Gosselin and M. Faillon, whose conscientious researches are of great
value, and philologists like M. Garnier, and especially M. Le Hir, the
only eminent masters in the field of ecclesiastical critique whom the
Catholic school in France has turned out.
But it is not to results such as these that the teachers of St.
Sulpice attach the highest value. St. Sulpice is, above all, a school
of virtue. It is chiefly in respect to virtue that St. Sulpice is
a remnant of the past, a fossil two hundred years old. Many of my
opinions surprise the outside world, because they have not seen what
I have. At Sulpice I have seen, allied as I admit, with very narrow
views, the perfection of goodness, politeness, modesty, and sacrifice
of self. There is enough virtue in St. Sulpice to govern the
whole world, and this fact has made me very discriminating in my
appreciation of what I have seen elsewhere. I have never met but one
man in the present age who can bear comparison with the Sulpicians,
that is M. Damiron, and those who knew him, know what the Sulpicians
were. A future generation will never be able to realise what treasures
to be expended in improving the welfare of mankind, are stored up in
these ancient schools of silence, gravity and respect.
Such was the establishment in which I spent four years at the most
critical period of my life. I was quite in my element there. While
the majority of my fellow-students, weakened by the somewhat insipid
classical teaching of M.
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