XXX BIOGr.APHICAL SKETCH. 



common hall. The fare in the refectory is of the plainest, no 

 flesh being allowed throughout tlic j-ear : besides this, through- 

 out about eight months of the year, fasting is enjoined. The time 

 of the monks is spent in a routine of soHtary meditations and oral 

 religious exercises ; the ancient rule ip : " Maneant singuli in cdlis 

 suii^, die ac node, in lege Domini mcilitanfes : " — " let every man re- 

 main in his cell, day and night, meditating in tlie law of the Lord." 

 This, of course, is construed with some regard to the necessities 

 of human nature; butin actual practice two hours each day of 

 solitary meditation are exacted of the initiated. 



The chief and primary object of the Order is c()ntemi)lution. 

 But a secondary and incidental object is preaching. And it may 

 easily be believed that such a regimen as has been descril)ed, in 

 the case of those robust constitutions which it does not break 

 down, and those refined and energetic minds which it does not 

 decoy into mere intellectual and spiritual indolence and sluggish- 

 ness, may well result in producing great preachers. Certain it is, 

 that when, two years after Charles Loyson had disappeared froni^ 

 the world behind the walls of the convent at Broussey, there 

 emerged, in a pulpit at Lyons, the form of one Father Hyacinthe, 

 tlie Catholic Church of France at once recognized its prophet. 



If we pause now, for a moment, to look back on this career, it 

 will hardly seem like the prophecy of world-famous achievements 

 in the public preaching of the Gospel. Father Hyacinthe had 

 lired for thirty-four 3'ears with the faculties and instincts of a 

 great orator, of which it would seem impossil)le to be unconscious, 

 growing and stirring within him, and yet iii) to this time his 

 .voice had never been lifted up in any more public discourse tiian 

 that of a theological professor to his knot of students. We can- 

 not but admire, either the self-restraint, or the power of ecclesi- 

 astical discipline, which could seal up, as with the seal of Solo- 

 mon, in so small a vase, a genius which, once let the seal be l)ro- 

 ken, was to fdl the world with its ])resence and influence. 



If the question arises in any mind I)y what considerations such 

 a man could have been induced to bind himself undei: the rigors 

 of so austere and arbitrar}- and disabling a discii)line, it will not 



