CONTENTS
FOOTNOTES
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE

THE AMERICAN

IN

PARIS.

IN TWO VOLUMES.


VOL. II.


LONDON:
HENRY COLBURN, PUBLISHER,
GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.
1838.

LONDON:
PRINTED BY STEWART AND MURRAY,
OLD BAILEY.

CONTENTS.

THE AMERICAN IN PARIS.

LETTER XII.

I attended yesterday a mass said at St. Roch’s for the soul of the Admiral de Rigny, who was famous, you know, for much fighting at sea and land, especially at Navarino, and for much talking in the Chamber of Peers about the American Indemnity. He was never chary about dying, he said, but he thought it unlucky to be snatched away just when he was wanted to chastise “Old Hickory” for his impudent Message. By-the-bye, all the world is talking of war here by the hour, with great fluency and ignorance. Newspapers and conversation are full of abuse. They send out privateers by five hundreds, and take our ships as kites catch chickens. Worst of all, they don’t leave an American alive, and they kill us all off without losing a man.—The Admiral’s hearse was rich with the spoils of vanquished enemies, and was escorted by ten thousand French heroes to Pére la Chaise, with thrilling music from all the military bands, and with a pomp and circumstance suitable to the dignity of so great a personage.

I went this morning with every body to Notre Dame, to hear the celebrated Abbé Lacordaire preach. He was too eloquent! Oratory in this country, at least in the pulpit, has her trumpet always at full blast, and announces the smallest little news with the emphasis of a miracle. Her method is to run up to the top of the voice and then pour out her whole spirit, as your Methodists on Guinea Hill, until human nature is exhausted, and then to take a drink and begin again. I will set you a French sermon, if you please, to the gamut, and you may play it on the piano.

You must know, that the Parisian young men having gained great credit at the last Revolution, (and they were not oppressed with modesty before that event,) now give the tone to society. The device of the nation is “Young France.” It is young France that measures merit and deals out reputation; so it is not strange that they should set up this Abbé for a Bossuet or a Bourdaloue; any more than that an eye unpractised in painting should set up a tawdry piece of daubing above the chaste and excellent compositions of genius. It is true, there is not a class of young men in any country more earnest in the pursuit of letters, than these French; but youth is not the age of good taste, and is not the age that ought to govern public sentiment in any department of life.

In old France, the church being rich and honourable, was filled by persons well educated and refined by good society. For a long time, there has been no permanent public esteem to encourage talent among the clergy, or restrain them from vices degrading to their order. Religion, which had nearly perished in the Revolution, had but a feeble health under the Empire; and Louis XVIII. and Charles so favoured the priesthood, especially the Jesuits, and at the same time so mis-governed the nation, that they had again brought it to its last gasp at the accession of Louis Philippe. There was a time when even admission to the Duchess de Berri’s balls required one to go to the communion and take the sacrament. The present king has fallen in with the popular sentiment, and is gradually changing this sentiment to the side of the clergy, showing in this, as in most things else, the ability of a good statesman. He sends his own family to church, and it begins to be fashionable to be seen there. Not indeed from any reverence for religion.

Things venerable in this country have had their day, and, as far as religion is concerned, the bump of veneration is worn out of the human skull. But the world rushes to Notre Dame in the morning, and to the Opera in the evening, and to both, for the same purpose; for the crowd, for the music and dramatic effect, for the emotion, for the fashion. I had a student with me this morning; a young gentleman, who has just made his debut in the world of beards, and judging from his conversation, it would take a fifty-parson power at least to get him to heaven; but he was enthusiastic in admiration of the sermon. Let the Abbé Lacordaire preach when he will, Notre Dame is mobbed with worshippers.

I believe I shall take advantage of my unusual seriousness, as it is Sunday, to tell you all I know about such divine things as French churches. Almost every saint in the Almanack has acquired the honours of at least one. There are forty-five of Roman, one of Greek, and two of Independent French Catholics; and the churches for Protestant service, are three French, and two English, besides a synagogue; and there are several places of worship in private houses and palaces.

All the Catholic churches are decorated with the most costly furniture; with saints, virgins, and angels in statuary and painting by the best masters. Why, the gold and silver expended in this old church of Notre Dame upon Virgin Marys alone, would make a railroad to the Havre.

One of the most beautiful of these churches and my next neighbour too, is St. Genevieve, now called the Pantheon, once the “abode of Gods whose shrines no longer burn.” It is now the national sepulchre for great men. It is two hundred and fifty feet high, and overtops majestically all Paris. It was designed to rival the Great St. Paul’s of London.

On one of the cupolas of the dome, which is surrounded by a colonnade of Corinthian pillars, is painted the apotheosis of St. Geneviéve. Her saintship is in the costume of a shepherdess, breathing all peace, all happiness, all immortality. Nothing of earth is in her composition. Beside her, is Louis XVIII. and little winged angels. They are very busy—the angels—in scattering flowers about the saint. Above her, is Louis XVI. and his queen, as elegant as she was upon the threshold of Versailles, and Louis XVII. all surrounded by celestial glory. Before her, are the persons the most illustrious of each race; Clovis, who looks very savage; St. Clotilde, very pretty; Charlemagne, very heroic; and St. Louis and Queen Margarite who look very pious. They are now effacing these figures for something more suitable to the occasion.

The floor of this temple, incrusted with various-coloured marble, is very remarkable, and very beautiful. It is exclusively occupied by Voltaire and Rousseau, at opposite extremities. [1]

Why did they not lay them at the side of each other, that we might all learn how vain are the jealousies, the petty competitions and animosities of men so soon to come to this appointed and unavoidable term of all human contentions. These are the only two who are buried above ground.

It was once the custom of these old countries to multiply a man by burying him piecemeal, his heart at Rouen and his legs in Kent, because the world was then on short allowance of heroes; but modern times have reversed this practice; and Bonaparte has laid up together a whole batch of them in the basement of this church, for eternity, as you lay up potatoes in your cellar for winter. Here are the names graven overhead in a catalogue, on the marble, of men famous for giving counsel to the Emperor (who never took any) in the senate, and of men who gained a great deal of celebrity by having their brains knocked out on the fields of Austerlitz and Marengo.

When Marat was deified by the Convention, he was interred here in 1793, and in 1794 he was disinterred and undeified, and then thrown into his native element, the common sewer, in the Rue Montmartre—to purify him.

I have often sat an hour in a beautiful little temple adjoining this, called St. Etienne du Mont. Its architecture is original and pretty, and it is rich in statuary and paintings. The pulpit is a splendid piece of workmanship, supported by a figure of Samson kneeling upon a dead lion; allegorical figures are hovering over, and an archangel, with two trumpets, is assembling the faithful. The painted glass, too, is brilliant with colours glowing as the rainbow. In a morning walk, I have often found an excuse for returning this way. A few persons, mostly women, are seen kneeling through the church, upon the marble, before the altar, silently—you hear but the little whispering prayers fluttering towards Heaven—the tranquillity of early morning is so favourable to devotion. It feels like giving to Heaven the first offerings of one’s heart. I have often sat here on the fine summer evenings, too, when the twilight shed its gray and glimmering rays through the windows upon the statues of the venerable saints and martyrs, and listened to the voices as they swelled in the sacred anthem, and then fell, with the departing day, into silence. It seemed to me the very romance of religion. One feels more the influence of such feelings when wandering alone in a foreign country.

In visiting a boarding-school of this quarter, a few days ago, I entered a room where the children were praying before retiring to bed; I observed one with his hands clasped, and pouring out his little soul with the fervency of a saint—an American child, of eight years, from New York—I took him in my arms at the end of his prayer, saying: “Vous aimez donc bien, le bon Dieu?”—“Ah! oui,” he replied, with a most eloquent expression, “on aime bien le bon Dieu quand on est loin de ses parens.”—It is so natural to lay hold of heaven, when cut off from one’s home and earthly affections. If I had the amiable society of your “Two Hills,” and the other comforts and consolations of the village, I should not be hovering so piously about this little church of St. Etienne du Mont.

The great Pascal, in spite of the Jesuits’ noses, is buried here; and an old tower, in the neighbourhood, recals the memory of the renowned Abbey of St. Genevieve. I have visited, several times, the library of this institution, and paid my respects to its one hundred and fifty thousand volumes, and thirty thousand manuscripts. This, like all the other places of Paris, where they keep books, is filled constantly with readers, and, like every other institution of the kind, is open gratuitously to the public.

I spoke of Val de Grace in my last letter. A little to the east of it, and of not less historical importance, is the church of St. Medard; to which I stretched, also, one of my solitary walks, and took a seat among the worshippers. Faint hymns, chanted at a distance, as the still evening comes on, have lured many a wandering sinner from the wickedness of the world. This is the church so famous for its miracles, called the “convulsions,” which once filled the whole city with alarm; and were not discontinued, until the archbishop had placed a strong military guard around the tomb of father Paris. You know the placard put up by some wag on this occasion:

The young girls used to have fits at this tomb, which gave them comical twitchings of the nerves. Some would bark all night long at the door of their chambers, and others leap about like frogs all day. Sister Rose supped the air with a spoon, as your babies do pap, and lived on it forty days; another swallowed a New Testament, bound in calf. Some had themselves hung, others crucified, and one, called Sister Rachel, when nailed to a cross, said she was quite happy—“qu’elle faisait dodo.” In their holy meetings, they beat, trampled, punctured, crucified, and burnt one another, without the least sentiment of pain. All this was done at St. Medard, under Louis XV., and attested by ten thousand witnesses.

Large packages of the earth were exported to work miracles, in the provinces and foreign countries. One of these miracles is told in a song of the Duchesse de Maine.

Some of these fanatics were found, forty years afterwards, in the dungeons of the Bastile, at its destruction in 1789.

There is one point in religion, in which there are no heretics out of Scotland—the music. The choir of voices, which assisted the organs in this church, seemed to be almost divine. One feminine voice, singing occasionally alone, had all the powers of enchantment; swelling sometimes into a strain of almost religious frenzy, and then melting softly away till there was nothing between it and silence; and just in front of me, and in full view, sat a handsome woman, wrapped entirely in her devotional enjoyments, who seemed placed there expressly to give effect to the music; her shoulders, arms, and features, all moved in exact unison with its harmony. I wish you could have seen her beautiful countenance as she presented it to the firmament; her sainted smile which beamed out and waned away upon her lips; the devout expression of her eyes, how illuminated as the music rose, how languishing in its dying notes; how she expired, and then came to life again! I do not hope to see again on the earth a more vivid picture of religious rapture.

Devotion, I believe, exalts a woman’s beauty to its highest perfection; there is no picture so beautiful as the Madonna, and, if I were a woman, I would be religious, if for no other motive, just from vanity. No one doubts that the human countenance is modified by the feelings cherished in the heart, and she who cherishes the mild and benevolent Christian affections, cannot be otherwise than very pretty. If there are any ugly women in the world, it is because they have not been brought up religiously. I sat thinking all this over, till night came on, and I felt one or two of sister Rose’s twitchings.

I am going to tell you next of the Chapelle de St. Nicholas; which you will find intrenched under the Palais de Justice. This is the “Sainte Chapelle,” made famous by the Lutrin of Boileau. It is the most classical, as well as the most holy of the churches of Paris. It was built by St. Louis. It was here he stowed away the relics he brought from the Holy Land. The “real crown” was one of them, which he bought for eighty thousand dollars, and which, walking barefooted, and bareheaded, and preceded by all the prelates and dignitaries of the kingdom, in solemn procession, he deposited in this shrine. There were, besides, Moses’ rod and a great many other such miracles, which the Emperor of Constantinople manufactured, they say, expressly for his use. And, also, a great variety of presents from popes, cardinals, and other holy men, of less equivocal value. A light was burnt here, as in the Temple of Vesta, and a priest waked and watched over them at all hours of the night. They are now—what remains from the sacrilegious and pilfering fingers of the Revolution—in the sacristy of Notre Dame; and their place is supplied by old musty records of the Palais de Justice; lawyers’ declarations, and nasty crim. con. cases—even to the receipt of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers for making the poison she tried so effectually upon her father, husband, and brother. Boileau is buried in this chapel, made immortal by his verses.

For architectural effect, the Madelaine has an unquestionable superiority over all the churches of Paris. It has the advantage of a very favourable site; terminating with one flank, the view from the Boulevards, and fronting the Rue Royale, and Place Louis XV. It is mounted on a basement of eight feet, ascended on its entire perimeter by thirty steps. It is a parallelogram of three hundred and twenty-six, by one hundred and thirty feet, surrounded in double peristyle, by fifty-two Corinthian columns sixty feet high. On the south pediment, is represented in bas-relief, the Day of Judgment; the figures of sixteen feet. In the middle is Christ, and at his feet Madelaine, a suppliant. The rest of the group, is of angels, and allegorical vices and virtues; covering a triangular surface of one hundred and eighteen feet in length, and twenty-two in height.

The interior is a rich and variegated picture. The eye is dazzled at the glittering aspect of its gilding and fanciful decorations; its Ionic and Corinthian pillars. On each flank are three chapels to be adorned with painting, and at the extremity is the choir in the shape of a demi-cylinder, with Ionic pilasters which extend along the two aisles. It was begun in the year of our Independence; it was the “Temple of Glory” in the Revolution, and has got back to its religious destination. It has neither dome nor spire, nor any of the usual emblems of a Christian church, except the sculpture; so that in the event of another Revolution, it may be converted into an Exchange or Bank, or the temple of some Pagan divinity, or a Mosque, without much expense of alteration.

The good lady, Notre Dame, is the largest of the Parisian churches. The adjoining houses squat down in her presence and seem to worship her; and she is not only admirable for her beauty and richness, but for her sense. She has the history of eight centuries in her nave. She has the whole of the Old and New Testament in pictures on her walls, or in groups of statuary, in her chapels. When you sit down under the arched vaults, one hundred and twenty feet over your head, and amidst these massive columns, you see flitting about your imagination, such personages as Queen Fredegonda; or if you please, you can see the pretty Marchioness de Gourville confessing, instead of her sins, her tender loves for the Archbishop of Paris. You can live back into those times when Henry IV. was d——d, and Ravaillac, being anointed and prayed over, in bad Latin, went to heaven.

The light is let in upon her dread abodes by one hundred and thirteen windows, each bordered with a band of painted glass. There are three circular ones painted in the thirteenth century which are not matched, for the delicacy of the stone-work, and brilliancy of the colours, by any thing of modern art.

The choir is paved with precious marble, and enclosed by a railing of polished iron; in the centre of it, is an eagle in gilt brass seven feet high, and three and a half from wing to wing, which serves as a reading desk. Its wainscoting is sculptured with scriptural pieces, and a great many sins in the shape of toads and lizards are carved upon it. It terminates near the sanctuary with two archiepiscopal chairs of great beauty.

The other day, in climbing up through one of the towers, from which there is a splendid panoramic view of the city, two hundred and four feet in the air, I fell in with that famous old bell, Emanuel, whose clapper alone weighs nine hundred and seventy-six pounds. Clappers of this kind do not speak on ordinary occasions. This one announces in a very hoarse and solemn voice, only the approach of some great festival, or an extraordinary event. On July 27th, five years ago, it pealed at midnight, and all night long, the awful tocsin of revolt; and upon these two towers, the tricoloured flag floated triumphant on the 29th.

It was to this church that the world used to come in their gala dresses to thank Providence for all those victories which are carved on the great triumphal column; every time a bulletin came in from Italy and Germany announcing the event, and when a new prince ascended the throne. They came here to thank God for Louis XVIII. then for Charles, and then for Louis Philippe. Providence is always sure of its thanks in this church, whichever side is uppermost.

In Paris, the meanest hovels are striving which shall be nearest the church. Notre Dame is a venerable and noble lady, with a brood of filthy and ragged children about her. We have the same ungracious image often in America. In Philadelphia, there is but a step from St. Stephens’ to the Stews. This is chiefly caused by the vicinity of grave yards; a senseless arrangement, which has happily grown out of fashion in this country. It is deplorable that we should patronize every silly practice that Europe is shaking off.

The fashionable church, of all the churches, is St. Roch’s, of which I have spoken in a former letter. To this, the old lady queen, and the little queenies, and all the prettiest women of Paris, come to be blessed every Sunday. A fine woman is a hymn to the Deity, said some old philosopher. If you wish to see a great number of these hymns, praising most eloquently the workmanship of their divine Author, come to St. Roch’s about twelve. A priest told me there was more merit in saving a pretty woman than an ugly one, on account of the enormity of her temptations; an ugly one goes to heaven of herself. The skill of the musician makes the only distinction between the hallelujahs of St. Roch’s, and the addios of the Italien.

While on the chapter of churches, I must not forget the Cathedral of St. Denis, a few miles out of town, the burial place of the French kings. The village, which was built on account of the church, and its monastery, and the number of pilgrims that resorted there, is now as filthy and stupid as suburban villages always are. About ten thousand persons are doing penance by living there; enough to take them to heaven without any other effort. In 1436 it was taken and rifled by the English, who frightened the nuns desperately, and carried off their most precious things. A bit of the iron grate or gridiron on which St. Francis was burnt, and the prophet Isaiah’s bones, with not a few of the little nuns themselves, were amongst the articles stolen. The cathedral is gothic and magnificent. On the first floor, you will see the tomb of Dagobert, the founder; a splendid mausoleum of Francis I., in white marble, and opposite, the tomb of Louis XII., surmounted by the naked figures of the king and his consort in a recumbent posture, and the tomb of Henry de Valois, with the images of Henry II., and Queen Catharine de Medicis. In the centre of the basement, is a vault of octagonal shape, which contains the ashes of the monarchs all in a lump.

These verses have lost their meaning: but the little urn saith “more than a thousand homilies.”

Around the circumference are cenotaphs, upon which the several kings repose in marble at the side of their marble wives. Two unanointed men were admitted amongst them; Duguesclin and Turenne. Bonaparte removed the latter to the Invalids, and Duguesclin was lost entirely in the Revolution. The convention issued a decree for the total destruction of this royal cemetery in 1793. The first graves examined were those of Henry IV., and Marshal Turenne. Both these heroes were as fresh, as the day they were killed, while all those who had died in the natural way, were in a state of dissolution. The kings were transferred to a vulgar grave, with the grass only of the field for a monument; the ghosts of the mighty Bourbons were turned loose to range upon the commons: the lead too was stripped from the cathedral to shoot the enemies of the Republic. The church was repaired by Napoleon, who destined it to be the burial place of “the Emperors.” Diis aliter visum. Fortune provided him a much more remarkable grave. Future ages will no doubt go on a pilgrimage to St. Helena; here he would have mingled with the rabble dust of the French kings.

The farther reparation of the church was reserved for the piety of Louis XVIII. I walked out to St. Denis as the saint did once himself, except that he carried his head under his arm. Returning home, as I was no saint, I got into a coucou at the side of some queer old peasant women and heard their conversation. I am sorry the dignity of my subject does not allow me to report it to you in this letter.

Many others of these churches seem to me very entertaining, but I must postpone them to another time; with only a respectful look upon the great St. Sulpice in front of my window, whose huge towers are staring me reproachfully in the face; and I must say a word in parting with the subject of the Chapelle Expiatoire of the Madelaine. This chapel is placed over the ground in which reposed for twenty-two years the bodies of Louis XVI., and Marie Antoinette. The interior is in form of a cross. In the centre, is the altar, exactly over the spot in which the royal bodies were found, and in the lateral branches are their statues. The entrance through an alley of yew trees, sycamores and cypresses, gives it the air and solemnity of an antique tomb. It is the most mournful spot of all Paris. On the Sunday mornings, mass is said here with great solemnity; and early every day you will see a few persons kneeling in silent worship by the altar, or in solitary corners through the church.

The duties of the Catholic churches are administered by an Archbishop with an annual salary of 5,000 dollars; three vicars general, 800 dollars, and between two and three hundred priests at 300 dollars each. The grand Rabbin has 1200; the little Rabbins from one to four hundred, and a protestant clergyman has from two to six hundred dollars. So you see, the French patronize all sorts of religions, and Moses and St. Peter come in alike for their share of the church funds. But what a change of circumstances! The church revenue of France was, before the Revolution, twenty-seven millions of dollars; at present it is six millions. The clergy of old France exceeded four hundred thousand; of “young France,” they are rated at thirty thousand!

In the service of a French Catholic church, there are officers in a military costume; there are processions and pageantry, and loud and impassioned music. Every thing is prepared for vehement impressions, for theatric effect. I should like a religion intermediate between this Catholic vivacity and our Presbyterian dulness. Whoever believes that any association of men can be held together without forms and ceremonies has much yet to learn of the nature of his species, and whoever would dispense with even the forms which are ridiculous in society, would be himself the most ridiculous man in it. Still, some regard is to be had in this to the popular sentiment and spirit of the age.

There is certainly much absurd and trumpery ceremony kept up in this church, designed formerly for a mass of ignorant people, when the general sense of the world and the infidel propensities of the French have got far a-head of it. That Louis XVIII. should go all the way to Rheims and be greased with some drops saved from the Jacobins, of that same oil or “holy cream” brought by a dove from heaven to anoint king Pepin, was presuming too far upon the stupidity of the times. Surely the age of such nonsense and bigotry has gone by. The elevating the host and processions through the church, are neither solemn nor dignified, and what position has so little dignity as that of the priest kneeling at the altar, with a little boy holding up the tail of his surplice in the face of the congregation?

In these times of popular education, every body reads and reasons, and general learning, by cheap publications, is brought within every one’s reach. The common man, who is fed by twopenny knowledge, is almost as learned upon common affairs, as the gentleman who feasts upon his guinea a volume; so that a ceremony that was very solemn in the last age, may be very notable for its absurdity in this. Not half a century ago, a doctor of medicine did not visit a patient in this city unless his head was first wrapped in a huge wig—perruque à trois marteaux; and if he forgot his cane with the golden head he turned back for it, though his patient in the mean time should die. A ring too, with a diamond on his finger, and laced ruffles, were indispensable to his practice. In condemning this Catholic flummery, I do not go into the opposite Presbyterian extreme, and proscribe what is rational and sensible, the music, the paintings, and statuary. There is no more occasion in these times to take measures against idolatry than against witchcraft; and why deprive our churches of what gratifies the senses innocently, excites devotional feelings, and improves the taste and understanding?

But to keep a religion now in favour with the world, requires unexceptionable virtue on the part of those who administer its duties; and the celibacy of the priesthood seems to me directly adverse to such a requirement. It is not likely, that human nature will be controlled in one of her strongest impulses with impunity. When I see these rosy and smart looking priests, who haunt the churches, and reflect upon the penchant of the women for holy men, I cannot help wishing, for the sake of the catholic religion, that they were married. I would not go bail for any one of them under the merit of St. Anthony.

The intrigues and libertinism of the French and Italian clergy are matters of authentic history. There was a time when a cardinal’s hat depended on the patronage of the candidate’s mistresses. The Cardinals de Retz, Richelieu, Mazarin and Dubois were the notorious roués of the day. I see here every where a set of jovial-looking monks, with their caps over the right eye, who would drink your health in the sacristy. Besides, when the cares of men are limited to themselves, they lose some of the best qualities of the human heart; they become selfish. I never knew an old maid, a bachelor, or even a married woman without children, who was not an insupportable egoist, unless the affections nourished by matrimony were supplied from other sources; and the concern men have for their children brings out their religious as well as their social qualities into continual exercise. Not only the strongest defence against immorality, but the foundation of every public virtue is laid in the domestic affections. The Athenians would not allow any one to vote who had not a child; if I were pope, I would not permit any one to preach who had not a wife, and I would take one myself to set them the good example.

I am sorry the interior arrangements of our American churches, both catholic and protestant, are so opposed to architectural beauty. The pew has an air of habitation; it has the comfort, it has the sacredness of home. Families, accustomed to see each other, the year round, grow into acquaintance; and, even without the intercourse of words, experience the joy of a friendly meeting. The humble man, also, has the satisfaction, one day in seven, of seeing himself in company with those of better fortunes, on something like terms of equality. When one gets the apostles and all the saints on one’s side, one rises almost to the dignity of any body. A great man, too, can, in a church, associate a little with his inferiors without compromising his importance: all which is lost in this random and desultory way of sitting about upon chairs, as in the French churches.

A great evil of our American churches is, their great respectability, or exclusiveness. Here, being of a large size, and paid by government, the church is open to all the citizens, with an equal right and equal chance of accommodation. In ours, the dearness of pew-rent, especially in the Episcopal and Presbyterian, turns poverty out of doors. Poor people have a sense of shame; and I know many a one who, because he cannot go to church decently, will not go at all. This is an evil we must bear, to avoid the greater one of a church establishment. We suffer disadvantages, also, from want of religious uniformity. A thin settled community, which is just able to support one clergyman, starves three or four, or dispenses altogether with their services. A first-rate Methodist would rather not go to church at all, than take part in the litany; and what good Presbyterian, would not rather be d—d, ten times over, than be seen at a mass?

In a diversity of sects, also, we are given to dogmatise too much, and define articles of faith; to follow the letter rather than the spirit of religion. The French catholic believes (if he believes any thing) in the power of absolution, in the real presence, and in the infallibility of the pope; without inquiry into the absurdity of such belief, we dogmatise and doubt and reason ourselves into infidelity; and, though we can see no essential difference in the prayers and sermons of our different clergymen, we cling to our own, as indispensable to our salvation.

Our clergy, too, of the same denomination, are often falling into schisms, in which they too often show jealousy, malice, and other bad passions, which brings religion itself into disrepute. Are these things worse than the abuses and corruptions of undivided church establishments?

The manner of keeping Sunday is a subject of general censure amongst our American visitors at Paris. There is no visible difference between this day and the others, except that the gardens and public walks, the churches in the morning, and the ball-rooms and theatres in the evening, are more than usually crowded. In London, the bells toll on the Sunday most solemnly; the theatres and dancing rooms are silent, and all the shops (but the gin-shop) shut; yet the poor get drunk, and the equipages of the gentry parade their magnificence in Hyde Park, of a Sunday afternoon.

“How do you spend your Sundays,” said a Frenchman, condoling with another, “in America?” He replied: “Monsieur, je prends médecine.” A Frenchman has a tormenting load of animal spirits that cannot live without employment: he has no idea of happiness in a calm; and it is not likely that he will remain endimanché chez-lui during the twelve hours of the day, or that his Sunday evenings would be better employed than in the theatre and ball-room.

This is my opinion; but I have great doubts whether a man ought to have an opinion of his own, when it does not correspond with that of others, who are notoriously wiser than himself. I cannot easily persuade myself, that nature has intended the whole of this life to be given up to a preparation for the next, else had she not given us all these means of enjoyment, all these “delicacies of taste, sight, smell, herbs, fruits and flowers, walks and the melody of birds.”—Now this is enough about French churches.

LETTER XIII.