in them compatible
with Catholic orthodoxy, he appropriated. In matters of critique,
incompatibilities were continually occurring, but in grammar, upon the
other hand, there was no difficulty in finding common ground. There
was no one like M. Le Hir in this respect. He had thoroughly mastered
the doctrine of Gesenius and Ewald, and criticised many points in
it with great learning. He interested himself in the Phoenician
inscriptions, and propounded a very ingenious theory which has since
been confirmed. His theology was borrowed almost entirely from the
German Catholic School, which was at once more advanced, and less
reasonable, than our ancient French scholasticism. M. Le Hir reminds
one in many respects of Dollinger, especially in regard to his
learning and his general scope of view; but his docility would have
preserved him from the dangers in which the Vatican Council involved
most of the learned members of the clergy. He died prematurely in 1870
upon the eve of the Council which he was just about to attend as a
theologian. I was intending to ask my colleagues in the Academie des
Inscriptions et Belles Lettres to make him an unattached member of our
body. I have no doubt that he would have rendered considerable service
to the Committee of Semitic Inscriptions.

M. Le Hir possessed, in addition to his immense learning, the talent
of writing with much force and accuracy. He might have been very witty
if he had been so minded. His undeviating mysticism resembled that of
M. Gottofrey; but he had much more rectitude of judgment. His aspect
was very singular, for he was like a child in figure, and very weakly
in appearance, but with that, eyes and a forehead indicating the
highest intelligence. In short, the only faculty lacking, was one
which would have caused him to abjure Catholicism, viz. the critical
one. Or I should rather say that he had the critical faculty very
highly developed in every point not touching religious belief; but
that possessed in his view such a co-efficient of certainty, that
nothing could counterbalance it. His piety was in truth, like the
mother o'pearl shells of Francois de Sales, "which live in the sea
without tasting a drop of salt water." The knowledge of error which
he possessed was entirely speculative: a water-tight compartment
prevented the least infiltration of modern ideas into the secret
sanctuary of his heart, within which burnt, by the side of the
petroleum, the small unquenchabl