LITTELL'S LIVING AGE.-No. 474.-18 JUNE, 1853.

POETRY: With a Guitar Homeward Bound, 705; The "Green-Horns".
-Sculptured Vase-"Nothing to do," 706; Spring Cleaning, 754.
SUORT ARTICLES: Mysterious Music, 736; Thomas Chatterton, 754; The
Jackson's Epitaph on his Wife Management of the Finger Nails, 767.

From the British Quarterly Review.

Life and Religious Opinions and Experience of Madame de la Mothe Guyon; together with some account of the Personal History and Religious Opinions of Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray. By 'THOMAS C. UPHAM, Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy in Bowdoin College. 2 vols. New York: Harper and Brothers. 1851.

ing there on which any fire may kindle after divine calm, the fruition of an absolute repose death. It promises a perfect sanctification, a on this side the grave. It has been both persecuted and canonized by kings and pontiffs. In one age the mystic is enrolled among the saints; in another, the inquisitor burns him, or a lettre-de-cachet consigns him to the Bastille. But the principle is indestructible. There always have been, and JEREMY TAYLOR relates, in one of his ser- probably always will be, minds whose religion mons, the following legend: "Saint Lewis assumes spontaneously a mystical character. the king having sent Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, States of society continually recur which necon an embassy, the bishop met a woman on the essarily foster this disposition. There have way, grave, sad, fantastic, and melancholy, been periods in which all the real religion with fire in one hand, and water in the other. existing in a country has been found among He asked what these symbols meant. She its mystics. Then this inward contemplative answered, My purpose is with fire to burn devotion becomes conspicuous as a power Paradise, and with my water to quench the ventures out into public life, and attracts the flames of hell, that men may serve God eye of the historian. Then its protest is without the incentives of hope and fear, and heard against literalism, formality, scholaspurely for the love of God." This fanciful ticism, human ordinances. It reacts strenupersonage may be regarded as the embodiment ously against the corruptions of priesteraft. of that religious idea to which we give the But its voice is heard also discoursing concernname of Quietism. It is the ambition of the ing things unutterable. It speaks as one in a Quietist to attain a state in which self shall dream of the third heaven, and of celestial be practically annihilated in which nothing experiences and revelations fitter for angels shall be desired, nothing feared-in which than for men. Its stammering utterance, the finite nature ignores itself and all crea- confused with excess of rapture, laboring with tures, and recognizes only the Infinite- is emotions too huge or with abstractions too swallowed up and hidden in the effulgence of spiritual for words, is utterly unintelligible. the Divine Majesty. Quietism attempts self- Then it is misrepresented. Mysticism betranscendence by self-annihilation. It calls comes in turn the victim of a reaction on man to become Nothing, that he may be delirium is dieted by persecution—it is condissolved in Ilim who is All. It has many signed once more to secrecy and silence. various names to denote its beloved contrasts There it survives, and spins in obscurity its of self-emptiness and Divine fulness. That mingled tissue of evil and of good. We must reduction of self to an inappreciable quantity not blindly praise it in our hatred of formalism. which it inculcates, is called poverty, simpli- We must not vaguely condemn it in our fication, denudation, indifference, silence, horror of extravagance. quiet, death. That self-finding in God which Mr. Upham has contributed to the literais the immediate consequence of this self-ture of America an interesting and instructive loss, is termed union, transformation, perfec- book. To write the biography of Madame tion, pure love, immersion, absorption, deification.

the

Guyon has been with him a labor of love, and he makes us love him for his labor. To what Mysticism is the romance of religion. Its external section of the Christian community history is bright with stories of dazzling spir- he may belong we know not, but his devout itual adventure, sombre with tragedies of the spirit and large-hearted Christian charity bring soul, stored with records of the achievements him near to our hearts at once. He has and the woes of martyrdom and saintship. It availed himself conscientiously of the best has reconciled the most opposite extremes materials within his reach. His style is calm of theory and practice. In theory it has and equable-almost too much so. His verged repeatedly on pantheism, ego-theism, modest and gentle nature would seem to have nihilism. In practice it has produced some been schooled in the Quietism he records.. of the most glorious examples of humility, The wrongs of Madame Guyon are narrated benevolence, and untiring self-devotion. It by him with a patient forbearance equal to has commanded with its indescribable fasci- that with which she endured them. For unnation the most powerful natures and the most charitableness itself he has abundant charity, feeble-minds lofty with a noble disdain of and the worst malignity of persecution cannot life, or low with a weak disgust of it. If the provoke him to asperity or carry him away self-torture it exacts be terrible, the reward it with indignation. In his sympathy with holds out has been found to possess an irre- Madame Guyon, and in his admiration. for sistible attraction. It lays waste the soul her character as a whole, we fully agree with with purgatorial pains, but it is to leave noth-him. In his estimate of her Quietism and of

Quietism generally, we differ. We shall find occasion, as we proceed, to show why we think him wrong in regarding Quietism and the highest Christian spirituality as identical. In his anxiety to do justice to Madame Guyon, he has transposed and paraphrased ner language, softened many expressions, and omitted others. He underrates, we think, the allowance which thoughtful readers will be disposed to make for her. It would have been more satisfactory had he represented her to us just as she was, without veiling a single extravagance. There is a nobleness in her which would survive the disclosure, and preserve for her memory a place in the affection of every liberal mind. The biographer might have appended to her exact words whatever explanation or comment he thought necessary, leaving his readers to judge for themselves. The best course would have been, to have placed occasionally side by side with her meditations some of the rhapsodies of Angela de Foligni or St. Theresa. It would then have been seen, that, in comparison with these be-praised and sainted devotees, the persecuted Madame Guyon was sobriety itself. Thus instructed, the Protestant would be placed in a position to do her full justice. But, ignorant of mysticism generally, and of the expressions to which Romanist mystical writers had long been accustomed, he would see in Madame Guyon standing alone only a monster of extravagance. Professor Upham, however, has brought much less information of this kind to his subject than could have been desired. The particular form of mysticism which goes by the name of Quietism can only be thoroughly understood by a comparison with some of the other developments of its common principle.

powerful stimulant. There she read of hu-
miliations and austerities numberless, of
charities lavished with a princely munifi-
cence, of visions enjoyed and miracles wrought
in honor of those saintly virtues, and of the
intrepidity with which the famous enthusiast
wrote with a red-hot iron on her bosom the
characters of the holy name Jesus. The girl
of twelve years old was bent on copying these
achievements on her little scale.
She re-
lieved, taught, and waited on the poor; and,
for lack of the red-hot iron or the courage,
sewed on to her breast with a large needle a
piece of paper containing the name of Christ.
She even forged a letter to secure her ad-
mission to a conventual establishment as a
nun. The deceit was immediately detected;
but the attempt shows how much more favor-
able was the religious atmosphere in which
she grew up to the prosperity of convents
than to the inculcation of truth.

With ripening years religion gave place to
vanity. Her handsome person and brilliant
conversational powers fitted her to shine in
society. She began to love dress, and feel
jealous of rival beauties. Like St. Theresa,
at the same age, she sat up far into the night
devouring romances.
Her autobiography
records her experience of the mischievous
effects of those tales of chivalry and passion.
When nearly sixteen, it was arranged that
she should marry the wealthy M. Guyon.
This gentleman, whom she had seen but three
days before her marriage, was twenty-two
years older than herself.

The faults she had were of no very grave description, but her husband's house was destined to prove for several years a pitiless school for their correction. He lived with his mother, a vulgar and hard-hearted woman. Jeane Marie Bouviéres de la Mothe was Her low and penurious habits were unaffected born on Easter-eve, April 13th, 1648, at by their wealth; and in the midst of riches, Montargis. Her sickly childhood was dis- she was happiest scolding in the kitchen tinguished by precocious imitations of that about some farthing matter. She appears to religious life which was held in honor by have hated Madame Guyon with all the every one around her. She loved to be dressed strength of her narrow mind. M. Guvon in the habit of a little nun. When little loved his wife after his selfish sort. If she more than four years old she longed for mar- was ill, he was inconsolable. If any one spoke tyrdom. Her school-fellows placed her on against her, he flew into a passion; yet, at her knees on a white cloth, flourished a sabre the instigation of his mother, he was continover her head, and told her to prepare for the ually treating her with harshness. An artful stroke. A shout of triumphant laughter fol- servant girl, who tended his gouty leg, was lowed the failure of the child's courage. She permitted daily to mortify and insult his was neglected by her mother, and knocked wife. Madame Guyon had been accustomed about by a spoiled brother. When not at at home to elegance and refinement - beneath school she was the pet or the victim of ser-her husband's roof she found politeness convants. She began to grow irritable from ill- temned and rebuked as pride. When she treatment, and insincere from fear. When spoke she had been listened to with attention ten years old she found a Bible in her sick- now she could not open her mouth without room, and read it, she says, from morning to contradiction. She was charged with prenight, committing to memory the historical suming to show them how to talk, reproved parts. Some of the writings of St. Francis for disputatious forwardness, and rudely de Sales, and the Life of Madame de Chantal, silenced. She could never go to see her pa fell in her way. The latter work proved a rents without having bitter speeches to bear