ammonism near strangled in the
partridge-nets of giant-looking Idle Dilettantism,--this, in all its
branches, in its thousand-thousand modes and figures, is a sight
familiar to us.

* * * * *

The Popish Religion, we are told, flourishes extremely in these years;
and is the most vivacious-looking religion to be met with at present.
"_Elle a trois cents ans dans le ventre_," counts M. Jouffroy; "_c'est
pourquoi je la respecte!_"--The old Pope of Rome, finding it laborious
to kneel so long while they cart him through the streets to bless the
people on _Corpus-Christi_ Day, complains of rheumatism; whereupon his
Cardinals consult;--construct him, after some study, a stuffed cloaked
figure, of iron and wood, with wool or baked hair; and place it in a
kneeling posture. Stuffed figure, or rump of a figure; to this stuffed
rump he, sitting at his ease on a lower level, joins, by the aid of
cloaks and drapery, his living head and outspread hands: the rump with
its cloaks kneels, the Pope looks, and holds his hands spread; and so
the two in concert bless the Roman population on _Corpus-Christi_ Day,
as well as they can.

I have considered this amphibious Pope, with the wool-and-iron back,
with the flesh head and hands; and endeavoured to calculate his
horoscope. I reckon him the remarkablest Pontiff that has darkened
God's daylight, or painted himself in the human retina, for these
several thousand years. Nay, since Chaos first shivered, and
'sneezed,' as the Arabs say, with the first shaft of sunlight shot
through it, what stranger product was there of Nature and Art working
together? Here is a Supreme Priest who believes God to be--What, in
the name of God, _does_ he believe God to be?--and discerns that all
worship of God is a scenic phantasmagory of wax-candles, organ-blasts,
Gregorian chants, mass-brayings, purple monsignori, wool-and-iron
rumps, artistically spread out,--to save the ignorant from worse.

O reader, I say not who are Belial's elect. This poor amphibious Pope
too gives loaves to the Poor; has in him more good latent than he is
himself aware of. His poor Jesuits, in the late Italian Cholera, were,
with a few German Doctors, the only creatures whom dastard terror had
not driven mad: they descended fearless into all gulfs and bedlams;
watched over the pillow of the dying, with help, with counsel and
hope; shone as luminous fixed stars, when all else had gone out in
chaotic nig