The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-04 00:00:00

The Count de Montalembert.

The Paris correspondent of the Times confirms
the happy tidings of the recovery of M. de Mon-
talembert--tidings which will gladden the hearts
of his numerous admirers in this country. The
passage extracted from his newly published volume
will be read with general interest.—" Every one,"
says the Paris correspondent in the Times of yester-
day, " will be glad to hear that M. de Montalem-
bert, after passing through a tedious and painful
illness, which has kept him for some months to
his bed, or to his room, is now convalescent.
His recovery is somewhat slow, but there is a
recovery. M. de Montalembert has been long en-
gaged on a work, which to him is a labour of love,
" The History of the Monks of the West." The
first two volumes appeared some time since. The
third has been in print for more than a year, and
was not to have appeared without the fourth and
fifth, which are exclusively occupied with the con-
version of England to Christianity, but which the
long malady of the distinguished author has pre-
vented him from finishing. It was thought better,
however, to delay the third volume no longer, and
it is this day published. It is inscribed in a short
but graceful and affectionate dedication, in Latin,
to Lord Dunrasen, who accompanied the author
during his visits to lona, " from which," as Sir W.
Scott observes, "the light of Christianityshone forth
on Scotland and Ireland," and to other ancient
sanctuaries in England and Scotland.
The volume opens with a sketch of the English
nation in five or six pages, vigorously and elo-
quently written, which I have thus translated :--
"There exists in modern Europe, at seven leagues distance
from France, within sight of our northern coasts, a people
whose empire is more vast than was that of Alexander or
the Caesars, who are at once the freest and the mightiest,
the richest and most manful, the most undaunted and the
most orderly that the world has known. No study is more
instructive than the-character of this people; none present
so original an aspect, or straoger contrasts. Liberal and
intolerant, pious and inhuman, loving order and secu-
rity as much as !movement and renown, they feel a
superstitious respect for the letter of the law, and prac-
tise the most unbounded personal independence. Conver-
sant, as none others are, with all the arts of peace, and
yet unconquerable in war, of which they sometimes are
even passionately fond, too often strangers to enthusiasm,
but incapable of faint-heartednesss, they know not what it
is to be discouraged or enervated. At one time they count
all by the measure of their gains or their caprices ; at an-
other they get heated for a disinterested idea or a passion.
As fickle as any other race in their affections and their
judgment they always know where to stop, and they are
gifted at once withal power of initiative which nothing
astonishes, and a perseverance which nothing turns aside.
Eager for conquest and discoveries, they wander or rush to
the utmost boundaries of the earth, and they return more
attached than ever to their home, and more resolute in up-
holding its dignity and perpetuating its ancient stability.
Implacable haters of constraint, they are yet voluntary
slaves to tradition and to discipline freely accepted, or to
prejudices handed down to them through generations. No
people have been oftener conquered, but none have so ab-
sorbed and transformed their conquerore. None have per-
secuted Catholicism with more unrelenting and sanguinary
hatred ; even at this day none appear more hostile to the
Church, of which yet none have more need ; none have
been more wanting to it ; none have left in its bosom a
more irreparable void ; but none have lavished on our
proscribed bishops, priests, and monks a more generous
hospitality. Inaccessible to modern convulsions, that island
has been an inviolable asylum for our exiled fathers and our
prince; notions than for our most violentenemies. Neither
the selfishness of these islanders, nor their indifference,too
often cynical, towards the sufferings and the servitude of
others, should make us forget that in their country, more
than any other, man belongs to himself and governs him-
self. It is there that the nobleness of our nature dew-
lopes itself in all its splendour, and there attains its highest
perfection. It is there that the noble passion of inde-
pendence, combined with the genius of association, and
the constant practice of self-control, have given birth to
those prodigies of energy, of indomitable vigour, of stub-
born heroism, which have triumphed over seas and cli-
mates, over time and distance, over nature and, tyranny,
and have excited the envy
of all peoples and the haughty
enthusiasm of the English. Loving Liberty for her own
sake, and loving nothing without her, they owe little to
their Kings, who were nothing but through them and for
them. On them alone rests the formidable responsibility
of their history. After undergoing as much, and more
than any other nation of Europe, the horrors of political
and religious despotism in the 16th and 17th centuries, they
were the first and the only people who threw it off once and
for ever. Reinstated in their ancient rights, their proud
and brave nature has over since kept them from delivering
over to any one their rights, their destiny, their interests,
or their free will. They themselves know what to resolve
and what to do ; governing, raising up, inspiring, their
great men, instead of being seduced, led astray, or made the
matter of traffic by them. That English race has inherited
the pride, as it has inherited the grandeur of the people whose
rivals and whose heirs they are, of the Roman people—not
the vile Romans enslaved by Augustus, but the sterling
Romans of the Republic. But that race, like the Romans to
their tributaries, has been fierce and rapacious in Ireland,
and has inflicted, even down to recent times, the servitude
and degradation which it repudiates with horror for itself.
Like ancient Rome, often hated, and too often deserving
of hatred, it will always excite,
even among its most favour-
able judges, more of
admiration than of love. But, more
fortunate than Rome, that race is, after a thousand years
and more, still full of youth and youthful vigour. Progress,
gradual, imperceptible, but never interrupted, has created
for it an inexhaustible store of force and life. Its sap over-
flowed yesterday, and it will overflow to-morrow. More
fortunate than Rome, and despite of a thousand incon-
sistencies, a thousand excesses, a thousand foul blots,
the English race is of all. modern races and of
all Christian communities the ono which has
best preserved the three fundamental bases of
every society worthy of man—the spirit of liberty, the
spirit of family, and the spirit of religion. How has this
nation, in which pagan pride still survives and triumphs,
and which has yet remained even in error the most religious
of all the nations of Europa, how came it to be Christian ?
How, and by what hands have these imperishable roots
been implanted ? The question is surely the most important
of all those which history makes mention of, and its interest
is the more important when wo consider that on the con-
version of England depended, and still depends, the con-
version of many million souls. English Christianity was
the source of the-Christianity of Germany. From the
depths of Germany the missionaries formed by the Anglo-
Saxons carried the faith into Scandinavia, and among
tile Slaves; and day after day, at the present moment
either by the fruitful expansion of Irish orthodoxy, or by
the stubborn impulse of Protestant propagandism, Chris-
tian societies are created, speaking. English and living
English life, throughout the whole of North America, in
the Pacific. Over nearly half the world Christianity has
flawed, or will flow, front the source which first gushed
both the Indies, in vast Australia, among_ the islands of
cut from the soil of Britain. To that question we are
enabled to reply with rigorous exactness. No people on
earth have received the Christian faith more directly from
the Roman Church, and more exclusively through the
agency of the monks, than the English,"

MISSING SIIIP. —The General Grant, Laughlin,
sailed from Melbourne for London on the 31 of May, and
has not since been heard of.
TRADE AND NAVIGATION A.CCOUNTS.--The Board
of Trade returns for the month of October, which
have just appeared, show a slight decrease in the number
of vessels entered in the foreign trade as compared with
those of the corresponding month of last year. But the
export trade exhibits a decided increase, indicated by the
employment of a larger number of British vessels. Of fo-
reign shipping entered inwards during the above month
there is, as compared with last year, au increase of tonnage
from Norway, and a decrease from Prussia, France, Aus-
tria, and 'the United States. The exports of foreign ves-
sels during the same time chows very little alteration, ex-
cept as to France, which shows a decrease. During this
month 567 vessels have arrived from, and 373 have de-
parted to, our British possessions, and our commerce with
other countries is represented by an import trade of
£1,004,608, and up. OXPort 046 of 4001695. tons.