1

And see, the castle is quite perfect, | Campaign in Brittany," for instance, without a scar, without a ruin! Was or one of those great Gascon sieges, the wood, after all, an enchanted wood, full of histories of mining and counteras it seemed, aud have we driven back mining, of sudden sallies from the posfive hundred years into the Valois of teru gate, of great engines, built like the fourteenth century? towers, launching stones and Greek fire, which the enemy wheels by night against the castle wall. I am deep in mediæval strategy when a timid, common-sensible voice interrupts :

VIII.

PIERREFONDS! It was here that a sad ne'er-do-weel (for whom I have a liking none the less) built himself this famous castle in 1391. It was the wonder of the age, too strong and too near Paris for the safety of the crown. It was dismantled in 1617; and all that remains of the fourteenth-century fortress is, with the foundations, one side of the keep and part of the outer wall. Its restoration, begun in 1858, was the triumph of Viollet-le-Duc. Before the decoration was finished, the last moats delved, or the palisade laid out, the Second Empire fell; the munificent patron became an invalid in exile, and Pierrefonds was dubbed a national monument, kept from ruin, but no longer an occasion for expense. I owu that I should like to have seen it before it was restored, to have seen the real, time-stained, historical document. Yet after all the world has a goodly harvest of ruins, of documents; and there is only one such magnificent historical novel as the Castle of Pierrefonds.

"Mais comment cela se peut-il que le château soit si ancien, p'isque vous me dites qu'il était construit sous le Second Empire ?”

'Tis our fellow-sightseer, apparently some local tradesman, bent on holiday, and tramping the forest with his wife, their dinner in a basket and bunches of muguets dangling from their wrists. He is a shrewd little fellow. In his one phrase, he has summed up the sovereign objection to Pierrefonds :

"How is it possible that the castle be so ancient if, as you say, 'twas built under Napoleon III. ?"

Decidedly Pierrefonds is too well restored!

IX.

THE castle is the chief interest at Pierrefonds, but not the only one; for, down by the lake in the overgrown and weedy path, there stands the Etablissement des Bains. Here tepid sulphur The decoration is often poor and springs are captured and turned to gaudy; but architecturally Pierrefonds healing uses. Happy sick people, who is a work of genius. To walk through are sent to get well in this enchanting it is to see the Middle Ages alive, and village! How they must gossip in the as they were; a hundred phrases of lime-walk and fish in the lake, read on mediæval novels or poems throng our the castle terraces, and wander in the memory. See there is the great Jus- forest! Happy sick people, for, alas ! tice Hall, built separate from the keep (unless one stand in need of sulphur above the Salle des Gardes; and these, baths) Pierrefonds, in its lovely valley, connecting it with the outer defences, is not, they say, a very healthy place. are the galleries or loggie, where the So, at least, from Compiègne, proclaims knights and ladies used to meet and the trump of envy; or perhaps the watch the Palm Play in the court be- imparadised Pierrefondois, eager to low. Here is the keep, a fortress keep their lovely home safe from the within a fortress, with its postern on jerry-builder, have started these vague the open country. From its watch- rumors of influenza, of languor, of towers, or its double row of battle-rheumatisms. 'Tis а wise ruse, ments, we can study the whole system weapon of defence against the Parisian of mediæval defence. Ah, this would -a sort of sepia shot forth to protect be the place to read some particularly the natural beauty of the woods against exciting Chronicle of Froissart's, "The the fate of Asnières.

a

MARY DARMESTETER.

There are three courses open to the clesiastical lord chancellors invariably visitor to Pierrefonds. He may stay thus prefaced their opening speeches there, and that would certainly be the in Parliament, down to the time of pleasantest course. Or he may take William of Wykeham. Allusive texts the train, and after little more than were occasionally used somewhat unhalf an hour arrive at Villers-Cotterets, scrupulously by mediæval divines; where he will sleep, reserving for the thus, for example, on St. Lawrence's morrow the lovely drive through the day the people were reminded from forest to Vaumoise, and the visit to the Deuteronomy that "his bedstead was quaint old high-lying town of Crépy-en- a bedstead of iron," the unfortunate Valois, whence the train will take him saint having been grilled on a gridiron; on to Paris. Crépy is a dear old town. while on the festival of St. Vincent No one would think that such a dull, words suitable to the occasion were disastrous treaty once was signed there. found in the text, "To him that overThe road that slopes down from Crépy cometh" (i.e., to Vincent) "will I to the plain is full of a romantic, grant to sit upon my throne." Somealmost an Umbrian picturesqueness. times a rare facility has been shown in We drove there once, more than a year the selection; thus, a Capuchin about ago, and visited the knolly forest full of to preach in a church at Lyons, slipped moss and pines. But we have never on the pulpit steps, falling so ungraceseen Villers-Cotterets; for when we fully that a pair of brawny legs prewere at Pierrefonds we followed the sented themselves through the banisters third and worst course open to us: we to the gaze of the startled congrega drove back to Compiègne, and thence tion. Quickly recovering himself the we took the train direct to Paris. self-possessed monk took his place in the pulpit and gave out words appro priately chosen from the Gospel for the day: "Tell the vision unto no man." Swift was especially ingenious in his choice of texts. Conceiving himself to have been neglected by the Duke of Ormond, he took occasion when preaching before him to select the words, "Yet did not the chief butler remenber Joseph but forgat him." The witty dean, however, gave dire offence to the Company of Merchant Tailors, before whom he had been invited to preach, by addressing them from the words, "a remuant shall be left." Sometimes also a covert meaning h been conveyed in the passage selected. Thus, Paley, preaching at Great St Mary's, when Pitt, as first lord of the At the very outset it may be of in- treasury at the age of twenty-three. terest to learn that a text was not visited Cambridge, remarking the always considered an essential part of siduous court paid by many leading a sermon; in the early church, indeed, members of the university to the youthtexts were conspicuous by their ab- ful premier, made choice of the words: sence, nor was it until the reign of "There is a lad here which hath five King John that the custom in England barley loaves and two small fishes, of preaching from some specially adding, as he looked round on the selected passage appears to have crowded congregation, "but what are originated with Langton, they among so many ?" Archbishop of Canterbury.

From Temple Bar.

PREACHERS AND SERMONS.

a sermon

THERE are manifestly, as Mr. Ruskin has observed, two modes of regarding as a human composition, or a divine message. Confining our attention altogether to the former aspect of preaching, it is surprising how much light may be thrown upon subjects such as the style and eloquence of divines at various periods, as well as upon contemporary manners and modes of thought, even from a superficial study of the more humorous side of pulpit literature.

Stephen

The ec- Unhappily chosen texts have some

times been followed by unfortunate | it thus: first, the Devil will play at results. Thus, Sheridan's father preach- small game rather than none at all; ing at the Chapel Royal, Dublin, on second, they run fast whom the Devil the anniversary of the succession of the drives; and thirdly, the Devil brings house of Hanover, picked out an old his hogs to a fine market." But the sermon on the words, "sufficient unto Puritans made divisions unfashionable the day is the evil thereof;" the in- by the enormous number they introsult supposed to have been thus con- duced. In one sermon Baxter has one veyed to the Irish court was never hundred and twenty; no wonder that forgiven, and it has been said lost the the pastor of Bemerton exclaims against preacher a see. Burnet, November, "crumbling a text into too small parts." 1684, selected for the opening of a ser- The mediæval divine, strangely mon on Gunpowder Plot the words, enough, represented the various char"Save me from the lion's mouth; for acters of Scripture as good Catholics; thou hast heard me from among the thus, Abel heard mass daily; Abrahorns of the unicorns; some allusion ham and Isaac going to Mount Moriah to the royal arms appears to have been recited paters and aves; the Virgin at suspected; the preacher, at any rate, the Annunciation was found telling her was deemed disaffected, and lost in beads; while even so recently as the consequence the lectureship of St. year 1715, a Father Chatenier speaks of Clement's and the chaplaincy of the l'Abbé Jésus. Classical allusions were rolls. The announcement of the text at one time much in vogue, and a story has been followed by strangely unex- is told of a French peasant who had pected consequences. A rector of El-"sat under" his priest for so long and tham once gave out the words, "Who hrt thou?" and as he paused for a monent, an officer in uniform who had just entered church suddenly halted, nd taking the question as personal, bromptly replied: Sir, I am the reruiting officer of the 16th Foot, and having my wife and daughter with me, hould be glad to make the acquaintnce of the clergy and gentry of the eighborhood.” The reply is unreorded; the rector probably was not so eady as was Rowland Hill, who, oberving one day that his chapel was may do as he chooses, but tell him," avaded by a concourse of people intent he added, "that I shall sooner reach n seeking refuge from the violence Paradise by water, than he will with f a passing shower, remarked that all his post-horses," alluding to the nough many have been blamed for custom of travelling by post, which aking religion a cloak, yet that he the monarch had recently introduced. puld think little better of those who Louis laughed, and forgave the ofade it an umbrella. The text an- fender. Maillard likewise notices cerounced, it was formerly the very tain particulars of the various modes sual custom to treat the subject under of cheating in trade which were in ree heads. "I shall divide," said vogue in his days, and have not wholly owland Hill, 66 my sermon into three disappeared even amongst ourselves; arts; first I shall go through the text, thus he inveighs against those "who ext I shall go round about the text, put ginger with cinnamon, color safad finally I shall go away from it alto-fron with oil, water their wool, moisten ther." So also a preacher dealing cloth in order that it may stretch, and ith the subject of the Devil entering when they weigh anything, press down e herd of swine proposed to handle the scale with the finger." Father VOL. LXXXIII. 4308

LIVING AGE.

heard so much about Apollo in his discourses, that he actually bequeathed his old cart-horse to "Mr. Pollo, about whom the curé had said so many fine things." One of the strangest of Gallican divines was Oliver Maillard, one of the preachers to Louis XI., who died in 1502, and who was of the number of those who believe that a jest may sometimes do duty for a sermon. Being one day told that the angry monarch had threatened to have him thrown into the Seine, "the king," he replied,

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Menot was another French preacher of | a profound slumber."

ants asleep; stooping down he cried out to one of the delinquents, "My lord, I am sorry to interrupt you, but if you snore so loud you will wake the king."

His Majesty thereupon awoke, and turning to his neighbor, remarked with his accustomed good nature, "This man must be made a bishop, remind me on Latimer speaks of the next vacancy.' a woman who suffered from insomnia, and who, all soporifics having failed, was taken to the church of S. Thomas of Acres, when she fell at once into a Lapenius, chaprefreshing slumber. lain to the Danish court (1662), noticing that a large part of the congregation fell asleep during the sermon, suddenly stopped, and pulling from his pocket a shuttlecock commenced to play with it The strange device, we are assured. had the effect desired.

So at any rate repute who freely lashed the prevailing thought not South, who, preaching vices of the time. Discoursing on the one day at Whitehall, observed King parable of the prodigal, he describes Charles II. and several of his attendthe younger son as coming to his father "bold as the pope himself," and dresses out the youth when setting forth from his home "in a pourpoint fringed with velvet, a Florence cap, a shirt of fine linen puckered at the neck, scarlet boots, and a cloak of damask silk floating at his back," but represents him returning "in a scanty rochet which barely covered his hams." Some century later we find Père Bosquier preaching on the same favorite subject; when the son resolves to return, the divine suddenly starts the inquiry, "But why did he not write?" replying that the reason was not that his education had been neglected, but that it was as impossible to instruct him as to "teach a pig to play the trumpet." A popular German preacher of the latter part of the seventeenth century- Sancta Clara suggested that the prodigal was in Nor was the popular mode of preach all probability an Irishman, and warnprevailed ing his countrymen against a too prev-ing, which, as has been seen, alent vice, surmised that he was given among Continental divines, altogether to frequenting wine-shops, the propri- without imitators in our own country. etors of which had so dealt with him For a while, at any rate, it was also "that his breeches were as full of appreciated. And in this sense we find holes as a fishing-net." Father André, Latimer complaining bitterly of the Strawberry preacher" who came bu a frequent preacher before Louis XIV., interspersed his discourse with many a once a year to his cure with the strawsoon-desilively sally with the view of arresting berries, and departed as the attention of his audience. Preach- ing "to fit some judges that he wots of ing on the casting out of the devil with a Tyburn tippet ;" telling of the which was dumb, "Know you," said merry monk of Cambridge who wou he, "what a dumb devil is? I will fain have read the sentence, Nil mes tell you it is a lawyer before his con- quam lætari et facere bene, without the "I would bene were out. fessor; in court such gentlemen chatter last word. like pies, but in the confessional devil quoth he, "for it importeth so many a word can one draw out of them." things "-speaking of the Captain "Shut the doors!" he cried one day Calais, whose fabled betrayal of to the Suisse on duty, when he ob- trust becomes an image of the fall To Latimer also served the Archbishop of Paris asleep man in Adam. during his discourse, "shut the doors, owe the well-known non sequitur the shepherd is asleep, the sheep will Tenterden Steeple and the Good It was in the year 1548 that get out."1 "Some men preach," said Sands. Sydney Smith, as if they thought sin delivered his well-known sermon on t is to be taken out of a man as Eve was Plough," so filled with quainti taken out of Adam, by casting him into agery. He was preaching on this oc sion from the pulpit at Paul's Cross 1 Predicatoriana, par G. P. Philomneste. Dijon, the north-east corner of the old ca 1841.

dral, a spot marked till days compara- | mons (Nov., 1640), occupied, it is astively recent by an elm-tree, which serted, at least seven hours between shed its autumn leaves over the site them. South once went incog. to hear of what was the very whispering-gal- a certain Mr. Lob, a Dissenting minislery of the nation, from the first mur- ter, who, after giving out his text, split mur of Henry's divorce to the final it up into twenty-six divisions, whereadjustment of Anglicanism under Eliz- upon the doctor rose, and, nudging a abeth. The preacher and the piough- friend who accompanied him, said, man are likened to one another, for "Let us go home for our gowns and they labor at all seasons of the year. slippers, for I see this man will make a But Satan is also busy following his night of it." Wisely does George Herplough, and he winds up: "The devilbert remark" that he that profits not in shall go for my money, for he applieth an hour, will less afterwards; the same to his business. Therefore, ye un-affection which made him not profit preaching prelates, learn of him to be before, making him then weary, so that diligent in doing your office; if you will neither learn of God nor of good men, for very shame learn ye of the devil." It is Latimer also who speaks with such wisdom of the English bow as "that gift of God which he hath given us to excel all nations withal." But the popularity of these familiar allusions does not seem to have been of very long duration, for Fuller tells us that when they were imitated by a country clergyman of his day, the preacher was interrupted by peals of laughter.

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he grows from not relishing to loathing." To the same effect, though the mode of expression may be somewhat dissimilar, are the words of an American critic: "If a man can't strike ile in twenty minutes, he's either got an uncommon bad location or he's boring with the wrong tool." One of the briefest discourses probably ever delivered was that of a Prince Archbishop of Cologne, who, being appointed to preach before the court at Versailles one April, ascended the pulpit, gravely bowed to the audience, and, shouting Preaching hath its limits as all out "April fools—all !" ran down the things have," said Lord Bacon; and steps again amid peals of laughter. But Baron Alderson more recently sug- brevity is not always the soul of wit. gested twenty minutes, with a leaning Canning was once asked by a clergyto the side of mercy, as a suitable man how he had liked his sermon. length for a sermon. Long discourses "Why, it was a short sermon," was the were, as a rule, a product of Puritan reply. "Oh, yes," said the preacher; times, and yet some of the earlier 'you know I avoid being tedious." divines were in all conscience lengthy "Ah! but," answered Canning, "you enough. Bishop Alcock, founder of were tedious." Jesus College, Cambridge, preached on one occasion two hours before the Uni- The worst speak something good; if all versity, and Cranmer is found warning God takes a text, and preacheth Patience. Latimer, about to deliver a course of Lent Lectures before the court, that an hour and a half would be sufficiently long, "else the king and queen might peradventure wax so weary as to have small delight to continue with you to he end." Burnet speaks of Bishop Forbes of Edinburgh, who officiated at he Scottish coronation of Charles I. (1633), that he had a strange faclty" of preaching five or six hours at time. Dr. Burgess and Mr. Marshall, one fast-day, before the House of Com

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want sense

The Church Porch.

Still, in some churches, by the side of the pulpit, or perhaps stored away in the vestry, remains the old hour-glass, to remind the preacher of the flight of time a device, perhaps, a little older than the Reformation. Hugh Peters (1663) was represented as preaching with an hour-glass in the left hand and saying, "I know you are all good fellows, so let's have another glass." And when Burnet preached at the