At length, however, the action brought conviction of the sincerity with which the by the family of the Rohans, to invalidate causes of the prince's death were investithe testament of the Duc de Bourbon in gated. It does not seem to us that Louis favour of the Duc d'Aumale was tried. Philippe acted with his usual tact in this Few trials excited more interest. The veil case. For tact he has, and wonderful abilwhich covered the details of the event was ity, in spite of the sneers of M. Louis Blanc. half drawn aside. M. Hennequin, in a A man cannot rule France without courage, speech full of striking facts and inferences, cleverness, and tact. Louis Philippe has. presented a picture of the violences and abundantly shown to what a great extent artifices by which the old Duc de Bourbon he possesses all three. He uses his miniswas hurried into consent to the will. In ters and friends as tools, it is true; but it the well known sentiments of the prince, is no ordinary task to use such men as inM. Hennequin saw the proof that the testa-struments for your own ends.

ment was not his real wish, but had been M. Louis Blanc. in common with most forced from him; and in the impossibility Frenchmen, is very bitter against the king; of suicide, he saw the proof of assassination. The younger M. Dupin replied with great dexterity. But it was remarked and commented on at the time, that he replied to precise facts and formal accusations with vague recriminations and tortuous explanations. He pretended that this action was nothing but a plot laid by the legitimistes; an attempt at vengeance; which he called upon all friends of the revolution of 1830 to resent. The interest of the legitimistes in the affair was evident; but to combat an imposing mass of testimony something more than a vehement appeal to the recollections of July was necessary. The Rohans lost their cause before the jury: but, right or wrong, do not seem altogether to have lost it before the tribunal of public opinion.

The court soon ceased to feel any uneasiness respecting the noise which the affair still kept up. Nevertheless one thing was extremely tormenting in it. There was, and had been for some time in the house of Condé, a secret of which two persons were always the depositaries. This secret had been confided by the Duc de Bourbon, at the time of his stay in London, to Sir William Gordon, equerry to the Prince Regent, and to the Duc de Chitre. After their deaths M. de Chourlot received the confidence of the prince, and having been thrown from his horse and being considered in danger, admitted Manoury also into his confidence. No one ever knew what this secret was, except that it was most important and most redoubtable.

Whatever may be the conclusion arrived at by the reader respecting this mysterious affair, there can be but one sentiment respecting part of the conduct of Louis Philippe. Decency would have suggested that such a woman as the Baronne de Feuchères should not be welcomed at court, especially when such terrible suspicions were hanging over her. Decency would have suggested that the public should have full and ample l

and the episode we have selected from bis work must be read cum grano, as it is obviously dwelt upon for the purpose of inspiring his readers with his own animosity. True, the spirit of the whole work is biographical, anecdotical, personal; nevertheless we remark that M. Blanc selects with pleasure all the facts or anecdotes which tell against the king. He dwells with evident satisfaction on the vivid picture which he draws of the irresolution, the want of audacity, which Louis Philippe displayed when the throne was first offered to him; and very strongly depicts the utter want of participation which the Duc d'Orleans had in the Revolution. He neither conspired nor combated. His name was never mentioned, his person never thought of, till the Revolution was finished: and then, wanting a ruler, they elected him. It is with quiet sarcasm that M. Blanc points to the fact of Louis Philippe, the day after every émeute, always appearing in public with his family, especially on the theatre of the transaction, as if to associate in the people's minds the ideas of order and peace with the Orleans family.

But we must here quit for the present the work of M. Louis Blanc: anxiously awaiting the appearance of the concluding volumes, and conscientiously recommending it to our readers as one of the most vivid, interesting, and important works that have recently issued from the French press.

ART. IV.-De l'Agonie et de la Mort dans perhaps, that he lays some considerable toutes les Classes de la Société, sous le Rapport Human taire, Physiologique, et Religieux. (Agony and Death in all Classes of Society: humanitarily physiologically, and religiously considered.) Par H. LAUVERGNE. Paris. 1842.

stress upon phrenology, which was not recognized uutil lately as a part of physiological science. But though it is now pretty well proved that certain conformations of the brain will determine certain 'qualities' of the subject, we are in truth no nearer the first principles than before; we are but in possession of one little link in the chain of effects, the cause of which lies hidden in eternity; and we come to no more than this, that a man with this or that conformation of brain will die probably in this or that manner. And no wonder: for con

which, as in any other, the individual will act according to his nature.

In reading this book one is reminded of the practice of the French law-courts, where a good case is often disfigured by the advocate's oratorical redundancy and looseness of assertion. M. Lauvergne's Treatise on Death and Dying' contains a great deal of exceedingly curious and interesting mat-scious death is only the last act of living, in ter; but his philosophic remarks are weakened by the looseness of his style; his narratives have a theatrical manner, which makes the reader sceptical in spite of himself; nor is our belief in his statements or his sense strengthened much, by proofs continually exhibited in his work of a credulity rather extraordinary in one of his nation and profession. A devout Roman Catholic, he has numberless little miracles to relate, and deals in stories of spiritual gifts and visions vouchsafed to the faithful. to believe as little as possible. Because an Such naïve confessions of faith would bring a sneer to the lips of Bichat or Broussais. We confess, for our parts, a great incredulity as to our author's supernatural flights; and in acknowledging, doubtless, the honesty, must frequently question the reasona bleness, of his piety.

His religion, too, is a strange jumble of divinity and physic: he attempts to account for the mysteries of the one, by discoveries in the other; he speaks ominously on the sexes of souls; he says that the sublimest aspiration of the mind is its aspiration towards a feminine being,' and that all religions which endure, cannot arrive at the supreme and incomprehensible ideal, but by the intermediary of this feminine being, whom they have personified in the symbol of a virgin pure and immaculate.' As for the Protestant religion, it, says M. Lauvergne, 'admits the doctrines of Christianity with some variations, and there is nothing active in it but good works, &c. Hence, from the absence of the aspiration after the feminine being, the Protestant adept is incapable of the higher delights of religion.' It is evident that our author has not studied much the Protestant's creed, and that he would be astonished to find it word for word in his own prayer-book.

With regard to dying proper, and the physiological portion of his subject, M. Lauvergne carries his reader no farther than Bichat did forty years ago: except,

To recur to the religious point of view, our author seems disposed to hint that to certain souls, more or less favourably disposed, and immediately before dissolution, a prescience is given of their condition in a future state, a celestial revelation, and a power of prophecy: all of which he exemplifies by various tales in support of his theory, and in all of which tales we confess

hysterical nun on her deathbed sees her heavenly bridegroom descending to her; because an agonized sinner, in a delirious fever of remorse and cowardice, beholds a devil at his pillow who is about to drag him from it into the fiery pit; we are not called upon to respect their hallucinations at their last moments more than at any other time. We should otherwise be prepared to receive equally the revelations of persons, who have. so-called, spiritual gifts, and yet do not die: of Lord Shrewsbury's ecstatic virgin; of Kerner's saint and heaven-seer of Prevorst; of the howlers of the unknown tongue in Newman-street; of the heroines of American revivals, foaming at the mouth, and shouting Glory, glory;' of Corybantes, and Mænads, and Pythonesses; of all sects of illuminati in all countries. The Obiwoman works herself into a fit of real excitement, as she makes her fetish ready; the howling dervish is doubtless not an impostor; any man who has seen the Egyptian magicians knows that they are perfectly in earnest; and the preternatural visions of every one of these are quite as worthy of credit as are the gifts of M. Lauvergne's saints of the Roman Catholic community. The Virgin Mary will not appear to a Protestant pietist, any more thin Bacchus will to a French or Spanish nun, who never heard of him. The latter lives surrounded perpetually by images of martyrs and saints. She kneels in chapel,

her patroness is before her with a gilded ings and artificial flowers-"a wig," says glory round her head, with flowers at her he, "and a pot of rouge for the French altar, from which she looks down smiling soul to appear in at her last rising." The friendly; the nun wakes at night, there is illustration is not a just one. The artificial the picture of the Virgin above her lamp, flowers do not signify a wig and pot of the gilt glory round her head still, the dag- rouge'-a mere love, that is, of the false ger displayed in the mystic heart. What and artificial pursued even into religion : wonder that a woman so bred should see in these ornaments argue rather a love of what the confusion or exaltation of death the is real than of what is artificial. The custom figures on which her mind has dwelt a of the Frenchman's religion unites this whole life through? Such apparitions are world with the next by means not merely not new images presented to the brain, but of the soul, but of the body too. A human a repetition or combination of old ideas creature passes from earth to heaven or to formed there. One does not invent, one purgatory almost as he does from London only repeats in dreams; (the story in Mr. to Calais, carrying his individuality as comDickens's America of the deaf, dumb, and pletely with him in the one journey as in blind girl, who spoke with her fingers, as the other. Money is paid here towards the phrase is, in her sleep, is a very curious bettering the condition of the departed beverification of this); and every case of ing in the other world; prayers are said vision that we have read has a similar earthy, nay individual origin. Saint Barbara or Saint Scolastica will never appear to a Bramin woman, we may depend on it; any more than Vishnu will manifest himself in a dream to a nun.

here, which the priests negotiate, and carry over to the account and benefit of the soulin limbo; interest is made for him without,' and offerings of masses brought by his relatives, as petitions and little gifts of money or presents are brought by his friends to a But there is little need to enter into man in prison. In every way, the Roman these disquisitions in our Protesting coun- Catholic's religion is put objectively before try. The Seherin of Prevorst may have his eyes. The saints whom he worships made her converts in Germany, but Lord have all been men like himself, are now Shrewsbury has not obtained for his Virgin many disciples here: and if we might be permitted to judge, Dr. Lauvergne has perhaps produced his marvellous stories not with a very profound credence to them himself, but from the desire that his book should have as mysterious an air as possible, and contain discoveries of some sort.

men still with certain extra faculties and privileges; their images are the earliest shapes which he looks at from his mother's knee; his worship of them is to the full as much sensual as spiritual, and may rather be called extreme love and wonder than abstract devotion.

That service which is paid to the Virgin As this occasional supernatural illumina- in Roman Catholic countries is almost as tion of the mind at the period of dissolution, personal as the devotion which a knight of is almost the only new point, with regard old offered to his mistress. The prayers to to the phenomenon of death, on which our her in the Catholic prayer-books abound in author appears to insist, we may say that expressions almost passionate, and in terms with respect to death in France or else- of regard and love such as an individual where, physiologically, humanitarily, or re- may feel for another who exhibited the exligiously, he has given us very little satis treme of purity, tenderness, and beauty. factory information. But about dying, in Heaven is only the dwelling place of this other words living in France, his book is adored and beautiful person, whom one very curious and instructive, and must in-day the believer will bodily meet there. terest every person who approaches it. We The saints live there in the body as here: get here a good moral picture of individuals there kneels Saint Francis and exhibits his of numerous classes in the neighbouring wounds; there, listening to each individual country. We have priests and nuns, sol- supplication of the faithful below, is the blessdiers and husbandmen, gentle and simple;ed Virgin, who intercedes for her servants and the Englishman will note many curious with her Son; not one of the holy persondifferences between their manner of being ages of the scripture or the legend but exA late ingenious traveller in ists personally in heaven as he did on earth, Ireland. Mr. Thackeray (whose pleasant according to the received articles of a theSketch-Book we recommend to all who ology with which painting and poetry have would know Ireland well and judge her had so much to do.

and his own.

kindly), notes a French grave in the ceme- And hence, as we have before said, and tery at Cork, with its ornaments and carv-in regard of the visions and prophecies with

She

which some of M. Lauvergne's dying sub- entertain thoughts of frivolity; and when her jects are favoured, we must ascribe them companions would give themselves up to the not to supernatural but to hysterical influ- innocent gaieties of their age, she would retire ences; which have wrought wonders at issue with a countenance bearing the traces of into solitude, from which she would be seen to every period, and amongst all religionists tears. On taking the veil she received the meritof the world. But let us allow some of the ed name of Sœur des Anges. During the first doctor's illuminati to speak for themselves; six months of her recluse life, it was observed they are members of a class about whom that in good locks and health she quickly fell we are not much in the habit of hearing in away. She complained of pain in her breast, England, and rife in the provinces of which was found to be cancer, of which it was France Here is an account, not of a dying submitted to it, and while a surgeon was disnecessary to free her by an operation. but a living wonder, who will no doubt secting the tumour, all that she did was to utter, cause Lord Shrewsbury to set off to the from time to time, the sweet and gentle name of department of the Var, in order to match the Virgin Mary, for whom she had always proher with the other heaven-inspired virgins fessed a particular devotion. After the operation, whom his lordship has discovered. she confessed that she had suffered very little, and that the good mother had received her in her arms. Soon after this, consumptive sympfriend of the favour of heaven, and prayed to toms declared themselves, and she spoke to a die soon in her state of innocence and purity.

"At this moment there exists in a village of the department of the Var, of which Brignoles is the chief town, a woman possessed by divine love. She has to the extremest extent the development of the organ of veneration, or pure with whom she lived in a touching state of inti"There was also in the convent a young nun love. She is simple, good, charitable, unostentatiously pious, and of a converse extremely in all the cells around, she would awake her macy; and, during the night, when silence was agreeable. Since her earliest infancy this woman professes the most ardent love for the Sa- companion, whose bed was next to hers, and talk viour; the Passion has been always her fixed idea, to her friend of her visions, and of her hopes of the object of her aspirations and thoughts, her death. It was not long in coming. Her beautiphantasma, as the ancient Greeks would call it than on that day; the disease had covered her ful face never beamed with brighter radianceHer life is entirely a metaphysical one; she medi-cheeks with roses, and softened with a pearly tates and prays, and, perhaps, in her moments of ecstasy may have confided some of her thoughts in the morning everything was ready for the whiteness her azure blue eyes. At nine o'clock and visions to some of her friends. Of these, triumph of the virgin; her modest chamber was however, none as yet have spoken. But that which she can hide from none, that which all adorned as if for a fete day; she had already eyes can see, and the vastest intelligences may her friends. The young girl whom she loved so confessed and communicated in presence of all comprehend, is the following:-be it at a church, or at the bedside of a dying person, when her tenderly was herself in a desperate condition, and prayer is at its height, a circle or crown is seen at the side of the dying nun's. It is from the had obtained permission to have her bed placed to surround her forehead and the rest of her former that we have received the following achead, which looks as if it were opened by a re- count. Before receiving the Eucharist the cangular tattooing, from each point in which a pure ticle is customarily sung. At this moment, blood issues; the palms of her hands and the Sœur des Anges, lifting her arms to heaven, and soles of her feet open spontaneously at the places with a seraphic voice, purer than that which where the nails of the punishment were inserted, her side offers the bleeding mark of a lancethrust, and finally a true cross of blood appears on her chest. Cotton-cloths, applied to these places, absorb the red mark with a touch purely artistic. And what is more extraordinary still, this appearance manifests itself spontaneously every Good Friday at some minutes past three o'clock. It is extraordinary, but it is true, and the fact can be vouched for by hundreds in the country both of the wise and the poor of spirit."

she had been known to possess, sung a couplet.

Sœur des Anges was to die. Her ideas remained "After the ceremony, all that remained for mingled a sort of infantine joy at the heaven perfectly lucid to the end, and with them was held her hands, and endeavoured to support her opening for her. When, for example, two nuns her neighbour who lay herself a prey to fever, and with words of kindness, she cast a furtive look on laid one finger on her lip. (This signified that she had but one hour to remain.) Then she The Good Friday part of the story is good fortune. Then changing her gesture, she raised the finger to heaven, as if to prophesy her certainly not a little strange, and a miracle asked her friends how many hours she too was which ought surely to give such a saint a place in the calendar. The next instance is that of a dying nun, not so wonderful, but more natural and pathetic.

to linger before enjoying the blessing of death? But remembering that by these movements she had committed the sin of pride, she called for her director and confessed herself with inexpressible candour.

Towards mid-day her head appeared to sink "Mademoiselle embraced the life of the in her pillow: she remained two or three hours cloister at an early age. She was sixteen; of a in a state of torpor, from which she issued, askmelancholy and dreamy temperament. She ing one of the nuns watching by her, if she had was very handsome, but was never known to slept? I never,' she said, believed myself so

This tale has a theatrical air; but the author alludes to it more than once in the course of his volumes, and we must remem"A terrible example of the effects of fanati- ber that the actors in the story are French