On

lights of Dover harbour were soon lost in the distance. nearing, however, the French coast, we were often compelled to move at half-speed; the night was dark; the lights at Cape Gris-nez obscured by mist. When at last we reached Boulogne it was impossible to enter the harbour; the water was too low. Again the small boats were in requisition, and such was the inconvenience we suffered before we finally arrived at the town, that we were not surprised to have it whispered that the Marquis of Clanricarde's Post-office mission to Paris would probably end in the selection of Calais as the chief point of embarkation for the mails from France to England.

So now we were in the land of equality, liberty, and fraternity. These high-sounding names did not appear to have given a dinner to the Boulogne "touters," as they are called. The poor fellows looked lean and hungry, and plied their office (ventre magistro) with the energy of desperation. The republic seems to have overtaken the bureau of the customs unawares. Our provisional passports yet bore the ill-concealed words Royaume de France." Your old acquaintances at the Messageries Royales had hastily rubbed out Roy and with Nhad turned the word into N-ales; but the old Roy evidently had the best of it, and was quite ready to be rubbed in again. We have found, as yet, little sympathy with the new order of things. The bourgeois are evidently aristocrats in their views, and show no reluctance in avowing it.

Staying only a few hours at Boulogne, we set out for the ancient, dirty, Abbeville. The inhabitants were formerly rivals of Amiens. The prelates and nobles of the latter city built a sumptuous cathedral; so the merchants, if I am rightly informed, of the other, erected an overgrown nave to their collegiate church. The west front, in the gorgeous flamboyant style, is majestic and impressive, though in bad repair; the interior looks stilted and too high for its breadth. It was painful and humiliating to see the glorious Gothic of the mediæval builders bedizened with the tawdry trumpery of modern Romanism. Is not this part of the explanation of French infidelity? Is the sarcastic and gainsaying generation which now rules France to be made religious and reverential by penny candles and lace veils placed on images which consist only of a gilded head and arm, the parts concealed by drapery being sticks of rude wood? "Desinit in piscem." Is there any appeal in all this to the understanding and the conscience? there not rather something against which the common sense revolts, and do we find in the worship anything else to bring it back to obedience? Must not intelligent men think that all this is designed merely to charm the vulgar, and that, as they are not vulgar, they do not intend to be charmed?

Is

While I was thus musing and hoping that at some future

time the taste, if not the religion, of the French clergy and people would lead them to restore their churches and improve their form of worship, the loud clatter of a hundred sabots, or wooden shoes, announced the arrival of a large elementary school at the church. In they poured, looking just "like other people's children "—bright-eyed, rude, and boisterous-dipping their fingers in the holy water, without pronouncing a prayer or realizing a lustration, and marching by twos, threes, and fours, to the upper end of the northern aisle of the church, where a priest began to confess them one by one. I was deeply grieved to find them set, apparently to contemplate the altar of the Blessed Virgin while they awaited their turn, and to adore there THREE STATUES of her; one bearing the painful title of Notre Dame de Grace, and another that De Bon Secours. What was the idea presented to the minds of these poor children by the gaudy decorations and multiplied statues of this altar? What, by these fearful inscriptions? What is the

natural reaction of such superstition? Is it not Deism?

On leaving the collegiate church, we followed the sound of a deep-toned bell, and soon perceived a church still more ancient, which was dimly lighted. Entering, we found a considerable congregation, of women exclusively. I did not see a single man, except the officers of the church. A number of female children were present, and sang at the close of the service with much sweetness and devotion. One hoped that these were the mothers and daughters of the town, on whom so much depends the tone and character of childhood. The rare lamps, glimmering amidst the long aisles and lofty arches of the old edifice; the simple dresses of the country women at prayer, as the light fell on them; the reverential tones of the officiating clergyman; all combined to form a scene which will never be effaced from my memory. I offered an earnest prayer to God that he would in his mercy regenerate the Gallican Church for the salvation of the nation. O that the ultramontane novelties which now depress and dishonour it were thrown aside, and that it might assume again the beautiful garments which it wore in the days of Irenæus, Germanus, Hilary, and their venerable compeers.

On reaching Amiens, our first visit was to the Cathedral. When the DOM of Cologne is completed, it will be, in many respects, a large edition of this magnificent pile. It is saddening to observe how much it is disfigured by the wretched style of ornament which prevailed during the last century. The exquisite stalls, with their canopies and tracery, in the purest manner of the thirteenth century-the labour of love of some gifted carver-make the absurdity of the high altar and its appurtenances only the more glaring and ridiculous. Enormous rays of glory in wood and plaster-clouds in solid stucco,

fastened on to the richly clustered columns of the original building, so as to conceal their proportions-saints in exaggerated postures and violent action, suitable rather to the tableau of a pantomime than the decorations of a church, where everything should breathe the spirit of gravity and repose—seem to express, as far as rude materials can, the decay of all true church-feeling in the country. If opinions are ever written on wood and marble-if it be true, that the national religion more or less embodies itself in the shapes of religious edifices-one would be tempted to surmise, from the interior of Amiens Cathedral, that the Church of France was endeavouring to compensate for the loss of real devotion by theatrical glare and excitement. And yet this tendency is seen less offensively here than in many French churches. Has this unhealthy tone any part in producing the spirit of change and revolution? or, if not, does it form any moral check to that spirit? In days of trouble, and rebuke, and blasphemy, does the Church stand forth as the uncompromising example of constancy, staidness, and obedience? To this question, every reflecting Frenchman would answer, No: it swims with the stream; it blesses every succeeding form of government, and every mutable constitution; while it has an arrière pensée that must eventually embarrass them all. The Church is denationalized, because she is ultramontane. She opposes herself to the existing government, that she may gain by its fears. All this begets and fosters a temper which is unfavourable to quiet and unobtrusive piety. It brings in novel religious orders, novel services. It fills the churches with tinsel and trumpery; so that one constantly sees, heaped in the corners, defunct scenery and "properties" enough to stock a playhouse. It is not in the spirit of triumph or sarcasm I say this; it is to show what appears to me to be part of the moral anatomy of the revolutionary state of the country.

Our guide, on leaving the church and conducting us through several squares, informed us that one was built upon the site of a convent. In like manner, the public libraries and museums of France are frequently collected in the halls and refectories of convents. It may be that the nation has not yet recovered from the reaction which the wholesale dissolution of those vast institutions must have caused. Sixty years after a similar change had taken place in England, our forefathers were gathering up their energies for the fearful contest which ended in the martyrdom of King Charles the First. Many a voice, that now cries 66 Panem et circenses," would have been hushed in the deep gloom of those cloistered abodes. There is nothing now but the sword to repress the energy of the wild youth of France. There is not enough of manufactures, and still less of colonization.

But I must not indulge any longer in these desultory reflections; for we have arrived at the gate of a simple institutionthe Primary School of the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine. The door is opened by one of the brethren, a grave and thoughtful man; and we find four rooms within appropriated to elementary instruction.

The first is about twenty-five feet square, and contains nothing but rows of desks and forms placed opposite to each other; a chair, raised on a platform, for the master; a large black board, which seemed well used; a portrait of a venerable personage, who, as we were informed, was the founder of the order; some passages of Scripture, on framed sheets of paper, relating chiefly to moral duties; and four or five admonitions, of which the following may be taken as a specimen :

*

"Go home from school to your house without stopping in the streets, modestly, (modestement,) that is to say, without shouting or offending any one. On the contrary, if one molest or offend you, endure it for the love of JESUS CHRIST, and say within yourselves,-May God give you grace to repent, and pardon you as I pardon you. Celébrité."

On my asking our conductor if the Christian religion was prominently taught in his schools, his face lighted up with interest, and he immediately replied, "It is the very first and foremost thing that we diligently inculcate ;" and introduced me to a second apartment, where the same order of the benches and desks was observed, and some pictures, taken from Scripture and natural history, &c., were on the walls. Here again was the portrait of De la Salle. The third chamber was still better supplied with apparatus, and the fourth contained a fair collection of prints illustrating the orders of architecture, some designs for linear drawing, &c., &c., and-what I confess grieved me deeply an altar to the Blessed Virgin, decorated with artificial flowers, and the simple gifts of the children. In spite of my respect and affection for these self-denying and estimable men-who give themselves up, heart and soul, to teach the poor-I could not but say within myself:-" In these fables of the assumption, in the undue honours paid to the Virgin, is the beginning of sorrows." In the school is laid the foundation of future infidelity. Why are not these children taught to honour first and chiefest, as the fairest among ten thousand, as not only the best, but the sole and only mediator, Him who said,

66

SUFFER THE LITTLE CHILDREN TO COME UNTO ME AND FOR

BID THEM NOT." Brothers of the CHRISTIAN Doctrine, why do you obscure it with the dogma of Mariolatry?

Before leaving the Christian Brethren, I asked them how it was that their instruction was so much lost upon the bad boys

* De la Salle, whose biography will be found in No. 1 (Jan. 1847) of this publication.

of the large towns, many of whom they had probably educated in their schools. The brethren stated that the influence exercised upon the yet unformed minds of the youths in the manufactories and workshops was most deleterious; that it was there they learned vice and crime. To obviate the social and moral mischiefs into which they fell on leaving school, and to sustain their Christian principle at that most critical period of life-the period from thirteen to eighteen years-these good men had formed evening schools, in which they gave, as I understood, gratuitous instruction, adding thereto godly advice and admonition.

Bidding adieu to the worthy Brothers, and trusting that the Church schoolmasters of England would more than emulate them in painstaking industry and love of poor children, I proceeded to the Departmental Normal School, which is delightfully situate in the Boulevards of the city.

pose.

The building was not originally erected for its present purIt is to a certain extent provisional in its arrangements. The apartments of the resident director are small and incommodious. The refectory of the students is mean and ill-ventilated. They all sleep in one long room, without even a curtain to separate the beds, which are inconveniently crowded.

The young men, to whom we were introduced by the resident director, who was very polite and obliging, were modest and well-behaved. One large class was studying vocal music, under a master, who kept up the voices by the sound of a violin. Another class was occupied in writing some exercises on geography. The walls of the principal class-room were profusely adorned with geometrical diagrams, very neatly and boldly painted on the plaster; and in an adjoining apartment were two maps, similarly drawn, one of France and one of Europe, which were nothing to boast of. Amidst these geometrical figures was a crucifix, with a faded wreath of immortelle over it, and covered with dust. I am, perhaps, too prone to æsthetics, and draw a conclusion concerning the religious tone of the establishment from what many would call a trifling circumstance; but in a Roman Catholic country this fact did not impress me favourably. It was very different from the little altar of the Christian Brothers.

On further inquiry, I found that the year which is about to close had been very disadvantageous to public instruction. The excessive agitation which had reigned throughout the country, and filled so many hearts with dismay, had left no time to the authorities and to the fathers of families to exercise the influence which is absolutely essential to the success of education. The schoolmaster had been turned aside from his work by the distractions of the times, and in some instances had been engaged in that silliest of all silly occupations, the planting of