obliged to confess that in that as in many other respects he had the advantage of me, and we continued our discourse in his native tongue, which strangely enough had become less familiar to him than the language of Cicero, which for centuries has ceased to be ranked among living languages. Such facility in the use of the Latin is much more common in Catholic countries, expecially in the eastern part of Europe, than the Protestant world generally supposes. The lectures in the Roman college are almost entirely given in Latin, and in a journey which I made a few weeks since from Trieste to Vienna I made the acquaintance of two young priests who conversed in Latin with each other all the way and with as much fluency and freedom as if it had been their mother tongue, though neither spoke a word of Italian and neither had ever been in Rome.

The Abbé has built up an immense printing establishment here, the features of which are that it is devoted entirely to ecclesiastical science; that every volume for the sake of economy is printed in the same form, quarto; and that every work or collection of works is designed to be as complete as it can possibly be made: and when his cours is complete he designs that it shall embrace all ecclesiastical science to its uttermost boundaries. But a still more remarkable feature of his operations is that he has built up his business, now a colossal one, without a cent of capital to start with and entirely upon his credit with the clergy.

He began twenty years ago with the publication of his Cours complet de Théologie in twenty-five volumes, which he published by subscription. He followed that with his Cours complet d'Ecriture Sainte. The cheapness, accuracy, and general excellence of his publications were immediately appreciated, and his sales soon put him in funds sufficient for an extension of his plans. He went on and published a collection, integral and universal, of the sacred orators of the first and second order, and an integral or assorted collection of most of those of the second order, arranged chronologically so as to present at a glance the history of preaching in France for three centuries, with its commencement, its progress, its apogee, its decline, and its revival. The first series appeared in sixty-seven volumes quarto for sixty-seven dollars; and the second, embracing the most celebrated preachers who have illustrated the French pulpit since 1789, the most remarkable diocesan addresses of the archbishops and bishops of France, Savoy, and Belgium; sermons of twenty-three of the best con

temporary preachers; and a collection of the best pulpit exhortations ancient and modern - is published in thirty-three volumes for thirty-three dollars. He has also published the complete works of Saint François de Sales; of Cardinal de Berulle; of Olier, the preceptor of Fénelon; of Tronson; of Fénelon; of Lantages; of Boudot; of Bossuet; of Bourdaloue; of Fléchier; of Massillon; of de La Chétardie; of de La Tour; of Baudran; of de Pressy; of de Bergier; of de Pompignan; of Régnier; of Thibault, and I cannot undertake to say how many more nobles and ignobles of the Latin Church, and which he sells at lower prices than they can be bought at in any other form whatsoever.

But the Abbé's greatest enterprise is his Cours complet de Patrologie, or as he terms it, his universal, complete, uniform, convenient and economical library of all the Holy Fathers, doctors, and ecclesiastical writers, Greek and Latin, for the first twelve centuries of the Christian church. To this collection is added over two hundred tables of reference to the contents, the most complete apparatus for consultation perhaps that was ever provided for any publication. There are alphabetical, chronological, statistical, synthetical, analytical, analogical, and various other kinds of tables, besides two specially worthy of mention. By the aid of one the reader may see at a glance, not only what one Father but what all the Fathers have written on a given subject. By the other he may see by what Fathers and in what places any of the Fathers have commented on any of the verses of the Bible, from the first of Genesis to the last of the Apocalypse. Two hundred and seventeen volumes of the Latin Fathers going from Tertullian to Innocent III are finished, embracing about three thousand authors and costing only five francs, the equivalent of one dollar, a volume, if taken entire, or six francs for a single volume. Sixty volumes of the Greek patrology in Greek and Latin and thirty in Latin only have yet appeared. When complete it will embrace all the fathers, doctors and writers of the Greek church from St. Barnabas to Photius, and occupy a hundred volumes to cost from eight to nine francs apiece.

These works, I judge from the Abbé's account, are prepared with infinite care to insure completeness and accuracy. He has over a thousand scholars employed in preparing matter for his presses, in ransacking the libraries and manuscript repositories of Europe. He advertises frequently for works which he knows to have existed and which are therefore necessary to make his

publications complete; and he has now a standing offer of twenty francs before the public for any information of the whereabouts of a letter of St. Francis "On the Power of Demons.

He thus describes his mode of securing accuracy. We begin by preparing the copy from one end of the work to the other to the last word. It is then read in type by the copy thus prepared. It is read a second time after corrections, then a third, and then a fourth, and finally a fifth. These revisions are to make sure that none of the errors marked by the proofreaders have been overlooked or erroneously corrected. After this there are one or two revisions before stereotyping, after which follows another reading before the book is put to press; so that the proofreading and corrections cost as much as the composition.

On the 10th of January 1867 I took leave of Paris and France, sent the members of my family that were then with me to the railway station with our personal baggage, and took a cab for myself to make a few farewell calls. The most important of these was upon Professor Laboulaye of the Institute of France, whom I was fortunate enough to find in his apartment. During my brief visit, he showed me with pride an ink-stand of silver presented to him by his political admirers at Strasbourg, who in a note which he read to me with great satisfaction announced him as their perpetual candidate for the Corps Législatif. Before leaving, I reminded him of a promise he had once made me to ascertain whether I had been right in my conjecture that the manuscript of the autobiography of my most illustrious predecessor in the French embassy was in France. His answer gave me the impression that he had not given the subject much thought; but he kindly promised to give it his immediate attention, and said he did not doubt of his success in finding it if the manuscript were - as he agreed with me in thinking it probably was in France. Here let me premise that among my guests one day at dinner in Paris; in the summer of 1866, was Professor Laboulaye. He had recently translated and published a selection from the writings of Franklin,' and as he had amiably sent me a copy, it naturally became one of the topics of our conversation. In the course of the entertainment I asked my guests, who as far as I remember were all French gentlemen of letters, if they had ever heard, or if they had any reason to suspect, that the original manuscript of Franklin's autobiography was in France. All answered in the 1 Correspondance de Benjamin Franklin traduite de l'anglais et annotée.

FRANKLIN MEMOIRS

negative. I then assigned some reasons for thinking that unless it had been destroyed, which was in the highest degree improbable, it was somewhere within the limits of the Empire.

Ist. I said I had received the impression some years previous from Mr. Henry Stevens, a professional book-collector in London, that he had seen the manuscript in the hands of a gentleman residing in France, and had only been discouraged from buying it by the price.

2d. Romilly (Sir Samuel) in his diary speaks of having looked through the Autobiography of Franklin while visiting a friend residing at Amiens.

3. If, as this record authorized the belief, the original manuscript had ever been in France, there was every reason to presume it was there still.

4th. It was in the highest degree improbable that a manuscript of that character could be in the United States without its lodging-place being a matter of common notoriety, whereas none of Franklin's numerous biographers or kindred had ever professed to have any trace of it after the death of William Temple Franklin in 1823.

5th. As William Temple Franklin embarked for Europe within a few weeks after the death of his grandfather whose papers he inherited, and who never returned to the United States, the presumption was that he took this manuscript with him, and that it was in Europe, certainly not in the United States.

Mr. Laboulaye seemed impressed by the force of these considerations said he had a friend at Amiens who would be sure to know if any literary treasure of that nature was concealed in the neighbourhood; and if in France, whether at Amiens or not, he felt confident of being able to ascertain the fact through some of his friends in the Institute.

While speaking of Franklin, Mr. Laboulaye rather surprised me by asking if I thought Franklin had been serious in his application for the hand of Madame Helvetius. He did not seem entirely free from doubt on that subject, and whether it was not policy rather than a more tender emotion that prompted the old gentleman's proposal. I could not but laugh at the question but realizing that it was put to me seriously, I told him that the salon of Madame Helvetius was one of the most popular in Paris in those days; that Napoleon I, on his return from his early Italian campaign, did not think his triumph as a general was

complete until he had been received there, that it was one of the resorts in Paris most frequented by people with whom it was important for Franklin in the exercise of his mission to meet casually; and finally, that Madame Helvetius was then already sixty years of age and Franklin over seventy.

On taking leave I gave Mr. Laboulaye my address in London and New York.

I joined my family at the railway station at five p. m, with tickets for Bonn, where I had four children at school and where I arrived the following morning before seven. At nine-twenty in the evening after our arrival we all embarked for London via Dieppe. The passage across the channel was rendered more than usually disagreeable by a violent snow-storm, and some of us landed with wet clothes and feet, pleased enough to be on shore but disappointed to find the cars were not warmed. In due time we reached 117 Jermyn Street, London, where we had often been guests before; and between the warm rooms and the warm supper, the warm welcome of our hostess, and the reunion of all my children around the same table for the first time in many months, our happiness was as nearly complete as it well can be in a part of the world where at that period of the year the sun is invisible most of the time.

The following day, being the Sabbath, we went to the most convenient church, which chanced to be Westminister Abbey. On Monday Mrs. Paulton, a sister of Mrs. Hargreaves, whose husband had been for some years my valued correspondent, called upon us and insisted upon our coming to stay with them in Cleaveland Square.1 It proved to be an invitation more difficult to reject than to accept. The same evening we dined with Mr. and Mrs. Hargreaves.

The first letter that I received upon my arrival in London was from a friend who had returned to his home in Paris from a brief visit to London and had called at my Legation after I had left it.

This was William H. Huntington, who for nearly a generation had been the Paris correspondent of the New York Tribune. Though our acquaintance commenced subsequently to my arrival in Paris in 1861, he became the most intimate of all my

'Mr. Paulton and Mr. Hargreaves were at this time much absorbed in the establishment of an International College with four branches, one in France, one in Italy, one in Germany, besides the one in England.