CHAPTER VI.

_The influence of solitude on the passions._

The passions lose in solitude a certain portion of that regulating weight by which in society they are guided and controlled; the counteracting effects produced by variety, the restraints imposed by the obligations of civility, and the checks which arise from the calls of humanity, occur much less frequently in retirement than amidst the multifarious transactions of a busy world. The desires and sensibilities of the heart having no real objects on which their vibrations can pendulate, are stimulated and increased by the powers of imagination. All the propensities of the soul, indeed, experience a degree of restlessness and vehemence greater than they ever feel while diverted by the pleasures, subdued by the surrounding distresses, and engaged by the business of active and social life.

The calm which seems to accompany the mind in its retreat is deceitful; the passions are secretly at work within the heart; the imagination is continually heaping fuel on the latent fire, and at length the laboring desire bursts forth, and glows with volcanic heat and fury. The temporary inactivity and inertness which retirement seems to impose, may check, but cannot subdue the energies of spirit. The high pride and lofty ideas of great and independent minds may be, for a while, lulled into repose; but the moment the feelings of such a character are awakened by indignity or outrage, its anger springs like an elastic body drawn from its centre, and pierces with vigorous severity the object that provoked it. The perils of solitude, indeed, always increase in proportion as the sensibilities, imaginations, and passions of its votaries are quick, excursive, and violent. The man may be the inmate of a cottage, but the same passions and inclinations still lodge within his heart: _his_ mansion may be changed, but _their_ residence is the same; and though they appear to be silent and undisturbed, they are secretly influencing all the propensities of his heart. Whatever be the cause of his retirement, whether it be a sense of undeserved misfortune, the ingratitude of supposed friends, the pangs of despised love, or the disappointment of ambition, memory prevents the wound from healing, and stings the soul with indignation and resentment. The image of departed pleasures haunts the mind, and robs it of its wished tranquillity. The ruling passion still subsists; it fixes itself more strongly on the fancy; moves with greater agitation; and becomes, in retirement, in proportion as it is inclined to vice or virtue, either a horrid and tormenting spectre, inflicting apprehension and dismay, or a delightful and supporting angel, irradiating the countenance with smiles of joy, and filling the heart with peace and gladness.

Blest is the man, as far as earth can bless, Whose measur’d passions reach no wild excess; Who, urged by nature’s voice, her gifts enjoys, Nor other means than nature’s force employs. While warm with youth the sprightly current flows, Each vivid sense with vigorous rapture glows; And when he droops beneath the hand of age, No vicious habit stings with fruitless rage; Gradual his strength and gay sensations cease, While joys tumultuous sink in silent peace.

The extraordinary power which the passions assume, and the improper channel in which they are apt to flow in retired situations, is conspicuous from the greater acrimony with which they are in general tainted in small villages than in large towns. It is true, indeed, that they do not always explode in such situations with the open and daring violence which they exhibit in the metropolis; but lie buried as it were, and mouldering in the bosom with a more malignant flame. To those who only observe the listlessness and languor which distinguish the characters of those who reside in small provincial towns, the slow and uniform rotation of amusements which fills up the leisure of their lives; the confused wildness of their cares; the poor subterfuges to which they are continually resorting, in order to avoid the clouds of discontent that impend in angry darkness, over their heads; the lagging current of their drooping spirits; the miserable poverty of their intellectual powers; the eagerness with which they strive to raise a card party; the transports they enjoy on the prospect of any new diversion or occasional exhibition; the haste with which they run toward any sudden, unexpected noise that interrupts the deep silence of their situation; and the patient industry with which, from day to day, they watch each other’s conduct, and circulate reports of every action of each other’s lives, will scarcely imagine that any virulence of passion can disturb the bosoms of persons who live in so quiet and seemingly composed a state. But the unoccupied time and barren minds of such characters cause the faintest emotions, and most common desires, to act with all the violence of high and untamed passions. The lowest diversions, a cock fighting, or a pony race, make the bosom of a country ’squire beat with the highest rapture; while the inability to attend the monthly ball fills the minds of his wife and daughter with the keenest anguish. Circumstances, which scarcely make any impression on those who reside in the metropolis, plunge every description of residents in a country village into all the extravagances of joy, or the dejection of sorrow; from the peer to the peasant, from the duchess to the dairy maid, all is rapture and convulsion. Competition is carried on for the humble honors and petty interests of a sequestered town, or miserable hamlet, with as much heat and rancor, as it is for the highest dignities and greatest emoluments of the state. Upon many occasions, indeed, ambition, envy, revenge, and all the disorderly and malignant passions, are felt and exercised with a greater degree of violence and obstinacy amidst the little contentions of claybuilt cottages, than ever prevailed amidst the highest commotions of courts. Plutarch relates that when Cæsar, after his appointment to the government of Spain, came to a little town, as he was passing the Alps, his friends, by way of mirth, took occasion to say, “Can there here be any disputes for offices, any contentions for precedency, or such envy and ambition as we behold among the great in all the transactions of imperial Rome?” The idea betrayed their ignorance of human nature; while the celebrated reply of their great commander, that _he would rather be the first man in this little town, than the second even in the imperial city_, spoke the language, not of an individual, but of the species; and instructed them that there is no place, however insignificant, in which the same passions do not proportionately prevail. The humble competitors for village honors, however low and subordinate they may be, feel as great anxiety for pre-eminence, as much jealousy of rivals, and as violent envy against superiors, as agitate the bosoms of the most ambitious statesmen in contending for the highest prize of glory, of riches, or of power. The manner, perhaps, in which these inferior candidates exert their passions may be less artful, and the objects of them less noble, but they are certainly not less virulent. “Having,” says Euphelia, who had quitted London, to enjoy the quietude and happiness of a rural village, “been driven by the mere necessity of escaping from absolute inactivity, to make myself more acquainted with the affairs and happiness of this place, I am now no longer a stranger to _rural conversation_ and employments; but am far from discerning in them more innocence or wisdom than in the sentiments or conduct of those with whom I have passed more cheerful and more fashionable hours. It is common to reproach the tea table and the park, with giving opportunities and encouragement to scandal I cannot wholly clear them from the charge, but must, however, observe, in favor of the modish prattlers, that if not by principle, we are at least by accident, less guilty of defamation than the country ladies. For, having greater numbers to observe and censure, we are commonly content to charge them only with their own faults or follies, and seldom give way to malevolence, but such as arises from injury or affront, real or imaginary, offered to ourselves. But in those distant provinces, where the same families inhabit the same houses from age to age, they transmit and recount the faults of a whole succession. I have been informed how every estate in the neighborhood was originally got, and find, if I may credit the accounts given me, that there is not a single acre in the hands of the right owner. I have been told of intrigues between beaus and toasts, that have been now three centuries in their quiet graves; and am often entertained with traditional scandal on persons of whose names there would have been no remembrance, had they not committed somewhat that might disgrace their descendants. If once there happens a quarrel between the principal persons of two families, the malignity is continued without end; and it is common for old maids to fall out about some election in which their grandfathers were competitors. Thus malice and hatred descend here with an inheritance; and it is necessary to be well versed in history, that the various factions of the country may be understood. You cannot expect to be on good terms with families who are resolved to love nothing in common; and in selecting your intimates, you are, perhaps, to consider which party you most favor in the barons’ wars.”

Resentments and enmities burn with a much more furious flame among the thinly-scattered inhabitants of a petty village, than amidst the ever varying concourse of a great metropolis. The objects by which the passions are set on fire are hidden from our view by the tumults which prevail in a crowded city, and the bosom willingly loses the pains which such emotions excite when the causes which occasioned them are forgot: but in country villages, the thorns by which the feelings have been hurt are continually before our eyes, and preserve on every approach toward them, a remembrance of the injuries sustained. An extreme devout and highly religious lady, who resided in a retired hamlet in Swisserland, once told me, in a conversation on this subject, that she had completely suppressed all indignation against the envy, the hatred, and the malice of her surrounding neighbors; for that she found they were so deeply dyed in sin, that a rational remonstrance was lost upon them; and that the only vexation she felt from a sense of their wretchedness arose from the idea that her soul would at the last day be obliged to keep company with such incorrigible wretches.

The inhabitants of the country, indeed, both of the lower and middling classes, cannot be expected to possess characters of a very respectable kind, when we look at the conduct of those who set them the example. A country magistrate, who has certainly great opportunities of forming the manners and morals of the district over which he presides, is in general puffed up with high and extravagant conceptions of the superiority of his wisdom, and the extent of his power; and raising his idea of the greatness of his character in an inverse proportion to his notions of the insignificance and littleness of those around him, he sits enthroned with fancied pre-eminence, the disdainful tyrant, rather than the kind protector of his neighbors. Deprived of all liberal and instructive society, confined in their knowledge both of men and things, the slaves of prejudice and the pupils of folly; with contracted hearts and degraded faculties the inhabitants of a country village feel all the base and ignoble passions, sordid rapacity, mean envy, and insulting ostentation more forcibly than they are felt either in the enlarged society of the metropolis, or even in the confined circle of the monastery.

The social virtues, indeed, are almost totally excluded from cloisters, as well as from every other kind of solitary institution: for when the habits, interests, and pleasures of the species are pent up by any means within a narrow compass, mutual jealousies and exasperations must prevail; every trifling immunity, petty privilege, and paltry distinction, becomes an object of the most violent contention; and increasing animosities at length reach to such a degree of virulence, that the pious flock is converted into a herd of famished wolves, eager to worry and devour each other.

The laws of every convent strictly enjoin the holy sisterhood to live in Christian charity and sincere affection with each other. I have, however, when attending these fair recluses in my professional character, observed many of them with wrinkles, that seemed rather the effect of angry perturbation, than of peaceful age, with aspects formed rather by envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, than by mild benevolence and singleness of heart. But I should do injustice if I did not declare, that I have seen some few who were strangers to such unworthy passions; whose countenances were unindented by their effects: and whose beauty and comeliness still shone in their native lustre and simplicity. It was, indeed, painful to reflect upon the sufferings which these lovely innocents must endure, until the thoughts of their lost hopes, defeated happiness, and unmerited wrongs, should have changed the milky kindness of their virtuous dispositions into the gall-like bitterness of vexation and despair; until the brightness of their charming features should be darkened by the clouds of discontent, which their continued imprisonment would create; and until their cheerful and easy tempers should be perverted by the corrosions of those vindictive passions which the jealous furies, with whom they were immured, and to whom they formed so striking a contrast, must in time so cruelly inflict. These lovely mourners, on entering the walls of a convent, are obliged to submit to the tyranny of an envious superior, or the jealousy of the older inmates, whose angry passions arise in proportion as they perceive others less miserable than themselves; and retiring, at the stated periods, from their joint persecution, they find that the gloomy solitude to which they have flown, only tends to aggravate and widen the wound it was expected to cure. It is, indeed, almost impossible for any female, however amiable, to preserve in the joyless gloom of conventual solitude the cheering sympathies of nature. A retrospect of her past life most probably exhibits to her tortured fancy, superstition stinging with scorpion like severity her pious mind; love sacrificed on the altar of family pride; or fortune ruined by the avarice of a perfidious guardian; while the future presents to her view the dreary prospect of an eternal and melancholy separation from all the enjoyments of society, and a continual exposure to the petulance and ill humor of the dissatisfied sisterhood. What disposition, however mild and gentle by nature, can preserve itself amidst such confluent dangers? How is it possible to prevent the most amiable tenderness of heart, the most lively and sensible mind from becoming, under such circumstances, a prey to the bitterness of affliction and malevolence? Those who have had an opportunity to observe the operation of the passions on the habits, humors, and dispositions of recluse females, have perceived with horror the cruel and unrelenting fury with which they goad the soul, and with what an imperious and irresistible voice they command obedience to their inclination.

The passion of love, in particular, acts with much greater force upon the mind that endeavors to escape from its effects by retirement, than it does when it is either resisted or indulged.

Retirement, under such circumstances, is a childish expedient; it is expecting to achieve that, by means of a fearful flight, which it is frequently too much for the courage and the constancy of heroes to subdue. Retirement is the very nest and harbor of this powerful passion. How many abandon the gay and jovial circles of the world, renounce even the most calm and satisfactory delights of friendship, and quit, without a sigh, the most delicious and highest seasoned pleasures of society, to seek in retirement the superior joys of love! a passion in whose high and tender delights the insolence of power, the treachery of friendship, and the most vindictive malice, is immediately forgot. It is a passion, when pure, that can never experience the least decay; no course of time, no change of place, no alteration of circumstances, can erase or lessen the ideas of that bliss which it has once imprinted on the heart. Its characters are indelible. Solitude, in its most charming state, and surrounded by its amplest, powers, affords no resource against its anxieties, its jealous fears, its tender alarms, its soft sorrows, or its inspiringly tumultuous joys. The bosom that is once deeply wounded by the barbed dart of real love, seldom recovers its tranquillity, but enjoys, if happy, the highest of human delights; and if miserable, the deepest of human torments. But, although the love-sick shepherd fills the lonely vallies, and the verdant groves, with the softest sighs, or severest sorrows, and the cells of the monasteries and convents resound with heavy groans and deep-toned curses against the malignity of this passion, solitude may perhaps, for a while suspend, if it cannot extinguish its fury. Of the truth of this observation, the history of those unfortunate, but real lovers, Abelard and Eloisa, furnishes a memorable instance.

In the twelfth century, and while Louis the Gross filled the throne of France, was born in the retired village of Palais, in Brittany, the celebrated Peter Abelard. Nature had lavished the highest perfections both on his person and his mind: a liberal education improved to their utmost possible extent the gifts of nature; and he became in a few years the most learned, elegant, and polite gentleman of his age and country. Philosophy and divinity were his favorite studies: and lest the affairs of the world should prevent him from becoming a proficient in them, he surrendered his birthright to his younger brethren, and travelled to Paris, in order to cultivate his mind under that great professor, William des Champeaux. The eminence he attained as a professor, while it procured him the esteem of the rational and discerning, excited the envy of his rivals. But, beside his uncommon merit as a scholar, he possessed a greatness of soul which nothing could subdue. He looked upon riches and grandeur with contempt; and his only ambition was to render his name famous among learned men, and to acquire the reputation of the greatest doctor of his age. But when he had attained his seven and twentieth year of age, all his philosophy could not guard him against the shafts of love. Not far from the place where Abelard read his lectures, lived a canon of the church of Notre Dame, named Fulbert, whose niece, the celebrated Eloisa, had been educated under his own eye with the greatest care and attention. Her person was well proportioned, her features regular, her eyes sparkling, her lips vermilion and well formed, her complexion animated, her air fine, and her aspect sweet and agreeable. She possessed a surprising quickness of wit, an incredible memory, and a considerable share of learning, joined with great humility and tenderness of disposition: and all these accomplishments were attended with something so graceful and moving, that it was impossible for those who saw her not to love her. The eye of Abelard was charmed, and his whole soul intoxicated in the passion of love, the moment he beheld and conversed with this extraordinary woman; and he laid aside all other engagements to attend to his passion. He was deaf to the calls both reason and philosophy, and thought of nothing but her company and conversation. An opportunity, fortunate for his love, but fatal to his happiness, soon occurred. Fulbert, whose affection for his niece was unbounded, willing to improve to the highest degree the excellency of those talents which nature had so bountifully bestowed on her, engaged Abelard as her preceptor, and received him in that character into his house. A mutual passion strongly infused itself into the hearts of both pupil and preceptor. She consented to become his mistress, but, for a long time, refused to become his wife. The secret of their loves could not remain long concealed from the eyes of Fulbert, and the lover was dismissed from his house: but Eloisa flew with rapture to his arms, and was placed under the protection of his sister, where she remained; until, from the cruel vengeance which her uncle exercised on the unfortunate Abelard, she was induced at his request to enter into the convent of Argenteuil, and he into the monastery of St. Gildas. In this cloister, the base of which was washed by the waves of a sea less turbulent than the passions which disturbed his soul, the unfortunate Abelard, endeavored by the exercises of religion and study, to obliterate all remembrance of his love; but his virtue was too feeble for the great attempt. A course of many years, however, had passed in penitence and mortification, without any communication between them, and further time might possibly have calmed in a still greater degree the violence of their feelings; but a letter which Abelard wrote to his friend Philintus, in order to comfort him under some affliction which had befallen him, in which he related his affection for Eloisa with great tenderness, fell into her hands, and induced her to break through the silence which had so long prevailed, by writing to him a letter, the contents of which revived in his mind all the former furies of his passion. Time, absence, solitude, and prayer, had in no degree diminished the amiable tenderness of the still lovely Eloisa, or augmented the fortitude of the unfortunate Abelard. The composing influence of religion seems to have made an earlier impression upon his feelings than it did upon those of Eloisa; but he continually counteracted its effects, by comparing his former felicity with his present torments; and he answered Eloisa’s letter, not as a moral preceptor, or holy confessor, but as a still fond and adoring lover; as a man whose wounded feelings were in some degree alleviated by a recollection of his former joys; and who could only console the sorrows of his mistress, by avowing an equal tenderness, and confessing the anguish with which their separation rent his soul. The walls of Paraclete resounded his sighs less frequently, and re-echoed less fervently with his sorrows, than those of St. Gildas; for his continued solitude, so far from affording him relief, had administered an aggravating medicine to his disease; and afforded that vulture, grief, greater leisure to tear and prey upon his disordered heart. “Religion,” says he, “commands me to pursue virtue since I have nothing to hope for from love; but love still asserts its dominion in my fancy, and entertains itself with past pleasures; memory supplies the place of a mistress. Piety and duty are not always the fruits of retirement. Even in deserts, when the dew of heaven falls not on us, we love what we ought no longer to love. The passions, stirred up by solitude, fill those regions of death and silence; and it is very seldom that what ought to be is truly followed there, and that God only is loved and served.”

The letters of Eloisa were soft, gentle, and endearing; but they breathed the warmest language of tenderness and unconquerable passion. “I have your picture,” says she, “in my room. I never pass by it without stopping to look at it; and yet when you were present with me, I scarce even cast my eyes upon it. If a picture, which is but a mute representation of an object, can give such pleasure, what cannot letters inspire? Letters have souls; they have in them all that force which expresses the transports of the heart: they have all the fire of our passions; they can raise them as much as if the persons themselves were present; they have all the softness and delicacy of speech, and sometimes a boldness of expression even beyond it. We may write to each other; so innocent a pleasure is not forbidden us. Let us not lose, through negligence, the only happiness which is left to us, and the only one perhaps, which the malice of our enemies can never ravish from us. I shall read that you are my husband, and you shall see me address you as a wife. In spite of all your misfortunes, you may be what you please in your letters. Letters were first invented for comforting such solitary wretches as myself. Having lost the pleasure of seeing you, I shall compensate this loss by the satisfaction I shall find in your writings: there I shall read your most secret thoughts: I shall carry them always about me; I shall kiss them every moment. If you can be capable of jealousy, let it be for the fond curiosity I shall bestow on your letters, and envy only the happiness of those rivals. That writing may be no trouble to you, write always to me carelessly and without study: I had rather read the dictates of the heart than of the brain. I cannot live, if you do not tell me you always love me. You cannot but remember, (for what do not lovers remember?) with what pleasure I have passed whole days in hearing you discourse; how, when you was absent, I shut myself up from every one to write to you; how uneasy I was till my letter had come to your hands; what artful management was required to engage confidants. This detail, perhaps, surprises you, and you are in pain for what will follow: but I am no longer ashamed that my passion has had no bounds for you; for I have done more than all this: I have hated myself that I might love you. I came hither to ruin myself in a perpetual imprisonment, that I might make you live quiet and easy. Nothing but virtue, joined to a love perfectly disengaged from the commerce of the senses, could have produced such effects. Vice never inspires any thing like this. How did I deceive myself with the hopes that you would be wholly mine when I took the veil, and engaged myself to live for ever under your laws! For, in being professed, I vowed no more than to be yours only; and I obliged myself voluntarily to a confinement in which you denied to place me. Death only can make me leave the place where you have fixed me; and then too my ashes shall rest here, and wait for yours, in order to show my obedience and devotedness to you to the latest moment possible.”

Abelard, while he strove, in his reply, to adhere to the dictates of reason, betrayed the lurking tenderness of his heart. “Deliver yourself, Eloisa,” says he, “from the shameful remains of a passion which has taken too deep root. Remember that the least thought for any other than God is an adultery. If you could see me here, pale, meagre, melancholy, surrounded by a band of persecuting monks, who feel my reputation for learning as a reproach of their stupidity and ignorance, my emaciated figure as a slander on their gross and sensual corpulency, and my prayers as an example for their reformation, what would you say to the unmanly sighs, and unavailing tears, by which they are deceived? Alas! I am bowed down by the oppressive weight of love, rather than contrition for past offences. Oh, my Eloisa, pity me, and endeavor to free my laboring soul from its captivity! If your vocation be, as you say, my wish, deprive me not of the merit of it by your continual inquietudes: tell me that you will honor the habit which covers you by an inward retirement. Fear God that you may be delivered from your frailties. Love him, if you would advance in virtue. Be not uneasy in the cloister, for it is the dwelling of saints; embrace your bands, they are the chains of Jesus, and he will lighten them, and bear with you, if you bear them with humility and repentance. Consider me no more, I entreat you, as a founder, or as a person in any way deserving your esteem; for your encomiums do but ill agree with the multiplying weakness of my heart. I am a miserable sinner, prostrate before my Judge; and when the rays of grace break on my troubled soul, I press the earth with my lips, and mingle my sighs and tears in the dust. Couldest thou survey thy wretched lover thus lost and forlorn, thou wouldest no longer solicit his affection. The tenderness of thy heart would not permit thee to interpose an earthly passion, which can only tend to deprive him of all hopes of heavenly grace and future comfort. Thou wouldest not wish to be the object of sighs and tears, which ought to be directed to God alone. Canst thou, my Eloisa, become the confederate of my evil genius, and be the instrument to promote sin’s yet unfinished conquest? What, alas! couldest thou not achieve with a heart, the weaknesses of which you so well know? But, oh! let me conjure you, by all the sacred ties, to forget for ever the wretched Abelard, and thereby contribute to his salvation. Let me entreat you by our former joys, and by our now common misfortunes, not to abet my destruction. The highest affection you can now show me, is to hide your tenderness from my view and to renounce me for ever. Oh, Eloisa! be devoted to God alone; for I here release you from all engagements to me.”

The conflict between love and religion tore the soul of Eloisa with pangs far more violent and destructive. There is scarcely a line of her reply to Abelard, that does not show the dangerous influence which solitude had given to the concealed, but unsmothered, passion that glowed within her breast. “Veiled as I am,” she exclaims, “behold in what a disorder you have plunged me! How difficult it is to fight always for duty against inclination! I know the obligation which this sacred veil has imposed on me; but feel more strongly the power which a long and habitual passion has gained over my heart. I am the victim of almighty love: my passion troubles my mind, and disorders my senses. My soul is sometimes influenced by the sentiments of piety which my reflections inspire, but the next moment I yield myself up to the tenderness of my feelings, and to the suggestions of my affection. My imagination riots with wild excursion in the scenes of past delights. I disclose to you one moment what I would not have told you a moment before. I resolve no longer to love you; I consider the solemnity of the vow I have made, and the awfulness of the veil I have taken; but there arises, unexpectedly, from the bottom of my heart, a passion which triumphs over all these notions, and, while it darkens my reason, destroys my devotion. You reign in all the close and inward retreats of my soul; and I know not how nor where to attack you with any prospect of success. When I endeavor to break the chains which bind me so closely to you, I only deceive myself, and all my efforts serve only to confirm my captivity, and to rivet our hearts more firmly to each other. Oh! for pity’s sake, comply with my request; and endeavor by this means, to make me renounce my desires, by showing me the obligation I am under to renounce you. If you are still a lover, or a father, oh! help a mistress, and give comfort to the distraction of an afflicted child. Surely these dear and tender names will excite the emotion either of pity or of love. Gratify my request; only continue to write to me, and I shall continue to perform the hard duties of my station without profaning that character which my love for you induced me to assume. Under your advice and admonition I shall willingly humble myself, and submit with penitence and resignation to the wonderful providence of God, who does all things for our sanctification; who, by his grace purifies all that is vicious and corrupt in our natures; and, by the inconceivable riches of his mercy, draws us to himself against our wishes, and by degrees opens our eyes to discern the greatness of that bounty which at first we are incapable of understanding. Virtue is too amiable not to be embraced when you reveal her charms, and vice too hideous not to be avoided when you show her deformities. When you are pleased, every thing seems lovely to me. Nothing is frightful or difficult when you are by. I am only weak when I am alone, and unsupported by you; and therefore it depends on you alone that I may be such as you desire. Oh! that you had not so powerful an influence over all my soul! It is your fears, surely, that make you thus deaf to my entreaties, and negligent of my desires: but what is there for you to fear? When we lived happily together you might have doubted whether it was pleasure or affection that united me to you; but the place from which I now indite my lamentations must have removed that idea, if it ever could find a place in your mind. Even within these gloomy walls, my heart springs toward you with more affection than it felt, if possible, in the gay and glittering world. Had pleasure been my guide, the world would have been the theatre of my joys. Two and twenty years only of my life had worn away, when the lover on whom my soul doated was cruelly torn from my arms; and at that age female charms are not generally despised; but, instead of seeking to indulge the pleasures of youth, your Eloisa, when deprived of thee, renounced the world, suppressed the emotions of sense, at a time when the pulses beat with the warmest ardor, and buried herself within the cold and cheerless region of the cloister. To you she consecrated the flower of her charms; to you she now devotes the poor remains of faded beauty; and dedicates to heaven and to you, her tedious days and widowed nights in solitude and sorrow.”

The passion, alas! which Eloisa thus fondly nourished in her bosom, like an adder, to goad and sting her peace of mind, was very little of a spiritual nature; and the walls of Paraclete only re-echoed more fervent sighs than she had before breathed, and witnessed a more abundant flow of tears than she had shed in the cells of Argenteuil, over the memory of departed joys with her beloved Abelard. Her letters, indeed, show with what toilsome but ineffectual anxiety she endeavored to chasten her mind, and support her fainting virtue, as well by her own reasoning and reflection, as by his counsels and exhortations; but the passion had tenaciously rooted itself at the very bottom of her heart; and it was not until the close of life that she was able to repress the transports of her imagination, and subdue the wild sallies of her fond and fertile fancy. Personally separated from each other, she indulged a notion that her love could not be otherwise than pure and spiritual; but there are many parts of letters which show how much she was deceived by this idea; for in all the fancied chastity of their tender and too ardent loves,

“Back thro’ the pleasing maze of sense she ran, And felt within the slave of love and man.”

The wild and extravagant excesses to which the fancy and the feelings of Eloisa were carried, was not occasioned merely by the warm impulses of unchecked nature; but were forced, to the injury of virtue, and the distraction of reason, by the rank hot bed of monastic solitude. The story of these celebrated lovers, when calmly examined, and properly understood, proves how dangerous it is to recede entirely from the pleasures and occupations of social life, and how deeply the imagination may be corrupted, and the passions inflamed, during a splenetic and ill-prepared retirement from the world. The frenzies which follow disappointed love, are of all others the most likely to settle into habits of the deepest melancholy. The finest sensibilities of the heart, the purest tenderness of the soul, when joined with a warm constitution, and an ardent imagination, experience from interruption and control the highest possible state of exasperation. Solitude confirms the feelings such a situation creates; and the passions and inclinations of a person laboring under such impressions are more likely to be corrupted and inflamed by the leisure of retirement, than they would be even by engaging in all the lazy opulence and wanton plenty of a debauched metropolis.

The affection which Petrarch entertained for Laura was refined, elevated, and virtuous, and differed, in almost every ingredient of it, from the luxurious fondness of the unfortunate Eloisa; but circumstances separated him from the beloved object; and he labored during many years of his life, under the oppression of that grievous melancholy which disappointment uniformly inflicts. He first beheld her as she was going to the church of the monastery of St. Claire. She was dressed in green, and her gown was embroidered with violets. Her face, her air, her gait, appeared something more than mortal. Her person was delicate, her eyes tender and sparkling, and her eyebrows black as ebony. Golden locks waved over her shoulders whiter than snow, and the ringlets were woven by the fingers of love. Her neck was well formed, and her complexion animated by the tints of nature, which art vainly attempts to imitate. When she opened her mouth, you perceived the beauty of pearls, and the sweetness of roses. She was full of graces. Nothing was so soft as her looks, so modest as her carriage, so touching as the sound of her voice. An air of gayety and tenderness breathed around her; but so pure and happily tempered, as to inspire every beholder with the sentiments of virtue; for she was chaste as the spangled dewdrop on the thorn. Such was the description given of this divine creature by her enslaved lover. But, unfortunately for his happiness, she was at this time married to Hugues de Sade, whose family was originally of Avignon, and held the first offices there. Notwithstanding the sufferings he underwent from the natural agitation of an affection so tender as that which now engrossed his soul, he owns that Laura behaved to him with kindness so long as he concealed his passion; but when she discovered that he was captivated with her charms, she treated him with great severity; avoiding every place it was likely he would frequent, and concealing her face under a large veil whenever they accidentally met. The whole soul of Petrarch was overthrown by this disastrous passion; and he felt all the visitation of unfortunate love as grievously as if it had been founded upon less virtuous principles. He endeavored to calm and tranquillize the troubles of his breast by retiring to the celebrated solitude of Vaucluse, a place in which nature delighted to appear under a form the most singular and romantic; “But, alas!” says he, “I knew not what I was doing. The resource was ill suited to the safety I sought. Solitude was incapable of mitigating the severity of my sorrows. The griefs that hung around my heart, consumed me like a devouring flame. I had no means of flying from their attacks. I was alone, without consolation, and in the deepest distress, without even the counsel of a friend to assist me. Melancholy and despair shot their poisoned arrows against my defenceless breast, and I filled the unsoothing and romantic vale with my sighs and lamentations. The muse indeed, conveyed my sufferings to the world; but while the poet was praised, the unhappy lover remained unpitied and forlorn.”

The love which inspired the lays of Petrarch was a pure and perfect passion of the heart; and his sufferings were rendered peculiarly poignant by a melancholy sense of the impossibility of ever being united with the object of it; but the love of Abelard and Eloisa was a furious heat of wild desire. This passion flows clear or muddied, peaceful or violent, in proportion to the sources from which it springs. When it arises from pure and unpolluted sources, its stream is clear, peaceful, and surrounded with delights: but when its source is foul, and its course improperly directed, it foams and rages, overswells its banks, and destroys the scenes which nature intended it to fertilize and adorn. The different effects produced by the different kinds of this powerful passion, have, on observing how differently the character of the same person appears when influenced by the one or the other of them, given rise to an idea that the human species are possessed of two souls; the one leading to vice, and the other conducting to virtue. A celebrated philosopher has illustrated this notion by the following story:

A virtuous young prince, of an heroic soul, capable of love and friendship, made war upon a tyrant, who was in every respect his reverse. It was the happiness of our prince to be as great a conqueror by his clemency and bounty, as by his arms and military virtue. Already he had won over to his party several potentates and princes, who had before been subject to the tyrant. Among those who still adhered to the enemy there was a prince, who, having all the advantages of person and merit, had lately been made happy in the possession and mutual love of the most beautiful princess in the world. It happened that the occasion of the war called the new married prince to a distance from his beloved princess. He left her secure as he thought, in a strong castle, far within the country; but, in his absence, the place was taken by surprise, and the princess brought a captive to the quarters of the heroic prince. There was in the camp a young nobleman the favorite of the prince; one who had been educated with him, and was still treated by him with perfect familiarity. Him he immediately sent for, and with strict injunctions, committed the captive princess to his charge; resolving she should be treated with that respect which was due to her rank and merit. It was the same young lord who had discovered her disguised among the prisoners, and learnt her story; the particulars of which he now related to the prince. He spoke in ecstacy on this occasion; telling the prince how beautiful she appeared even in the midst of sorrow; and though disguised under the meanest habit, yet how distinguished by her air and manner from every other beauty of her sex. But what appeared strange to our young nobleman was, that the prince, during this whole relation, discovered not the least intention of seeing the lady, or satisfying that curiosity which seemed so natural on such an occasion. He pressed him, but without success. “Not see her, sir!” said he wondering, “when she is so much handsomer than any woman you have yet seen!” “For that very reason,” replied the prince, “I would rather decline the interview; for should I, upon this bare report of her beauty, be so charmed as to make the first visit at this urgent time of business, I may upon sight, with better reason, be induced, perhaps, to visit her when I am more at leisure; and so again and again, until at last I may have no leisure left for my affairs.” “Would you, sir, persuade me then,” said the young nobleman, smiling, “that a fair face can have such power as to force the will itself, and constrain a man in any respect to act contrary to what he thinks becoming him? Are we to hearken to the poets, in what they tell us of that incendiary love and his irresistible flames? A real flame, we see, burns all alike; but that imaginary one of beauty hurts only those that are consenting. It affects no otherwise than as we ourselves are pleased to allow it. In many cases we absolutely command it, as when relation and consanguinity are in the nearest degree. Authority and law we see can master it; but it would be vain, as well as unjust, for any law to intermeddle or prescribe, was not the case voluntary, and our will entirely free.” “How comes it then,” replied the prince, “that if we are thus masters of our choice, and free at first to admire and love where we approve, we cannot afterward as well cease to love whenever we see cause? This latter liberty you will hardly defend; for I doubt not you have heard of many who, though they were used to set the highest value on liberty before they loved, yet, afterward, were necessitated to serve in the most abject manner, finding themselves constrained, and bound by a stronger chain than any of iron or of adamant.” “Such wretches,” replied the youth, “I have often heard complain, who, if you will believe them, are wretched indeed, without means or power to help themselves. You may hear them in the same manner complain grievously of life itself; but though there are doors enough at which to go out of life, they find it convenient to keep still where they are. They are the very same pretenders who, through this plea of irresistible necessity, make bold with what is another’s, and attempt unlawful beds; but the law, I perceive, makes bold with them in its turn, as with other invaders of property. Neither is it your custom, sir, to pardon such offences. So that beauty itself, you must allow, is innocent and harmless, and cannot compel any one to do amiss. The debauched compel themselves, and unjustly charge their guilt on love. They who are honest and just can admire and love whatever is beautiful, without offering at any thing beyond what is allowed. How then is it possible, sir, that one of your virtue should be in pain on any such account, or fear such a temptation? You see, sir, I am sound and whole after having beheld the princess. I have conversed with her; I have admired her in the highest degree; yet I am myself still, and in my duty, and shall be ever in the same manner at your command.” “It is well,” replied the prince; “keep yourself so: be ever the same man, and look to your fair charge carefully, as becomes you; for it may so happen, in the present situation of the war that this beautiful captive may stand us in good stead.” The young nobleman then departed to execute his commission; and immediately took such care of the captive princess that she seemed as perfectly obeyed, and had every thing which belonged to her in as great splendor as in her own principality, and in the height of her fortune. He found her in every respect deserving, and saw in her a generosity of soul exceeding even her other charms. His studies to oblige her and to soften her distress, made her, in return, desirous to express her gratitude. He soon discovered the feelings of her mind; for she showed, on every occasion, a real concern for his interest; and when he happened to fall ill, she took such tender care of him herself, and by her servants, that he seemed to owe his recovery entirely to her friendship. From these beginnings, insensibly, and by natural degrees, as may easily be conceived, the youth fell desperately in love. At first he offered not to make the least mention of his passion to the princess, for he scarce dared believe it himself. But time, and the increasing ardor of his passion, subdued his fears, and she received his declaration with an unaffected trouble, and real concern. She reasoned with him as a friend, and endeavored to persuade him to subdue so improper and extravagant a flame. But in a short time he became outrageous, and talked to her of _force_. The princess was alarmed by his audacity, and immediately sent to the prince to implore his protection. The prince received the information with the appearance of more than ordinary attention; sent instantly for one of his first ministers, and directed him to return with the princess’ domestic, and tell the young nobleman that _force_ was not to be used to such a lady; but that he might use _persuasion_, if he thought it was proper so to do. The minister, who was of course the inveterate enemy of his prince’s favorite, aggravated the message, inveighed publicly against the young nobleman for the grossness of his misconduct, and even reproached him to his face with having been a traitor to the confidence of his prince, and a disgrace to his nation. The minister, in short, conveyed the message of his master in such virulent and angry terms, that the youth looked on his case as desperate; fell into the deepest melancholy; and prepared himself for that fate which he was conscious he well deserved. While he was thus impressed with a sense of his misconduct, and the danger to which it had exposed him, the prince commanded him to attend a private audience. The youth entered the closet of the prince covered with the deepest confusion. “I find,” said he, “that I am now become dreadful to you indeed, since you can neither see me without shame, nor imagine me to be without resentment. But away with all these thoughts from this time forward! I know how much you have suffered on this occasion. I know the power of love; and am no otherwise safe myself, than by keeping out of the way of beauty. I alone am to blame; for it was I who unhappily matched you with that unequal adversary; who gave you that impracticable task; who imposed on you that hard adventure, which no one yet was ever strong enough to accomplish.” “In this, sir, as in all else,” replied the youth, “you express that goodness which is so natural to you. You have compassion, and can allow for human frailties; but the rest of mankind will never cease to upbraid me: nor shall I ever be forgiven, even were I able ever to forgive myself. I am reproached by my nearest friends; and I must be odious to all mankind wherever I am known. The least punishment I can think due to me is banishment for ever from your presence; for I am no longer worthy of being called your friend.” “You must not think of banishing yourself for ever,” replied the prince: “but trust me, if you will retire only for a while, I shall so order matters, that you shall return with the applause even of those who are now your enemies, when they find what a considerable service you shall have rendered both to them and me.” Such a hint was sufficient to revive the spirits of the despairing youth. He was transported to think that his misfortunes could be turned in any way to the advantage of his prince. He entered with joy into the scheme his royal friend had contrived for the purpose of restoring him to his former fame and happiness, and appeared eager to depart and execute the directions that were given to him. “Can you then,” said the prince, “resolve to quit the charming princess?” “O, sir,” replied the youth, with tears in his eyes, “I am now well satisfied that I have in reality within me two distinct separate souls. This lesson of philosophy I have learnt from that villanous sophister love; for it is impossible to believe that, having one and the same soul, it should be actually both good and bad; passionate for virtue and vice, desirous of contraries. No; there must of necessity be two; and when the good soul prevails, we are happy; but when the bad prevails, we are miserable. Such was my case. Lately the ill soul was wholly master, and I was miserable; but now the good prevails, by your assistance, and I am plainly a new creature, with quite another apprehension, another reason, and another will.”

He who would be master of his appetites, must not only avoid temptation, but vigilantly restrain the earliest shoots of fancy, and destroy the first blooms of a warm imagination. It is the very nature of confidence to be always in danger. To permit the mind to riot in scenes of fancied delights, under an idea that reason will be able to extinguish the flames of desire, is to nurse and foster the sensual appetites, which, when guided by the cool and temperate voice of nature alone, are seldom raised to an improper height. The natural current of the blood, even in the warmest constitutions, and under the most torrid zone, would keep an even, temperate course, were it not accelerated by such incentives. Youth indeed despises this species of reasoning, and imputes it to the sickness of satiety, or the coldness of old age. I have, however, in general, observed, that those who seek these incitements to what they improperly call love, possess a rayless eye, a hollow cheek, a palsied hand, a pallid countenance; and these symptoms of faded splendour and withered strength, unquestionably prove that they have not consulted nature in their gay pursuits; for nature has not planted any propensities in the human frame which lead it to early ruin, or premature decay. The blame which is so unjustly thrown upon temperament and constitution, belongs to the indulgence of false and clamorous passions, those which sensual fancies, and lascivious ideas have raised to the destruction of chastity and health.

Monastic institutions produce, in this respect, incalculable mischiefs. The sexes, whom these religious prisons seclude from the free and unconfined intercourses of society, suffer their imaginations to riot without restraint or discipline, in proportion to the violence imposed on their actions. A thousand boyish fancies, eager appetites and warm desires, are perpetually playing truant, and the chastity of the soul is corrupted. To effect the conquest of the passion of love, it is absolutely necessary that the evil suggestions of the imagination should be first silenced; and he who succeeds in quelling the insurrections of that turbulent inmate, or in quieting its commotions, achieves an enterprise at once difficult and glorious. The holy Jerome checked the progress of many disorderly passions which he found rising in his breast; but the passion of love resisted all his opposition, and followed him, with increasing fury, even into the frightful cavern to which he retired to implore, in humble prayer and solitary abstraction, the mercies of his God. The solitude, however remote, to which the demon of sensuality is admitted, is soon crowded with legions of tormenting fiends. John, the anchorite of the deserts of Thebais, wisely addressed his solitary brethren, “If there be any among you who in his pride, conceives that he has entirely renounced the devil and all his works, he should learn that it is not sufficient to have done this merely by his lips, by having resigned his worldly dignities, and by dividing his possessions among the poor; for, unless he has also abandoned his sensual appetites, his salvation cannot be secure. It is only by purifying our bosoms from the pernicious influence of this master passion, that we can ever hope to counteract the machinations of satan, and to guard our hearts from his dangerous practices. Sin always introduces itself under the guidance of some guilty passion; some fond desire; some pleasing inclination, which we willingly indulge, and by that means suffer the enemy of peace to establish his unruly dominion in our souls. Then tranquillity and real happiness quit their abode in our hearts, and all is uproar and anarchy within. This must be the fate of all who permit an evil spirit to seat itself on the throne of their hearts, and to scatter around the poisonous seeds of wild desire and vicious inclinations.” But love once indulged in bright and rapturous fancies, fills the mind with such high and transporting ideas of supreme bliss, that the powers of reason are seldom, if ever, capable of making head against its fascinations. The hermit and the monk, who, from the nature of their situations, cannot taste its real charms, ought, if it were for that reason alone, to stifle at their birth the earliest emotions of this inspiring passion; for the indulgence of it must prove fatal to the virtue, and of course destructive to the peace of every recluse. The impossibility that such characters can listen with any propriety to the dictates of this delightful passion, shows in the strongest manner the impolicy and absurdity of those institutions, on the members of which celibacy is enjoined. The happiness of every individual, as well as the civil and religious interests of society, are best promoted by inducing the endearments of sense to improve the sympathies, tenderness, and affections of the human heart. But these blessings are denied to the solitary fanatic, who is condemned to endure the suppression of his passions, and prevented from indulging without endangering his principles, both the desires of sense, and the dreams of fancy. He cannot form that delightful union of the sexes, where sentiments of admiration are increased by prospects of personal advantage; where private enjoyment arises from a sense of mutual merit; and the warmest beams of love are tempered by the refreshing gales of friendship. The grosser parts of this innate and glowing passion can alone occupy his fancy; and the sentiments it instils, instead of refining his desires, and meliorating his affections, tend, through the operation of his soul and corrupted imagination, to render his appetites still more depraved. He is as ignorant of its benefits as he is of its chaste and dignified pleasures; and totally unacquainted with its fine sensibilities, and varied emotions, his bosom burns with the most violent rage; his mind wallows in images of sensuality; and his temper frets itself, by unjustly accusing the tempter as the author of his misery. If the luxurious cogitations of such a character were dissipated by the pleasures and pursuits of busy life; if the violence of his passions were checked by laborious exercises; and if habits of rational study enabled him to vary the uniformity of retirement, and to substitute the excursions of mental curiosity, and moral reflections, instead of that perpetual recurrence of animal desire by which he is infected, the danger we have described would certainly be reduced; but without such aids, his self-denials, his penitence, his prayers, and all the austere discipline of the monkish and ascetic school, will be ineffectual. Celibacy, indeed, instead of assisting, as their disciples mistakingly conceive, to clear the soul from its earthly impurities, and to raise it to divine brightness and sublimity, drags it down to the basest appetites and lowest desires. But matrimony, or that suitable and appropriate union of the sexes which prevails under different circumstances, according to the manner and custom of different societies, leads, when properly formed, to the highest goal of human bliss.

The mischievous effects which the celibacy and solitude of monastic institutions produce on that passion which arises so spontaneously between the sexes in the human heart, will appear unavoidable, when it is considered how absurdly the founders of these religious retreats have frequently endeavored to guard against the danger. The partitions which divide virtues from their opposite vices are so slender and conjoined, that we scarcely reach the limits of the one before we enter to a certain degree, the confines of the other. How ridiculous, therefore, is it to conceive, that frequent meditation on forbidden pleasures, should be at all likely to eradicate impure ideas from the mind. And yet the Egyptian monastics were enjoined to have these rules constantly in their contemplation: first, that their bosoms must remain unagitated by the thoughts of love; that they should never permit their fancies to loiter on voluptuous images; that female beauty, in its fairest form, and most glowing charms, should be incapable of exciting in their hearts the least sensation; and that, even during the hours of sleep, their minds should continue untainted by such impure affections. The chastity of these solitary beings was, on some occasions, actually tried by experiment; but the consequences which resulted from such irrational discipline, were directly the reverse of those it was intended to produce. The imagination was vitiated, and the inclination rendered so corrupt, that neither the examples nor the precepts of the more enlightened ages were able to correct their manners, or reclaim them from the machinations of the unclean spirit. Numberless indeed, and horrid, are the instances recorded by Ruffinus, and other writers, of the perversions of all sense and reason, of all delicacy and refinement, of all virtue and true holiness, which prevailed in the ascetic solitudes of every description, while the nuptial state was held incompatible with the duties of religion, and the sexes separated from each other, that they might more piously, and with less interruption, follow its dictates. Some of the fathers of the church defined female celibacy to be the only means of living a chaste and godly life amidst the impurities of a sinful world, and regaining, during the perdition of gross mortality, the resemblance of the soul’s celestial origin. The holy, happy tie of matrimony they considered as a cloak to the indulgence of impure desires, and launched their anathemas against it as an hateful institution. Even the eloquent and pious Chrysostom says, “that a double purpose was intended to be attained by the institution of marriage, _viz._ the propagation of the species, and the gratification of sexual affection; but that, as population had sufficiently covered the face of the earth, the first had become no longer necessary; and that it was the duty of the sexes rather to conquer their affections by abstinence and prayer, than indulge them under so thin a disguise.” The human soul, he admits, must, in a state of celibacy, subsist under a perpetual warfare and the faculties be in continual ferment; but contends, that piety exists in proportion to the difficulties which the sufferer surmounts. The holy fathers seem, from the whole strain of their exhortations and reasonings, to have considered female chastity in a very serious point of view; and there can be no doubt but that it is the brightest jewel and most becoming ornament of the sex; but these reverend teachers were so blinded by their zeal, that they lost all sight of nature, and mistakingly conceived that the Great Creator had planted affections in our hearts, and passions in our breasts, only to try our tempers in suppressing their turbulence, rather than promote our happiness, and to answer the ends of his creation, by a sober and rational indulgence of them.

But nature will not be argued out of her rights; and these absurd doctrines introduced into every monastic institution throughout Europe a private intercourse, hostile, from its evil example to the interests both of morality and religion. The nuns of the convent of Argenteuil, who chose Eloisa for their Abbess, were in all probability, influenced in their choice by the recollections of her former frailty, and their knowledge of the present ruling passion of her heart; they meant to provide the abbey with a superior who, if she were not inclined to promote, would feel no disposition to interrupt their intrigues. The fact certainly was, that during the time Eloisa presided over the convent, the conduct of the nuns was so extremely licentious, that Sugger, abbot of St. Dennis, complained of their irregularities to Pope Honorius, in such a manner as to induce his holiness to give the abbot possession of it; and he immediately expelled the negligent prioress and her intriguing sisters, and established in their place a monastery of his own order. Strong suspicions may, perhaps, prevail against the virtue and integrity of Eloisa’s character, from the dissoluteness which existed in this society; but she was certainly not included by name in the articles of accusation which the abbot of St. Dennis transmitted upon this subject to the court of Rome; and there is every reason to believe that these irregularities were carefully concealed from her knowledge. When this lovely victim was presented with the veil, some persons who pitied her youth, and admired her beauty, represented to her the cruel sacrifice she would make of herself by accepting it: but she immediately exclaimed, in the words of Cornelia, after the death of Pompey the great--

“Oh my loved lord! our fatal marriage draws On thee this doom, and I the guilty cause: Then while thou go’st th’ extremes of fate to prove, I’ll share that fate, and expiate thus my love!”

and accepted the fatal present with a constancy not to have been expected in a woman who had so high a taste for pleasures which she might still enjoy. It will therefore, be easily conceived, that her distress, on being ignominiously expelled from this retreat, was exceedingly severe. She applied to Abelard to procure her some permanent asylum, where she might have the opportunity of estranging herself from all earthly weaknesses and passions; and he, by the permission of the bishop of Troyes, resigned to her the house and the chapel of Paraclete, with its appendages, where she settled with a few sisters, and became herself the foundress of a nunnery. Of this monastery she continued the superior until she died; and whatever her conduct was among the licentious nuns of Argenteuil, she lived so regular in this her new and last retreat, and conducted herself with such exemplary prudence, zeal, and piety, that all her former failings were forgot, her character adored by all who knew her, and her monastery in a short time enriched with so great a variety of donations, that she was celebrated as the ablest cultivator of the virtues of forgiveness and Christian charity then existing. The bishop of the district behaved to her as if she had been his own daughter; the neighboring priors and abbots treated her with all the tenderness and attention of a real sister: and those who were distressed and poor, revered her as their mother. But all her cares, and all her virtues, could not protect her against the returning weakness of her heart. “Solitude,” says she, “is insupportable to a mind that is ill at ease; its troubles increase in the midst of silence, and retirement heightens them. Since I have been shut up within these walls, I have done nothing but weep for our misfortunes: this cloister has resounded with my cries, and like a wretch condemned to eternal slavery, I have worn out my days in grief and sighing.”

The useful regulations imposed by the wisdom of St. Benedict upon the votaries of monastic retirement, were soon neglected. Abstinence and prayer were succeeded by luxury and impiety. The revenues of the several orders had, by the increased value of property, become so great, that they were expended in purchasing a remission of those duties which their founders had enjoined. The admission of the poor laity relieved the initiated members from the toil of cultivating the demesne lands, and produced a system of indolence and laziness. They exchanged their long fast and unsavory diet, for frequent feasts, and the richest repasts; substituted indolent pride for laborious humility; and lost entirely their original piety and virtue. Abelard, indeed, and some few other abbots of the tenth century, endeavored to restore the ancient discipline, but they were reviled and persecuted with the most vindictive malice by their contemporaries. The duke of Brittany, in order to secure Abelard from the rage with which he was pursued, for exercising qualities which ought to have procured him admiration and esteem, gave him the convent of St. Gildas, as an asylum from their hatred. The high character which this monastery comparatively enjoyed for regularity and good order, excited a hope that he might there find rest from his vexations, and consolation for his griefs. But instead of finding it the seat of wisdom and piety, and the mansion of tranquillity, he discovered the most dissolute manners and abandoned conduct prevailing in every part of the convent. His mild and rational attempts to reclaim these disorderly brethren, were so far from producing the desired effect upon their minds, that it only provoked their rage, and gave new edge to their malice. Foiled in their endeavors, by conspiracy and calumny, to dispossess him of his situation, they attempted, several times at their common repasts, to infuse poison into his victuals: and at length, dreadful to relate! actually administered, in the sacramental cup, the poisoned chalice to his lips, but which he was miraculously prevented from tasting. It is, indeed, impossible to read the description he has given of his dreadful situation in this wild and savage community, without shuddering at the idea how much an irrational solitude tends to corrupt the manners and deprave the heart. “I live,” says he, in his letter to Philintus, “in a barbarous country, the language of which I do not understand. I have no conversation but with the rudest people. My walks are on the inaccessible shore of a sea which is perpetually stormy. My monks are only known by their dissoluteness, and living without any rule or order. Ah! Philintus, were you to see my habitation, you would rather think it a slaughter house than a convent. The doors and walks are without any ornament except the heads of wild boars, the antlers of stags, the feet of foxes and the hides of other animals, which are nailed up against them. The cells are hung with the skins of victims destroyed in the chase. The monks have not so much as a bell to wake them, and are only roused from their drowsiness by the howling of dogs and the croaking of ravens. Nothing disturbs their laziness or languor but the rude noises of hunting; and their only alternatives are riot and rest. But I should return my thanks to heaven if that were their only fault. I endeavor in vain to recall them to their duty; they all combine against me; and I only expose myself to continual vexations and dangers. I imagine I see every moment a naked sword hanging over my head. Sometimes they surround me, and load me with the vilest abuse; and even when they abandon me, I am still left to my own dreadful tormenting thoughts.” This single example would be sufficient to prove the extraordinary dominion which solitude has over the human mind. It is, indeed, unless it be managed with great good sense, the complete nursery of mischief. The mind is without those numerous incentives to action which are continually occurring in the busy world; and nothing can contribute to produce irregular and disorderly passions more than the want of some pursuit by which the heart is interested and the mind employed. The minds of idle persons are always restless; their hearts never at perfect ease; their spirits continually on the fret; and their passions goaded to the most unwarrantable excess.

Idleness, even in social life, inflicts the severest torments on the soul; destroys the repose of individuals; and, when general, frequently endangers the safety of the state. Timotheus, an Egyptian monk, surnamed the Cat, a short time after the Eutychian Controversy, in the year 457, felt an ambition to fill the episcopal and patriarchal chair. The splenetic restlessness which prevailed among the monks in their several monastic solitudes, seemed to present to his observing eye proper instruments for the execution of his scheme. He was conscious, from his profound knowledge of the human character, that if men who had so long remained in uneasy and dissatisfied indolence, could be provoked to activity, their zeal would be as turbulent as their former life had been lazy and supine; and that their dispositions might be easily turned to the accomplishment of his wishes. The better to effect his purpose, he clothed himself in a white garment, crept silently in the dead of night to the cells of his companions, and, through a tube, which concealed his voice while it magnified the sound of it, hailed every monk by his name. The sound seemed to convey the voice of heaven to the superstitious ears of the awakened auditors; and the sagacious and enterprising trumpeter did not fail to announce himself as an ambassador of heaven, sent in the name of the Almighty to command the monks to assemble immediately, to consult on the most likely mode of deposing the Nestorian heretic Proterus, and of raising the favored and orthodox Timotheus to the episcopal throne. The idea of being thus elected to execute this pious rebellion, roused all the sleeping powers of these solitary and hitherto idle fanatics; they rose tumultuously at the sacred signal; proclaimed him as a heaven elected patriarch; solicited him with friendly violence, not to refuse the promised boon; and burning with all the ardor of expected success, marched, in a few days under the banner of the imposter, to Alexandria, where they inspired the members of other monasteries with their own delusion, and created throughout Egypt the wildest and most tremendous commotions. The populace caught the religious frenzy, and joined in vast numbers the monastic rout. Assisted by this desperate rabble, Timotheus proceeded to the principal church of Alexandria, where he was, by a preconcerted arrangement, pompously received by two deposed bishops, and ordained the metropolitan of the whole Egyptian territory. Proterus was astonished at this sudden irruption, and hurled his anathemas with great art and dexterity against the impious audacity of the obscure monastic who had thus dared to depart from the humility of his station, and to invade with his indolent brethren, the rights of sovereignty; but being well aware of the fury with which this description of men generally act when they are once set in motion, and being informed of the vast multitude by which they had been joined, he thought it prudent to quit his palace, and to retire to the sacred shelter of the church of St. Quirinus. Heathens and barbarians had heretofore respected this venerable sanctuary; but, upon the present occasion, it was incapable of giving safety to its aged refugee. The furious troops of the holy imposter burst with irresistible violence through the walls of this consecrated edifice, and with their daggers drank the blood of the innocent pontiff, even upon that altar, the very sight of which ought to have paralyzed the hand of guilt. His surrounding and numerous friends, particularly six ecclesiastics of great eminence, learning, and piety, shared the fate of their unhappy master, and were found, when the dreadful massacre was over, clinging with fondness, in the arms of death, round his mangled body. But it was necessary for the murderers to calumniate the purity of that life which they had thus violently and injuriously destroyed. They accordingly dragged the corpse of this virtuous patriarch to the most public part of the city, and, after the grossest abuse of his character, and most scandalous misrepresentation of his conduct, hung it on an elevated cross, and exposed it to the brutal insults of the misguided and deluded populace. To complete this unmanly outrage, they at length committed the torn and mangled remains of this excellent prelate to the flames, and hurled his ashes, amidst the most opprobrious and insulting epithets, into the darkened air; exclaiming with horrid imprecations, that the mortal part of such a wretch was not entitled to the right of sepulchre, or even the tears of friends. So furious and undaunted, indeed, were all the oriental monks, when once roused from their monastic lethargy, that even the soldiers of the Greek emperors cautiously avoided meeting them in the field. The fury by which they were actuated was so blind, that the pious Chrysostom, the warmest and most zealous advocate for monastic institutions, trembled at his approach. This celebrated father of the church was born in the year 344, of one of the first families of the city of Antioch, and added new lustre to their fame by his virtues and his eloquence. Having finished his studies with wonderful success, under Libanus, the greatest rhetorician of the age, he devoted himself to the study of the law; but religion having planted itself deeply in his mind, he quitted all secular concerns, and retired into solitude among the mountains in the vicinity of the city, where, in the dreary caves, he devoted two entire years to penitence and prayer. Ill health, however, obliged him to return to Antioch; he began to preach the Word, and was soon followed by a host of disciples. The life of this excellent pastor was an example to his whole flock. He endeavored to drive away the wolves from the folds, and sent missionaries even into Scythia, to convert its inhabitants to Christianity. These missions, and his various charities, required either considerable revenues or the most rigid economy; and the holy patriarch was contented to live in the extremest poverty, that he might have the better opportunity of relieving the sufferings of his fellow creatures. The character and conduct of this virtuous pontiff soon gained him the hearts of his people, and he set himself earnestly to reform the many abuses which at this time prevailed at Constantinople. The severity and vehemence, however, with which he declaimed against the pride, the luxury, and the rapacity of the great; the zeal with which he endeavored to reform the vices and misconduct of the clergy; and the eagerness he discovered for the conversion of heretics, created him a multitude of enemies; and Eutropius, the favorite of the Emperor Arcadius; Gainas, the tyrant to whom he had refused protection for the Arians; Theophilus, of Alexandria, the patron of the Origenists; and the disciples of Arius, whom he banished from Constantinople, entered into a conspiracy against him; and an occasion soon happened, which gave them the opportunity of taking ample vengeance. The intrepid preacher, convinced that while he declaimed against vice in general, the peculiar vices which prevailed in the court of the Empress Eudoxia, and the personal misconduct of the Empress herself, called aloud for his severest animadversions, he took every opportunity of exposing them to the public abhorrence. The resentment of the court encouraged the discontent of the clergy and monks of Constantinople, who had been very severely disciplined by the zeal of the archbishop. He had condemned from the pulpit the domestic females of the clergy of Constantinople, who, under the name of servants or sisters, afforded a perpetual occasion either of sin or scandal. The silent and solitary ascetics, who had secluded themselves from the world, were entitled to the warmest appprobation of Chrysostom; but he despised and stigmatized, as the disgrace of their holy profession, the crowd of degenerate monks, who from some unworthy motives of pleasure or profit, so frequently infested the streets of the metropolis. To the voice of persuasion, the archbishop was obliged to add the lesson of authority; and in his visitation through the Asiatic provinces, he deposed thirteen bishops of Lydia and Phrygia; and declared that a deep corruption of simony and licentiousness had infected the whole episcopal order. These bishops also entered into the confederacy above mentioned, and the excellent Chrysostom was studiously represented as the intolerable tyrant of the eastern church. This ecclesiastical conspiracy was managed by the archbishop of Alexandria, who, by the invitation of Eudoxia, landed at Constantinople with a stout body of Egyptian mariners, to encounter the populace, and a train of dependant bishops, to secure, by their voices, a majority of a synod. The synod was convened in the suburbs of Chalcedon, and was called the Oak; in which Chrysostom, was accused of treason against the empress; rudely arrested, and driven into exile; from whence, however, he was in two days recalled; but, upon a repetition of his imputed offences, was again banished to the remote and desolate town of Cucusus among the ridges of mount Taurus, in the Lesser Armenia. On his way to this place, he was detained by sickness at Cesarea, and at length confined to his bed. The bishop of Cesarea, who had long entertained a secret enmity against him, unmoved by his fallen fortunes and helpless state, stirred up the lazy monks of the surrounding monasteries to vengeance against him. The fury with which they issued from their respective cells was incredible; like the sleeping powder of the present age, they burst into immediate conflagration and explosion at the touch of that hand by which they were fired, and directing their heated animosity against the dying Chrysostom, surrounded his house and threatened, that if he did not immediately depart, they would involve it in flames, and bury him in its ruins. The soldiers of the garrison were called out to protect the life of this virtuous ecclesiastic; and, on their arrival at the scene of action, very courteously requested the enraged monks to be quiet and depart; but the request was treated with contempt and defiance; and it was by the humane resolution of Chrysostom himself that this tumult was quelled; for, rather than the blood of his fellow creatures should be shed on his account, he desired a litter might be procured, into which, in his almost expiring state, he was roughly laid, and, by his departure from the city, escaped the fury which thus assailed his life. It is evident, from these facts, that the irrational solitude of monastic institutions, particularly that which prevailed in the early ages of Christianity in the eastern parts of the converted world, instead of rendering the votaries of it mild, complacent and humane, filled their minds with the wildest notions, and the most uncharitable and acrimonious passions, and fostered in their hearts the most dangerous and destructive vices. It is truly said, by a very elegant writer and profound observer of men and manners, that monastic institutions unavoidably contract and fetter the human mind; that the partial attachment of a monk to the interest of his order, which is often incompatible with that of other citizens, the habit of implicit obedience to the will of a superior, together with the frequent return of the wearisome and frivolous duties of the cloister, debase his faculties, and extinguish that generosity of sentiment and spirit which qualifies men for thinking and feeling justly, with respect to what is proper in life and conduct; and that father Paul of Venice was, perhaps, the only person educated in a cloister, that ever was altogether superior to its prejudices, or who viewed the transactions of men, and reasoned concerning the interests of society, with the enlarged sentiments of a philosopher, with the discernment of a man conversant in affairs, and with the liberality of a gentleman. Depraved, however, as this order of men has ever been, it was to their prayers and masses that all the princes and potentates of more than half the discovered regions of the earth confided their salvation, and expected from their intercession, divine favor from the fountain of all goodness and truth. But the fears which these artful and intriguing ecclesiastics raised in the weak or guilty minds of their contemporaries, instead of being quieted by the conciliatory and comforting doctrines of the gospel of Christ, were converted to the purposes of their own sordid avarice, and made subservient to the enjoyment of their vices, and the advancement of their power. They inculcated the notion, that the surest passport to eternal bliss was to overwhelm them with riches, and to indulge them with extraordinary privileges; and every haughty noble, or despotic sovereign, who was anxious to gratify his own wanton pleasures, and capricious vices, at the expense of his people’s prosperity and happiness, endeavored to reconcile himself to his offended God, by bribing these ambitious and greedy monastics to grant them absolution for their deepest crimes. Their history exhibits, in full view, the melancholy truth, that their hearts were corrupted by the worst passions that disgrace humanity, and that the discipline of the convent was seldom productive of a single virtue. Enthusiasts, indeed, of every description, whose sentiments and feelings are continually at war with the dictates of nature, and who renounce all the pleasing sympathies, gentle endearments, kind connexions, and rational enjoyments of life, are not likely to entertain any great anxiety for the interest or happiness of others, or to feel the least commiseration for their sorrows. Occupied by sordid and selfish pursuits, they must hate and despise a society, to the lively enjoyments of which they look back with such keen regret. When the mind, alas! has numbed its sense of social joys, and become a stranger to the delightful charms of sweet domestic love; when all affection for the world and its concerns has been studiously expelled from the bosom, and no kind feeling or social inclination suffered to fill the vacant heart; when man has separated himself from his species, and has not united his soul with his Creator, he has lost all power of being happy himself, or of communicating happiness to others.

The bishop exceeded the inferior clergy in every kind of profligacy, as much as in opulence and power; and, of course, their superintending and visitorial authority was not exerted to lessen or restrain the prevalence of those vices which their evil example contributed so greatly to increase. Time and chance sometimes produce extraordinary events; and if a really pious, vigilant, and austere prelate arose amidst the general dissoluteness of the age, his single effort to reclaim these solitary ecclesiastics was seldom attended with success. These fathers, indeed, frequently scrutinized with great minuteness into the practices of the convents; and as they were not so able to detect the guilt of incontinency, as some philosophers of the present age pretend to be, by the lines and features of the face, they proceeded upon evidence less delicate, perhaps, but certainly more demonstrative and unerring.

The celebrated Boccace has, by his witty and ingenious tales, very severely satirized the licentiousness and immorality which prevailed during his time in the Italian monasteries; but, by exposing the scandalous lives, and lashing the vices, of the monks, nuns, and other orders of the Catholic clergy, he has been decried as a contemner of religion, and as an enemy to true piety. Contemporary historians have also delivered the most disgusting accounts of their intemperance and debauchery. The frailty, indeed, of the female monastics was even an article of regular taxation; and the holy father did not disdain to fill his coffers with the price of their impurities. The frail nun, whether she had become immured within a convent, or still resided without its walls, might redeem her lost honor, and be reinstated in her former dignity and virtue, for a few ducats. This scandalous traffic was carried to an extent that soon destroyed all sense of morality, and heightened the hue of vice. Ambrosius, bishop of Camadoli, a prelate of extraordinary virtue, visited various convents in his diocese, but, on inspecting their proceedings, he found no traces of virtue, or even of decency remaining in any one of them; nor was he able, with all the sagacity he exercised on the subject, to reinfuse the smallest particle of these qualities into the degenerated minds of the sisterhood.

The reform of the nunneries was the first step that distinguished the government of Sextus IV. after he ascended the papal throne, at the close of the fifteenth century. Bossus, a celebrated canon, of the strictest principles, and most inflexible disposition, was the agent selected by his holiness for this arduous achievement. The Genoese convents, where the nuns lived in open defiance of all the rules of decency and precepts of religion, were the first objects of his attention. The orations which he publicly uttered from the pulpit, as well as the private lectures and exhortations which he delivered to the nuns from the confessional chair, were fine models, not only of his zeal and probity, but of his literature and eloquence. They breathed, in the most impressive manner, the true spirit of Christian purity; but his glowing representations of the bright beauties of virtue, and the dark deformities of vice made little impression upon their corrupt hearts. Despising the open calumnies of the envious, and the secret hostilities of the guilty, he proceeded, in spite of all discouragement and opposition, in his highly honorable pursuit; and at length, by his wisdom and assiduity, beheld the fairest prospects of success daily opening to his view. The rays of hope, however, had scarcely beamed upon his endeavors, when they were immediately overclouded by disappointment. The arm of magistracy, which he had wisely called upon to aid the accomplishment of his design, was enervated by the venality of its hand; and the incorrigible objects of his solicitude having freed themselves by bribery from the terror of the civil power, contemned the reformer’s denunciation of eternal vengeance hereafter, and relapsed into their former licentiousness and depravity. A few, indeed, among the great number of nuns who inhabited these guilty convents, were converted by the force of his eloquent remonstrances, and became afterward highly exemplary by the virtue and piety of their lives; but the rest abandoned themselves to their impious courses; and though more vigorous methods were, in a short time, adopted against the refractory monastics, they set all attempts to reform them at defiance. The modes, perhaps, in which their vices were indulged, changed with the character of the age; and as manners grew more refined, the gross and shameful indulgences of the monks and nuns were changed into a more elegant and decent style of enjoyment. Fashion might render them more prudent and reserved in their intrigues; but their passions were not less vicious, nor their dispositions less corrupt.

The disorderly manners of these solitary devotees were among the principal causes that produced the reformation. There is a point beyond which even depravity cannot go in corrupting the manners of the age. The number and power of the monastics, or, as they were at that time called, the regular clergy, was certainly great, and their resistance to the approaches of reformation obstinate; but the temper of the times had changed, and the glorious and beneficial event was at length accomplished. The Catholics viewed the dismemberment of their church as a fatal stroke to their interest and power; but it has since been confessed, by every candid and rational member of this communion to be an event which has contributed to advance morals to a higher degree of perfection than they had ever before attained since the introduction of Christianity, and to restore the discipline of the church to some portion of its original purity.

The pure spirit of the gospel of Christ breathes forth a holy religion, founded on meekness, charity, kindness, and brotherly love; but fanaticism, when joined to a systematic and irrational solitude, only produces the rank and poisonous fruits we have already described. The trivial, querulous, and intolerant superstitions, which, during so many ages, eclipsed the reason and morals of mankind, and obscured, in clouds of lust and cruelty, the bright rays of evangelical truth, were the sad effects of irrational solitude. The best affections of nature were perverted or suppressed; all the gentle offices of humanity were neglected; moral sentiments despised; and the angel voice of piety unheard, or converted into the violent vociferations of hatred, and the cries of persecution. The loud clangors of pretended orthodoxy resounded with sanguinary hostilities from shore to shore; the earth was deluged with the blood of those who dared to deny, or even to doubt the absurd and idle dogmas which the monks every where invented: and their horrid barbarities were attempted to be justified by propagating the notion that severity with heretics was the only mode of preserving the true faith. Oh! how blind is human folly! How obdurate are hearts vitiated by pride! How can that be the true faith which tears asunder every social tie; annihilates all the feelings of nature; places cruelty and horror on the throne of humanity and love, and scatters ferocious fury and insatiable hatred through the paths of life? But we may now indulge a pleasing hope, that the period is at hand, when the sacred temple of religion, purified by the labors of learned and truly pious men, from the foul stains with which fanaticism and ambition have so long defaced it, shall be restored to its own divine simplicity; and only the voice of gentleness, of love, of peace of virtue, and of goodness, be heard within its walls. Then will every Christian be truly taught the only means by which his days may be useful and his life happy; and Catholics, Lutherans, Calvinists, Protestants, and every really religious class of men, will unite in acts of sincere benevolence and universal peace. No austere, gloomy, and dispiriting duties: no irrational penances and unnatural mortification, will be enjoined; no intolerant cruelties be inflicted; no unsocial institutions established; no rites of solitary selfishness be required; but reason and religion in divine perfection, will reassume their reign; and unaffected and sincere devotion will occupy every mind; the Almighty will be worshipped _in spirit_ and _in truth_; and we shall be convinced that “the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest; but that the work of righteousness is peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietude and assurance for ever.” To effect this, a rational retirement from the tumults of the world will be occasionally necessary, in order to _commune with our own hearts, and be still_, and to dispose our minds to such a train of thinking, as shall prepare us, when the giddy whirl of life is finished for the society of more exalted spirits.

Oh! would mankind but make fair truth their guide, And force the helm from prejudice and pride, Were once these maxims fix’d, that God’s our friend, Virtue our good, and happiness our end, How soon must reason o’er the world prevail, And error, fraud and superstition fail! None would hereafter, then, with groundless fear, Describe th’ Almighty cruel and severe; Predestinating some, without pretence, To heaven; and some to hell, for no offence; Inflicting endless pains for transient crimes, And favoring sects or nations, men or times. To please him, none would foolishly forbear, Or food, or rest, or itch in shirts of hair: Or deem it merit to believe, or teach, What reason contradicts or cannot reach. None would fierce zeal for piety mistake, Or malice, for whatever tenet’s sake; Or think salvation to one sect confin’d, And heaven too narrow to contain mankind. No more would brutal rage disturb our peace, But envy, hatred, war, and discord cease; Our own and others’ good each hour employ, And all things smile with universal joy; Fair virtue then, with pure religion join’d, Would regulate and bless the human mind, And man be what his Maker first design’d.