As to the causes of the sudden changes of wind, and of storms, they are as yet shrouded in mystery, and we cannot have much expectation that in our lifetime, at least, much will be done to unravel the web. Meteorology is a very young science—if it deserves [{214}] the title of science at all—and until observations for a long series of years shall have been made at many stations, we shall not be in the possession of trustworthy facts on which to ground our reasoning. It is merely shoving the difficulty a step further off to assign these irregular variations to atmospheric waves. It will be time enough to reason accurately about the weather and its changes when we ascertain what these atmospheric waves are, and what causes them. Until the "astro-meteorologists" will tell us the principles on which their calculations are based, we must decline to receive their predictions as worthy of any credence whatever.
From The Month.
EUGÉNIE AND MAURICE DE GUÉRIN.
The life of Eugénie de Guérin forms a great contrast with those which are generally brought before the notice of the world. Not only did she not seek for fame, but the circumstances of her life were the very ones which generally tend to keep a woman in obscurity. Her life was passed in the deepest retirement of a country home. The society even of a provincial town was not within her reach. Poverty placed a bar between her and the means for study in congenial society. The routine of her life shut her out from great deeds or unusual achievements. In fact, her life, so far from being a deviation from the ordinary track which women have to tread, was a very type of the existence which seems to be marked out for the majority of women, and at which they are so often wont to murmur. The want of an aim in life, the necessity of some fixed, engrossing occupation, and the ennui which follows on the deprivation of these, forms the staple trial of thousands of women, especially in England, where there is much intellectual vigor with so little power for its exercise. That the reaction from this deprivation is shown by "fastness," or an excessive love of dress and amusement, is acknowledged by the most keen observers of human nature. But to the large class of women who, disdaining such means of distraction, bear their burden patiently, Eugénie de Guérin's Journal et Lettres possess an intense interest. Her life was so uneventful that it absolutely affords no materials for a biography, but her character is so full of interest that her name is now a familiar one in England and France.
Far away in the heart of sunny Languedoc stands the chateau of Le Cayla, the home of the de Guérins. They were of noble blood. The old chateau was full of reminiscences of the deeds of their ancestors. De Guérin, Bishop of Senlis and Chancellor of France, had gone forth, with a valor scarcely befitting his episcopal character, to animate the troops at the battle of Bouvines; and from the walls of Le Cayla looked down from his portrait de Guérin, Grand Master of the Knights of Malta in 1206. A cardinal, a troubadour, and countless gallant and noble soldiers filled up the family rolls—the best blood in France had mingled with theirs; but now the family were obscure, forgotten, and poor. But these circumstances were no hindrances to the happiness of Eugénie's early life.
"My childhood passed away like one long summer-day," said she [{215}] afterward. Thirteen happy years fled by. There was the father, cherished with tender, self-forgetting love; the brother Eranbert; the sister Marie, the youngest pet of the household; the beautiful and precocious Maurice; and the mother, the centre of all, loving and beloved. But a shadow suddenly fell on the sunny landscape, and Madame de Guérin lay on her death-bed, when, calling to her Eugénie, her eldest child, she gave to her especial charge Maurice, then aged seven, and his mother's darling. The dying lips bade Eugénie fill a mother's place to him, and the sensitive and enthusiastic girl received the words into her heart, and never forgot them.
From that day her childhood, almost her youth, ended; and it is without exaggeration we may say that the depth of maternal love passed into her heart. Henceforth Maurice was the one object and the absorbing thought of her heart, second only to one other, and that no love of earth. Sometimes, indeed, that passionate devotion to Maurice disputed the sway of the true Master, as we shall hereafter see, but it was never ultimately victorious. It was not likely that their lives should for long run side by side. The extraordinary brilliancy of Maurice's gifts made his father determine upon cultivating his mind. As soon as possible, he was sent first to the petit séminaire at Toulouse, and then to the college Stanislaus at Paris.
Maurice de Guérin was a singularly endowed being. He possessed that kind of personal beauty so very rare among men, and which is so hard to describe—a spiritual beauty, which insensibly draws the hearts of others to its possessor. Added to this, he had that sweetness of tone and manner, that instinctive power of sympathy, that sparkling brilliance which made him idolized by those who knew him, which rendered him literally the darling of his friends. "Il était leur vie," said those who spoke of him after he was gone from earth.
The early and ardent aspirations of this gifted being were turned heavenward. His youthful head was devoutly bowed in prayer. The country people called him "le jeune saint;" and his conduct at the petit séminaire gave such satisfaction that the Archbishop of Toulouse, and also the Archbishop of Rouen, offered to take the whole charge of his future education on themselves; but his father refused both. The temptations of a college life had left him scathless, and the longing of his soul was for the consecration of the priesthood. What he might have been, had he fallen into other hands, cannot now be known. Whether there was an inherent weakness and effeminacy in the character which would have unfitted him for the awful responsibilities of the priestly office, we know not. At all events, he was attracted, as many minds of undoubted superiority were at that time, by the extraordinary brilliancy and commanding genius of de Lamennais; and Maurice de Guérin found himself in the solitude of La Chesnaie, a fellow-student with Hippolyte Lacordaire, Montalembert, Saint-Beuve, and a group of others. Here some years of his life were spent, divided between prayer, study, and brilliant conversation, led and sustained by M. de Lamennais. Maurice, of a shy and diffident disposition, does not seem to have attached himself to Lamennais, although he admired and looked up to him, and although the insidious portion of his teaching was making havoc with his faith.
And now, it may be asked, what of Eugénie? Dwelling in an obscure province, with no other living guide than a simple parish curé, with a natural enthusiastic reverence for genius, and a predilection for all Maurice's friends, was she not dazzled from afar off by this great teacher of men's minds, this earnest reformer of abuses? The instinct of the single in heart was hers. Long ere others had discerned the canker eating away the fruit so fair to look on, Eugénie, with prophetic voice, was warning Maurice. [{216}] Lacordaire's noble soul was yet ensnared. Madam Swetchine's remonstrances had not yet prevailed; while this young girl in the country, whose name no one knew, was watching and praying for the issue of the deliberations at La Chesnaie.