VOLUME VII.

[Madame de Récamier] After the painting by Baron François Pascal Gérard.
[Abélard Teaching in the Paraclete] After the painting by A. Steinheil.
[Joan of Arc Hears the Voices] After the painting by Eugene Thirion.
[The Vision of St. Therese] After the painting by Jean Brunet.
[Reception of the Great Condé by Louis XIV] After the painting by J. L. Gérôme.
[Ministerial Conference of Louis XIV. at the Salon of Madam de Maintenon] After the painting by John Gilbert.
[John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough] After the painting by Pieter van der Werff, Pitti Palace, Florence.
[Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough] After the painting by Sir Godfrey Kneller.
[Mme. de Récamier] After the painting by Mlle. Morin
[Madame de Staël] After the painting by Mlle. de Godefroid, Versailles.
[Garrick and His Wife] After the painting by William Hogarth.
[Hannah More] After the painting by H.W. Pickersgill, A.R.A..

BEACON LIGHTS OF HISTORY

HÉLOÏSE.

A.D. 1101-1164.

LOVE.

When Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, they yet found one flower, wherever they wandered, blooming in perpetual beauty. This flower represents a great certitude, without which few would be happy,--subtile, mysterious, inexplicable,--a great boon recognized alike by poets and moralists, Pagan and Christian; yea, identified not only with happiness, but human existence, and pertaining to the soul in its highest aspirations. Allied with the transient and the mortal, even with the weak and corrupt, it is yet immortal in its nature and lofty in its aims,--at once a passion, a sentiment, and an inspiration.

To attempt to describe woman without this element of our complex nature, which constitutes her peculiar fascination, is like trying to act the tragedy of Hamlet without Hamlet himself,--an absurdity; a picture without a central figure, a novel without a heroine, a religion without a sacrifice. My subject is not without its difficulties. The passion or sentiment I describe is degrading when perverted, as it is exalting when pure. Yet it is not vice I would paint, but virtue; not weakness, but strength; not the transient, but the permanent; not the mortal, but the immortal,--all that is ennobling in the aspiring soul.