France. The horrors and cruelties of the Napoleonic war soon drove her back northwards. At Königsberg she again met with Queen Louisa of Prussia, and together they visited the huts of the poor and the bedsides of the sick and wounded in deepest sisterly sympathy. Soon after she visited Dresden, and thence went to the great Moravian settlement of Herrnhut, where her faith was greatly strengthened by intercourse with this primitive people, and especially with the earnest-souled Baumeister. The fame of Jung Stilling for piety and spirituality led her on to Karlsruhe; and in his family she saw the beauty and peace of those who lived in daily communion with God and the spiritual world. At Karlsruhe, the residence of the Court of Baden, she met with the kindest reception from the Markgräfin of Baden, and her daughters, the Queens of Sweden and Bavaria. Here also she met with the Queens of Hanover and Holland and the Duchess of Brunswick. Hortense, the Queen of Holland, daughter of the Empress Josephine, and mother of the present Emperor of the French, was especially attentive to the author of Valérie, and the Queen of Hanover, the sister of Queen Louisa of Prussia, was one of her most interested listeners; for to all that she came near she opened the great subject of her own new convictions. The dark and menacing aspect of the times, when Napoleon was laying all European kings and countries at his feet, made their hearts open to the voice of religion.

While Madame von Krüdener was thus appealing to the higher natures of the princely, she was equally assiduous in visiting, conversing with, and comforting the poor. Her stepdaughter Sophie and her daughter Juliette were with her, and they all resided in the family of Jung Stilling. In fact, they found themselves breathing, as it were, the spiritual atmosphere of Swedenborg, St. Martin and Oberlin, and would gladly have remained there for ever. Madame von Krüdener having been forgiven much loved much, and she found means in her intercourse with the poor of reconciling them often to circumstances which appeared to them harder than they really were. On one occasion she found a servant-girl scrubbing the floor and weeping at the same time. On asking what ailed her, she said she was of a superior condition in life, and this menial drudgery was to her hard and humiliating. Madame Krüdener gently took the brush, knelt down and scrubbed the floor for her, notwithstanding her endeavours to prevent her, saying at the same time that the Virgin Mary who was of a royal race, and Jesus Christ, the Son of God, did not refuse to labour with their hands, and that, therefore, manual labour could not be degrading. To do our duty cheerfully, however humble it might be, had its honour in the sight of God. Her kind words, her sympathizing manner,

and her example had a wonderful effect, and she left the poor girl smiling and happy.

In these labours of love thus happily engaged, she unfortunately became acquainted with a Pastor Lafontaine the minister of St. Marie aux Mines, who had acquired a great fame as a preacher. This M. Lafontaine had a clairvoyante named Maria Kummrin, a peasant woman of very little education, but who frequently announced in her trance extraordinary things beforehand. It was not long before she vaticinated that Madame von Krüdener had to do a great work for the truth, by buying an estate on which a colony of the faithful should be established, whence the labourers in the heavenly harvest should go forth for the reformation of Germany. The clairvoyante, no doubt, spoke under the influence of rapport with the Pastor Lafontaine. Madame von Krüdener, who was yet little experienced in the mysteries of the lower regions of clairvoyance and Spiritualism, in her zeal for the Gospel consented. An estate was bought, as Maria Kummrin declared that it was at the express command of God. The clairvoyante and Lafontaine soon found themselves comfortably installed on it. The seeress, however, became too bold, and announced publicly that the Duke of Würtemberg would be made king by Napoleon. The thing took place, but the new king did not choose to owe his crown in any degree to the prophetess. He arrested her, and because Madame von Krüdener ventured to speak with her through the prison window, he ordered her to quit Würtemberg in four-and-twenty hours, and her colony of Boningheim was confiscated. This did not open the eyes of Madame Krüdener to the real character of Lafontaine. Another time, when he had become minister of a church near Karlsruhe, he induced her through the communications of Maria Kummrin, to open an institution for the furtherance of the Gospel. Lafontaine, the clairvoyante, and a goodfor-nothing brother of Lafontaine's were speedily in possession of it, and it very soon ended in Madame von Krudener's loss of a very large sum-the sole result of the undertaking. This teaching was effectual, and we mention these two incidents together to clear the narrative of them.

During the years in which these selfish traps were laid for her, she was still pursuing her plans of good among the people. She paid a visit to Geneva to her beloved friend Madame Armand, who shared all her sentiments and views of religion, where she made many other valuable acquaintances with people of her own mode of thinking. During these years she was often so reduced by her support of the poor under the terrible distresses of those times of the French spoliation, that she and her daughter frequently had only a crust of dry bread for their

own dinners. Frequently she had ten or twelve families depending entirely upon her, when she would find herself with only a few pence in her pocket, and her remittances from Riga cut off by the war; yet, like Stilling, she called on God to help, and was continually broken into tears by the arrival of unexpected supplies. In these times of trial of her faith she derived a wonderful support from her perusal of the works of Madame Guyon and Antionette Bourignon. Amongst her firmest adherents and encouragers was Benjamin Constant, who imbued his philosophy with her teachings. In the summer of 1810, she lost her great friend and coadjutor in works of human love, Queen Louisa of Prussia, who died broken-hearted by the miseries of her country under the insolent despotism of Buonaparte.

Almost immediately on the death of Queen Louisa followed that of Madame Krüdener's mother, to whom she had been much attached, and whose closing days she had greatly comforted. In the north, at Königsberg, Ebel was rousing a feeling of living piety, and gave origin to the class called Pietists, or contemptuously "Mucker," or fanatics; in Dresden, Pastor Stephan, minister of the community of Bohemian exiles, was doing a like work. Madame von Krüdener, therefore, once more turned her steps towards Geneva, where she now, with better auspices, revived her religious association. She there made the acquisition of a young student of theology, M. Empeytas, who, disgusted with the Rationalism openly avowed by the heads of the Theological Academy, and by the Venerable Compagnie des Pasteurs, had with other serious students formed themselves into an association for religious intercourse, and had, with his friend Guers and M. Merillac, a workman amongst the Moravians, established a Sunday school. These zealously came round Madame Krüdener, and M. Empeytas, eloquent and honest, became through her future great campaign for the Gospel her right-hand man. Madame Krüdener had the happiness of having her son Paul not far off, at Strasburg, where she visited and made the friendship of Count Lezay and his wife, most excellent people. By them she was introduced to the venerable apostle, Oberlin, at Steinthal, in the Ban de la Roche, whither also Empeytas came, and occasionally relieved Oberlin by addressing his flock.

Here they saw in miniature what Madame Krüdener was anxious to see over all the world. Oberlin had found his parish and neighbourhood in Steinthal in the most pitiable condition of poverty and neglect. Not only by his preaching but by his example he had stirred his people up to improve their condition. He had established schools for the children and he was himself

the great schoolmaster to the parents. He took the axe, the spade and the hoe, and taught them how to cultivate their lands and their gardens. A new spirit was awoke, the fields became full of rich produce, their cattle flourished, were well housed; cleanliness and domestic comfort became general; poverty disappeared and peace and happiness took its place. In one thing the people had taught Oberlin. They had long had their spiritual eyes open and saw visibly the forms of their departed friends. Oberlin became convinced of the fact, and after the death of his wife for nine years received frequent evening visits from her, in which she advised him in difficult affairs and strengthened him for his works of good around him. In this little secluded heaven upon earth, Madame von Krüdener and M. Empeytas passed the early mornings in the most sympathetic conversation with Oberlin and his son on the great work of God in the earth, then all went their own ways till dinner-time, and again enjoyed their evenings in discussing what they had seen and done. On fine days they made excursions into the neighbouring parishes, where the people received Oberlin as their beloved father, and their presence made quite a little festival. Madame von Krüdener and Empeytas rejoiced Oberlin with their accounts of their labours and the enthusiasm with which they were responded to by the people in Geneva, Strasburg, Bâsle, and other places.

In the midst of this delightful sojourn where they lived, as it were, already in the inner land, where the spirits of the happy departed seemed to walk almost visibly amongst them, they were suddenly startled by the news of the fall of Napoleon through his disastrous Russian campaign. The Allied Monarchs had followed him to Paris, and compelled him to abdicate and retire to Elba. In attending the entrance of the Duke of Berry into Strasburg, their friend, Count Lezay, was killed by the fall of his horse. Madame von Krüdener and M. Empeytas hastened to Strasburg to console the widow of this noble man whose hand had always been open to every good object, and who had given to Oberlin alone for the promotion of his good Samaritan labours 30,000 francs. They then resumed their Christian employment of succouring the poor. enormous was the need of it, for the passage of the vast French army to the North and the retreat and pursuit of the vast hordes of Austrians, Prussians, Russians, and Cossacks had desolated the whole intermediate countries, and spread a scene of popular miseries inconceivable and unprecedented.

And

In November, 1814, the Congress of Monarchs and Ministers was sitting in Vienna. Madame von Krüdener's eye began to turn on the Emperor Alexander as the one of the royal

personages on whom there was a hope of operating towards a better state of things. He had the reputation of piety; and with her ardent and believing nature, she persuaded herself that by an earnest appeal, supported by the blessing of God, he might be induced to commence the work of a genuine reformation of society. The more she dwelt on this idea, the more her mind kindled upon it. She wrote to her excellent friend Fräulein von Stourdza, a maid of honour to the Empress of Russia, declaring her hopes of immense good through the Emperor Alexander, if this idea could be communicated to him. There can be little doubt that this was made known to Alexander from what followed.

But the monarchs were enjoying their triumph in Vienna, amid fêtes and festivities, believing Buonaparte safe at Elba, and Europe under their hands for partition at pleasure. Madame Krüdener, however, wrote again to Fräulein von Stourdza in the utmost alarm, to warn the emperor through the empress. "I speak," she said to her, "strongly, for I live at the foot of the Cross, and the coming events are shown me, and I am compelled in my conscience to declare them to you. It is no time for hesitation. It is not a time to waste in pleasures; the angel of judgment is passing over and sprinkling with blood the doorposts of the faithful; but the world sees him not, and the Congress sits on a volcano. The tempest is about to break; and these lilies, which are properly the symbols at once of purity and perishableness, which an iron sceptre crushed, but which God revived, and which should have been a call to purity, to the love of God and to repentance, have only appeared to be again swept away. Mankind has been taught in terror and agony. They forget it, and grow more hardened than ever in wild tumult. What! can they dance and parade in splendid array when millions mourn, and a gloomy spirit of vengeance is destroying the human race? What! can they enjoy pleasures which have sprung out of the bloodiest agonies of the nations? Let them awake from their infatuated feasts in which the demons wildly riot and which do homage only to the Prince of Darkness."

Fräulein von Stourdza was so struck with the warning of ✓ this letter that she immediately communicated it to Alexander, and he expressed a wish to see the writer. But Madame von Krüdener neglected no means of rousing the monarch to the sense of coming danger. She wrote to another lady at one of the courts of Baden-Baden-Fräulein Cochelet-declaring that the Congress sate over an abyss; that Buonaparte would return, and the terror and bloodshed of the year 1815 would be more dreadful than ever. "Think," she said, "on the year 1815! The Peace Congress will bring to bear no peace. The Powers