me
monasteries in this province extravagances solemnised which pagans would
not have practised. Neither the clergy nor the guardians indeed go to
the choir on this day, but all is given up to the lay brethren, the
cabbage-cutters, errand boys, cooks, scullions, and gardeners; in a word,
all the menials fill their places in the church, and insist that they
perform the offices proper for the day. They dress themselves with all
the sacerdotal ornaments, but torn to rags, or wear them inside out: they
hold in their hands the books reversed or sideways, which they pretend to
read with large spectacles without glasses, and to which they fix the
rinds of scooped oranges . . . ! particularly while dangling the censers
they keep shaking them in derision, and letting the ashes fly about their
heads and faces, one against the other. In this equipage they neither
sing hymns nor psalms nor masses, but mumble a certain gibberish as
shrill and squeaking as a herd of pigs whipped on to market. The
nonsense verses they chant are singularly barbarous:--

"'Haec est clara dies, clararum clara dierum,
Haec est festa dies festarum festa dierum.'" {269}

Faith was far more assured in the times when the spiritual saturnalia
were allowed than now. The irreverence which was not dangerous then, is
now intolerable. It is a bad sign for a man's peace in his own
convictions when he cannot stand turning the canvas of his life
occasionally upside down, or reversing it in a mirror, as painters do
with their pictures that they may judge the better concerning them. I
would persuade all Jews, Mohammedans, Comtists, and freethinkers to turn
high Anglicans, or better still, downright Catholics for a week in every
year, and I would send people like Mr. Gladstone to attend Mr.
Bradlaugh's lectures in the forenoon, and the Grecian pantomime in the
evening, two or three times every winter. I should perhaps tell them
that the Grecian pantomime has nothing to do with Greek plays. They
little know how much more keenly they would relish their normal opinions
during the rest of the year for the little spiritual outing which I would
prescribe for them, which, after all, is but another phase of the wise
saying--"_Surtout point de zele_." St. Paul attempted an obviously
hopeless task (as the Church of Rome very well understands) when he tried
to put down seasonarianism. People must and will go to church to be a
little better, to the theatre to be a l