ord, once so fertile, only produced brambles and
thorns; the evil plants choked the good, and the tares every where
devoured the corn. Scarcely, however, was the Catholic worship restored
in France by the concordat, before religion shed among us some rays of
its former light. Dazzled by the majesty of religious ceremonies, the
people were jealous to emerge from their revolutionary blindness. The
dearth of ministers was the cause that instruction only distilled drop
by drop upon this people famishing with want."

The scanty manner in which this dearth had been occasionally supplied
for some time, excited a longing to participate in the instructions of
the new Mission, which had already visited Arles, Valence, and Tarascon,
under the sanction of the state; and whose claims to religious authority
the writer defends by precedents unnecessary to enumerate here. On the
first Sunday in Lent, 1819, its proceedings were commenced at Avignon,
by a solemn procession, which made the circuit of the principal streets
of the town, singing penitential psalms, and halted on the hill of Notre
Dame; where an inaugural sermon was delivered on a spot called Calvary,
and supposed to represent that sacred place. The multitude, assembled by
curiosity or a better feeling, was so great, that two of the
missionaries found it expedient to address them at the same time from
different stations. One of these was M. Guyon, the director of the
Mission; of whose eloquence and animation, as a preacher, the author
speaks highly.

On the succeeding day, the nine ecclesiastics composing the Mission
attached themselves respectively to the different churches of the town,
and called in the assistance of the neighbouring clergy, as confessors
to those persons whom their discourses might affect most strongly. This
step was rendered the more necessary, inasmuch as the common people of
the vicinity understand French merely as the Welsh do English, and
converse only in their native Provencal with any facility. If we may
believe their zealous eulogist, the effects which the missionaries had
anticipated immediately followed, and their utmost exertions, as well as
those of their new associates, were taxed to satisfy the spiritual wants
of the populace. "The Avignonese," says the narrative, "hungered so
after the word of God, that the gates of the churches were besieged from
three hours before daybreak, by those who flocked to be present at the
morning exhortation. Th