n Hall, New Jersey.

His various changes of belief have often been taken as an index of
vacillation; but a simple and candid study of his writings shows that
such changes were merely the normal progress of an intensely earnest and
sincere mind, which never hesitated to avow its honest convictions nor
to admit its errors. This is the quality which gives Brownson his
vitality as a mind and an author; and he will be found to be consistent
with conscience throughout.

His writings are forceful, eloquent, and lucid in style, with a
Websterian massiveness that does not detract from their charm. They fill
twenty volumes, divided into groups of essays on Civilization,
Controversy, Religion, Philosophy, Scientific Theories, and Popular
Literature, which cover a great and fascinating variety of topics in
detail. Brownson was an intense and patriotic American, and his national
quality comes out strongly in his extended treatise 'The American
Republic' (1865). The best known of his other works is a candid,
vigorous, and engaging autobiography entitled 'The Convert' (1853).

SAINT-SIMONISM

From 'The Convert'

If I drew my doctrine of Union in part from the eclecticism of Cousin,
I drew my views of the Church and of the reorganization of the
race from the Saint-Simonians,--a philo-sophico-religious or a
politico-philosophical sect that sprung up in France under the
Restoration, and figured largely for a year or two under the monarchy of
July. Their founder was Claude Henri, Count de Saint-Simon, a descendant
of the Due de Saint-Simon, well known as the author of the 'Memoirs.' He
was born in 1760, entered the army at the age of seventeen, and the
year after came to this country, where he served with distinction in our
Revolutionary War under Bouillie. After the peace of 1783 he devoted two
years to the study of our people and institutions, and then returned to
France. Hardly had he returned before he found himself in the midst of
the French Revolution, which he regarded as the practical application of
the principles or theories adopted by the reformers of the sixteenth
century and popularized by the philosophers of the eighteenth. He looked
upon that revolution, we are told, as having only a destructive
mission--necessary, important, but inadequate to the wants of humanity;
and instead of being carried away by it as were most of the young men of
his age and his principles, he set himself at work to amass materials
for