eive the
promise of eternal life; with what confidence did he recommend his body
and soul to the tender mercies of the Saviour!"

Such was the death of Abelard, as attested by the most venerated man of
that generation. And when we bear in mind the friendship and respect of
such a man as Peter, and the exalted love of such a woman as Heloise, it
is surely not strange that posterity, and the French nation especially,
should embalm his memory in their traditions.

Heloise survived him twenty years,--a priestess of God, a mourner at the
tomb of Abelard. And when in the solitude of the Paraclete she felt the
approach of the death she had so long invoked, she directed the
sisterhood to place her body beside that of her husband in the same
leaden coffin. And there, in the silent aisles of that abbey-church, it
remained for five hundred years, until it was removed by Lucien
Bonaparte to the Museum of French Monuments in Paris, but again
transferred, a few years after, to the cemetery of Pere la Chaise. The
enthusiasm of the French erected over the remains a beautiful monument;
and "there still may be seen, day by day, the statues of the immortal
lovers, decked with flowers and coronets, perpetually renewed with
invisible hands,--the silent tribute of the heart of that consecrated
sentiment which survives all change. Thus do those votive offerings
mysteriously convey admiration for the constancy and sympathy with the
posthumous union of two hearts who transposed conjugal tenderness from
the senses to the soul, who spiritualized the most ardent of human
passions, and changed love itself into a holocaust, a martyrdom, and a
holy sacrifice."

AUTHORITIES.

Lamartine's Characters; Berington's Middle Ages; Michelet's History of
France; Life of St. Bernard; French Ecclesiastical Historians; Bayle's
Critical Dictionary; Biographic Universelle; Pope's Lines on Abelard and
Heloise; Letters of Abelard and Heloise.

JOAN OF ARC.

* * * * *

A.D. 1412-1431.

HEROIC WOMEN.

Perhaps the best known and most popular of heroines is Joan of Arc,
called the Maid of Orleans. Certainly she is one of the most interesting
characters in the history of France during the Middle Ages; hence I
select her to illustrate heroic women. There are not many such who are
known to fame; though heroic qualities are not uncommon in the gentler
sex, and a certain degree of heroism enters into the character of all
tho