ique whom the
Catholic school in France has turned out.

But it is not to results such as these that the teachers of St.
Sulpice attach the highest value. St. Sulpice is, above all, a school
of virtue. It is chiefly in respect to virtue that St. Sulpice is
a remnant of the past, a fossil two hundred years old. Many of my
opinions surprise the outside world, because they have not seen what
I have. At Sulpice I have seen, allied as I admit, with very narrow
views, the perfection of goodness, politeness, modesty, and sacrifice
of self. There is enough virtue in St. Sulpice to govern the
whole world, and this fact has made me very discriminating in my
appreciation of what I have seen elsewhere. I have never met but one
man in the present age who can bear comparison with the Sulpicians,
that is M. Damiron, and those who knew him, know what the Sulpicians
were. A future generation will never be able to realise what treasures
to be expended in improving the welfare of mankind, are stored up in
these ancient schools of silence, gravity and respect.

Such was the establishment in which I spent four years at the most
critical period of my life. I was quite in my element there. While
the majority of my fellow-students, weakened by the somewhat insipid
classical teaching of M. Dupanloup, could not fairly settle down to
the divinity of the schools, I at once took a liking for its bitter
flavour; I became as fond of it as a monkey is of nuts. The grave
and kindly priests, with their strong convictions and good desires
reminded me of my early teachers in Lower Brittany. Saint-Nicholas du
Chardonnet and its superficial rhetoric I came to look upon as a mere
digression of very doubtful utility. I came to realities from words,
and I set seriously to study and analyse in its smallest details the
Christian Faith which I more than ever regarded as the centre of all
truth.

[Footnote 1: I am speaking of the years from 1842 to 1845. I believe
that it is the same still.]

THE ISSY SEMINARY.

PART II.

As I have already explained, the two years of philosophy which serve
as an introduction to the study of theology are spent, not in Paris,
but at the country house of Issy, situated in the village of that name
outside Paris, just beyond the last houses of Vaugirard. The seminary
is a very long building at one end of a large park, and the only
remarkable feature about it is the central pavilion, which is so
delicate and elegant i