Footnotes:


[Footnote 1: _One Poor Scruple._ By Mrs. Wilfrid Ward. London: Longmans,
1899.]

[Footnote 2: We do not mean to imply that there is any close
etymological relation between these two uses of the term.]



XVI.


A LIFE OF DE LAMENNAIS.

The appearance of a work by the Hon. W. Gibson on _The Abbé de
Lamennais, and the Catholic Liberal Movement in France_, invites us to a
new attempt to grapple with a problem which has so far met with no
satisfactory solution, and probably never will. Up to a certain point we
seem to follow more or less intelligently the working of the restless
soul of De Lamennais; but at the last and great crisis of his life we
find all our calculations at fault; "we try to understand him; we wish
that penetrating into the inmost recesses of his wounded soul, we could
force it to yield up its secret, and once more sympathize with him,
perhaps console him; but we cannot. He is an enigma, as impenetrable as
the rocks on his native shore."