rous colloquies with her beloved Christ, he asked her, while her head was reclining upon his bosom, to give him her heart; and upon her consenting, he took it from her side, inserted it in his own, and then replaced it. He then constituted her heiress of his heart, and authorized her to dispose of it as she pleased; upon which she cut the name of Jesus with a penknife in large and deep letters upon her breast. As from that hour she suffered a continual pain in her side where the heart had been extracted and replaced, Christ told her that she should be bled whenever the pain became too strong; accordingly she was bled on the first Friday of every month as long as she lived, being one hundred and ninety-two times. The legend proceeds in the old vein of blasphemous fable to a promise of marriage with the Redeemer, the affiancing and the actual espousals. Compare such tales as these with the disgraceful story of Joanna Southcott, and the difference will immediately be seen between imposture and madness.

The imposture was too late. When the Bishop of Soissons, in 1729, published the life of Marie Alacoque, he found it expedient to withdraw from sale a book which excited great indignation, and Pope Ganganelli suppressed an Italian translation as soon as it appeared. The fashion, however, which it was intended to introduce prevailed, the devotion was approved at Rome by the Congregation of Rites, and the Festival of the Heart of Jesus was authorized by a brief of Pope Clement XIII. Church bells were dedicated to it and named after it, towns placed under its patronage. Amulets were written on heart-shaped paper and inclosed in hearts of gold, silver, or baser metal, to be worn upon the breast; allegorical prints were engraved upon the same subject, in the taste of Hugo's or Quarles' Emblems, and the most splendid church in Lisbon was erected by the late Queen of Portugal, in honour of this new object of devotion, where the altar-piece by Pompeio Battoni represents the heart in the heavens, radiating with glory. The court of Rome in vain represented the new worship as purely spiritual; the language of the devotees became as carnal as its tangible symbol, and they talked of its fine fibres and its blood derived from that of David, of its palpitation and dilatation. In the prolific order of such abuses it was conceived that the heart of the Virgin Mary was entitled to a like worship, as being after God's own heart, and one with the heart of Christ; and a Friar Minim, preaching at Morteau, in Franche-Comté, to recommend this devotion, said that the foolish virgins could not enter into Paradise, because, when they knocked at the gate, they cried Lord, Lord! whereas if they had cried, Lady! Lady! the marriage hall would immediately have been opened to them.

Thus in the christian, as in the heathen world, superstitions have

arisen from the abuse of words, and typical representations have past into objects of idolatrous worship. The Roman church has grown more cautious in encouraging such practices than it was in darker times; it has also sometimes exposed frauds which it would formerly have encouraged, and suffered fanatics to follow their own wild impulses, which three centuries ago would have been controlled and directed by the policy of the church. In those days something would have been shaped out of the Society of Victims, who were so far connected with the Cordicoles, that each member was to wear a silver medallion representing the hearts of Christ and the Virgin. The use of the word Victim had been introduced by the foundress of the Religieuses adoratrices perpétuelles du très Saint Sacrement de l'Autel, an order of nuns which spread rapidly in France during the latter part of the 17th century. The sisters were to consider themselves as victims self-devoted in atonement for the offences offered to our Lord in the mystery of the Eucharist. Each in turn acted as the Victime réparatrice of the day; in the discharge of this office she secluded herself from the hour of matins; when the sisterhood went from the quire to the refectory she came out the last, with a rope round her neck and a torch in her hand; when they had taken their places at the table she reminded them of their obligation as victims immolated in the place of their Saviour, and then returned to the quire, fasting, and remained there till after vespers, like a lamb set apart from the flock, for sacrifice. M. Gregoire approves of this; he says, l'acception du mot Victime, qui se reproduit fréquemment dans cette règle, n'offre rien là que de louable; mais de quoi n'abuse-t-on pas?

The person who took up the word, which M. Gregoire thinks was laudably used by the disciples of M. Mathilde, was Mademoiselle Brohon, who at the age of eighteen attracted considerable notice at Paris by her personal accomplishments and her talents. She wrote some novels, of which she repented when her life had been, as she believed, preserved by a miracle. From that time her writings were upon devotional subjects, and were published anonymously by her admirers. M. Gregoire says, they all display a certain kind of talent; the language is pure and sometimes felicitous, -but they are still romances of another kind, in which the writer delivers as realities the chimeras of her delirious imagination. Yet, he adds, they had seduced a great number of persons. Mlle. Brohon required that a college of Victims should be established, consisting of six men and as many women. Our Saviour, she said, had vouchsafed to act as her confessor, and chosen her to institute this new order; and he had said to her, seek me no longer upon the cross; I have yielded that place to thee: I shall be crucified no longer, my Victims shall be crucified for me. We pass over other

things of the same kind too offensive to be brought forward. The honour of commencing this mission was given to the female sex for three reasons, first, as a proof of our Lord's love to his blessed mother; secondly, to recompense the fidelity shown him by women during the course of his mortal life and passion; and, thirdly, to humble the male sex, and to make them jealous of the zeal of the weaker vessels. The number of Victims was fixed at twelve, to resemble the Apostles; the men were to be all priests, the women not subordinate to them but to the bishop only; and their successors were to be chosen from a body of auxiliaries, that there might be no deficiency at any time. Mademoiselle Brohon called upon Louis XV. in the name of the Lord, to devote Madame Victoire as one of the Victims. Elevated as her rank was, it would still be an elevation for her to become one of an order for whom the same privileges were promised as the angels enjoyed, and whom the angels themselves might envy. For their names were to be written with the precious blood which issued from the Redeemer's side, and Christ and the Virgin had as parents adopted them, would live with them openly and familiarly, refuse them nothing, and admit them into all their secrets. Without them an essential point in the Messiah's religion would still be wanting. They were to be his coadjutors in the great work of redemption, and, taking upon themselves the sins of the world, were to become, as it were, the centre, and reservoir, and channel from which grace was to flow upon mankind. The time for their institution was arrived, for God was about to exercise judgment upon the nations, to decimate the earth, and chuse for himself a new people. France, as having been the first of the Christian kingdoms, and distinguished for the purity of its faith and for its devotion to the Holy Virgin, might be the cradle of this chosen people, if its perversity did not deprive it of so great a blessing. And if France refused the Victims, its provinces would be lost, and a foreign prince would be commissioned to lay waste and subdue it. The prophetess thought she could perceive that the Spaniards would be the instruments of this chastisement. Heavy calamities would fall upon Paris, the clergy, secular as well as regular, would be abased, and the sanctuaries abolished, to punish the offences of those who ought to have been the ornament and glory of the church. When all was fulfilled, the Victims would constitute the sole body of the church during the reign of the Redeemer, and Enoch and Elias would be their presidents.

The prediction of calamities for France accredited these dreams at the commencement of the revolution, and during its dreadful progress. Another unmarried woman, Mademoiselle Labrousse, as mad as her predecessor, began to prophesy in 1779, and when the

the horrors of the Revolution came on, believed that she saw in them the fulfilment of her predictions. She too thought that the Lord would chuse out victims acceptable to himself, that the existing ecclesiastical system would be done away, and two great societies, male and female, be substituted for it; and, like some of the primitive Quakers, she went to Rome for the purpose of assuring the Pope that his downfall was at hand. There are many places wherein such a crazy pretender would have been treated worse. She was confined in the castle of St. Angelo, and was so little dissatisfied with her treatment, that when the Directory demanded her liberation, she chose to remain there. At length, however, she returned to Paris. And M. Gregoire says, it is certain, that at this time both Mademoiselles Brohon and Labrousse have their believers in that city, and not among the ignorant and vulgar only, but those who occupy or have occupied honourable stations; doués ́de vertus, de talens, he says, ils attestent par le fait que l'erreur peut trouver accès dans les têtes les mieux organisées, et que le bon sens est limitrophe de la déraison.

The Convulsionnaires also, we are told, still exist at Paris, Lyons, and in other parts of France; that they should ever have existed might appear incredible, if any excess of folly, extravagance, or horror could excite surprize in the history of fanaticism and deceit. Their origin is connected with the question of Jansenism, wherewith a century ago all Europe rang from side to side. In the persecution which that question brought upon Port-Royal, it was affirmed that miracles were wrought in favour of the persecuted party; the most remarkable of these was the cure of a fistula lachrymalis, which was instantly healed when a thorn from the holy crown was kissed by the patient in full faith. If this were the fact, nothing could be more plainly miraculous; and that it was so, was so strongly attested, that the Archbishop of Paris, though an enemy to Port-Royal, admitted it; it was believed by the court, who would gladly have detected fraud or falsehood in a community which it had determined to destroy; the proceedings against the monastery were for awhile suspended in consequence, and Pascal, upon whose niece the miracle was wrought, appealed to it in triumph with his characteristic energy. Pascal's is deservedly a great name, and may therefore, in this case, carry with it an authority to which it is not fairly entitled.

The Lettres Provinciales, able as they are, and efficient beyond all other controversial writings, are worse than disingenuous; and the man who could write with such unfairness might rightly be suspected of dishonesty in acts as well as in words, wherever the interests of his sect or party were concerned. On the other hand, nothing, except the alleged miracle itself, can be more improbable,

than

than that a man of such eminent abilities should have ventured upon a fraud, which was sure to be closely scrutinized, and could hardly escape detection. The sincerity of his opinions is proved by the austere life which he led after his conversion, and this very circumstance produced in him that great and effectual change. Ever after he wore the device of a crown of thorns for his seal; it was represented as emitting rays, and the motto was, Scio cui credidi. The circumstance itself is one of those things (and whoever has read much must have met with many) which it is equally difficult to believe, or disbelieve, or account for. Its effect upon the public mind prepared the way for the astonishing exhibitions which ensued upon the death of the Deacon Paris.

This person, who has obtained so singular and lasting a celebrity, was a humble-minded, worthy man, bigoted to Jansenism. Having appealed against the bull Unigenitus, he thought it his duty not to receive priests' orders, renounced his patrimony, and retired into the Fauxbourg St. Marceau, the most beggarly part of Paris, where he supported himself by making stockings, and shared his earnings with the poor. The austerities which he practised in this obscure and charitable course of life, are believed to have accelerated his death. The younger brother, to whom he had resigned his inheritance, erected a monument to his memory in the churchyard of St. Medard. The grave of the pious and penitent deacon, as he was then called, was visited as much in gratitude as in devotion, by the infirm, and sick, and poor, to whom he had administered alms and spiritual consolation; and some there were who affirmed that their bodily ailments had been relieved while they were engaged in praying there. This might easily have been feigned or fancied, and there were strong motives both for credulity and fraud; for he who could allege that he was the object of miraculous favour, appealed, with sure effect, to the charity of those who believed him. At length it was asserted, that a girl, who was both blind and lame, had been cured at his grave. This was so commonly believed, that the archbishop of Paris deemed it expedient to institute a judicial examination, the result of which was to show that the girl had never been either lame or blind. But wilful credulity is never to be undeceived. A certain Abbé Becheraud, who had one leg shorter than the other, declared that, after he had prostrated himself on the thaumaturgic grave, he found a sensible though not a visible elongation of the defective limb; at length it was reported that the leg had been elongated an inch; this was disproved by measurement: still, however, he proclaimed that he felt the miraculous aid which he sought, though nobody could see it, and the multitude believed him; and he became, in consequence, so great an object of veneration among the vulgar, that the govern

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