No. 1203. Fourth Series, No. 64. 22 June, 1867. POETRY: Sakya Mouni at Bodhimanda, 738. An English Eclogue, 793. Just Published at this Office THE STARLING. By Norman Macleod, D.D. 38 cents. 38.cents. Reduced Prices: THE CLAVERINGS. 50 cents instead of 75. A PAINTER'S CAMP. By Philip Gilbert Hamerton. In Three Books. 1. In England. 2. In Scotland. 3. In France. Boston: Roberts Brothers. PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the Living Age will be punctually forwarded! for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year; nor where we have to pay a commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. Second The Complete work 32 50 "6 88 " 220 "" Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers. What profit have we found, Still weary war to wage Bent limbs, dim eyes, weak brain, and failing breath; Through each new type of life; To know the same vain strife, And taste a thousand times the bitterness of death! Yes, the true Wisdom's way, Is pure Not-being, Nothing absolute; *At Bodhimanda is the sacred fig-tree, the "tree And the vast orb lies motionless and mute. of wisdom," which all Buddhists reverence as having witnessed their founder's attainment of Nirvana, and his consequent identification with Bud. dha, or the Supreme Intelligence. · Contemporary Review. E. H. PLUMPTRE. From the Christian Remembrancer. Le Récit d'une Sœur. Souvenirs de Famille recueillies par Mme. Augustus Craven, née La Ferronnays. Sixth Edition. Paris: Didier. 1866. OFTEN has it been remarked how the fresh spring of the French Church coincided with that in our own, and how that decade which began with 1830 was a period of stern trial, when the axe was laid to the root of a tree; and when, if there was a great outpouring of grace, there was also severe sifting, which all could not withstand. The journals of Maurice and Eugénie de Guérin have already shown the effect of this movement in one private family, where, in the sister, every holy sentiment was quickened and intensified; in the brother, the defection of Lamenais seemed for a time to wrench away the very foundations of faith. We have here another intimate and close portraiture of the workings of religion upon individual minds; but there is this great difference between the books, that whereas genius and reflection are the prominent natural characteristics of the two Guérins, here we have only action and feeling without more thought than is the ordinary heritage of intelligent sensible people. It would, however, be doing the La Ferronnays family injustice to treat their religion as merely the work of a revival. The father and mother belonged to that grand old race of French noblesse, whose faith as well as their loyalty was their support through the trials of the Great Revolution. True it is that there was many a profligate, many an unbeliever, among the fugitives from France, and that the hospitality of the Germans who received the emigrants was often shamefully requited; but there were also a large number who suffered with cheerful patience and deep, earnest religion, and more and more of these are coming to light. In this book we have the genuine documents, journals and letters, only pieced out here and there by Mrs. Augustus Craven, one of the few surviving members of the family, and with the stamp of authenticity in every line. The nucleus of the work, so to speak, was the narrative, the composition of which was the solace of her sister-in-law, Madame Albert de la Ferronnays, in the first months of her widowhood, and around this accumulated the memorials of others of the family, and of the remaining years of the young widow herself. As a picture of earthly love lifted to heavenly love, and of a character ripened, through its affections, for heaven, we think the history unrivalled. The Comte de la Ferronnays was married to Mademoiselle de Montsoreau at Klagenfurth, in Carinthia, in 1802, in the midst of the troubles of emigration. On the return of the Bourbons to France, he stood high in favour with Louis XVIII., and was French Ambassador at Petersburg, and Minister of Foreign Affairs under Charles X. Ten children were born to him, of whom Charles, the eldest, was by many years the senior three died, and there remained the dramatis_personæ of the Récit Albert, Fernand, Pauline (the narrator), Eugénie, Olga, and Albertine, the latter being much younger than the rest. Ill health sent M. de la Ferronnays to Italy in 1829, and there it was that the tidings of the Thirty Days reached the family. Their principles were strongly loyal and legitimist, and their adherence to their fallen sovereign was at the expense of much worldly prosperity. They established themselves in a villa at Castellamare, where the young people (including Charles's wife) seem to have revelled in the beauty of the view outside, while they treated the inconveniences within as the beginning of such an exile of poverty and distress as their parents had endured in the first Revolution. There was a great room in the house entirely unfurnished, but with windows looking out on the gulf and mountains, and there they used to bring their own tables and chairs, and spend the morning in reading, writing, laughing and talking. In the winter they were at Naples or its neighbourhood, going a great deal into society, and leading a very joyous and affectionate family life, in close intimacy with many dear and valued friends. Eugénie's chief friend was. Flavie Lefebvre, afterwards Marquise de Raigecour, a name that recalls the saintly Madame Elizabeth's dearest friend in the last generation, as indeed the intimates of the family constantly recall to us the tragedies of the past age. Mme. de Tourrels, the Dauphin's governess and the last lady taken from Marie Antoinette, was a kinswo man, and was Pauline's godmother, and again and again do we meet with persons whose names recall touching memories. The good mother of the family took the daughters into society on principle; for, as she afterwards says in one of her very sensible letters, she observed that the young married women, who comported themselves like runaway horses, were chiefly those | been at Alexandrine's feet 379, according who had been kept so strictly in the back- to a joke of Montalembert's but without ground in their girlhood that they had gaining her heart; and once, when her gained no experience while yet under guid- mother had tried to force her into a marance. Still there was something in the riage repugnant to her feelings, she had esconstant round of pleasure-something caped it by an appeal to the Emperor Nichtoo in Naples itself, that with the more olas, who had then said to her mother, as thoughtful left a sense of unsatisfactoriness. he held Alexandrine's hand, Promise me, Eugénie, who had scarcely left childhood Madame, that you will never bestow this behind, was the merriest of all, but she used child in marriage but according to her inafterwards to say, that she did not like to clination.' recollect those days, and Albert, who was about one-and-twenty, bright, gentle, and scrupulously religious, several times told Pauline in the course of the winter, that it was not good for him to be always in a place where serious life was impossible, and that some fine day he should go and 6 se retremper' in solitude. It was too easy at Naples, he said, to forget everything, and in 1831 he joined a like-minded, elder friend, M. Rio, in a tour in Tuscany, in the course of which he became acquainted with the Comte de Montalembert, and formed a close friendship, which continued to be the comfort of the rest of the family when Albert had been taken from them. Alexandrine was already on terms of friendship with Pauline, but Albert had never seen her till this memorable call, on the 17th of January, 1832, when her beauty and sweetness captivated him on the spot, and he went home to his friends in such a state of admiration that they laughed at him. She was not at that time much struck with him. Her fond recollections, however, are dated from that time; and in the long hours which five years later-she used to spend in dreaming over her desk, and recording her cherished memories, with minuteness that even Pauline sometimes thought excessive, she went back to the first day when Albert inspired her with respect. ་ After this journey, in the January of She had gone, on the 5th of February, 1832, the friends came to Rome, and there it with a Protestant friend to hear the nuns was that the romance of Albert's life began. singing at the conventual church of Trinità He went to call upon a lady whom his pa- del Monte. Albert was there on his knees rents had known at Petersburg, the Coun- as a devout worshipper; and as they came tess von Alopeus. She was a German by out of church together, she told him that birth, and her husband, a Swede, had been had she been alone, she would gladly have in the Russian diplomatic service, where the knelt too. 'Why did you not?' said he. La Ferronnays family had become acquaint- Why this respect of persons? ''This bolded with her. Her husband was recently ness in a man of twenty pleased me. Never dead, and she was travelling with her only had any man spoken to me so wisely' daughter, her two sons being in the Russian says the hitherto spoilt, flattered beauty, service. The daughter was born at Peters- who had no doubt thought herself saying burg in 1808, and had received the name something extremely gracious and patronof Alexandrine, in compliment to the Em-izing. peror Alexander, her godfather. His par- A few days after, she continues, while ticipation in the ceremony had caused her walking in the gardens of the Villa Pamfili, to be baptized by immersion according to We talked, I think, for an hour of religion, the Greek ritual, although her parents were immortality, and death, which we said would both Lutherans, and brought her up in their be sweet in those fair gardens. This converdoctrine. Madame d'Alopeus was a cele-sation, so unlike those that had wearied my brated beauty with perfectly regular features, ear in the world- this conversation sank and Alexandrine, though not judged by into the depths of my heart.' It was then connoisseurs to be equal to her in symmetry that his depth and piety made Alexandrine of feature, was exceedingly lovely, and had attach herself to Albert; and on his side, so a greater charm of expression. They were much was her faith upon his mind, that in excessively admired, and it used to be said very early morning, in a pilgrim's frock and that no one could say whether the daughter barefooted, he made the pilgrimage of the were loved for the sake of the mother or Seven Basilica, to pray for her conversion, the mother for the sake of the daughter. and even to offer his own life as a sacrifice The Countess was a gay woman, delighting if at such a price it might be vouchsafed. in all this admiration, and had brought up her daughter to the constant round of Russian dissipation. Numerous admirers had We pass rapidly over this portion of the journals; if there was nothing beyond, we should have been inclined to call it senti |