But his charity was not confined to great occasions. You might find him in some wretched hovel in Broadstreet, with a child in his arms, administering the last consolations of religion, watching over the sick child and dying father, till the wife or mother, refreshed by sleep, is able to resume her place. On a cold and stormy day he has been met several miles from the city, going on foot through mud and rain to cheer the last hour of some poor man.

We must remember that these disagreeable duties were performed by one of a sensibility so delicate and shrinking, that only with extreme pain could he ever think of the wretched beings, who are suffering upon the earth, whom disease and want, revolutions and civil wars overwhelm with their sor

rows.

His delicacy of feeling was, perhaps, nowhere more severely tried than among the Indians in Maine, whom he visited every year. When he first went among them, he was invited to share their repast. Should he refuse, it might give them pain, and yet everything was nauseously filthy and disgusting. He overcame his scruples, swallowed the broth they had prepared, and ate of the meat they presented on the bark of a tree. Then, with a tone of great kindness, he told them that, in future, bread would be all the food that he should require.

Cheverus remained among us till 1823, when the king of France recalled him in order to install him over the bishopric of Montauban. The ties which bound him here were too strong to be broken. At first he refused to go. But the French government persisting in its request, and his physicians representing that he could not, without great hazard, continue here through another winter, he felt no longer at liberty to remain. Protestants and Catholics almost alike regretted their loss. "We hold him," says a paper signed by two hundred of the first citizens of Boston, "to be a blessing and a treasure to our social community, which we cannot part with, and which, without injustice to any man, we may affirm, if withdrawn from us, can never be replaced." Even the jailer, we are told, came, deeply moved, to take leave of him. The bishop, with his usual mildness, said to him, "Those that leave you generally are delighted to get out of your way; it is not so with me; I leave you with pain, and shall always remember your kindness towards the poor prisoners."

The evening before he left Boston his friends crowded

around him, threw themselves upon him, wept over him. And where private feelings had no influence, his departure was lamented as a public loss. Where shall we find a more touching and beautiful eulogium than the following, which first appeared in our journal, and which, though long familiar, we cannot even now read without a quickening of the pulse?

"Has not," says Dr. Channing, in his article on Fenelon, "the metropolis of New England witnessed a sublime example of Christian virtue in a Catholic bishop? Who, among our religious teachers, would solicit a comparison between himself and the devoted Cheverus? This good man, whose virtues and talents have now raised him to high dignities in church and state, who now wears in his own country the joint honors of an archbishop and a peer, lived in the midst of us, devoting his days and nights, and his whole heart, to the service of a poor and uneducated congregation. We saw him declining, in a great degree, the society of the cultivated and refined, that he might be the friend of the ignorant and friendless; leaving the circles of a polished life, which he would have graced, for the meanest hovels; bearing, with a father's sympathy, the burdens and sorrows of his large spiritual family; charging himself alike with their temporal and spiritual concerns; and never discovering, by the faintest indication, that he felt his fine mind degraded by his seemingly humble office. This good man, bent on his errands of mercy, was seen in our streets under the most burning sun of summer, and the fiercest storms of winter, as if armed against the elements by the power of his charity. He has left us, but not to be forgotten. He enjoys among us what, to such a man, must be dearer than fame. His name is cherished where the great of this world are unknown. It is pronounced with blessings, with greatful tears, with sighs for his return, in many an abode of sorrow and want."

The perfect simplicity of his character, united as it was with feelings so warm and sensitive, is, perhaps, what strikes us most in the life of Cheverus. This was the true secret of his strength. It gave consistency to all his efforts. It directed to a single point those powerful impulses, which, for want of unity, are so often thrown away upon a great variety of subjects. None of the gifts which God had bestowed on him were ever lost. The passions of youth, instead of laying waste what the vigor of manhood must be exhausted in repairing, were already building up the character of the man. From this unity

every

of purpose we find in him a completeness, through which part of his life gives strength to the whole. We feel that it is always the same man who is before us. In the cellars of Broadstreet, and in the palace of Charles the Tenth, or Louis Philippe; in the schoolboy and the peer of France; in the young abbé and the old archbishop, we find always the same humble, healthy, devoted minister of the cross. His official conduct was not something assumed; it was a part of himself. Through the forms of time he looked ever to those great spiritual interests which are supreme and eternal. After giving a very simple discourse on the plainest precepts of Christian duty, he was told that many of the nobility were present. "I knew nothing of that," he replied, "and if I had, the entertainment would have been the same." Being called to preach before an assembly of conceited and tumultuous students, his discourse was almost worthy of the apostle from whom his text was taken. "I am determined," he began, "to know nothing among you, but Jesus Christ, and him crucified. If it were my business to speak of human sciences, it would be in this learned school, and from you, gentlemen, that I should seek instruction; but now I am to speak of the science of the cross, a science which I have been studying and preaching these forty years among civilized nations and savage tribes," And such were the simplicity, sincerity, and dignity of his manner, that all listened in silence, with strong interest and attention. We have seen those who knew him in Boston and in the obscure villages of Maine and Vermont; and the pictures given by each, and by the poor peasants of France, are all the same; and all agree with the general impression of his character which is left by the work before us. Everywhere the same gentleness, simplicity, modesty; the same firmness, intrepidity, and meekness.

*

His deep and ready insight into man was a natural result of the quick sympathies, which brought him at once into close contact with others. We have no evidence that he possessed remarkable powers of thought. His capacity for abstract subjects, we apprehend, was small. Nor have we evidence that he was able to search into those principles of truth, which are the central energies of the moral world, or comprehend those broad views of man and society, in conformity to which all great measures of social improvement must be carried out.

We have sometimes heard his name mentioned in connexion VOL. XXVI. 3D S. VOL. VIII. NO. I.

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with that of Fenelon. They belong to entirely distinct orders. They were alike pure and simple-minded, alike humble and devoted. But the purity, simplicity, humility, and self-sacrifice of Fenelon were entirely different from the same qualities in Cheverus. Fenelon moves through a wider sphere, he reaches farther into the soul of things, and has a more purely spiritual existence. His personal influence was not so much less, as the influence of his works is broader and more enduring. We can imagine circumstances under which Fenelon might have performed all that was done by Cheverus; but we cannot conceive it possible that Cheverus should ever have left behind the legacy by which Fenelon has enriched the world. The one we regard as a model of action, a spur to the thoughtless, sluggish, or selfish spirit; to the other we turn in the hour of sadness and doubt, and in the season of solitary thought, when we would rise above the interests of the day, and feast on visions of immortal hope. As one possessing that happy combination of faculties, which fits man for a life of active beneficence, it would be hard to find the parallel of Cheverus. In the quickness of his human sympathies, and the tenderness of his devotional feelings, his heart was that of a child. But beyond these qualities, and in harmony with them, is a higher life, which belongs more entirely to the soul. There is a sensibility purely spiritual, through which the mind lies open to divine impressions, as the flower unfolds itself to the light. There is a depth and clearness of spiritual perception, like that of the peaceful waters in which are mirrored the very depths of the overarching heavens. There is a spiritual calmness and energy, which bears the soul up like the unseen power that, moving the ocean and the winds, carries planets and stars forever onward in their course. There is a union of the soul with God, a concert of the human and the Divine will, through which the thoughts of the good man are one with the dictates of eternal truth. From this subjection of the human to the Divine nature, this blending of the soul with God, this unison between the motions of the human mind and the promptings of the Infinite Spirit, springs a purely spiritual peace, which, "filling the soul, as God does the universe, silently, and without noise," is its life— the consummation of its hope-the marriage of earth and heaven. Thus man rises above the sphere of mortality, and looks down, with the feelings of an angel, upon all the interests, the struggles and passions, the hopes and sorrows, of life.

We had wished to dwell on other features in the life of Cheverus. His decision, his delicate respect for the aged, -an uncommon virtue, in these days,—his firmness, his regular employment of time, rising at four in summer, and half past four in winter, that he might secure time for study before the duties of the day began, his preaching, these and other topics might each form the subject of an entire discourse. But we leave our readers to find the text and make the commentary for themselves.

In no instance was Cheverus advanced to a more dignified station without doing all in his power to prevent it; and often, by his exertions, did he escape from what others would have regarded as desirable preferments. His reluctance to be dragged into distinguished places was never stronger than when he was appointed cardinal, in February, 1836. "You have often,' he wrote to a powerful friend in Paris, "professed to be my friend. Give me a proof of your sincerity by stopping a project, which fills me with pain. I am already too high. Suffer me, I beseech you, to die as I am." The appointment was made, and he was called to Paris to receive the insignia of office from the hands of the king. Still he was heavy and sad, as if weighed down by some great calamity. The attentions of a court, the honors of a world, had no charm for him. "What," he asked, "is the difference, after death, between a black, a violet, and a crimson shroud? When one has seen thrones falling, and society every day threatened to its foundation, how can he feel that there is anything solid here!" The new dignity oppressed him.

He returned from Paris through his native place. There he was received with every mark of respect. Still the same feelings continued. In preaching, he spoke only of death, and the necessity of preparing to appear before God. "Most of those, whom I once knew in this place, are gone. Death has carried them all away. It is a lesson to me, teaching that I also must soon go."

At Bordeaux an immense procession met him, and he was received with all the honors which gratitude, affection, and respect could bestow. But his days were numbered. Overcome by his excessive labors in an excursion through the rustic parts of his diocese, during the oppressive heat of summer, he returned to Bordeaux quite exhausted, on the 2d of July. He had always prayed that his death might be sudden; his prayer