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accomplishment of intellect or manners, opened | with active emulation on the abstruse questions a school near Paris. He was scarcely twenty- of philosophy. The school-master was to the two, yet his precocious genius had already made him renowned as the most subtile and the most ingenious of dialecticians. An unprecedented union of mental and physical attractions-a tall and stately form, an eye brilliant with intellectual vigor, an undying faith in the supremacy of mental culture, a fatal passion that clouded his grand career with an unchanging gloom, a mournful life, a holy death-have made the story of Abelard the most touching in the annals of letters. Generations have wept with him in his self-abasement, and rejoiced in his final humility; have pardoned his error or condoned his selfish love; and still, in the cemetery of Père la Chaise, the sweetest flowers are yearly scattered by unknown hands upon the tomb that enshrines the ashes of Abelard and Heloise, and tender lovers renew their vows before the marble forms that lie sculptured side by side on the stately mausoleum.

1

Abelard was born of noble parentage, in a fortified château of Brittany. His father, Beranger, and his mother, Lucie, reared their son with tender care, and deserved his sincere affection. He was designed for a soldier; and the young noble, the eldest son of a wealthy family, might well hope in that martial age to carve his way to the highest honors by the sword. His youth was passed in that eventful period when war was the common passion of all active minds; when William the Conqueror, his near neighbor, had just won a kingdom by his martial prowess; when the Crusades were just beginning, and all the chivalry of Europe were pressing in impassioned hosts upon the startled East; and when the applause of mankind was chiefly bestowed upon the welltrained knight who beat down his rivals in brutal tournaments, or came back maimed, bruised, and sick with malarious fever from the burning battle-fields of the holy war. What unaccustomed impulse turned Abelard aside from his destined profession, what secret meditation directed his fierce ambition to the calmer pursuits of intellectual culture, can scarcely be imagined. Yet he seems early to have made his decision. He would rather be a school-master than a paladin.

He gave up his military studies, and directed all the wonderful powers of his mind to the acquisition of the subtile theories of the schools and the disputatious eloquence of the lecture-room."

Alcuin and Charlemagne, Erigena and Gerbert, had not labored vainly; and in the year 1100 the school had already become a powerful instrument in guiding the affairs of nations. At Tours and Rheims, Paris and Orleans, and many another cathedral town of Germany or France, successful teachers gathered around them vast throngs of students, and lectured

1 De Remusat, Abélard, vol. i. p. 1. Un petit château fortifié, etc.

Says Cousin, Ouvrages Inédits d'Abélard, p. 3, Chef d'école et martyr d'une opinion.

age of Abelard what the editor is to the present. He guided the opinions of his contemporaries, and ruled over the intelligent circles of his time. In the absence of a press, a literature, and of political discussion, to become the master of a great school was the favorite aim of ambitious students: to stand at the head of a band of faithful disciples was a position not less to be coveted than that of a hero of tournaments and a successful courtier. Around the brilliant teacher gathered the sons of princes and peasants; strangers from the distant cities of the Elbe and the Rhine; the gifted youth who were destined hereafter to wear the cardinal's hat or even the papal crown; the children of nobles who aspired to the highest posts in diplomacy or at the royal court. Fame, wealth, and regal favor often followed the successful school-master; and he who could gain the widest circle of admirers might well aspire to the chief benefices of the church and control the policy of his king. A fierce emulation often sprung up between ambitious teachers. They contended with ardor and with bitter enmity for popularity. They denounced each other with sharp asperity as heretics, charlatans, or impostors. They used open or secret arts to win each other's scholars and destroy a rival's fame. The merits of the opposing teachers filled the throngs of students with factions and animated discussion. The world rang with the quarrels of an Abelard and a William of Champeaux. A hatred even to death often grew up between the accomplished lecturers, and a fatal emulation ended only in their common woe.

Abelard possessed one of those clear and capacious minds that seem fitted for almost every sphere of literary culture. He was a musician and a poet; a deep thinker, to whom life offered incessant material for speculation; a patient student, who had passed over the whole range of human learning. His rare gifts might well have won him from his studies; his vigorous frame and iron will might readily have made him famous on the battle-field; his wealth and noble birth might have opened to him the high stations of diplomacy; his highbred manners and singular beauty of face and form would have insured him a kind reception in all the gay revels of the French or German court. He might have won the hearts of noble women, and become the Buckingham of his time; he might have wasted in frivolous license the hours he gave to Aristotle or Alcuin. But he preferred to teach. All the pride of his overbearing nature was turned to the contests of the intellect, and he wandered through his age the knight-errant of dialectical tournaments. He rejoiced to strike down his opponents by subtile argument, to win from them

1 Cousin has studied Abelard with ardor. He thinks him one of the two great philosophers of France. The second is Descartes. Ouvrages Inédits, p. 5.

the suffrage and the esteem of scholars, to reign over admiring throngs of progressive disciples, to become the first teacher of France.

no leisure to repeat the story of Abelard and Heloise. Yet in the narrative of his misfortunes Abelard has told with ingenuous plainness the history of his fall. He records his own triumphs, his vain self-confidence, and the fatal steps by which he forfeited the esteem of his contemporaries, and won the sympathy of all succeeding ages. Heloise was almost as renowned to all Paris for her learning and her virtues as he to whom she was to be forever joined in a mournful fame. The fair, devoted girl cast herself at the feet of her earthly idol, and worshiped with an utter self-devotion, never surpassed even in her unselfish sex. Mistress, wife, mother, novice, or nun, she gave herself wholly to Abelard, and would never be con

which he claimed her ever as his own. She asked only to lie by his side in death, and in her last hours still worshiped the faded form that slept in the sepulchre of Paraclete.

He was prepared for his literary career by acts of singular self-denial. He abandoned to his relatives all share in the family inheritance,' gave up the honors of nobility and his rights as an eldest son, left his fair château in Brittany, and passed his youth in wandering from school to school, a penniless follower of learning. When he was about twenty he came up to Paris to attend the teachings of the famous William of Champeaux. In 1100 no university yet existed at the capital, but the cathedral school of Notre Dame was already renowned as the centre of medieval learning. Abelard joined its throng of students, resolved, per-scious of that trace of selfish superiority with haps, to assail its master and drive him from his intellectual throne. William of Champeaux discovered at once the genius of the youthful Breton. Abelard was at first a docile learner; then, in the midst of wondering throngs of students, attacked the theories of his master, became his rival and his foe. A long hostility followed. The two combatants struck each other unsparing blows. Excluded from Paris by the influence of William, Abelard established rival schools in its neighborhood, and from the heights of St. Geneviève his aggressive genius sapped the popularity and destroyed the influence of his master. The students flocked in throngs to the new teacher, whose ready eloquence and vigorous novelty aroused their eager curiosity. William of Champeaux, mortified and disheartened, retreated from his emp-ory of his woe. He asked only for solitude, ty cloisters to hide in a monastery or a bishopric. Abelard ascended the vacant chair, and became (1113) the chief school-master of Paris and of the age.

2

His fame had now risen to an unprecedented height; his vigorous intellect had subdued the minds of his contemporaries. Five thousand students, drawn from every part of Europe, came up to attend his lectures, and none went away dissatisfied with those daring speculations that flowed with incessant novelty from his honored lips. He was worshiped, beloved, adored. As his tall and stately form passed through the streets of Paris, dressed with singular care in rich scholastic robes, the people followed him in admiration, and mothers held up their children to gaze on his pale, fair countenance, and pursued him with their blessings. His spotless purity added to his intellectual power; the noble and the great, the courtier and the king, the humble and the poor, united in their reverence for that ideal of intellectual excellence which seemed exemplified in the beneficent career of Abelard.

But a stronger passion3 than even literary ambition now cast him down to a lower pitch of humiliation than that to which he had himself reduced William of Champeaux. We have

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In his humiliation and remorse, Abelard, flying from mankind, strove to hide himself in a savage wilderness, and built a hut of the branches of trees on the banks of the Ardusson. He would abandon forever the exercise of that polished intellect which had made him the wonder and the scorn of Paris. He would lose himself in endless prayer. His hut was an oratory, dedicated to the Trinity, where he meditated only on God. A savage anchorite, he would live alone in the wild haunts of nature, his only companions the sighing forest, the wintry winds, the flowing river, the mem

he begged of mankind only to be left alone. But his request could not be granted, and the last years of his life were still to be passed in endless intellectual contests. His students traced him to his wilderness, and found him praying in the forest, in his dwelling of leaves and branches. Touched with unbounded love and admiration, the impetuous youth asked to be allowed to share his solitude, and to listen once more to the wise counsels of his honored lips. Abelard unwillingly consented. A throng of students once more gathered around him. They built their savage dwellings of the green boughs of trees, and filled the woods with their singular studies. Young men who were afterward to be priests, cardinals, teachers, popesthe rich, the poor, the humble, or the great-clustered around the eminent recluse, maintained him by their various contributions, and lived with him in the forest. That Abelard lectured once more with unwonted fire in that strange retreat we may well imagine. Beneath the leafy woods, far from the tumult of the capital, surrounded by an eager band of admirers, who hung upon his voice, the genius of the teacher must have glowed with new ardor, and his daring intellect have risen to a fresh consciousness of its own superiority. From the liberality of his students the monastery of the Paraclete grew up in the wilderness, and Abelard invoked in his remorse the presence of the Comforter.

He was

He now began to teach with renewed power; | upon the life of this eminent man. his lessons and his writings startled the dull intellect of his superstitious age. By many he was believed to be a heretic, by some an infidel. A throng of enemies were aroused by his daring resistance to authority; his reputation was assailed by gross insinuations; he was beset by the malice of his foes, and was at times obliged to hide himself to escape assassination. The pious but fanatical St. Bernard had resolved upon his destruction, and denounced him to the world as the enemy of Christ. In 1140, at Sens, in Champagne, Abelard appeared before a splendid assembly of kings and princes, bishops and teachers, to defend himself against the accusations of the saint. As he passed amidst the superstitious throng, haughty and resolute, men shrank from him in dread as a heretic and accursed; but the meek and humble St. Bernard was every where received with reverence and holy awe. Abelard's writings were declared heretical. He appealed to the pope, but the Holy Father ordered his books to be burned, and condemned him to perpetual silence. His proud spirit gave way, his health declined, and at length he died (1142) a religious recluse, touching all hearts by his humility and contrition.

rather a preacher than a teacher. He governed multitudes by his rapid eloquence and his pure example. He was born at Brescia, and had learned republican principles among the aspiring commonalty of his native town. His mind was formed, his faculties enlarged, by the lectures and example of his friend Abelard; and he soon began to teach and preach doctrines that seemed strangely heretical to the most progressive of his contemporaries. He demanded that every Christian should be humble and be poor; that the clergy should abandon their wealth and their pride; the pope emulate the humility of the apostles; the gilded throng of knights and princes sink down to a level with the meanest serf. His preaching was attended with wonderful results, and all Lombardy followed with applause the teacher of Brescia. Arnold became the champion of the people. He was the master of unnumbered subjects; he startled the twelfth century by suggestions that seem new even to the nineteenth.

As prioress of the Paraclete, where she had followed and succeeded her husband, Heloise demanded that his remains should be placed in a consecrated vault which she had prepared for their common resting-place. Her request was granted. She survived him more than twenty years. She was then laid by his side; and generations of the curious and the devout came to visit the lonely spot where slept the most eminent of school-masters and the most gifted woman of her age. After a century a fanatical abbess separated them, placing their remains in different parts of the vault. The French Revolution, the result of the teachings of Abelard, broke up the monastery of Paraclete; the coffin of the two lovers was transported to Paris; their remains were inspected, and two marble statues were carved in imitation of the faded relics in which artists could still trace forms of superhuman beauty. At length Paris demanded that their tomb should be erected in Père la Chaise. The flight of seven centuries had not dulled the enthusiasm of a gifted people for two of its most eminent intellects; and every year invisible hands scatter flowers and funereal wreaths upon the spot where hover, at least in fancy, the shades of the illustrious dead.

A scholar of the Paraclete, the friend and the disciple of Abelard, Arnold of Brescia, carried into practical use the opinions he had heard inculcated in the woodland lecture-room on the banks of the Ardusson. A deep obscurity rests

1 The great school-masters were all heretics, believing in the Scriptures rather than the popes.

Gunther and Otho Freisingen are the obscure authorities for Arnold's life. See Milman, Lat. Christ., iii. 399; and Hallam, Middle Ages.

Seldom have two men of genius, united in liberal sentiments, obtained a more ruthless foe than did Abelard and Arnold. The most humble and self-denying, the most modest and the most gifted of saints was Bernard of Clairvaux. He was celebrated in every land for his boundless penances, his self-chosen poverty, his learning and eloquence, his devotion to the suffering and the sad. Yet so inconsistent is human nature, so treacherous is a fanatical faith, that in the breast of the lowly Bernard raged passions scarcely less savage than those of the cannibal or the tiger. He thirsted for the blood of the heretic or the infidel with untiring ferocity. He preached a crusade against the Saracens, and fired the evil instincts of all Europe by exclaiming, "The Christian who slays an infidel is certain of celestial bliss!" He had resolved on the ruin of Abelard and Arnold, and pursued them with fanatical malice as the enemies of Christ.

Abelard died the victim of the malicious saint. Arnold was, in his turn, driven from Lombardy, and found refuge among the Alps, at Zurich. For five years he taught the virtuous Swiss, and laid, perhaps, the foundations of that austere faith which was afterward cherished and defined by Zuinglius and Calvin. Meantime a revolution took place at Rome. The people rose against the temporal power of the popes, and a republic sprang up in the Eternal City that for ten years revived the image of its early freedom. A senate and a free government once more ruled upon the Capitol. Arnold of Brescia descended from his mountains, and guided with discretion the policy of the new republic. The church was reformed, the feudal tyrants expelled, and the priest and teacher from his perilous eminence fancied that he might yet amend the vices of his age. But genius and virtue, his only weapons, proved too

Milman, iii. p. 399.

feeble a protection against the enmity of popes and kings. Adrian, the English Brakespere, mounted the papal throne, and formed a league with the Emperor Conrad to destroy the Roman republic. The frail fabric of freedom sank before their enmity. The generous Arnold was strangled or burned, and his sacred ashes were cast into the Tiber.

We have surveyed briefly the careers of several of the most eminent of the early teachers. It remains only to observe the results of their labors. The first was the foundation of the chief universities of Europe. When Abelard taught five thousand scholars at Paris he had left an example that could scarcely have been neglected by his successors. The origin of that brilliant series of schools that soon after his death sprang up in the French capital may be traced to his successful teaching. He made Paris an intellectual centre, and gave it a supremacy in letters which it was never again to lose.

Successive kings filled it with colleges; rich endowments maintained a gifted series of teachers or professors. The University of Paris was the tribunal of European opinion, and kings and scholars consented to be governed by its decisions. It is stated that in the fifteenth century twenty-five thousand students were assembled in its lecture-rooms, a number that seems scarcely credible in so ignorant an age; yet they were gathered from almost every country in Europe."

Nor did the University of Paris stand alone. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a strong passion for learning began to stir the rising intellect of Europe. A gifted teacher, Werner, lecturing at Bologna on the Roman law, about 1158, founded a great university, that soon numbered ten thousand students. Oxford and Cambridge began to rival Paris in fame.

An un

disciplined throng of thirty thousand scholars, or pretenders to scholarship, are said to have been gathered at Oxford alone. Colleges now sprang up in Germany, Italy, and Spain, and the taste for letters began slowly to lift men above the barbarism of the age of chivalry.

But a still more powerful element of civilization is due to the example of Charlemagne and the influence of the school-master. The common-school system may be traced back at least to the year 800. The idea of the first Emperor of Germany was never lost. Slowly the necessity for a general education of the people forced itself upon the minds of men ; and when Luther and the Reformation set free the intellect of Europe, Saxony and Prussia laid the foundations

1 Cousin. C'est Charlemagne qui l'ouvre; ce sont les écoles Carlovingiennes, etc., p. 203. Int. Abelard. 2 Hallam, Middle Ages.

A statute was made to improve the discipline, 1432. See Wood, Ant. Ox., i. p. 579. Effrænata exsecrabilium dissensionum in hac universitate continuatio. Quarrels, stabbing, murders, prevailed among the students.

Henry Barnard, our eminent educator (National Education, p. 20, 21), traces the free school back to the carly Christian church. Charlemagne and Luther at least enforced the conception.

of that wonderful system of free schools that has been imitated in every progressive nation. Germany led the way in the universal diffusion of knowledge. Prussia caught up the grand conception of Charlemagne, and electors and kings strove to bind together in a wide unity of intelligence and mental power their willing people. The Minister of Public Instruction in Prussia has ever stood on an equality with the Minister of War. Her common schools have created her supremacy in Germany; and her example has taught mankind that knowledge should be as free to all as the air we breathe or as the light from heaven.

REGRET.

WHERE'S the hearth, however low,
Knoweth not this guest?
When the sunset embers glow
Enters she with Rest.

In the empty place she sits,
Lets her eyelids fall;
Through the dusk a shadow flits,
Deepening over all.

Awe that stealeth from her place
Every heart hath stirred;
None that looketh in her face
Asketh her a word.

Hands that seem a cloudy waft
Clasping on her knees;

Eyes with wonted musing soft-
What is it she sees?

High in many a fairy spire
Leaps the mimic flame;
Golden palaces afire

Die the death of fame.
Faces glimmer, hands are swept-
Turned to ashes cold;

In her eyes are tears unwept,
Tears that were of old.

Girt with memories sublime
Looks her crownless brow:
Was she princess in her time?
Who can answer now?
Of the old immortals she,
Trailing glory yet;
Nothing but the past can be
Ever for Regret.

All her breath is sighing faint,
As from wind-harp drawn;
All her song is tender plaint
For a world that's gone.
Ages past our age of strife
She remembereth;
Young as Sorrow, young as Life,
Born of every death.

Her in lonely walks you meet
Woody hills among,
Trying echoes strangely sweet
To a siren song.
Soon, with utter longing fain,
Down you choose to lie,
For the rapture or the pain
Closeth always, Die!

One highway beyond the east
She hath often found,

And, with whitest moonlight fleeced,
Walked unearthly ground.

A dim land, outlying far
Every track of men,

Sown with many a mystic star,
Is the Might Have Been.

Lonely by the lapsing waves

Sits she on the shore,

And her look one country craves,
Named the Nevermore.

In the fading purple haze

Of a sun long set,
Last of all the goddesses
Lingereth Regret.

I

ANNE FURNESS.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "MABEL'S PROGRESS," "AUNT MARGARET'S TROUBLE,"
"VERONICA," ETC.

to Clementina, and, although she agreed with
me that it was good, it threw her into a very
nervous state, which was not diminished by
hearing later in the afternoon that her father
had mounted his horse and ridden over to
Farmer Hodgekinson's.

CHAPTER XLVII. EASILY found an opportunity of performing my embassy to Uncle Cudberry. I found him a little after noon in the old barn wherein our memorable interview had taken place last year. He had been tramping over the farm in the hot sunshine, and had withdrawn into the cool shelter of the barn's thick walls to enjoy his lunch, which consisted of bread and cheese and home-brewed beer in a flat stone bottle. His first words, after silently and attentive-ingly rigid, brusque, and almost snappish. And ly listening to what I had to say, rather took as in her anxiety she clung to me and followed me aback. me every where, I had not altogether a pleasant time of it.

"The chap don't expect any thing down wi' Clemmy, does he ?"

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Poor Clemmy's trepidation exhibited itself not in any soft, trembling, subdued gentleness of manner which called for encouragement and sympathy, but after a characteristic Cudberry fashion-she became, that is to say, exceed

But at length Uncle Cudberry returned. And he did not return alone. The suitor had ridden back with him, and when from the garden we (Clemmy and I) beheld two horses trotting along the pathway, instead of one, I squeezed Clemmy's hand, and bade her be of good cheer, for it was plain that the course of her true love was destined to run smooth.

I reckoned a little too rashly, however, when I talked of smoothness, as will presently appear.

Clementina ran into the house and up to her own room; perhaps to recover her composure in solitude, perhaps to add some touch of adornment to her dress. And Mr. Cudberry, followed by his young guest, who looked remarkably sheepish, walked solemnly into the

I was rather surprised at the liberality of this provision for the wedding-clothes. But Uncle Cudberry proceeded to explain, and, as it were, to apologize for it. A hundred pounds was a large sum, truly—a very large sum. But he calculated that his daughters cost him a considerable sum per annum, and he was bound in fairness to remember that the husbands who married them would in future take all that ex-drawing-room. pense on their own shoulders. "It is but the one outlay, you see," said Uncle Cudberry; "and I don't choose that a Miss Cudberry of Woolling should go shabby into any man's house."

He was very reticent, as usual, but I gathered on the whole from his words and demeanor that, as I had anticipated, he would be very willing to allow Clementina to become Mrs. William Hodgekinson.

"There'll be a devil of a bobbery with Miss Cudberry!" said he, with a momentary spark of expression in his black eye, just before we parted.

I was silent, being puzzled how to reply to this unexpected admission; and, after pausing a second or two, he resumed, still more to my surprise:

“And, mind you, I don't say Miss Cudberry will be altogether wrong. She comes first in the family. There's no doubt about that. But, as I said to 'em t'other day, there don't seem to be much chance of finding husbands for the girls, or a wife for Sam. Sam's a lout, it's true. But Miss Cudberry- Well, can't be helped. It's high time as I got rid of some on 'em."

It was tenanted only by Aunt Cudberry and Henrietta-the former writing crooked entries in her housekeeping-book, the latter playing the piano in a manner which always suggested to me that she must be hurting the instrument. I entered the room almost at the same instant with Mr. Cudberry and his guest.

"Mrs. Cudberry," said my uncle, walking up to his wife, "allow me to present to you your future son-in-law."

Aunt Cudberry let her pen fall from her fingers, and Henny ceased her relentless performance with a crash. As to the future son-inlaw, thus presented, he was in an agony of bashfulness, and of a glowing red color even to the tips of his ears. But none of these things disconcerted Mr. Cudberry.

"I've been over to Hodgekinson's and settled it all with him-or, at least, with Mrs. Hodgekinson. Her husband wasn't at home. But it's quite the same. He knows all about it," said Mr. Cudberry, sitting down and wiping his head with his handkerchief.

"Oh my! La, well now, my dear! and so you really mean it, poor thing?" said Aunt Cudberry, putting one of her hands on each of the young man's shoulders, and giving him a I communicated the result of my interview queer little shake as she looked earnestly into

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