pose, bespeak a ritual religion, and therefore a
religion light and gay in its spirit; all religions being so which cast
responsibility into outward observances, especially where the outward
observances are not of a very burdensome character. If nuns in their
cloister, and Jews in their synagogues, have been characterized by the
lightness of their religious spirit, well may the Catholics of an
enlightened country be so, discarding the grossest and most burdensome
of their rites, and retaining the ritual principle. The searchers after
a new faith in France must increase by millions before they can change
the character of the religious sentiment of the country; and perhaps
before that which is now gross can be elevated into what is genial, and
before a mixture of levity and fear can be changed into the cheerful
earnestness of a moderate or truly catholic religious conviction, the
ancient churches of France may be standing in ruins,--objects for the
research of the antiquary.

The rule of examining things before persons must be observed in
ascertaining the religious sentiment of any country. A stranger in
England might interrogate everybody he saw, and be little wiser at the
end of a year. He might meet a fanatic one day, an indifferent person
the next, and a calmly convinced one the third: he might go from a
Churchman to a Jew; from a Jew to a Quaker; from a Quaker to a Catholic;
and every day be farther from understanding the prevailing religious
sentiment of the country. A much shorter and surer method is, to examine
the Places of Worship, the condition of the Clergy, the Popular
Superstitions, the observance of Holy Days, and some other particulars
of the kind.

* * * * *

First, for the Churches. There is that about all places of worship which
may tell nearly as plain a tale as the carved idols, with messes of rice
before them, in Hindoo temples; or as the human bones hung round the hut
of an African god. The proportion and resemblance of modern places of
worship to those which were built in dark times of superstition; the
suitability or incongruity of all that is of late introduction into
their furniture and worship with what had its origin in those dim
ages;--such circumstances as these cannot but indicate whether the
common religious sentiment is as nearly as possible the same as in
centuries past, or whether it is approximating, slowly or rapidly,
towards the ascetic or the modera