to Sainte-Beuve for more of them. His position was peculiar, and his duty obvious. He was making the literary men and women of the reign of Louis XIV. live over again for the benefit of a generation which, as he declared, needed standards of life. By touching lightly upon evils whose existence and whose tainted and contaminating results he well knew, he failed to represent seventeenth-century life as it really was, in France, and the standard loses its authority. He should have had the courage to publish boldly his opinion of the enormous corruption of a reign whose greatness has been over-estimated, not without harm to the French character. Like most other French critics and historians, he caressed so daintily these false ideals, that if we had not Saint-Simon to tell us the truth, we might miss the whole point of the timely and necessary revolt which began with the eighteenth century.

Alluding to the subjects of his lectures in the École Normale, from 1857 to 1861, Sainte-Beuve makes a distinction, which he has happily not always observed, between his work as a teacher and his work as a critic. The two offices are quite distinct, he says, "the critic's being, above all things, the search for what is new and the discovery of talent; the teacher's the maintenance of tradition and the conservation of taste." Yet it is worthy of remark that most of the subjects of his "Causeries" and "Portraits "were chosen without reference to works which had been recently published. Less than half the "Causeries du Lundi " are book reviews. In his practice as critic he was performing more than ever the duty which he lays down as that of a teacher; he was maintaining tradition and conserving taste.

The persons whom Sainte-Beuve most delights to introduce are those who not only have written, but have made some stir in the world by their swords or their tongues or their fair eyes. The more serious side of court life is, however, not neglected. Indeed, Sainte-Beuve has seldom gone deeper into detail than regarding Bossuet, to whom he devotes three of the "Causeries du Lundi," and Fénelon, whom he discusses in two.

More and more, as he grew older, SainteBeuve became a classicist, a conservative,

feeling the dignity and beauty of the past and acknowledging its authority. He was keenly alive to fine shades of difference. He had the aristocratic instinct, and preferred the best to the second best, the noble to the common, the interests of a select few to the interests of the mass. There are well-bred books, just as there are men of born distinction. The Republic of Letters is not a very happy phrase if it is supposed to imply equality, and in the world of books it is no disgrace to be a tuft-hunter.

Stronger than the most selfish parasite's fondness for a duke is Sainte-Beuve's instinct for a grand or an elegant style. He has wonderful facility also in detecting whatever is unnatural or false. His favorite device for disabusing his readers of exaggerated respect for any book was to quote some violent or sentimental passage from it, some strained metaphor, some weak or pretentious phrase, and then ask if Voltaire could have used such language, or if the simple diction and polished thought of Madame de Sévigné were not preferable.

From the persons and books he disliked, it is apparent that Sainte-Beuve's especial antipathy was for declamation, the sounding brass and tinkling cymbals of discourse, the oratorical habit, the love of mere rhetoric, the want of simplicity, excess of emphasis, or to sum up all in his own word, la phrase. This he considered the worst element of bad style, and a sure indication of vulgar taste.

Is it not remarkable that in our American colleges the form of writing which has been most encouraged by the giving of prizes and commencement honors-indeed, the only kind of English composition which in some institutions has been officially preserved at all—is the so-called oration, a sort of exercise now seldom called for by the demands of professional or social life, and always dangerous in its effects on style?

As a true disciple of the prose writers of that chosen period of his, the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, Sainte-Beuve is annoyed by vagueness, and his own works are marvellously clear. He is more concrete than is usual with critics. He has the precision of a fencer, with all a fencer's grace. He has the French faculty for fine insinuation. His "Causeries" read

like skilful conversations; they abound in delicate approaches and feigned withdrawals. His good-humor and self-command are wellnigh perfect. His flashes of indignation are so rare as to be always welcome. But he is, for the most part, imperturbable, serene. Not many men, having to write a piece of literary criticism once a week for half a lifetime, would have developed so few crotchets and refrained so entirely from arbitrary or tyrannical judgments.

Despite his vast and minute information, there is in Sainte-Beuve no mere pedantry of letters, no boasting of mere research. He does not throw up barriers of erudition between the reader and the author who is under discussion, but tries, rather, to remove every obstruction. He does not think it beneath his dignity to sketch broad, popular outlines of the lives and works of his subjects. He is never content with furnishing a mass of recondite facts. In each of his sketches you can refresh your knowledge of the author who is being criticised. It is not, as a rule, taken for granted that even the main features of his life will be known to you. Sainte-Beuve treats these elementary matters with a patient enthusiasm, an originality, a charm of language, which make them always fresh and delightful. Thus one of the first effects he produces is to acquaint the reader personally with a man

or a woman.

Sainte-Beuve somewhere uses the words savant and érudit in such a way as to show the beautiful distinction between them. A man may be érudit and stuffed with learning, yet it may be all congested in his brain, and he but a crude scholar. A savant, on the other hand, has better possession of his faculties and knows how to open his treasures to the world. Knowledge will not swamp a man, unless he be deficient in active energy or power of expression, which is almost the same thing. SainteBeuve was distinctly savant. He is neither a scientist nor a philologist in his treatment of literature; he is a man of letters.

It is natural to expect of a critic so intimately acquainted with these details that he should, at least toward the end of his career, draw valuable conclusions as to the distinguishing qualities of the French race, and the relative value of its intellectual

product. Sainte-Beuve answers but insufficiently this expectation. We find among his works a small number of essays on foreign authors. They show that he possessed breadth of sympathy and capacity for accommodation. But they are relatively few, and moreover they nearly all treat of writers who had a large share of the French spirit and lived much in France, or wrote in French. Such are Lord Chesterfield, Benjamin Franklin, Gibbon, and Frederick the Great. No history of French literature would be complete if it failed to take account of these. Sainte-Beuve is still, therefore, in his original circle when he speaks of them. To be sure, he has essays on Goethe, Dante, Firdausi, Theocritus, Virgil, and Pliny the Elder, but yet it must be said that he does not abound in those rich comparisons between different literatures which constitute much of the value of Arnold's critical writings and Schlegel's. In this he is a true Frenchman, for his countrymen are none too hospitable to foreign ideas and none too well acquainted with other literatures than their own. They are, after all, much more insular than their neighbors across the Channel. When Sainte-Beuve does, however, venture upon comparisons, he shows an admirable catholicity of spirit, and we can only regret that he so seldom let his mind go forth on foreign travel. From the rare excursions he allowed it to make, it returned with booty characteristic of the lands it had traversed. Thoroughly French though he was, and limited by some French prejudices, his essay on Cowper, for example, proves that he could appreciate an English type of intelligence absolutely foreign to his countrymen-incomprehensible to many of them. In reading this "Causerie" one feels that perhaps Sainte-Beuve's practice of abstaining from international comparison does not indicate lack of knowledge or appreciation on his part so much as on the part of the public for which he wrote. It is chiefly when thinking of this restraint and of what we lose by it, that one regrets the peculiar circumstances of his authorship.

For, after all, and it is not a reproach, we must conclude that Sainte-Beuve was a journalist, and that although his success was made possible by his close contact with the public, it was also limited thereby.

Fortunately the roots of his development were struck in academic rather than bohemian soil. He won his great and unique celebrity by happily combining in himself the professor, the journalist, and the man of the world. Other men in his situation commonly suffer an abasement of their talent and a levelling of their style. In him the more solid elements of the mind strengthened with years, and there is little of an ephemeral character in his work. From the very limitations of his position he gained advantage, for to whom would he be so useful if his flights were longer

or his range more general? He is so close to his hearers, and in such an easy attitude, that it would be ridiculous for him to sermonize or prate. So he simply talks-in the first person singular, as if seated with a group of listeners around a table full of books. He speaks with an easy and wellbred familiarity, with vividness and endless variety. It is a lively, instructive, polite conversation on the many forms of his subject, for he has but one, and that is French literature. To study this, to purify, propagate, and defend this, is his great concern.

HE earliest churches in this country of which authentic records or recognizable features survive date back to about 1630. There were earlier churches, which were mere log-houses surrounded by stockades -the "meeting-houses" of the colonists, where they gathered not only for religious services, but for the transaction of government affairs or the defence of the colony. As soon as a settlement was firmly established, and prosperity blessed the colony, larger and more appropriate edifices were made; so that to-day but few traces are left of the pioneer churches. Where they survive in whole or in part, or as the immediate successors of the primitive churches, it is made evident that the colonists did the most natural thing when they came to plan churches in this new country-they built, as best they could with meagre skill and wealth, imitations of churches that they remembered in the old country. You could tell to-day, with no other documents, the particular region from which the original settlers came by a study of the old churches.

One of the very few still standing and practically unchanged is St. Luke's, at Smithfield, Isle of Wight County, Va. It was built in 1632, as attested by the date on some of the bricks, under the superintendence of Joseph Bridger, whose descendants still live in the county and worship in the church. The records of the family, which are unbroken for a period of a hundred and fifty years, establish the date of the building of the church, and are full of interesting details of early colonial history. It appears that St. Luke's was originally so well built and of such excellent material that no repairs were VOL. XXII.-63

made to it until 1737, one hundred and five years after its completion. At that time it was ordered "that Peter Woodward do the shingling of the church with good cypress shingles, of good substance, and well nailed, for 700 lbs. of tobacco, 300 lbs. being now levied." It was again reshingled in 1821, eighty-four years later.

In 1812 such of the church records as had escaped the vicissitudes of the Revolution were in the care of the servants on an estate near Macclesfield, and they, in ignorance of their value, gave them to a force of Americans, who made them into cartridges for the defence of their homes and country. One vestry-book only has . been saved of the early records of the church.

ST. LUKE'S CHURCH, SMITHFIELD, ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY, VA.

One of the oldest churches still standing in America; the brick bears the date of construction-1632.

In June, 1877, a storm so shook the old church that the roof fell in, carrying with it a part of the eastern wall; but the church has now been reverently and very successfully restored in the spirit of the original design. Memorial windows have been put in representing John Smith, Pocahontas, John Rolfe, Generals Washington and Lee, Bishops Madison and Moore, and other historical figures connected with the neighborhood. St. Luke's was rededicated in 1894 with impressive ceremonies, and is now, after nearly a century of disuse, again devoted to worship. Only the large east window, the

tower, and the nave remain unfinished, but it is hoped that the funds necessary to complete these will soon be secured.

The picture of the old church, with the ivy on the walls, the spreading trees, and quiet churchyard, is full of charm and poetry, and its history, and that of the devoted men and women who built it and watched over its welfare through generations, is one to cherish and be proud of. Another church showing strongly the English influence is St. James's, at Goose Creek, S. C. The Rev. William Corbin came over from Middlesex, England, in 1700, and seven years later the first church, probably of wood, was built on a gift of one hundred acres of land. This soon became too small, and the present picturesque structure was erected in 1714, on the site of the first church. A quaintly worded record gives the date of the consecration, July 14, 1719, and awards the various pews to the church- wardens, vestrymen, and others, for pious contributions and zealous industry, to them and their heirs forever, and directs the remaining pews to be sold according to custom.

In 1728 the Rev. Richard Ludlam gave his whole fortune, two thousand pounds currency, to maintain the church and found a school, which fund, nearly doubled today by good investment and careful man

agement, has preserved the old church from destruction, and has made it possible recently to thoroughly restore it.

The interior of St. James's is almost exactly as when it was first built; the Arms of Great Britain, richly colored and gilded, are over the pulpit; on the columns on either side are two decorative, brightly colored stucco memorials of Colonel John Gibbs and Jane, his wife, who died in 1711 and 1717, respectively. In the front of the gallery hangs a hatchment, believed to be the only one left in this country. The custom was to carry these hatchments, which bore the family arms (in this case those of the Izard family), in front of the coffin of the head of the family, and then to hang. them in the church as memorials.

One of the romantic legends of the neighborhood is that of mad Archie Campbell, a British officer, who met and fell in love with Miss Pauline Philp. Being objected to by her family, who sympathized