ONE WORD TO THE PRIESTS:--We do not Attack Priests, but their Unhappy
and Dangerous Position--Not Rome but France is the Pope--Our Sympathy
for Priests, Victims of the Laws--Priests and Soldiers--_Priest_ means
_Old Man_

PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.

PART I.

ON DIRECTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER I.

RELIGIOUS REACTION IN 1600.--INFLUENCE OF THE JESUITS OVER WOMEN AND
CHILDREN.--SAVOY; THE VAUDOIS; VIOLENCE AND MILDNESS.--ST. FRANCOIS DE
SALES.

Everybody has seen in the Louvre Guide's graceful picture representing
the Annunciation. The drawing is incorrect, the colouring false, and
yet the effect is seducing. Do not expect to find in it the
conscientiousness and austerity of the old schools; you would look also
in vain for the vigorous and bold touch of the masters of the
_Renaissance_. The sixteenth century has passed away, and everything
assumes a softer character. The figure with which the painter has
evidently taken the most pleasure is the angel, who, according to the
refinement of that surfeited period, is a pretty-looking singing boy--a
cherub of the Sacristy. He appears to be sixteen, and the Virgin from
eighteen to twenty years of age. This Virgin--by no means ideal, but
real, and the reality slightly adulterated--is no other than a young
Italian maiden whom Guido copied at her own house, in her snug oratory,
and at her convenient praying-desk (prie-Dieu), such as were then used
by ladies.

If the painter was inspired by anything else, it was not by the Gospel,
but rather by the devout novels of that period, or the fashionable
sermons uttered by the Jesuits in their coquettish-looking churches.
The Angelic Salutation, the Visitation, the Annunciation, were the
darling subjects upon which they had, for a long time past, exhausted
every imagination of seraphic gallantry. On beholding this picture by
Guide, we fancy we are reading the Bernardino. The angel speaks Latin
like a young learned clerk; the Virgin, like a boarding-school young
lady, responds in soft Italian, "O alto signore," &c.

This pretty picture is important as a work characteristic of an already
corrupt age; being an agreeable and delicate work, we are the more
easily led to perceive its suspicious graces and equivocal charms.

Let us call to mind the softened forms which the devout reaction of
this age--that of Henry IV.--then assumed. We are lost in astonishment
when we hear, as it were on the morro