that there may be no doubt about the meaning. It is a prime rule of sacred rhetoric in the French schools, that the citations of Scripture and of the Fathers, who have an almost equal authority, should be "few and short." The preacher may set these as precious stones at intervals in the shrine of his discourse, or may sprinkle them over his argument as he has sprinkled the holy water on the heads of the people, but he must not show his skill in hiding his own poor material in the mosaic which he makes of St. Bernard and St. Thomas, of Gregory and Augustine, of Paul and David and Moses. Respect for the letter of the Word forbids, instead of suggesting, such a mechanical use of it. "To bring a crowd of passages and testimonies to prove a thing which is clear enough in itself, or already sufficiently proved, as many do, to show their scientific ability, is an insupportable vanity";- such is the shrewd saying of M. Vétu.

"Brilliant" preaching, though not by any means excluded from the pulpits of France, finds comparatively little favor. While careful preparation of style as of thought is commended, and wise preachers are supposed to write their discourses twice over, the second writing is rather to prune their luxuriance than to add to them fit ornament. "Severe simplicity" is the motto of the Jesuits; which it must be confessed, however, they too frequently violate. Father Félix, good hater as he is of pompous epithets, cannot resist the charm of inversion and of stately phrases. But the oratory of the French pulpit avoids effeminate brilliancy; its step is quick and its ornament masculine, like that of a French gentleman. You never find any languishing and sentimental beauty, any of that affectation, which, in the language of Thomas de Villeneuve, "throws a little rose-water upon a house on fire." Grandiloquence there may be, but no foppery

of style. A poetical style, as it is sometimes called, is not more allowable than a witty and trivial style. Neither are sentimental inversions, periphrases, and images, such as versemakers prefer, regarded as suitable, nor is it in order to quote verses. An English curate feels safe in garnishing his discourse with the stanzas of Watts and Doddridge, and is ready even on occasion to cite a passage from Young or Herbert or Shakespeare. If the Fall of Man be his theme, it is natural that Milton should help him out with timely measures. Or if the mystery of time and change be his theme, he will be justified in extracting stanzas from Longfellow's beautiful poem of The Old Clock on the Stairs. But no French preacher would feel authorized to borrow from Bridaine that fancy of the pendulum, singing "toujours jamais, — jamais, toujours," in its steady swinging, much less any rhymed version of it. Racine and Corneille, classic though they are, are not drawn upon to decorate sermons, and a respectable discourse would almost as soon borrow from the lyrics of Béranger as from the pious meditations of Lamartine. The psalms of Clement Marot, friend as he was to the Reformers, and sweet as is the music of his rhythm, are not like the psalms of Watts, a treasury from which preachers have always the right to draw.

And French sermons are, almost always, free from scientific affectation in their phrases. They use very few technical terms, and abjure altogether, even in abstruse discussions, what one writer calls "scientific jargon." Even when the subject is abstract and profound, and it would seem difficult to discuss it without employing the special language which the schools have applied, it is the aim of the French preacher to employ such words as the people, and not such words as the scholars use. In all the conférences of Father Félix on the difficult theme of "Progress," there are not ten words which an average congregation could not understand. If the reasoning is often specious and subtle, a Jesuit's pleading, the language is always clear. It may hide thought by weaving around it a many-colored tissue, but not by enveloping it in a fog. You always know what the words themselves mean, if you cannot see what they so cunningly conceal.

We have already remarked that French preachers, as a gen