what he had written, and felt an author's pride in his work. It was a complete indictment against Ultramontane policy and its dogmas; it set forth how, through the agency of the Jesuits, the Catholic spirit of the Christian Church had been subverted; how new dogmas, devised for worldly objects, had been laid upon the primitive faith taught by the Apostles; and how he, Bongrand, did not recognise the religion of Chiffoin as having any affinity with that inculcated by Bishop Beauharnais. In sum, Jérôme Bongrand declared he would appeal to Rome. Many another priest has argued as he thus did in the generous ardour of youthful illusion, and many another has behaved with the combative rashness which he showed after he had written his indictment, for he resolved to make it public. If Chiffoin alone were to see it, nobody would be any the wiser for the protest he had raised against Jesuitical despotism; whereas Bongrand wanted all the world to judge between him and those whom he accused of wrong-doing. So he spent the latter part of the evening in making two copies of his letter, and having reserved one for the vicargeneral, addressed the others to two influential newspapers, one in the diocese, the other in Paris. Then he went out with his precious parcels to the post-office.

It was midnight when Jérôme Bongrand had dropped his letters into the box, and he returned to the presbytery with a buoyant step and a light heart. He did not feel as if he had closed his career in the Romish Church for ever. So convinced was he of the justice of his cause, that he pictured himself as obtaining the approval of the Pope for what he had written, and being dignified with the glory of a true Catholic Christian. Alas! he had written nothing new; and the enemies whom he had attacked have over and over again trampled down opposition stronger than that of a poor village curé.

V.

Nevertheless, Bongrand's manifesto, as it was called, did make a great noise in the diocese. It came at a time when some protests against the behaviour of Vicar-General Chiffoin seemed needful; but the objection taken against it by the majority of the clergy was that it was not the protest of a Papist; it might have been signed by a Calvinist or Lutheran, and if it meant anything at all, it was an argument against Romanism. So nobody was surprised to hear that the curé of Farigny had been suspended from his benefice, and had received a summons to appear before the Bishop's Consistorial Court and answer a charge of heresy. Nay, most people opined that Jérôme Bongrand would soon be heard of as having joined the sect of "Old Catholics" revived by Dr. Dollingen and Father Hyacinthe. This seemed the more probable, as it was now announced that his friend Pastor Mercier, and the latter's Calvinist flock, were going to return to Switzerland, whither Bongrand could easily accompany them.

"Ah! that accounts for the fellow's lukewarmness," cried Mongros, the blacksmith, one day, as he was beating a horseshoe into shape in his forge. "I'm hanged if I didn't think there was something loose with himı from the time when he took to herding with those Calvinists."

"Eh, eh, perhaps he means to do as Father Hyacinthe did, and take a wife from among them," observed a jocular farmer whose horse was being shoed.

"Why, who could he find to take him?" asked Mongros, his face flaming from the forge fire. "An unfrocked priest is neither man nor woman."

"Eh, I don't know about that; ask Mdlle. Reine Mercier," laughed the peasant.

She and the curé seem mighty walking side by side down the Ever since that letter appeared

"Reine Mercier ?" muttered Mongros. "Yes; the pastor's pretty sister. sweet upon each other. I've met them lanes of Taulon any day this last week. in the paper, in fact, they've been together; and my opinion is that Bongrand is simply going to chuck his cassock aside in order to marry the girl."

"Thunder of Heaven!" shouted the blacksmith, bringing down his hammer upon the anvil with such force that a myriad of sparks leaped aloft. "By my soul, if I thought that, I'd stir up all the Catholics of Farigny to give them both such a charivari with pots and kettles that they'd be obliged to fly the country this very night. But, no," added he, flinging his hammer down, and speaking as if a reflection had occurred to him. "No. I tell you an unfrocked priest can't marry. I know something about it, as I'm mayor. If Bongrand came to me and asked me to perform the civil marriage for him, I'd say, 'Walk off, you scamp.' The law courts have decided that it would be my duty to act so."

"Yes, yes; but there's nothing to prevent Monsieur le Curé from going to get himself naturalised in the Canton of Geneva, where he can marry fast enough," answered the peasant.

The thought of Jérôme Bongrand's marrying Reine Mercier was too much for the blacksmith Mongros. He left his forge, ran home to dress, and an hour later was walking with quick strides down the road at Taulon which led to the parsonage. It happened to be during school hours, and consequently Pastor Mercier, who discharged the double duties of minister and teacher in his parish, was not at home. As for Madame Mercier, she was, as usual, in her kitchen, but on seeing Mongros, whom she rather liked and favoured as a suitor for her sister's hand, she said, "Oh, I suppose you've come to see Reine, you'll find her in the garden, I think, with Monsieur le Curé."

"With Monsieur le Curé!" muttered Mongros between his teeth. "Pretty company."

"Yes," continued Madame Mercier, who did not hear this remark. "The curé has come to say good-bye. It seems he is going away as a VOL. XXXIX.-No. 231. 16.

missionary. Oh, Monsieur Mongros, what troubles we have had since that new bishop came. And now it seems scandal is busy with our poor curé's name. You ought to stop it, for there was never a better man

alive."

"That may be your opinion," growled Mongros, "it isn't mine."

66

Oh, but haven't you heard of his noble conduct?" said Madame Mercier, who was a voluble little lady. "Why, as soon as an old tutor of his had come to tell him that he had done wrong in writing his letter, and that by so doing he would bring discredit on the memory of Bishop Beauharnais, whose pet pupil he was known to be, why Bongrand was filled with repentance, and now he is going to recant.”

"To recant?"

Aye. It seems he is to go to Rome and throw himself at the Pope's feet to ask for forgiveness; after which he is going as a missionary to China. He is saying good-bye to Reine now; go, and you'll find him in the garden."

The blacksmith went amazed. The notion that a priest could utterly humble himself in deference to the ecclesiastical rule of obedience was

one that he could not grasp all at once. The garden was strangely still, but as Mongros advanced he heard sounds of sobbing near the arbour.

He walked forward on tiptoe and looked stealthily through the ivy, expecting to witness a love scene. He saw Bongrand standing up bareheaded, with his hands folded on his breast, and a serene look on his face, which was wan and pale. Reine Mercier was seated on a bench and crying.

Suddenly Bongrand held out his hand: "Good-bye, my sister," he said. "And now have you anything to ask me before I go?"

"Yes, your blessing, father," she faltered, and flung herself on her knees at the feet of the young priest, who raised his hands and made the sign of the cross over her.

That is the scene which the blacksmith, Mongros, witnessed through the ivy.

323

The Adventures of an English Christian Name.

A LIFE-HISTORY faithfully narrated is always a pleasant thing to hear, whether it be the history of a thinker, a fighter, or a worker. Biography forms the most favourite department of solid literature; while novels, which are biographies released from the trammels of precise fact, rank first in popularity of all imaginative works. But a life-history, which extends through ten centuries or more, which carries us through varying phases of national development from the days of the pirates who drove out the Welsh aborigines, and settled down in Kent and East Anglia, to the days of the weavers who weave for the world and the thinkers who are revolutionising science and philosophy in our midst—such a lifehistory may surely claim a little passing attention beside the ephemeral biographies of short-lived men. Almost every English Christian name can point back to an age nearly as great as this, and its chequered story is full of curious facts, which often throw an interesting side-light upon half-forgotten pages of our national annals. Suppose, then, we take the commonest among them, and ask what information we can gather regarding it from medieval chroniclers or modern philologists.

The name of John may fairly claim to be the representative English Christian name. Not only does it compose part of our collective personality as John Bull, but it also gives a prænomen to our countless John Smiths, and in its diminutive form of Jack it passes as the general title of everybody whose more proper designations happen to be unknown to Moreover, it has supplied us with a larger number of well-known surnames than almost any other baptismal name, and it may therefore fitly form the peg upon which to hang a few reflexions upon English nomenclature in general.

us.

I do not propose to trouble the reader with any abstruse discussion as to the Aramaic derivation and Semitic affinities of the primitive word whose English dress is that of John. I shall frankly confess that I know nothing whatever upon those very learned subjects, and I shall not burn my fingers by meddling with their explosive philology. Nor do I mean to trace our name through the Ioannes of Greek and Latin, the Giovanni of Italian, the Johann of German, the Jehan or Jean of early and later French, down to the John of our own mother-tongue. I shall content myself with accepting the word in its primitive English dress, and following its fortunes after it became thoroughly acclimatised in our harsh northern mouths, so far from the soft influences of its native Syrian air.

The name of John, though now so common in our midst, was not a favourite with our early English forefathers. With a few rare exceptions, whose nature we shall examine later on, it does not occur before the Norman Conquest. And when we look at the mass of our familiar names, we shall see that this is the case with every one of them. Robert, Thomas, William, Henry, Richard, James; Mary, Ellen, Eliza, Emily, Catherine, Margaret, Jane: none of these are commonly found as native names until after the invasion of Duke William.

In fact, we may say, in a certain sense, that truly English Christian names are now all but unknown in England. Our whole modern nomenclature is almost entirely foreign or scriptural. In the good old English days, when the English nation spoke the pure English tongue in its unadulterated form-which a foolish modern practice has christened Anglo-Saxon-men and women bore names compounded from words having a common significance in the language of the day. Such names, in our own time, are those of Mercy, Charity, or Patience; and to a less degree, Ernest, Clement, or Blanche. But most of our common designations to-day, such as those instanced above, at once show their foreign origin by the fact that they convey no meaning to us as they stand. In early English times, however, before the Dane and the Norwegian from Scandinavian lands, or the Norman (a Scandinavian with a lacquer of Romance civilisation) had overflowed the country, every English man or woman bore a name which at once conveyed a meaning to the hearer in his own tongue. A few of these names survived through the middle ages, because they belonged to popular saints, as in the case of Edward, which was borne by the Confessor, our last English king, or of Edmund, which commemorated the martyr of Bury St. Edmunds, and the saint of Canterbury; a few more have been revived in modern times, as in the case of Alfred, Edgar, and Edwin, which owe their present popularity to the renewed interest in our early history: but the vast mass have been so utterly dispossessed by the foreign intruders that their very memory has passed away, and when we see them now in the pages of Mr. Freeman or Mr. Green, they seem like strange and uncouth importations from some forgotten tongue.

A few examples of these true English names will suffice to show their general character. Most of the best known, which are really royal names, are compounded of athel, "noble," as Ethelbald, Æthelberht, Æthelred, Æthelstan, and Ethelwulf; or of ead, "rich," as Eadbald, Eadberht, Eadward, Eadmund, and Eadric: or of alf, "an elf," as Ælfred, Ælfhæg, Ælfric, and Ælfwine. Of course, there are many other common elements, which enter into such names as Oswald, Oswin, Ecgberht, Swithhun, Wulfstan, and Leofwine; but these will probably be more than enough for the modern reader. Many of them have undergone sad havoc at the hands of historians and Latinizers. For example, Godgifu, the gift of God, has degenerated into Godiva; Eadgith, the name of the Confessor's queen, has taken the forms of