on Lutheranism. He went into France
to gain instruction from the professors of the Mother Church, as he
had from the Doctors of the reformed creed in Germany. He saw Arnauld
Fenelon, that second Gregory of Nazianzen, and Bossuet himself. Guided
by these masters, whose virtues made him appreciate their talents
the more, he rapidly penetrated to the depth of the mysteries of the
Catholic doctrine and morality. He found, in this religion, all that
had for him constituted the grandeur and beauty of Protestantism,--the
dogmas of the Unity and Eternity of God, which the two religions had
borrowed from Judaism; and, what seemed the natural consequence of
the last doctrine--a doctrine, however, to which the Jews had not
arrived--the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; free will in this
life; in the next, recompense for the good, and punishment for the evil.
He found, more pure, perhaps, and more elevated in Catholicism than in
Protestantism, that sublime morality which preaches equality to man,
fraternity, love, charity, renouncement of self, devotion to your
neighbor; Catholicism, in a word, seemed to possess that vast formula,
and that vigorous unity, which Lutheranism wanted. The latter had,
indeed, in its favor, the liberty of inquiry, which is also a want of
the human mind; and had proclaimed the authority of individual reason:
but it had so lost that which is the necessary basis and vital condition
of all revealed religion--the principle of infallibility; because
nothing can live except in virtue of the laws that presided at its
birth; and, in consequence, one revelation cannot be continued and
confirmed without another. Now, infallibility is nothing but revelation
continued by God, or the Word, in the person of his vicars.

"At last, after much reflection, Hebronius acknowledged himself entirely
and sincerely convinced, and received baptism from the hands of Bossuet.
He added the name of Spiridion to that of Peter, to signify that he
had been twice enlightened by the Spirit. Resolved thenceforward to
consecrate his life to the worship of the new God who had called him to
Him, and to the study of His doctrines, he passed into Italy, and, with
the aid of a large fortune, which one of his uncles, a Catholic like
himself, had left to him, he built this convent where we now are."

A friend of mine, who has just come from Italy, says that he has there
left Messrs. Sp--r, P--l, and W. Dr--d, who were the lights of the g