ay, any more than he would think, at any fixed
hour. In chapel he was equally apt to think of God or to meditate on
some problem of philosophy.

To him Jesus Christ was the most perfect type of his system. _Et Verbum
caro factum est_ seemed a sublime statement intended to express the
traditional formula of the Will, the Word, and the Act made visible.
Christ's unconsciousness of His Death--having so perfected His inner
Being by divine works, that one day the invisible form of it appeared
to His disciples--and the other Mysteries of the Gospels, the magnetic
cures wrought by Christ, and the gift of tongues, all to him confirmed
his doctrine. I remember once hearing him say on this subject, that
the greatest work that could be written nowadays was a History of the
Primitive Church. And he never rose to such poetic heights as when,
in the evening, as we conversed, he would enter on an inquiry into
miracles, worked by the power of Will during that great age of faith. He
discerned the strongest evidence of his theory in most of the martyrdoms
endured during the first century of our era, which he spoke of as _the
great era of the Mind_.

"Do not the phenomena observed in almost every instance of the torments
so heroically endured by the early Christians for the establishment of
the faith, amply prove that Material force will never prevail against
the force of Ideas or the Will of man?" he would say. "From this effect,
produced by the Will of all, each man may draw conclusions in favor of
his own."

I need say nothing of his views on poetry or history, nor of his
judgment on the masterpieces of our language. There would be little
interest in the record of opinions now almost universally held, though
at that time, from the lips of a boy, they might seem remarkable. Louis
was capable of the highest flights. To give a notion of his talents in
a few words, he could have written _Zadig_ as wittily as Voltaire;
he could have thought out the dialogue between Sylla and Eucrates as
powerfully as Montesquieu. His rectitude of character made him desire
above all else in a work that it should bear the stamp of utility; at
the same time, his refined taste demanded novelty of thought as well as
of form. One of his most remarkable literary observations, which
will serve as a clue to all the others, and show the lucidity of his
judgment, is this, which has ever dwelt in my memory, "The Apocalypse
is written ecstasy." He regarded the Bible