this eminent man's
career; and there are parts of his conduct of which no Liberal can
approve. But I have always thought that a tranquil and happy old age is
a proof, as well as a reward, of a good life; and if this be the case,
M. Guizot's life, though not free from faults, must on the whole have
been good.

His resistance to reform is commonly regarded as having led to the fall
of the constitutional monarchy. I should attribute that catastrophe much
more to the prevalence of the military spirit, which the peaceful policy
of Louis Philippe disappointed, and to which even the conquest of
Algeria failed (as its authors deserved) to give a sufficient vent. The
reign of Louis Philippe was essentially an attempt to found a civil in
place of a military government in France, which was foiled by the
passions excited by the presence of a large standing army and the recent
memory of the Napoleonic wars. The translation of the body of Napoleon
from St. Helena to Paris was the greatest mistake committed by the king
and his advisers. It was the self-humiliation of the government of peace
before the Genius of War.

At Lisieux, as at Caen, and afterwards at Rouen, I saw on the Sunday a
great church full of women, with scarcely a score of men. And what
wonder? Close to where I sat was the altar of Our Lady of La Salette,
offering to the adoration of the people the most coarse and revolting of
impostures. And in the course of the service, an image of the Virgin,
from which the taste of a Greek Pagan would have recoiled, was borne
round the aisles in procession, manifestly the favorite object of
worship in a church nominally devoted to the worship of God. An educated
man in France, even one of the best character and naturally religious,
would almost as soon think of entering a temple of Jupiter as a church.
Religion in Roman Catholic countries being thus left, so far as the
educated classes are concerned, to the priests and women, its recent
developments have been inspired exclusively by priestly ambition and
female imagination. The infallibility of the Pope and the worship of the
Virgin have made, and are still making, tremendous strides. The
Romanizing party in the Episcopal Church of England are left panting
behind, in their vain efforts to keep up with the superstitions of Rome.

From Lisieux my road lay by Pont-Audemer in its beautiful valley to
Caudebec on the Seine; then along the Seine,--here most pleasant,--by
the towers of