of writing possesses that absolute forgetfulness of form which is the proof of sincerity.  It never occurred to the masters that among their pupils must be a writer or an orator.  The principle which they insisted upon the most earnestly was never to make any reference to self, and if one had anything to say, to say it plainly and in undertones.  It was all very well for you, my worthy masters, with that total ignorance of the world which does you so much honour, to take this view; but if you knew how little encouragement the world gives to modesty, you would see how difficult it is for literature to act up to your principles.  What would modesty have done for M. de Chateaubriand?  You were right to be severe upon the stagey ways of a theology reduced so low as to bid for applause by resorting to worldly tactics.  But what does one ever hear of your theology?  It has only one defect, but that is a serious one; it is dead.  Your literary principles were like the rhetoric of Chrysippus, of which Cicero said that it was excellent for teaching the way of silence.  Whoever speaks or writes for the public ear or eye must inevitably be bent upon succeeding.  The great thing is not to make any sacrifice in order to attain that success, and this is what your serious, upright and honest teaching inculcated to perfection.

In this way St. Sulpice with its contempt for literature is perforce a capital school for style, the fundamental rule of which is to have solely in view the thought which it is wished to inculcate, and therefore to have a thought in the mind.  This was far more valuable than the rhetoric of M. Dupanloup, and the teaching of the new Catholic school.  At St. Sulpice, the main substance of a matter excluded all other considerations.  Theology was of prime importance there, and if the way in which the studies were shaped was somewhat deficient in vigour, this was because the general tendency of Catholicism, especially in France, is not in the direction of very high and sustained efforts.  St. Sulpice has, however, in our time turned out a theologian like M. Carriere, whose vast labours are in many respects remarkable for their depth; men of erudition like M. Gosselin and M. Faillon, whose conscientious researches are of great value, and philologists like M. Garnier, and especially M. Le Hir, the only eminent masters in the field of ecclesiastical critique 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