"Once religion instructed them from the pulpit, but confining all its morality to penitence, it gave rise to repentance more than to virtue. A Massillon, a Bourdaloue, a Bossuet strove to smother their passions; they should have known how to guide them. Far from supporting humanity, they broke it down beneath the yoke of a violent doctrine, which they illustrated by the fires of hell. And lo! their greatest miracles were not to make us live virtuously in the world, but to tear us from it; at their command, Lavalliere robed herself in penitential sackcloth; Chevreuse and Longueville fled to the desert to bewail their sins, and queens built temples, founded cloisters, and humbled themselves beneath their vaults!

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Surely the great moral truths repeated constantly at the altar, in presence of God, have not been without fruits for humanity; and if freed from all the superstitions which belittle them, and from cruel dogmas as to the eternity of punishment, and the vengeance of a pitiless Divinity, women might draw hence strong and efficient instruction; but it is solitude now in the temple, the priests there keep a lonely watch, listening from afar to the world, which cares no more for the ideas of a bygone age. Once the people followed them, because they took the lead; now the people await them, because they remain behind. Thus moral instruction escapes them; sad reaction of our excesses; theological impieties have brought religion to neglect ; and the neglect of religion abandons us passive to all the vanities of human intelligence.

"Now what is left for woman? Some offices of devotion, and the mass on Sunday: no moral and religious direction, for I cannot dignify with this name that brief and narrow instruction, entrusted to the memory in childhood, and which unsupported by the conviction of the parents, and the example of the family, holds almost the place of a dream, in the dream of life. Nevertheless, religious sensibility exists; and this, with maternal love, is enough to revive the whole soul. These two sentiments, inextinguishable in women, are now the last hope of civilization, and since all our modes of education tend to weaken them, be it our aim, as far as may be, to fortify them and renew their power.

"This power is entirely moral; we shall seek it immediately in the profound study of our material and spiritual faculties; it will be necessary to trace the line which divides them; what belong to the earth! what to heaven! an important distinction, too much neglected even in our day, and ignorance of which plunges us into darkness. Before drawing this line, you are oppressed by the vain phantoms of materialism; doubt overwhelms

you; but the separation once made, the phantoms vanish, darkness is dispelled, and the consoling truth appears!

"You will observe how this simple distinction suffices to establish the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul, not as dogmas, but as facts, at the same time independent of the illusions of thought, and the formulas of logic. There is a pleasure in seeing truths so sublime come out from the invisible world, all luminous and undeniable, as the unknown quantity of a mathematical problem.

"These truths come to light, it is true, through material sensations, but without springing from them.

"There we find an entirely new knowledge of being, and consequently new elements of education. The child is presented to its mother, as a spiritual creature; the object is not merely to teach an understanding, but to develop a soul; and this soul, the mother knows; she knows where to carry light, where to address her lessons. Others may provide the vessel its sails and rigging; she alone communes with the pilot, seats him at the helm, provides him with a compass, and before launching him upon the ocean of the world, points to him in heaven his guiding-star.

"From the study of man, we shall pass to the search for truth. Truth is the opposite of error; and error is the barbarism and crime, that ravage the world.

"Truth is not the property of any man, or caste, or people, or religion. Its character is beauty, utility, universality. Our passions and superstitions are the darkness which encompass it; the laws of Nature are its light.

"Our aim is to examine the moral, philosophical, political, religious questions, which concern man, and to refer them to the truth, by submitting them to an immutable authority.

"Thus we gradually arrive to the most important part of this book; the moral studies of the gospel; we say the most important, for all education, which is not religious, makes man incomplete, and at most, only forms an intelligent animal. It is an error to suppose, that man becomes truly great by science; he is not great, he is not man, but by the knowledge of God. Bereft of that, we see only his limited existence, and have a philosophy without light.

"Why such general selfishness? Why the love of gold, the love of power, the love of vengeance, instead of the love of humanity? Why so much ambition, which brings forth so much crime? Why so many murders, adulteries, ingratitudes, calumnies, iniquities, depravities? two causes: error and misery. A single remedy: religion.

"You may in vain agitate yourself, torment yourself, in vain vex your brain; to provide this divine power, you will interrogate to no purpose all the scenes, of which you are so proud, and the ciphers of algebra, and the lines of geometry; these vast displays of learning will give you nothing but the materials for a learned scholar. To make a man, the soul must be developed, and soon as the soul appears, it seeks its God. Thus we ever return to that thing so despised, religion.

"Such is briefly the plan of these studies. We address it to mothers, not that they may commit its principles to the memory of their children, but that they may impress them generously and deeply on the soul: their mission is not instruction, but influence; it is not knowledge which is demanded of them, but inspiration and guidance. In the bosom of the family, the child receives a certain number of ideas, which belong to his age, his nation, and to the rk which he occupies in it. These ideas are more or less exalted, more or less true; there are some which express political or sectarian passions; others, that are only prejudices or superstitions. No matter! he soon becomes all that he hears, all that he sees, royalist or Jacobin, fanatic or atheist, as of old the people became partisans for Orleans or Burgundy, Navarre or the League. The impressions of infancy give a passion for a party, for an interest, never for truth!

"Do you not feel that this is the source of all our errors? "It is, then, to the family, that education should be carried. There truth should be exhibited to us, like duty at Sparta, coun, try at Rome. Truth, the main-spring of modern nations, has promise of the whole world and if the love of country has sent forth nations of heroes, this love so much broader and more sublime, will produce the civilization of mankind." chap. 12.

- Book I.

After devoting several chapters to the subjects of physical education, and public instruction, and distinctly asserting the moral education of the young to be the province of woman, Aimé Martin enters upon the philosophical part of his work. His philosophy does not seem to be borrowed from any one master, but is generous and eclectic. It is lofty, yet humble. He most warmly asserts the spiritual nature of man, and the immortality of the soul, and its capacity for attaining religious truth; yet he shrinks modestly from the task of accurately defining the faculties of the mind. "All definition of faculties which are related to the infinite," he says, "is impossible. Neither sentiment, nor reason, nor the beautiful, nor God, nor VOL. XXVIII. 3D S. VOL. X. NO. I.

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any faculty of the soul, has ever been defined precisely, because their essence is infinite. And nevertheless, that which we cannot define, we feel, we think, we believe; we have consciousness of it without argument; and this consciousness is the mysterious star, which rises upon the limit of two worlds!"

The second book being upon psychology, the third book endeavors to guide the mother in the search for truth, on moral and political subjects. Here we find interesting essays on a variety of subjects, logic and love, the laws of nature and of nations, the republics of Athens and Rome, and the ideal republic of Plato, life and death, the perfectibility of the human race, and its hopes of progress. His ideas of government are strongly republican, and at the same time, deeply religious.

"God be thanked," he says, "the ideas of some people elected, and others damned, are dead in Europe. Authority does not constitute religion, nor the king's good pleasure constitute government. The universal reason is now awake. The vulgar saying, that the voice of the people is the voice of God, has been comprehended by sages. They have felt, that to dif fuse truth, there was less need of imploring kings, than of educating the people. Truth descends with difficulty from kings to to the people; but its triumph is certain, when it rises from the people to kings. Consider how many changes two or three gospel principles, falling at hazard in the crowd, have produced. The French charter, the abolition of the slave-trade, the emancipation of Ireland, the liberty of America, the deliverance of Greece were in the minds of the people, before entering the reason of princes. If monarchs had listened to the people, Italy would be free, and Poland in being: two crimes less would have pressed on the heads of the sovereigns of Europe. It is to the public conscience, enlightened by the laws of Nature, that the appeal must be made. Upon this the prosperity of the human race reposes; and the rising age shall behold the civilization of India and Africa, the deliverance of the East, the abolition of castes, the marriage of priests, the emancipation of the people, and the freedom of the world! Book III. chap. 30.

The fourth and last book treats of the moral studies of the Gospel, and unfolds religion to the mother of the family. It is pervaded by good sense, beauty, and piety. Here and there, as throughout the whole work, we meet with expressions, that might as well have been spared, and the extravagance of the

Frenchman gets the better of the gravity of the moralist. But on the whole, it would be difficult to find a more beautiful treatise on religion, as appealing to women, than that here given. The opinions advanced are very decided, yet entirely free from dogmatism. We should call Aimé Martin a Unitarian, as doubtless he is, were we not unwilling to deal needlessly with sectarian terms. We will let him designate his own creed. All that he says upon religion shows him to be a Christian, after the pattern of Fenelon, whom he never ceases to honor as the restorer of genuine Christianity in France.

A great part of the book upon religion is applicable to the state of things in our own land. All that is said of the power of women to destroy bigotry and fanaticism, and soften the somewhat harsh features of the prevailing faith, is worthy of being echoed from one end of our country to the other. It is very strange, and no less strange than true, that very little is done by the gentler sex to make the doctrines of the gospel appear in their native mildness and love. The most denunciatory style of preaching is too apt to charm the ears, which are generally thought to prefer more winning tones. Countless exampless of meek and amiable piety are found in our American homes, and many a mother and daughter has won souls to Christ, by a life of purity and faith, which is more convincing than whole libraries of polemic theology. Still the influence of the sex leans towards the harsher schools of Divinity. To them we look for the regeneration of religion, and deliverance from the chains of theologians. Such sentiments as the following will find a response in many hearts :

"We will boldly oppose the laws of Nature to the fictions of theology. What guide more sublime in separating the work of God from the work of men! What means more potent to lead us from indifference to love! If all our evils spring from theology, all our blessings come from religion: the double light of Nature and the Gospel cannot penetrate our hearts without bearing thither the convictions of virtue.

"The general spirit of the Gospel is love of humanity, compassion for weakness, pardon to penitence; it is yet more; it is benevolence and beneficence towards our enemies. I hear Jesus on the cross pray for his murderers! I hear him upon the Mount say to his disciples: It is written, you shall love your neighbor, and hate your enemy; but I say unto you, do good to them that hate you; pray for them which persecute you, and speak evil of you, that ye may be the children of your