the bloom of her life and passions, in the midst of all that was ready to crowd about her, and admire her, and love her, did this noble creature, no less affectionate at heart, than sensitive in every part of her being, devote herself to the living death of a cloister, purely to oblige the wounded egotist, in whom she worshipped the image of a better nature. The mean and envious self-lover was afraid that she would not do it, if he bound himself first: he was wretched enough to tell her so; she blushed for him, and went before. Let us quote here the account given by the Rev. Mr. Berington, a sincere and cordial writer, worthy to speak of the cordial and sincere. His translations from the letters of Eloisa do not equal the originals in force and beauty-a point which he would assuredly concede; but it is a pleasure to hear such a man give his account of this touching event. "Heloisa had not reached her twentieth year. In the vigour of youth and the prime of beauty, could it be supposed, that she also must see charms in a cell, or that she would be inclined to turn her back on a world, with which she had hardly made acquaintance, and which, notwithstanding, had expressed a strong partiality for her character, and an admiration of her talents? But the selfish eunuch knew the excess of her love for him, and of this he would avail himself: could she be his companion no longer, the remainder of her days should be devoted to solitude, and the pure colloquy of angels.— It is not said, how Heloisa received this generous proposal; but, as we know from her own letters, that the natural dispositions of her mind were averse from the cloister, it is probable she would expostulate with Abeillard: she would assure him of her unalterable regard; that it should never be in the power of man to divide her heart; that the world should evermore be hateful to her; but that, as she felt no inclination to the veil, she hoped she might be permitted to spend her life, a voluntary recluse, without the tie of eternal vows, within the walls of Argenteuil. ་ "The proud man was irritated by this gentle expostulation, and he ordered her instantly to comply.* Heloisa assented. It was not religion,' says she, which called me to the cloisters: I was then in the bloom of youth; but you ordered, and I obeyed.'-The sacrifice was not yet complete. She had, indeed, promised to comply with his injunctions; but was he sure, should he first engage himself, and leave her at liberty, that she might not violate her promise, and return to the world? He was therefore cruel enough to signify his suspicions, and to insist, that she bound herself first. When you had resolved to quit the world,' she says to him, I followed you; rather I ran before you. It seems, you had the image of the patriarch's wife before your eyes: you feared I might look back, and therefore, before you could surrender your own liberty, I was to be devoted. In that one instance, I confess, your mistrust of me tore my heart: Abeillard, I blushed for you, Heaven knows, had I seen you hastening to perdition, at a single word, I should not have hesitated to have followed, or to have preceded you. My soul was no longer in my own possession.'+ "Having submitted also to this harsh demand, and choosing the abbey of Argenteuil for her long residence, a day was fixed for the solemn ceremony of her profession. "It was, by this time, no longer a secret, that Abeillard and Heloisa had been married: the story of their adventures was generally known; it was known what had instigated Fulbert to his savage revenge; and it was now known, that the lovers were retiring from the world, and that the places of their abode were chosen. "The day came. Curiosity had drawn crowds to Argenteuil. The bishop of Paris officiated in the ceremony; and having blessed the holy veil, which * Hist. Calam. Ep. Helois. 1a. + Ep. Hel. 1a. was to cover the head of the victim, he laid it on the altar. The assembly stood in silent expectation: the gates of the cloister opened, and Heloisa came forward. She was clothed in the becoming dress of the order; her attitude marked resignation to her fate; and the hand of affliction had given to her features an angelic softness. As by a mechanical impulse, every bosom thrilled with compassion: it had been whispered that her sacrifice was involuntary: numbers pressed round her; and her approach to the altar was impeded. They begged her not to proceed; they urged the fatality of the step; they accused her pretended friends of cruelty; they spoke of her beauty, of her charms, of her talents, and of the horrors of a cloister. Heloisa was visibly affected; but not by their expostulations: the fate of Abeillard alone, who was soon to tread the same mournful path, hung heavy on her heart: tears rolled down her cheeks; and, in broken accents, she was heard to pronounce the words of Cornelia : Hoc juris habebat 'O maxime conjux ! LUCAN. Phar. 1. 8. "Uttering these last words as she strove to advance, the crowd separated: her resolution rose fuller on her countenance; she mounted the steps of the altar: put her hand on the veil, with which she covered her face; and pronounced distinctly the fatal vows, which were to sever her from the world and Abeillard for ever.t "The heroism of this action has seldom, I believe, been equalled. But love and the peculiar strength of her mind, would have carried Heloisa even to more arduous sacrifices, had they been presented to her.-It will be said, that her mind, at the awful moment of giving herself to God, was not in the disposition of a Christian votary; that it more resembled a pagan sacrifice; and that, instead of the pious sentiments, agreeable to the occasion, which her mouth should have uttered, she profanely repeated the lines, which Cornelia, with a dagger in her hand, addressed to the manes of Pompey, when she received the news of his death.-It is true: nor did Heloisa, either at the time of taking the veil, or afterwards in life, ever pretend that she had any thing in view, than merely to obey the command of Abeillard. To have acted a part, inconsistent with this object, became not her character: she wished not to introduce the affectation of religion, where nothing religious was meant: the honesty and candour of her mind revolted at the thought. Indeed, it is manifest, had Abeillard but hinted that the action would have pleased him more, with a Roman countenance, she would have met the point of a dagger, or have swallowed the deadly hemlock. "Years afterwards, turning to this event, she says to Abeillard: I obeyed, Sir, the last tittle of all your commands; and so far was I unable to oppose them, that, to comply with your wishes, I could bear to sacrifice myself. One thing remains, which is still greater, and will hardly be credited: my love for you had risen to such a degree of phrensy, that to please you, it even deprived itself of what alone in the universe it valued (himself), and that for ever. No sooner did I receive your commands, than I quitted at once the dress of the world, and with it all the reluctance of my nature. I meant that you should be the sole possessor of whatever I had once a right to call my own. Heaven knows, in all my love, it was you, and you only, that I sought for whilst together we enjoyed the pleasures, which love affords, the motives of my attachment were to others uncertain. The event has proved on what principle I started. To obey you I sacrificed all my pleasures: I reserved nothing, the Pope only excepted, that so I should become more perfectly your own.-For this sacrifice, if I have no merit in your eyes, vain indeed is all ny labour! From God I can look for no reward, for whose sake, it is plain, I have as yet done nothing."-Through the whole course of my life, she says in another letter, Heaven knows what have been my dispositions. It was you, and not God, whom I feared most to offend; you, and not God, I was most anxious to please. My mind is still unaltered. It was no love of him, but solely your command which drew me to Argenteuil. How miserable then my condition, if, undergoing so much, I have no prospect of a reward hereafter! By appearances, you may have been deceived like others you ascribed to the impressions of religion, what sprang from another source.'+ : "Used to contemplate, in ourselves and others, human nature, as cast in common moulds, we view its eccentricities with the mixed emotions of astonishment and pleasure. Of this description was Heloisa. She was born in a century remarkable for ignorance and a blind attachment to the weakest follies; her education, within the walls of a convent, had been little adapted to improve her understanding, or to enlarge her heart; and, at the time she began and finished the bold tragedy I have described, the blossom of life was but in its first stage of expansion: yet already she was learned, to the admiration of France, and her mind had acquired a boldness of conception, and a sufficiency in itself, which carried her far beyond the ideas of her sex, and the adopted maxims of the age. In the most brilliant days of Roman greatness, Heloisa would have been a splendid character.-Her notions of moral and religious duty may be deemed too free: but my surprise rather is from whence she could have drawn them. She had read, we know, the Scriptures, and she had meditated on the works of the fathers of the church: but as, in the sense and application of the doctrine they contained, she was told to adhere to low comments and trifling interpretations, her mind was unsatisfied: she did not find in them that sublimity of thought and fulness of idea, which could meet the expanding energy of her soul.-She turned to the composi tions of the old philosophers; and she dwelt, with rapture, on the poets of Greece and Rome. Here she was free to range, unshackled by rules, and unoppressed by authority. In them the romantic cast of her soul found something which accorded with its feelings; and she became the disciple of Epicurus, of Seneca, and of Ovid, without perceiving that she had quitted the amiable purity of the Christian scheme, and the severer morality of ecclesiastical discipline." We need not enter upon the connexion which afterwards took place between these celebrated persons on a very different ground, (Abelard being then an abbot, and Eloisa taking possession of a convent he had left, as abbess with her nuns.) Their respective characters remained the same. One thing they only always partook in common, which was a liberal theology; Abelard going to an extreme, only on the side of a frightened and selfish repentance; and Eloisa on that of exclamation against Providence, which gave way to the most touching humility. Her candour and good sense are always charming. She never pretends that she took to a religious life for the sake of religion. She hopes to go to heaven, because people love one another there; but says, that she would be content, as she ought to be, with the lowest place. When she applied to Abelard for a monastic rule, or system for her nuns to live by, she made remarks on human nature and what was due to it, worthy of a period of enlightened philosophy; and Abelard, upon the whole, did not do them injustice. The superiority of her letters, even in point of style, is remarkable. Eloisa writes like a man with a woman's heart; Abelard like a crabbed schoolmaster. All the writings he has left us are reckoned disproportionate to his fame; but it is justly considered probable, that his talent for disputation would not have been so renowned, had it not been superior to what his works remain to show. His disputatiousness, and all his other vanity, flourished as long as they had a crevice to issue forth at; and when he finally withdrew into his cell to die, there is no evidence that his thoughts of Eloisa were a jot more unselfish than ever. As for hers, love in her bosom survived every thing, even the shock of discovering that he was ungenerous. The habit of loving remained, as it is too apt to do for their peace in affectionate hearts, when the reason for it was feared to be imaginary. Love is clung to for its own sake;—gratitude and sweet memories are too sweet to part with, as long as a doubt and a possibility can be brought in to retain them. Eloisa prayed over the tomb of her husband to the last, which was twenty years after his death; and she directed her body to be placed in the same grave. We know not whether the legend of his opening his arms to receive her, be agreeable or not, now that his character is known. Supposing his disposition to remain, it looks as if he again took possession of his victim. Supposing it to be altered in the profound self-knowledge of the grave, the fiction is reconciling and beautiful. One can imagine her to have suffered willingly, even for that mortal acknowledgment. Eloisa and Abelard had an interview, the first after their separation, when she was in her eight-and-twentieth year, and he in his fiftieth. She was yet a blooming and a charming woman, with thoughts never ceasing to revert to the past;-he a cold, querulous, and withered elder. This beats the famous interview between the Princess Amelia of Prussia, and Baron Trenck; for though the interval was much greater, and both had grown old, yet it was both that had grown old. There was an equal look in their misfortunes; and they could sympathise with each other. What must have been Eloisa's feelings, when the cold monk gave her his paternal benediction? We would fain have concluded our article at the paragraph just before; but it appeared due to its truth and proper effect to finish with this contrast. THE WOOD-STORM. WHEN to the wind the firm oak's stately form That shrill sound heard amid the tempest's pause, clear, While its dread breath anew the spent blast draws:- J. "Did you never observe, while rocking winds are piping loud,' that pause, as the gust is re-collecting itself, and rising upon the ear in a shrill and plaintive note, like the swell of an Eolian harp? I do assure you there is nothing in the world so like the voice of a spirit."-Letter of Gray. THE IRISH ELECTIONS. THE representative system of England is a "mingled web of good and ill together." Viewed in its most brilliant aspect, it stands alone, a stupendous monument of political good luck : considered in the numerous abuses with which it is overlaid, it is pregnant with ridicule, and abundant in absurdity. The moment of a general election, when it is attempted to infuse new life into an assembly worn out and effete from its septennial longevity, brings the merits and the demerits of the system alike into prominent relief, and strikingly illustrates the strong and weak points of the national character. Assuredly it is not the precise time at which the system can be said " to work well," nor that in which the morality of "the most moral people of Europe" is seen to the greatest advantage; yet from the very depth of its shades there break forth occasional lights, of no ordinary intensity, to illuminate the political prospects of the country; and in the veriest sinks of corruption, a zeal, an ardour, a perseverance, and a devotion spring up, which afford undeniable evidence that the cause of liberty is not yet lost. The guarantees of freedom are less in the institutes than in the morals of a people; and public opinion, well asserted, will triumph over the most malignant combinations of circumstance. It is therefore gratifying to observe that in the late elections, the growing intelligence of the people has exercised a decided and a salutary influence on the returns ; that the sense and spirit of the nation have risen superior to the bribery and corruption which have been engrafted upon our institutions; and that, wherever the least popular principle is infused into the elective franchise, strenuous efforts have been made to restore purity of election, and to send to parliament real representatives of the people. Those disgusting appeals to the prejudices and the madness of the multitude, which have heretofore been so successfully employed in misleading men from their public interests, have, in the present instance, most egregiously failed of their purpose. Strong grounds of principle have been taken; pledges have been demanded for the future conduct of candidates; and their merits have been appreciated less by their adherence to political factions, or the more equivocal test of parentage and descent. Where a good principle exists, no matter how neutralized and impeded by ill, there is ground for hope; for it is impossible to say how soon some unobserved circumstance, some unforeseen combination may call it into exercise and awaken its energies. In Ireland, the recent elections have singularly illustrated this truth; and in the turn which they have taken, a political change has occurred that may almost be qualified a revolution, and which it is most important that the people of England should thoroughly understand. An Irish election is made up of far different elements, and exhibits far different phenomena, from those which may be traced on the English side of the Channel. In all the counties of Ireland the effective strength of the candidate lies in the forty-shilling freeholders, whose number is artificially raised, till it reduces the larger holders to insignificancy. The condition of this class of persons is altogether different from that of the individuals bearing the same denomination in England. In Ireland the |