The form of dramatic composition now most in vogue is the burlesque; or, in the language of the great Planche, "the original, grand, comic, romantic, operatic, melo-dramatic, fairy extravaganza!" There is a title for you, that would have put Polonius to the blush. I have invested some three shillings in the purchase of several of these works, in order that I might study at leisure the bold and brilliant wit, the elegant language, and the ingenious metaphors which had entranced me when I heard them uttered from the stage. I am now tolerably master of the subject, and therefore beg leave, before condescending upon details, to hand you a recipe for the concoction of one of these delectable dishes. Take my advice, and make the experiment yourself. Red Riding-Hood, I think, is still a virgin story; but, unless you make haste, she will be snapped up, for they are rapidly exhausting the stores of the "Contes des Fees." Alexander will probably give you something for it, or you can try our old friend Miller at the Green. The process is shortly this. Select a fairy tale, or a chapter from the Arabian Nights; write out the dramatis personae, taking care that you have plenty of supernaturals, genii, elves, gnomes, ghouls, or vampires, to make up a competent corps de ballet; work out your dialogue in slipshod verse, with as much slang repartee as you possibly can cram in, and let every couplet contain either a pun or some innuendo upon the passing events of the day. This in London is considered as the highest species of wit, and seldom fails to bring down three distinct rounds of applause from the galleries. I fear you may be trammelled a little by the scantiness of local allusions. Hungerford Bridge and Trafalgar Square, as I have already hinted, have kept the Cockneys in roars of laughter for years, and are dragged forward with unrelenting perseverance, but still undiminished effect, in each successive extravaganza. I suspect you will find that the populace of Glasgow are less easy to be tickled, and somewhat jealous of quips at their familiar haunts. However, don't be down-hearted. Go boldly at the Gorbals, the Goosedubs, and the great chimney-stalk of St Rollox; it is impossible to predict how boldly the municipal pulse may bound beneath the pressure of a dexterous finger. Next, you must compose some stanzas, as vapid as you please, to be sung by the leading virgin in pantaloons; or, what is better still, a few parodies adapted to the most popular airs. I see a fine field for your ingenuity in the Jacobite relics; they are entwined with our most sacred national recollections, and therefore may be desecrated at will. Never lose sight for a moment of the manifold advantages derivable from a free use of the trap-door and the flying-wires; throw in a transparency, an Elysian field, a dissolving view, and a miniature Vesuvius, and

"My basnet to a 'prentice cap, Lord Surrey's o'er the Till,"

you will take all Glasgow by storm, and stand henceforward crowned as the young Euripides of the West.

You and I, in the course of our early German studies, lighted, as I can well remember, upon the Phantasus of Ludwig Tieck. I attribute your loss of the first prize in the Moral Philosophy class to the enthusiasm with which you threw yourself into his glorious Bluebeard and Fortunatus. In truth it was like hearing the tales of childhood told anew, only with a manlier tone, and a clearer and more dignified purpose. How lucidly the early, half-forgotten images were restored under the touch of that inimitable artist! What a luxury it was to revel with the first favourites of our childhood, now developed into full life, and strength, and stately beauty! With these before us, how could we dare be infidels and recreants to our earlier faith, or smile in scorn at the fanciful loves and cherished dreams of infancy? Such were our feelings, nor could it well be otherwise; for Tieck was, and is, a poet of the highest grade—not a playwright and systematic jest-hunter; and would as soon have put forth his hand in impious challenge against the Ark, as have stooped to become a buffooning pander to the idle follies of the million. It remained for England—great and classic England—no, by heavens! I will not do her that wrong—but for London, and London artists!—I believe that is the proper phrase—after having exhausted every other subject of parody, sacred and profane, to invade the sanctuary of childhood, and vulgarize the very earliest impressions which are conveyed to the infant. Are not the men who sit down deliberately to such a task more culpable than even the nursery jade who administers gin and opium to her charge, in order that she may steal to the back-door undisturbed, and there indulge in surreptitious dalliance with the dustman? Far better had they stuck to their old trade of twisting travesties from Shakespeare for the amusement of elderly idiots, than attempted to people Fairyland with the palpable denizens of St Giles. The Seven Champions of Christendom, indeed! They may well lay claim to the title of Champions of Cockneydom incarnate, setting forth on their heroic quest from the rendezvous in the Seven Dials.

Let us look a little into their individual feats, although I must needs say, that the whole of these productions bear a marvellous resemblance to each other. There is no more variety in any of them than can be found in the copious advertisements of the Messrs Doudney. Still, it cannot but be that some gems shall scintillate more than others, or, at all events, be of coarser and duller water. With conscious impartiality, and without imputing the palm of slang to any particular individual, I shall give the precedence to Gemini, and their last approved duodecimo. Messrs Taylor and Smith have bestowed upon the public three dramas—to wit, Valentine and Orson, Whittington and his Cat, and Cinderella. I have not been fortunate enough to meet with the earlier portions of this trilogy; but I have got by me Cinderella, of which title the authors, with characteristic purity, confess

"'Twould be proper er To say, 'La Cenerentola,' from the opera."

You shall have a specimen, Bogle, of this extremely racy production, which I strongly recommend you to keep in view as model. You cannot have forgotten the tale of the poor deserted maiden, whose loneliness is thus touchingly described—

"From poker, tongs, and kitchen stove, To the neglected cellar, Is all the change I ever know— Oh, hapless Cinderella!"

But dear Cinderellar is not doomed to mourn in dust and ashes for ever. A prince is coming to her rescue, but in disguise, having changed suits with his own valet. Let us mark the manner of his introduction to the interesting family of the Baron:—

Baron.—The Baron Soldoff, Baroness, and Misses! I thought the Prince was here! (To CINDERELLA.) Tell me who this is.

Rodo.—(Bowing.) I'm but a humble servant of his Highness.

Baron.—Where is he?

Rodo.—Sir, he waits down-stairs from shyness.

Baron.—Give him the Baron's compliments, who begs To this poor hall he'll stir his princely pegs.

[C. Exit RODOLOPH, bowing.

(To musicians.) Now change your costumes, quick as you are able, And be in readiness to wait at table; Here are the pantry keys, (throws them up,) and there the cellar's. Now, try and look distingue—that's good fellows.

[L. Exeunt musicians.

Baroness.—What will the Browns say when this visit's told of? 'Tis a new era for the house of Soldoff!

QUARTETTE.—The BARON, BARONESS, CINDERELLA, and PATCHOULIA. AIR.—'The Campbells are coming.'

The Prince is a-coming, oh dear, oh dear, The prince is a-coming, oh dear! The Prince is a-coming, with piping and drumming, The Prince is a-coming, oh dear, oh dear!

[C. A grand march. Some hunters appear marching in at the door, when CAPILLAIRE, in the ducal cap, puts his head in at the entrance and shouts.

Capil.—Hold hard! (music and procession stop.) Come back, you muffs, that's not correct, You're spoiling a magnificent effect. Down those two staircases you've got to go' A la 'The Daughter of St Mark,' you know.

[C. They retire.

Baron.—That was the Prince who show'd his face just now.

Baroness.—What a fine voice!

Ronde.—What eyes!

Patch.—And what a brow!

Cin.—(aside.) To my mind, as a casual spectator, If that's the Prince, he's very like a waiter.

[March begins again. A grand procession enters the gallery, and deploying in the centre, proceeds down the two staircases simultaneously. Pages with hawks on their wrists. Hunters with dead game, deer, herons, wild-ducks, &c. Men-at-Arms. Banners with the Prince's Arms, &c. Ladies and Cavaliers. Flowergirls strewing flowers. RODOLPE with wand. CAPILLAIRE as the Prince. His train held up by two diminutive pages.

Capil.—(as soon as he reaches the stage, advancing to the front is almost tripped up by the pages mismanaging his train. He turns round sharply.)

If you do that again, you'll get a whipping; It won't do for a Duke to be caught tripping. Let our train go. [Some of the procession are moving off. R. What are you at? Dear, dear! We don't mean that train there, but this train here.

(Pointing to the train of his robe, the pages leave their hold of it.)

Baron.—This princely visit is a condescension—

Capil.—Now don't—

Baroness.—(curtsies) A grace to which we've no pretension,

Capil.—Bless me!

Patch.—(curtseying) An honour not to be believed.

Capil.—Oh, Lord!

Patch.—(curtseying) A favour thankfully received.

Baron.—(bowing again) This princely visit—

Capil.—(impatiently) You've said that before. Gammon! We know we're a tremendous bore. We're a plain man, and don't like all this fuss; Accept our game, but don't make game of us. (Looking about him.)

Well, Baron, these are comfortable quarters,

(Examining Rondeletia and Patchoulia.)

And you hang out two very 'plummy' daughters.

Ronde.—What wit!

Patch.—What humour!

Cin.—(aside) And what language—'plummy!'

Capil.—We like your wife, too. Tho' not young she's 'crummy.'

Cin.—(aside) And 'crummy,' too. Well, these are odd words, very! I'm sure they're not in Johnson's Dictionary.

(Attendant throws open door. L.)

Atten.—Wittles is on the table.

Baron.—(interrupting him) Hush, you lout. He means, you grace, the banquet waits without. If at our humble board you'll deign to sit?

Capil.—Oh, I'm not proud. I'll peck a little bit.

Baron.—For your attendants—

Capil.—Don't mind them at all. Stick the low fellows in the servants' hall. Baron.—(presenting the Baroness for Capillaire to take to dinner.) My wife.

Capil.—No, no, old chap, you take the mother. Young 'uns for me (takes Patchoulia under one arm.) Here's one, (takes Rondeletia,) And here's another.

[As they are going out ( L.) the PRINCE, forgetting himself, passes before CAPILLAIRE.

Capil.—Halloa! where are you shoving to, you scrub? Now for pot-luck, and woe betide the grub."

Match me that, Bogle, if you can! There is wit, genius, and polish for you! No wonder that the "School for Scandal" has been driven off the field. But we must positively indulge ourselves with a love scene, were it merely to qualify the convulsions into which we have been thrown by the humour of these funny fellows. Mark, learn, and understand how ladies are to be wooed and won—

"[(Enter PRINCE RODOLPH.) L.

Rodo.—How's this—what, tears!—Enough to float a frigate!

Patch.—Sir!

Ronde.—Sir!

Rodo.—Oh, it's the valet they look big at! Come, what's the row?—peace-maker's my capacity.

Ronde.—Low wretch!

Patch.—I shudder, man, at your audacity! How dare you interfere 'twixt your superiors?

Rodo.—'Twas pity!

Ronde.—Gracious! pity from inferiors!

Rodo.—Nay, dry your eyes, your quarrel's cause I've found, (sings) Oh, 'tis love, 'tis love, 'tis love that makes the world go round The Prince is a sad dog, he'll pop away, And bag you ten and twenty hearts a-day; Knocks ladies down like nine-pins, with a look, And worst of all can not be brought to book. He sha'n't dim those eyes long, my darlings, shall he?

Patch.—Why, you mad flunky!

Ronde.—Why, you maniac valet!

Patch.—Why, you impertinent piece of pretension!

Ronde.—To call him man would be a condescension. A valet, paugh! (going.)

Prince.—A clear case of cold shoulder.

Patch.—We'll have you trounced, e'er you're a minute older!

[Exeunt RONDELETIA and PATCHOULIA. ( R.)

Prince—(R.) But listen, for a moment. No, they're gone, Well, this is Cocker's old rule, 'set down one.' I had no notion, while I was genteel, How very small indeed a man may feel. I've made what Capillaire calls a 'diskivery.' I wonder what's my value out of livery! But here comes humble little Cinderella ( R.); I feel I love her—let's see, shall I tell her?

[Enter CINDERELLA.

Cin.—I've taken up the coffee, not too soon, And made all tidy for the afternoon. I think—

Prince—What do you think, you little gipsy?

Cin.—I think the Prince and Pa are getting tipsy.

Prince—Well, darling, here I am again you see.

Cin.—You don't mean you were waiting here for me?

Prince—Yes, but I was though; and can't you guess why?

Cin.—You thought that I popp'd out upon the sly?

Prince—I have a secret for you—I'm in love!

Cin.—(dolefully) Who with?

Prince.—With you—fact! There's my hand and glove— Do you return my passion and forgive me?

Cin.—I never do return what people give me.

Prince.—Then keep my heart!

Cin.—Mine kicks up such a bobbery, I'll give it you; exchange, you know, 's no robbery.

Prince—We'll wed next week—a house I'll see about.

Cin.—I'd go with you—but I've no Sunday out."

Beaumont and Fletcher, did I say? Rather Ovid and Tibullus. What a beautiful picture of innocence is conveyed in that suggestive line—

"You thought that I popp'd out upon the sly!"

It is too natural for fiction. It must be a reminiscence of departed bliss—a sigh wafted from the street-door of a furnished lodging-house in Bloomsbury, when our authors plied the bistoury at Guy's. Bogle, if you ever should be in love, take a lesson from these great masters, and your suit is sure to prosper. Not a serving-maid in the Saltmarket but must yield to such fervid and impassioned eloquence.

Talking of songs, I shall just give you the interesting ditty with which this excellent extravaganza concludes. There is fine moral in it, which will do well to lay to heart.

"CINDERELLA sings. When lords shall fall before my throne, And dare not call their souls their own On my slippery path, lest I should fall, I'll think on the COAL-HOLE, and sing so small— With my slipper so fine. Tra-la, Tra-la!

GORGEOUS TABLEAU.

[Curtain falls."

Yes! there can be little doubt that, after all the Coal-hole is their genuine Aganippe.

Would you like to have a slight specimen of Planche, by way of change? It is not fair to give an entire monopoly to Messrs Taylor and Smith, however eminent their deserts, so let us dedicate a moment to the substitute for Shakespeare. From six fairy dramas, composed by the Witty Wizard, I shall select "Graciosa and Percinet." A very short sample will, I opine, convince you that his popularity is as deserved as it assuredly is extensive. Hasten we, then, to the glorious tournament of the Cockneys.

"Enter (C.) the KING, Heralds, Nobles, and Ladies of the Court, the Six Knights, viz.:—SIR REGENT CIRCUS, Knight of the Bull and Mouth; SIR LAD LANE, Knight of the Swan with Two Necks; SIR SNOW HILL, Knight of the Saracen's Head; SIR LUDGATE HILL, Knight of the Belle Sauvage; SIR FLEET STREET, Knight of the Bolt-in-Tun; and SIR CHARING CROSS, Knight of the Golden Cross.

CHORUS

('To the Gay Tournament.')

To the gay tournament The Queen of Beauty goes; He shall gain a prize from her Who most his courage shows— Singing, singing, 'Though others fair may be, Nobody, nobody, can be compare to thee!'

Grog.—Soon will the conqueror, With trophy and with wreath, Kneel on his bended knee My throne low beneath— Singing, singing, 'Though others fair may be, Nobody, nobody can be compared with me.'

King, Lord Nimroddy, and Graciosa, (aside,)

Bold must the champion be Who can that boast maintain; He, for audacity, The prize must surely gain. Swinging, hanging on the highest tree, For such a lie, such a lie, he deserves to be.

Cho.—To the gay tournament, &c. [Exeunt. (R.)

SCENE IV. TILT-YARD OF THE PALACE. The Lists set out for a Tournament. Throne for the QUEEN OF BEAUTY; another for the KING; a Chair of State for the PRINCESS. Pavilions of the Knights-Challengers, &c.

GROGNON, KING, GRACIOSA, Knights, Courtiers, Guards, Heralds, &c., discovered.

Herald.—O yes! O yes! O yes! take notice, pray, Here are six noble knights, in arms to-day; Who swear, that never yet was lady seen So lovely as our new-elected Queen! Against all comers they will prove 'tis so. Oh yes! oh yes! oh yes!

Enter PERCINET ( L.) in Green Armour.

Per.—I say, oh no!

Grog.—Who's this Jack in the green?

Gra. [aside] Sure, I know who!

King.—Do you know what you say?

Per.—And mean it, too!

King.—How! come to court, and say just what you mean! You're a Green Knight, indeed!

Per.—Sir Turnham Green! Of Brentford's royal house a princely scion, Knight of its ancient order, the Red Lion; Baron of Hammersmith, a Count of Kew, Marquis of Kensington, and Lord knows who. But all these titles willingly I waive For one more dear—Fair Graciosa's slave! I'll prove it, on the crest of great or small, She's Beauty's Queen, who holds my heart in thrall, And Grognon is a foul and ugly witch!

King.—If you're a gentleman, behave as sich!

Per.—Come one, come all! here, I throw down my gage!

King.—A green gage, seemingly!

Grog.—I choke with rage! To arms! my knights!

[The Knights enter their Pavilions.

Gra.—I'll bet a crown he mills 'em!

King.—Laissez Aller! That's go it, if it kills 'em!"

I have no patience for such pitiful slaver! And yet this is the sort of trash which half London is flocking nightly to see, and for which the glorious English drama has been discarded and disdained!

I lay down my pen in utter weariness of the flesh. The jingle of that last jargon is still ringing in my ears; and in order to get rid of it—for if I do not speedily, I am booked as a Bauldie for life—I shall step down to Astley's, and refresh my British feelings by beholding Mr Gomersal overthrown (for the twentieth time this season) upon the field of Waterloo.



PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES.

This remarkable book contains a denunciation, by an angry and an able man, of some of the most pressing practical evils of the Roman Catholic system. The celibacy of the priesthood, the mysteries of the confessional, the usurpations of priestly direction in the economy of families, in the control of women, and in the education of children—these are the objects against which the historian of France now directs the arrows of his indignation, and which he seeks to drive from among his countrymen by his earnest and energetic attacks. His hostility has probably been prompted, in part, by the strong feelings of jealousy at present existing in France between the Universities and the Church. But his work is not professedly, nor principally, directed to that subject of controversy. It embraces a larger question, affecting the various relations of private life, and not confined to one form or phasis of fanaticism. It deserves the anxious consideration of all who are interested in the progress of European civilization, and may teach a valuable lesson to many who may, at first sight, seem to be far removed from the mischief which it seeks to remedy.

For centuries past, it may be said, that the great disease of France has been the disorder in its domestic relations. That amidst the general surrender of its upper classes in former times to levity, "and something more," there were many exceptions of family happiness and purity, is as certain as that human nature, in its worst state of depravity, will ever assert its better tendencies, and give indications of the ethereal source from which it has sprung. But, that the prevailing tone of those who ought to have given the tone to others, was long of the most lax or licentious character, admits of little doubt; nor is it wonderful that public corruption and anarchy should have followed fast upon the dissolution of private restraints. The same form of the evil may not now exist; but the book before us exhibits proofs that there is still a want of that harmony in conjugal life that is essential as the foundation of solid virtue and social prosperity. The husband and the wife are still separated from each other; not, it may be, by a lover, but by a priest. There is the same want of sympathy as ever, the same mutual alienation of hearts, the same absence of that kindly agency of mind on mind, which is needed to strengthen the intellect of the woman and to purify the spirit of the man. It is this state of things that has roused the energies of a writer not remarkable for his prejudices against the Catholic church in her earlier constitution, but who thinks he sees her now at his own door, undermining household authority, and stealing from every man the affections of those who are united to him by the tenderest ties, and whom he cannot cease to love, even when his love has ceased to be returned.

Michelet's book is divided into three parts. The first treats of "Direction," or spiritual superintendence in the seventeenth century; containing a historical view of clerical influence during that period; and more particularly of the policy and power of the Jesuits. The second discusses the character of "Direction" in general, and particularly in the nineteenth century. The third is specially devoted to the subject "Of the Family," and winds up the work, by showing the operation of the poison in the most vital part of the frame.

The preface to the first edition contains powerful passages. We extract some of the best of them from the English translation by Mr Cocks, which is sufficiently respectable for our present purpose.

"The question is about our family:—that sacred asylum in which we all desire to seek the repose of the heart, when our endeavours have proved fruitless, and our illusions are no more. We return exhausted to the domestic hearth; but do we find there the repose we sigh for?

"Let us not dissemble, but acknowledge to ourselves how things are: there is in our family a sad difference of sentiment, and the most serious of all.

"We may speak to our mothers, wives, and daughters, on any of the subjects which form the topics of our conversation with indifferent persons, such as business or the news of the day, but never on subjects that affect the heart and moral life, such as eternity, religion, the soul, and God.

"Choose, for instance, the moment when we naturally feel disposed to meditate with our family in common thought, some quiet evening at the family-table; venture even there, in your own house, at your own fireside, to say one word about these things; your mother sadly shakes her head, your wife contradicts you, your daughter, by her very silence, shows her disapprobation. They are on one side of the table, and you on the other—and alone.

"One would think that in the midst of them, and opposite you, was seated an invisible personage to contradict whatever you may say.

"But how can we be astonished at this state of our family? Our wives and daughters are brought up and governed by our enemies!

* * * * *

"Our enemies, I repeat it, in a more direct sense, as they are naturally envious of marriage and family life. This, I know full well, is rather their misfortune than their fault. An old lifeless system, of mechanical functions, can want but lifeless partisans. Nature, however, reclaims her rights: they feel painfully that family is denied them, and they console themselves only by troubling ours.

* * * * *

"This lifeless spirit, let us call it by its real name, Jesuitism, formerly neutralized by the different manners of living, of the orders, corporations, and religious parties, is now the common spirit which the clergy imbibes through a special education, and which its chiefs make no difficulty in confessing. A bishop has said, 'We are Jesuits, all Jesuits;' and nobody has contradicted him.

"The greater part, however, are less frank: Jesuitism acts powerfully through the medium of those who are supposed to be strangers to it; namely, the Sulpicians, who educate the clergy, the Ignorantins, who instruct the people, and the Lazarists, who direct six thousand Sisters of Charity, and have in their hands the hospitals, schools, charity-offices, &c.

"So many establishments, so much money, so many pulpits for preaching aloud, so many confessionals for whispering, the education of two hundred thousand boys, and six hundred thousand girls, the management of several millions of women, form together a powerful machine. The unity it possesses in our days might, one would suppose, alarm the state. This is so far from being the case, that whilst the state prohibits association among the laity, it has encouraged it among the ecclesiastics. It has allowed them to form a most dangerous footing among the poorer classes, the union of workmen, apprentice-houses, association of servants who are accountable to priests, &c. &c.

"Unity of action, and the monopoly of association, are certainly two powerful levers.

* * * * *

"That which constitutes the gravity of this age, I may even say its holiness, is conscientious work, which promotes attentively the common work of humanity, and facilitates at its own expense the work of the future. Our forefathers dreamed much, and disputed much. But we are labourers, and this is the reason why our furrow has been blessed. The soil which the middle ages left us still covered with brambles, has produced by our efforts so plentiful a harvest, that it already envelopes, and will presently hide the old inanimate post that expected to stop the plough.

"And it is because we are workmen, and return home fatigued every evening, that we need more than others the repose of the heart. Our board and fireside must again become our own; we must no longer find, instead of repose, at home, the old dispute which has been settled by science and the world; nor hear from our wife or child, on our pillow, a lesson learnt by heart, and the words of another man.

"Women follow willingly the strong. How comes it, then, that in this case they have followed the weak?

"It must be that there is an art which gives strength to the weak. This dark art, which consists in surprising, fascinating, lulling, and annihilating the will, has been investigated by me in this volume. The seventeenth century had the theory of it, and ours continues the practice."

We shall not follow the writer in his review of Jesuitical influences in the seventeenth century, though it contains much that might excite remark and deserve attention. We hasten to the more urgent question—the state of matters as they exist at the present hour.

The root of the evil, as Michelet thinks, lies in the position of the priesthood. We are far from adopting all his views, and would decline any indiscriminate condemnation of a body of men who, under any form of Christianity, must do good in many quarters, and must contain numerous examples of faithful and fervent piety. But in so far as the system of the Romish church is vicious and injurious, it is of vital moment that we should trace the effect to its cause. Much evil, we think, is ascribable to the doctrines of that church, and of every other that too highly exalts the powers and functions of the priest as compared with the people. But, dismissing these for the present, the peculiar discipline of the Romish system deserves our immediate consideration; and here our attention is first attracted by a striking characteristic, the CELIBACY of the clergy. Let us hear how so important a peculiarity is thought to operate by this acute observer:—

"We think, without enumerating the too well-known inconveniences of their present state, that if the priest is to advise the family, it is good for him to know what a family is; that as a married man (or a widower, which would be still better,) of a mature age and experience, one who has loved and suffered, and whom domestic affections have enlightened upon the mysteries of moral life, which are not to be learned by guessing, he would possess at the same time more affection, and more wisdom.

* * * * *

"Why torment a blind man by speaking to him of colours? He answers vaguely; occasionally he may guess pretty nearly; but how can it be helped? he cannot see.

"And do not think that the feelings of the heart can be guessed at more easily. A man without wife or child might study the mysterious working of a family in books and the world for ten thousand years without ever knowing one word about them. Look at these men: it is neither time, opportunity nor facility, that they lack to acquire knowledge; they pass their lives with women who tell them more than they tell their husbands; they know, and yet they are ignorant; they know all a woman's acts and thoughts, but they are ignorant precisely of what is the best and most intimate part of her character, and the very essence of her being. They hardly understand her as a lover, (of God or man,) still less as a wife, and not at all as a mother. Nothing is more painful than to see them sitting down awkwardly by the side of a woman to caress her child; their manner towards it is that of flatterers or courtiers—anything but that of a father.

"What I pity the most in the man condemned to celibacy, is not only the privation of the sweetest joys of the heart, but that a thousand objects of the natural and moral world are, and ever will be, a dead letter to him. Many have thought, by living apart, to dedicate their lives to science; but the reverse is the case. In such a morose and crippled life, science is never fathomed; it may be varied, and superficially immense; but it escapes—for it will not reside there. Celibacy gives a restless activity to researches, intrigues, and business—a sort of huntsman's eagerness—a sharpness in the subtilties of school-divinity and disputation: this is at least the effect it had in its prime. If it makes the senses keen and liable to temptation, certainly it does not soften the heart. Our terrorists in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were monks. Monastic prisons were always the most cruel. A life systematically negative—a life without its functions—developes in man instincts that are hostile to life; he who suffers is willing to make others suffer. The harmonious and fertile parts of our nature, which on the one hand incline to goodness, and on the other to genius and high invention, can hardly ever withstand this partial suicide.

* * * * *

"I have never been insensible either to the humiliation of the church, or to the sufferings of the priest. I have them all present, both before my imagination and in my heart. I have followed this unfortunate man in the career of privations, and in the miserable life into which he is dragged by the hand of a hypocritical authority. And in his loneliness, on his cold and melancholy hearth, where he sometimes weeps at night, let him remember that a man has often wept with him, and that I am that man."

We partly know the object and origin of the middle age institution of celibacy among the clergy. It was intended to check the tendency to secularize benefices. It was adapted to the condition of a church militant. It might do good, or at least it could do little harm, where aged and self-mortified men were the occupants of the office. But a youthful priesthood, established in all the comforts or the luxuries of a state endowment, moving and officiating in a sphere where leisure and refinement give an impulse to the heart and fancy, and yet condemned to a renunciation of all the charities of family union, of all the affections of a lover, a husband, a father—how unnatural a position is this, how detrimental to usefulness, how dangerous to virtue! Supposing, even, that the vow is kept in its spirit, and perhaps its violation is not the greatest imaginable mischief, what must be the effect of such solitary seclusion on ordinary minds! What power shall protect the mass of the profession on an envious sourness of heart at the sight of that happiness in others, which in a moment, it may be of rashness, they have relinquished for themselves. "Croire qu'un voeu, quelques prieres, une robe noire sur le dos, vont vous delivrer de la chair, et vous faire un pur esprit, n'est-ce pas chose puerile?" We hope and are sure it is not often so; but can we say that sometimes the dark and deserted spirit of the priest may not look on the happiness of families with an approach to the feelings of the Evil One, when gazing at our First Parents in their state of innocence?—

"Sight hateful! sight tormenting! thus these two Emparadised in one another's arms—While I—"

But this is not all. Thus doomed to the dreary isolation of a manque and mutilated life, yet, in the midst of his privations, retaining his natural passions, his longings of the heart and affections, the Romish priest is employed in no ordinary task of clerical occupation or superintendence—in preaching merely or in prayer—in the visitation of the sick and afflicted. The CONFESSIONAL is added to his duties, as if on purpose to enhance the misery of his condition, and the mischief of his influence. And with whom is the confessional chiefly conversant? The male penitent, we presume, is content with a very general acknowledgment of his errors, and seldom indulges in great outpourings of the spirit, or would submit to any stretch of authority over his conscience or conduct. But the softer sex, whose own tenderness of heart, and whose power over the hearts of others, make all converse with them so potent for good or for harm—maidens, and wives in the prime of life, and in the pride of beauty, opening their souls to a confessor, revealing all their secret emotions, their hopes, their disappointments, their fears, their failings, submitting to his questions, and hanging upon his words of acquittal or condemnation; surely this is a subject of contemplation full of awful interest, and on which it is impossible to be at ease where the mysterious intercourse is without a witness and without a check—but the consciences of two frail and fallible human beings. Well may we say with Michelet, that under such a system the priest ought to be truly a presbyteros, "a man who has seen, learned, and suffered much." A young priest as a father-confessor is not merely "a nonsensical contradiction," but a snare and a source of peril both to himself and his penitents.

The pomp of Popery gives its clergy sufficient aids to their influence by other means.

"The priest takes advantage of every thing that is calculated to make him be considered as a man apart—of his dress, his position, his mysterious church, that invests the most vulgar with a poetical gleam.

* * * * *

"What an immense place is this church, and what an immense host must inhabit this wonderful dwelling! Optical delusion adds still more to the effect. Every proportion changes. The eye is deceived and deceives itself, at the same time, with these sublime lights and deepening shades, all calculated to increase the illusion. The man whom in the street you judged, by his surly look, to be a village schoolmaster, is here a prophet. He is transformed by this majestic framework; his heaviness becomes strength and majesty; his voice has formidable echoes. Women and children tremble and are afraid.

* * * * *

"Do you see that solemn figure, adorned with all the gold and purple of his pontifical dress, ascending, with the thought, the prayer of a multitude of ten thousand men, the triumphal steps in the choir of St Denis? Do you see him still, above all that kneeling mass, hovering as high as the vaulted roofs, his head reaching the capitals, and lost among the winged heads of the angels, whence he hurls his thunder? Well, it is the same man, this terrible archangel himself, who presently descends for her, and now, mild and gentle, goes yonder into that dark chapel, to listen to her in the languid hours of the afternoon! Delightful hour of tumultuous, but tender sensations! (Why does the heart palpitate so strongly here?) How dark the church becomes! Yet it is not late. The great rose-window over the portal glitters with the setting sun. But it is quite another thing in the choir; dark shadows envelope it, and beyond is obscurity. One thing astounds and almost frightens us, however far we may be, which is the mysterious old painted glass, at the farthest end of the church, on which the design is no longer distinguishable, twinkling in the shade, like an illegible magic scroll of unknown characters. The chapel is not less dark on that account; you can no longer discern the ornaments and delicate moulding entwined in the vaulted roof; the shadow deepening blends and confounds the outlines. But, as if this chapel were not dark enough, it contains, in a retired corner, a narrow recess of dark oak, where that man, all emotion, and that trembling woman, so close to each other, are whispering together about the love of God."

The details of a priest's education for the confessional office are necessarily deplorable. We blame not so much the men as the system. Yet books, apparently, are continued among the preparations for this duty, which might well be dispensed with as wholly unsuited to the age. We believe that Sanchez was a man of holy life, though his purity, after the analogy of one of Swift's paradoxes, left him a man of impure ideas; and no one was ever forced by dire necessity to read his book without disgust and dismay. It may be good for the students of medicine to penetrate into every form in which bodily disease can show itself; but the pathology of the mind thus hideously represented is degrading even to the observer.

"A worthy parish priest has often told me that the sore part of his profession, that which filled him with despair, and his life with torment, was the confession.

"The studies with which they prepare for it in the seminaries are such as entirely ruin the disposition, weaken the body, and enervate and defile the soul.

"Lay education, without making any pretension to an extraordinary degree of purity, and though the pupils it forms will, one day, enjoy public life, takes, however, especial care to keep from the eyes of youth the glowing descriptions that excite the passions.

"Ecclesiastical education, on the contrary, which pretends to form men superior to man, pure virgin minds, angels, fixes precisely the attention of its pupils upon things that are to be for ever forbidden them, and gives them for subjects of study terrible temptations, such as would make all the saints run the risk of damnation. Their printed books have been quoted, but not so their copy-books, by which they complete the two last years of seminary education: these copy-books contain things that the most audacious have never dared to publish.

* * * * *

"This surprising imprudence proceeded originally from the very scholastic supposition, that the body and soul could be perfectly well kept apart."

What is the influence by which the power of the confessor is converted into that of the director? It is done in the usual way—by the continual repetition of the same process for a length of time. Habit is the insidious enemy that, ere it seems to assail, has already conquered and led captive.

"Stand at this window every day, at a certain hour in the afternoon. You will see a pale man pass down the street, with his eyes cast on the ground, and always following the same line of pavement next the houses. Where he set his foot yesterday, there he does to-day, and there he will to-morrow; he would wear out the pavement if it was never renewed. And by this same street he goes to the same house, ascends to the same story, and in the same cabinet speaks to the same person. He speaks of the same things, and his manner seems the same. The person who listens to him sees no difference between yesterday and to-day; gentle uniformity, as serene as an infant's sleep, whose breathing raises its chest at equal intervals with the same soft sounds.

"You think that nothing changes in this monotonous equality; that all these days are the same. You are mistaken; you have perceived nothing, yet every day there is a change, slight, it is true, and imperceptible, which the person, himself changed by little and little, does not remark.

"It is like a dream in a bark. What distance have you come whilst you were dreaming? Who can tell? Thus you go on, without seeming to move—still, and yet rapidly. Once out of the river, or canal, you soon find yourself at sea; the uniform immensity in which you now are, will inform you still less of the distance you go. Time and place are equally uncertain; no sure point to occupy attention; and attention itself is gone. The reverie is profound, and becomes more and more so—an ocean of dreams upon the smooth ocean of waters.

"A pleasant state, in which every thing becomes insensible, even gentleness itself. Is it death, or is it life? To distinguish, we require attention, and we should awake from our dream.—No, let it go on, whatever it may be that carried me along with it, whether it lead me to life or death.

"Alas! 'tis habit! that gently-sloping, formidable abyss, into which we slide so easily! we may say every thing that is bad of it, and also every thing that is good, and it will be always true."

It would be painful and repulsive to follow out the acts which the acquisition of such spiritual ascendancy may suggest to wicked or even a weak spirit. The result in general is the complete possession of the whole mind of the subdued victim, which lives, and moves, and has its being in the will and wishes of its omnipotent tyrant. This change is of itself destructive of moral independence; but we must not conceal what the writer before us represents as an ulterior effect, and which, even as a possibility, must be contemplated with fear and horror.

"To be able to have all, and then abstain, is a slippery situation! who will keep his footing on this declivity?

* * * * *

"Are you sure you possess the heart entirely, if you have not the body? Will not physical possession give up corners of the soul, which otherwise would remain inaccessible? Is spiritual dominion complete, if it does not comprehend the other? The great popes seem to have settled the question; they thought popedom implied empire; and the pope himself, besides his sway over consciences, was king in temporal matters.

* * * * *

"Afterwards comes the vile refinement of the Quietists:—'If the inferior part be without sin, the superior grows proud, and pride is the greatest sin; consequently the flesh ought to sin, in order that the soul may remain humble; sin, producing humility, becomes a ladder to ascend to heaven.'

"Sin!—But is it sin? (depraved devotion finds here the ancient sophism:) The holy by its essence, being holiness itself, always sanctifies. In the spiritual man, every thing is spirit, even what in another is matter. If, in its superior flight, the holy should meet with any obstacle that might draw it again towards the earth, let the inferior part get rid of it; it does a meritorious work, and is sanctified for it.

"Diabolical subtilty! which few avow clearly, but which many brood over, and cherish in their most secret thoughts."

We feel assured that, as Michelet himself has said, this last act of the dreadful drama is but seldom represented. But enough may be done, without actual or conscious guilt, to pervert the feelings, and, above all, to destroy the peace and the unity of the family.

"Six hundred and twenty thousand girls are brought up by nuns under the direction of the priests. These girls will soon be women and mothers, who, in their turn, will hand over to the priests, as far as they are able, both their sons and their daughters.

"The mother has already succeeded as far as concerns the daughter; by her persevering importunity, she has, at length, overcome the father's repugnance. A man who, every evening, after the troubles of business, and the warfare of the world, finds strife also at home, may certainly resist for a time, but he must necessarily give in at last; or he will be allowed neither truce, cessation, rest, nor refuge. His own house becomes uninhabitable. His wife, having nothing to expect at the confessional but harsh treatment as long as she does not succeed, will wage against him every day and every hour the war they make against her; a more gentle one, perhaps; politely bitter, implacable, and obstinate.

"She grumbles at the fireside, is low-spirited at table, and never opens her mouth either to speak or eat; then, at bed-time, the inevitable repetition of the lesson she has learned, even on the pillow. The same sound of the same bell, for ever and ever: who could withstand it? What is to be done? Give in, or become mad!

* * * * *

"What is very singular, the father, generally, is aware that they are bringing up his child against him. Man, you surprise me; what do you expect then? 'Oh! she will forget it; time, marriage, and the world, will wear away all that'. Yes, for a time, but only to reappear; at the first disappointment in the world, it will all return. As soon as she grows somewhat in years, she will return to the habits of the child; the master she now has will be her master then, whether for your contradiction, good man, or for the despair and daily damnation of her father and husband. Then will you taste the fruit of this education.

"Education! a mere trifle, a weak power, no doubt, which the father may, without danger, allow his enemies to take possession of!

"To possess the mind, with all the advantage of the first possessor! To write in this book of blank paper whatever they will! and to write what will last for ever! And, remember well, it will be in vain for you to write upon it hereafter; what has once been indited, cannot be erased. Is the mystery of her young memory to be as weak in receiving impressions, as it is strong in keeping them. The early tracing that seemed to be effaced at twenty, reappears at forty or sixty. It is the last and the clearest, perhaps, that old age will retain.

* * * * *

"This is true in speaking of the school, but how much more so as regards the church! especially in the case of the daughter, who is more docile and timid, and certainly retains more faithfully her early impressions. What she heard the first time in that grand church, under those resounding roofs, and the words, pronounced with a solemn voice by that man in black, which then frightened her so, being addressed to herself;—ah! be not afraid of her ever forgetting them. But even if she could forget them, she would be reminded of them every week: woman is all her life at school, finding in the confessional her school-bench, her schoolmaster, the only man she fears, and the only one, as we have said, who, in the present state of our manners, can threaten a woman.

"What an advantage has he in being able to take her quite young, in the convent where they have placed her, to be the first to take in hand her young soul, and to be the first to exercise upon her the earliest severity, and also the earliest indulgence which is so akin to affectionate tenderness, to be the father and friend of a child taken so soon from her mother's arms. The confidant of her first thoughts will long be associated with her private reveries. He has had an especial and singular privilege which the husband may envy: what—why, the virginity of the soul, and the first-fruits of the will.

"This is the man of whom, young bachelors, you must ask the girl in marriage, before you speak to her parents."

The subject is resumed in his preface to the third edition.

"It had been generally believed that two persons were sufficient for matrimony: but this is all altered; and we have the new system, as set forth by themselves, composed of three elements: 1st, man, the strong, the violent; 2dly, woman, a being naturally weak; 3dly, the priest, born a man, and strong, but who is kind enough to become weak, and resemble woman; and who, participating thus in both natures, may interpose between them.

"Interpose! interfere between two persons who were to be henceforth but one! This changes wonderfully the idea which, from the beginning of the world, has been entertained of marriage.

"But this is not all; they avow that they do not pretend to make an impartial interference that might favour each of the parties, according to reason. No, they address themselves exclusively to the wife: she it is whom they undertake to protect against her natural protector. They offer to league with her in order to transform the husband. If it was once firmly established that marriage, instead of being unity in two persons, is a league of one of them with a stranger, it would become exceedingly scarce."

It would be unjust to assume that a book written under the influence of strong feelings contains an impartial account of actual facts; but even the rage with which it has been received by the party attacked, is a proof that it is true to most damaging extent. That its pictures are exaggerated is more than possible. But it is not possible that it should be destitute of a broad and deep foundation of melancholy reality.

What now is the remedy which this physician would prescribe for the disease he has thus exposed? His words on this subject are well deserving of attention.

"Marriage gives the husband a single and momentary opportunity to become in reality the master of his wife, to withdraw her from the influence of another, and make her his own for ever. Does he profit by it? very rarely. He ought, in the very beginning, when he has much influence over her, to let her participate in the activity of his mind, his business, and ideas, initiate her in his projects, and create an activity in her by means of his own.

"To wish and think as he does, both acting with him and suffering with him—this is marriage. The worst that may happen is not that she may suffer, but that she may languish and pine away, living apart, and like a widow. How can we wonder, then, if her affection for him be lessened? Ah, if, in the beginning, he made her his own, by making her share his ambition, troubles, and uneasiness:—if they had watched whole nights together, and been troubled with the same thoughts, he would have retained her affections. Attachment may be strengthened by grief itself; and mutual sufferings may maintain mutual love.

* * * * *

"Unfortunately, this is not the way of the world. I have sought every where, but in vain, for this fine exchange of thought, which alone realizes marriage. They certainly try for a moment, in the beginning, to communicate together, but they are soon discouraged; the husband grows dumb, his heart, dried up with the arid influence of interests and business, can no longer find words. At first she is astonished and uneasy: she questions him. But questions annoy him, and she no longer dares to speak to him. Let him be easy; the time is coming when his wife, sitting thoughtful by the fireside, absent in her turn, and framing her imaginary plans, will leave him in quiet possession of his taciturnity.

* * * * *

"Let us not accuse the Jesuits, who carry on their jesuitical trade, nor the priests, who are dangerous, restless, and violent, only because they are unhappy.

"No, we ought rather to accuse ourselves.

"If dead men return in broad daylight, if these Gothic phantoms haunt our streets at noonday, it is because the living have let the spirit of life grow weak within them. How is it that these men reappear among us, after having been buried by history with all funereal rites, and laid by the side of other ancient orders? The very sight of them is a solemn token, and a serious warning.

* * * * *

"Modern strength appears in the powerful liberty with which you go on disengaging the reality from the forms, and the spirit on the dead letter. But why do you not reveal yourself to the companion of your life, in that which is for you your life itself? She passes away days and years by your side, without seeing or knowing the grandeur that is within you. If she saw you walk free, strong, and prosperous in action and in science, she would not remain chained down to material idolatry, and bound to the sterile letter; she would rise to a faith far more free and pure, and you would be as one in faith. She would preserve for you this common treasure of religious life, where you might seek for comfort when your mind is languid; and when your various toils, studies, and business have weakened the vital unity within you, she would bring back your thoughts and life to God, the true, the only unity.

"I shall not attempt to crowd a large volume into a small preface. I shall only add one word, which at once expresses and completes my thought.

"Man ought to nourish woman. He ought to feed spiritually (and materially if he can) her who nourishes him with her love, her milk, and her very life.

"Our adversaries give women bad food; but we give them none at all.

"To the women of the richer class, those who seem to be so gently protected by their family, those brilliant ones whom people suppose so happy, to these we give no spiritual food.

"And to the women of the poorer class, solitary, industrious, and destitute, who try hard to gain their bread, we do not even give our assistance to help them to find their material food.

"These women, who are or will be mothers, are left by us to fast, (either in soul or in body,) and we are punished especially by the generation that issues from them, for our neglecting to give them the staff of life.

"I like to believe that good-will, generally, is not wanting—only time and attention. People live in a hurry, and can hardly be said to live: they follow with a huntsman's eagerness this or that petty object, and neglect what is important.

"You, man of business or study, who are so energetic and indefatigable, you have no time, say you, to associate your wife with your daily progress; you leave her to her ennui, idle conversations, empty sermons, and silly books; so that, falling below herself, less than woman, even less than a child, she will have neither moral action, influence, nor maternal authority, over her own offspring. Well! you will have the time, as old age advances, to try in vain to do all over again what is not done twice, to follow in the steps of a son, who, from college to the schools, and from thence into the world, hardly knows his family; and who, if he travels a little, and meets you on his return, will ask you your name. The mother alone could have made you a son; but to do so you ought to have made her what a woman ought to be, strengthened her with your sentiments and ideas, and nourished her with your life."

True, O most subtle and sapient Frenchman, the remedy lies in the direction you have pointed out; but we have doubts if you have fully discovered its nature, or are prepared to apply it in its necessary extent. The husband must make the wife the companion of his heart and thoughts, of his hopes and exertions. Too long has this sympathy and confidence been unknown in France, where your women have been but the toys and playthings of your lighter or looser hours, and where often to their own husbands they have not even been so much. But, as you partly see, this is not all that is needed to be corrected. In order to be the fitting guide and guardian of the mother of his family, the husband must share in those higher feelings which he seeks to regulate and reclaim. You do not hope or wish to see your wife and children devoid of religion. But if you would not surrender them to the guidance of others in those momentous concerns, you must care for them and conduct their course yourself, and must learn to travel the road along which they are to be led. The husband must become himself the priest and the director: not by inculcating a vague theism or a cold morality, but by establishing in his household the purity and the practice of a Christian faith. If the domestic throne is to be upheld on its rightful foundation, the altar must be reared by its side. The philosopher and historian must stoop to learn from his own children that simplicity of which they are such powerful teachers, and which will amply repay him for all the lessons of a more mature wisdom that his learning and experience can impart. Openly and earnestly sympathizing with their devout impressions, he will strengthen and support by his intellectual energies the soft and more susceptible natures of those placed under his charge, and will thus shield them from the attempts to mislead and inflame, to which they must inevitably be exposed if left to find their only sympathy in extraneous influences. This re-establishment of a patriarchal piety is one of the great boons which the true spirit of Protestantism purchased for its followers, and which alone can protect the weaker members of the household from becoming a prey to priestly interference and false enthusiasm.

The book contains a touching tribute, such as able men have often paid to the maternal affection that formed their minds:—

"Whilst writing all this, I have had in my mind a woman, whose strong and serious mind would not have failed to support me in these contentions; I lost her thirty years ago, (I was a child then;) nevertheless, ever living in my memory, she follows me from age to age.

"She suffered with me in my poverty, and was not allowed to share in my better fortune. When young, I made her sad, and now I cannot console her. I know not even where her bones are: I was too poor then to buy earth to bury her!

"And yet I owe her much. I feel deeply that I am the son of woman. Every instant, in my ideas and words (not to mention my features and gestures,) I find again my mother in myself. It is my mother's blood that gives me the sympathy I feel for bygone ages, and the tender remembrance of all those who are now no more.

"What return then could I, who am myself advancing towards old age, make her for the many things I owe her? One, for which she would have thanked me—this protest in favour of women and mothers; and I place it at the head of a book believed by some to be a work of controversy. They are wrong. The longer it lives, if it should live, the plainer will it be seen, that, in spite of polemical emotion, it was a work of history, a work of faith, of truth, and of sincerity;—on what, then, could I have set my heart more?"

In a spirit worthy of these feelings, the author contends strongly for the benefits of maternal education on the character of sons. We shall give the passage in the original, as it contains a good deal that is French, and a great deal that is beautiful:—

"Quand on songe que la vie moyenne est si courte, qu'un si grand nombre d'hommes meurent tout jeunes, on hesite d'abreger cette premiere, cette meilleure epoque de la vie, ou l'enfant, libre sous la mere, vit dans la grace et non dans la loi. Mais s'il est vrai, comme je pense, que ce temps qu'on croit perdu est justement l'epoque unique, precieuse, irreparable, ou, parmi les jeux puerils, le genius sacre essaye son premier essor, la saison ou les ailes poussent, ou l'aiglon s'essaye a voler ... Ah! de grace, ne l'abregez pas. Ne chassez pas avant le temps cet homme nouveau du paradis maternel; encore un jour; demain a la bonne heure, mon Dieu! il sera bien temps; demain, il se courbera au travail, il rampera sur son sillon.... Aujourd'hui laissez-le encore, qu'il prenne largement la force et la vie, qu'il aspire d'un grand coeur l'air vitale de la liberte.

"Une education trop exigeante, trop zelee, inquiete, est un danger pour les enfants. On augmente toujours la masse d'etude et de science, les acquisitions exterieures; l'interieur succombe. Celui-ci n'est que latin, tel autre n'est que mathematiques. Ou est l'homme, je vous prie? Et c'etait l'homme justement qu'aimait et menageait la mere. C'est lui qu'elle respectait dans les ecarts de l'enfant. Elle semblait retirer son action, sa surveillance meme, afin qu'il agit, qu'il fut libre et fort. Mais, en meme temps, elle l'entourait toujours comme d'un invisible embrassement.

"Il y a un peril, je le sais bien, dans cette education de l'amour. Ce que l'amour veut et desire par-dessus tout, c'est de s'immoler, de sacrifier tout—interets, convenances, habitudes, la vie, s'il le faut.

"L'objet de cette immolation peut, dans son egoisme enfantin, recevoir, comme chose due, tous les sacrifices, se laisser traiter en idole, inerte, immobile, et devenir d'autant plus incapable d'action qu'on agira plus pour lui.

"Danger reel, mais balance par l'ambition ardente du coeur maternel, qui presque toujours place sur l'enfant une esperance infinie, et brule de la realiser. Toute mere de quelque valeur a une ferme foi, c'est que son fils doit etre un heros—dans l'action ou dans la science, il n'importe. Tout ce qui lui a fait defaut dans sa triste experience de ce monde, il va, lui, ce petite enfant, le realiser. Les miseres du present sont rachetees d'avance par ce splendide avenir: tout est miserable aujourd'hui; qu'il grandisse, et tout sera grand. O poesie! O esperance! ou sont les limites de la pensee maternelle? Moi, je ne suis qu'une femme; mais voici un homme. J'ai donne un homme au monde. Une seule chose l'embarrasse—l'enfant sera-t-il un Bonaparte, un Voltaire, ou un Newton?

"S'il faut absolument pour cela qu'il la quitte, eh bien! qu'il aille, qu'il s'eloigne, elle y consent; s'il faut qu'elle s'arrache le coeur, elle s'arrachera le coeur. L'amour est capable de tout, et d'immoler l'amour meme. Oui, qu'il parte, qu'il suive sa grande destinee, qu'il accomplisse le beau reve qu'elle fit quand elle le portait dans son sein, ou sur ses genoux. Et alors, chose incroyable, cette femme craintive, qui tout-a-l'heure n'osait le voir marcher seul sans craindre qu'il ne tombat, elle est devenue si brave qu'elle l'envoie dans les carrieres; les plus hasardeuses, sur mer, ou bien encore dans cette rude guerre d'Afrique. Elle tremble, elle meurt d'inquietude, et pourtant elle persiste. Qui peut la soutenir?—sa foi. L'enfant ne peut pas perir puis-qu'il doit etre un heros.

"Il revient. Qu'il est change! Moi! ce fier soldat, c'est mon fils! Parte enfant, il revient homme. Il a hate de se marier. Voila un autre sacrifice, et qui n'est pas le moins grand. Il faut qu'il en aime une autre; il faut que la mere, pour qui il est, et sera toujours le premier, n'ait en lui desormais que la seconde place—une place bien petite, helas! aux moments de passion. Alors elle se cherche et se choisit sa rivale, elle l'aime a cause de lui, elle la pare, elle se met a la suite, et les conduit a l'autel, et tout ce qu'elle y demande, c'est de ne pas etre oubliee."

A word now as to the application to our own case of the leading views already suggested. It may be thought that the moral they most clearly inculcate would point to our fellow countrymen in Ireland. But we own we have a different reading of the lesson, and consider that the peculiar perils here described must as yet have been scarcely felt among the priesthood of a peasantry. It is in circles where there is less physical privation and more sentimental excitement, that the evils of spiritual fascination and domestic division are likely to arise.

Michelet has shown that "Direction," in its worst forms, did not terminate with the seventeenth century, but has revived in his own times. We may be allowed to follow out his opinions, and suggest that Jesuits and Directors are not confined to the Romish faith. It behoves even a Protestant people to be on their guard against the recurrence of Popery and its Practices under a new aspect. The same erroneous position may be reached from opposite directions. The same constitutional malady may show itself in different diseases. Caesar was inaccessible to all flattery, except that which told him he hated flatterers. And many are most in danger of Popish error when it approaches under an ultra-Protestant disguise. We are saved, indeed, from the evils of a celibatary clergy. We are not exposed to that ignorance or that envy of family life which such a institution involves. But ambition and interest will supply the place of most other vices; and we shall be wise to watch whether the same battle is not now being fought among ourselves, and for the same immediate object—the occupancy of the female heart. The pictures that have been sometimes drawn of our own doings may have only a limited resemblance. Methodist preachers, and evangelical vicars, may be exaggerated delineations or mere individual portraits. But still, is it not true that the minds of our women, particularly those that are unmarried or childless, are here, as well as in France, sought to be engrossed, and alienated from their natural attachments, through priestly influences and for priestly purposes? Look at any new sect springing up among us—Look at the last example of the kind, where a peculiar religious body is forcing or feeling its way towards an ascendency. Powerful as it seems to be in numbers and in wealth, in what does its main strength consist? It was frankly avowed by one of its apostles, that the female mind alone seemed properly fitted to appreciate its tenets. A strange confession! We doubt if Luther, Calvin, or Knox, would have boasted of such a fact as characterizing the religious movements to which they gave an impulse. In the purity of female feelings we may have a security that any system that recommends itself to women, must have a fair semblance of goodness as it appears in their eyes: but it does not follow that their approbation is a test of its genuine excellence, or of its actual conformity with the type which it professes to represent. It is no novelty in the history of human nature, that evil makes its first attempts on the weakness of woman. Whatever is calculated strongly to excite the affections will gain the hearts of the more susceptible sex; and, without the aid of stronger intellects, they will run a risk of following after delusive lights, and may be found as often to be the votaries of an amiable and attractive error, as the assertors of a severe and sober truth. We would take leave to affirm, that a religious creed or constitution among whose supporters a vast preponderance of females was to be found, stood in a dubious position, and was open to the suspicion that its principles cannot stand examination by the standards of reason and argument. Certain it is that this severance of the sexes by religious distinctions is an unnatural state of society, and a serious evil. It is accompanied too, and aggravated, by another source of danger. The system of hanging the faith and feelings on the lips of a man, as if he were a special messenger from heaven, is nothing else than Popery, and goes to put a pope in every pulpit. Incessant sermons, itinerant speeches, public meetings, devotional assemblies, form a round of excitement of a dangerous and deceptive kind, and are little else than a species of decent dissipation. The constant intervention of a favorite or fashionable minister in all the exercises of religion, identifies too much the sacred subject itself with the individual who presides over it; while theatrical exhibitions of extemporaneous oratory and flights of fancy, make the ordinary ritual of public worship, or the quiet practice of private devotion, seem tame and trivial. The tendency of the evil is, that the direct access to a communion with above is barred against the deluded and dependent devotee, much in the same manner as the votaries of Romanism are driven for aid to the intermediate intercession of the Virgin and the Saints. If the devotion of women is to be maintained mainly by the presence and personal influences of a spiritual guide and prompter, the selection ought to be made in accordance with other principles. The substitution of the priest or preacher in the place of the husband or guardian, presupposes or foreshows a subversion more or less of the most essential relations of family life. The necessity of resorting to this means of gaining or maintaining power must degrade the clergy who depend on it, by tempting them to arts of flattery and excitement, and by corrupting their style of instruction to suit the tastes merely of the more sensitive section of our species, at the sacrifice of that due proportion of more solid and intellectual grounds of thought and principle, which are needed to influence thoroughly the understandings of men. The remedy here also is to be found in a similar course of conduct to what has been formerly suggested. Let the heads of every house do every thing in their power to call into exercise the good sense and natural feeling of the females who are dependent upon them, at the same time that they give its due place to that all-important subject which is the occasion of the error. By a judicious mixture of sympathy and sober feeling, they may counteract the extraneous influences that are now at work, and restore peace to the family, by uniting its members in the practice of a calm and rational piety, of which, out-of-doors, the best assistance and safeguard are to be found in the time-tried doctrines and discipline of our PROTESTANT ESTABLISHMENTS.

REFERENCE: MICHELET, (J.) Du Pretre, de la Femme, de la Famille. 1845. Priests, Women, and Families. By J. MICHELET. Translated by G. COCKS. London: Longmans.



MY COLLEGE FRIENDS.

No. II.

HORACE LEICESTER.

Oxford! Alma Mater! not to love thee were indeed the ingratitude of a degenerate son. Let the whiners of the Conventicle rail at thee for a mother of heretics, and the Joseph Humes of domestic economy propose to adapt the scale of thy expenses to their own narrow notions—I uphold thee to be the queen of all human institutions—the incarnated union of Church and State—royal in thy revenues as in thy expenditure—thy doctrine as orthodox as thy dinners, thy politics as sound as thy port.

Oxford! who are they that rail at her? who dare to lift their voice against that seat of high and holy memories? The man who boasts a private education, (so private, that his most intimate friends have never found it out,) who, innocent himself of all academic experiences and associations, grudges to others that superiority which they never boast indeed, but to which his secret soul bears envious witness. Or the rich nonconformist, risen perhaps from obscurity to a rank in society, indulging either his spleen or his pride—either to send his eldest son as a gentleman-commoner to Christ-Church, to swallow the Thirty-nine Articles with his champagne; or to have his fling at the Church through her universities—accusing Churchmen of bigotry, and exclusiveness, and illiberality, because Dissenters do not found colleges.[2] Or, worse than all, the unworthy disciple who (like the noxious plant that has grown up beneath the shade of some goodly tree) has drawn no nobility of soul from the associations which surrounded his ungrateful youth: for whom all the reality and romance of academic education were alike in vain: sneering at the honours which he could not obtain, denying the existence of opportunities which he neglected; the basest of approvers, he quotes to his own eternal infamy the scenes of riot and dissipation, the alternations of idleness and extravagance, which make up his sole recollections of the university: and looking, without one glance of affection, upon the face of his fair and graceful mother, makes the chance mole, or the early wrinkle, which he traces there, the subject of his irreverent jest, forgets the kindness of which he was unworthy, and remembers for evil the wholesome discipline which was irksome only to such as him.

"Non haec jocosae conveniunt lyrae;"

I admit mine is not the tongue or pen for such a subject; and Oxford has, I hope, no lack of abler champions. But it was geese, you know, who once saved the Capitol; and I must have my hiss at the iniquitous quackeries which people seek to perpetrate under the taking title of University Reform. And when I, loving Oxford as I do, see some of her own sons arrayed against her, I can only remember this much of my philosophy—that there are cases when to be angry becomes a duty. Men who, knowing nothing of the universities from experience, think proper to run them down, succeed at all events in exposing one crying evil—the absurdity of meddling with what one does not understand. We who know better may afford to smile at once at their spite and their ignorance. But he who lifts his voice against the mother that bore him, can fix no darker blot upon her fame than the disgrace of having given birth to him.

Show me the man who did not like Oxford, and I will show you either a sulky misanthrope or an affected ass. Many, many indeed, are the unpleasant recollections which, in the case of nearly all of us, will mingle with the joy with which we recall our college days. More than the ghosts of duns departed, perhaps unpaid; more than the heart-burnings of that visionary fellowship, for which we were beaten (we verily believe, unfairly) by a neck; more than that loved and lost ideal of first class, which we deserved, but did not get, (the opinions of our examiners not coinciding in that point with our own;) yes, more than all these, come forcibly to many minds, the self-accusing silent voice that whispers of time wasted and talents misapplied—kind advice, which the heat of youth misconstrued or neglected—jewels of price that once lay strewed upon the golden sands of life, then wantonly disregarded, or picked up but to be flung away, and which the tide of advancing years has covered from our view for ever—blessed opportunities of acquiring wisdom, human and divine, which never can return.

Yet in spite of all this, if there be any man who can say that Oxford is not to him a land of pleasant memories, "Met' hemoi parhestios ghenoito"—which is, being freely translated, "May he never put his legs under my mahogany"—that's all. I never knew him yet, and have no wish to make his acquaintance. He may have carried off every possible university honour for what I care; he is more hopelessly stupid, in my view of things, than if he had been plucked fifteen times. If he was fond of reading, or of talking about reading; fond of hunting, or talking about hunting; fond of walking, riding, rowing, leaping, or any possible exercise besides dancing; if he loved pleasant gardens or solemn cloisters; learned retirement or unlearned jollification—in a word, if he had any imaginable human sympathies, and cared for any thing besides himself, he would have liked Oxford. Men's tastes differ, no doubt; but to have spent four years of the spring of one's life in one of the most magnificent cities and best societies in the world, and not to have enjoyed it—this is not a variety of taste, but its privation.

I fancy there is a mistaken opinion very prevalent, that young and foolish, older and wiser, are synonymous terms. Stout gentlemen of a certain age, brimful of proprieties, shake their heads alarmingly, and talk of the folly of boys; as if they were the only fools. And if at any time, in the fulness of their hearts, they refer to some freak of their own youth, they appear to do it with a sort of apology to themselves, that such wise individuals as they are now should ever have done such things! And as the world stands at present, it is the old story of the Lion and the Painter; the elderly gentlemen are likely to have it their own way; they say what they like, while the young ones are content to do what they like. And the more absurdity a man displays in his teens, (and some, it must be confessed, are absurd enough) the more insupportable an air of wisdom does he put on when he gets settled. And as there is no hope of these sedate gentry being sent to College again to teach the rising generation of under-graduates the art of precocious gravity, and still less hope of their arriving at it of themselves, perhaps there is no harm in mooting the question on neutral ground, whether such a consummation as that of putting old heads upon young shoulders is altogether desirable.

Wherefore, I, Frank Hawthorne—being of the age of nine-and-twenty, or thereabouts, and of sound mind, and about to renounce for ever all claim and title to be considered a young man; having married a wife, and left sack and all other bad habits; having no longer any fellowship with under-graduates, or army subs, or medical students, or young men about town, or any other class of the heterogeneous irregulars who make up "Young England"—being a perfectly disinterested party in the question, inasmuch as having lost my reputation for youth, I have never acquired one for wisdom—hereby raise my voice against the intolerable cant, which assumes every man to be a hare-brained scapegrace at twenty, and Solomon at forty-five. Youth sows wild oats, it may be; too many men in more advanced life seem to me to sow no crop of any kind. There are empty fools at all ages; but "an old fool," &c., (musty as the proverb is, it is rather from neglect than over-application.) I have known men by the dozen, who in their youth were either empty-headed coxcombs or noisy sots; does my reader think that any given number of additional years has made them able statesmen, sound lawyers, or erudite divines? that because they have become honourable by a seat in Parliament, learned by courtesy, reverend by office, they are therefore really more useful members of society than when they lounged the High Street, or woke the midnight echoes of the quadrangle? Nay, life is too short for the leopard to change his spots, or the Ethiopian his skin; one can but pare the claws of the first, and put a suit of the last European fashion upon the other.

Let any man run over in his own mind the list of those school and college companions with whom, after the lapse of ten years or so he has still an opportunity of occasionally renewing his acquaintance, and judging of the effect which time has had upon their habits and characters. In how many cases can he trace any material alteration, beyond what results from the mere accidents of time and place? He finds, it is to be hoped, good principles developed, warm impulses ripened into active habits, exaggerations softened down, (for I am giving him credit for not choosing his companions, even in youth, among the vicious in heart and principle;) but if he finds in any what he can call a change at all, then I ask, in how many instances is it a change for the better? or does he not find it rather where there was no sterling value in the metal, which, as the gloss of youth wears off, loses its only charm?

Thirty is the turning-point of a man's life; when marrying becomes a now-or-never sort of business, and dinners begin to delight him more than dancing. As I said just now, then, I stand just at the corner; and, looking round before I turn it, I own somewhat of a shyness for the company of those "grave and reverend seniors" who are to be my fellow-travellers hereafter through life. There are certain points on which I fear we are scarce prepared to agree. I must have one window open for the first few miles of the journey at all events—that I may look behind me. Life's a fast train, and one can't expect to be allowed to get out at the stations; still less to ask the engineer to put back, because we have left our youth behind us. Yet there are some things in which I hope always to be a boy; I hope ever to prefer thoughtlessness to heartlessness, imprudence to selfishness, impulse to calculation. It is hard enough to part with all the fiery spirits, the glowing imaginations, the elasticity of mind and body which we lose as age creeps on; but if, with the bright summer weather and cloudless skies of youth, to which we are content to bid farewell, we must lose, too, the "sunshine of the breast"—the "bloom of heart"—then well might the poet count him happy who died in early spring—who knew nothing of life but its fair promises, and passed away in happy scepticism of the winter which was to come.

Talk of putting old heads upon young shoulders! Heaven forbid! It would but be making them stoop prematurely. If indeed we could put young hearts into old bodies occasionally, we might do some good; or if there could ever be combined in some fortunate individual, throughout his life, the good qualities peculiar to each successive climacteric; if we could mix just enough of the acid and the bitter, which are apt to predominate so unhappily after a long rubbing through the world, to qualify the fiery spirit of youth, and prevent its sweetness from cloying, the compound would undoubtedly be a very pleasant one. But this, it is to be feared, like many other desiderata, is too good to be attainable; and the experience which we undoubtedly want in early life, we acquire too often at the cost of that freshness of heart, which nature intended as a gift still more valuable.

Nowhere does the old Stagyrite display a more consummate knowledge of what men are made of, than in his contrasted characters of youth and age. I wonder how many of the old gentlemen who call themselves philosophers in this degenerate age, ever read or remember what he says on the subject. It is a great comfort, when one is arguing against so much collective wisdom, to feel that one has such authority to fall back upon; and I have the less hesitation in bringing my old friend Aristotle forward to help me, because I can assure my unlearned readers, ladies and others, that I am not going to quote any thing nearly so grave and sensible as modern philosophy. "Stingy, ill-natured, suspicious, selfish, narrow-minded"—these, with scarce a redeeming quality, are some of the choice epithets which he strings together as the characteristics of the respectable old governors and dowagers of his day; while the young, although, as he confesses, somewhat too much the creatures of impulse, and indebted to it for some of their virtues as well as vices, are trustful towards others, honest in themselves, open-handed and open-hearted, warm friends and brave enemies. It is true, he observes, they have, in a large degree, the fault common to all honest men, they are "easily humbugged;" a failing which perhaps may let us into the secret of their sitting down so quietly under the imputation of a hundred others. He urges, too, elsewhere, a fact I am not disposed to battle about, that young men do not make good philosophers; but this is in a book which he wrote for the use of his own son, wherein he probably thought it his duty to take the conceit out of his heir-apparent; but if he ever allowed the young philosopher to get a sight of the other book containing the two characters aforesaid, it may be doubted whether he found him as "easily humbugged" afterwards.

Remember, reader, as I said before I claim to occupy neutral ground. If I essay to defend youth from some injustice which it suffers at the hands of partial judges, it is as an amateur advocate rather than an accredited champion—for I am young no longer. If I am rash enough to couch a lance against that venerable phantom, which, under the name of Wisdom, hovers round grey hairs, I am but preparing a rod for my own back—for I feel myself growing old. I admit it with a sigh; but the sigh is not for the past only, but even more for the present. I mourn not so much for that which Time has taken away, as for the insufficiency of that which it brings instead. I would rejoice to be relieved from the dominion of the hot follies of youth, if I could escape at the same time the degrading yoke of the cooler vices of maturity. I do not find men grow better as they grow older; wiser they may grow, but it is the wisdom of the serpent. We scarce grow less sensual, less vain, less eager after what we think pleasure; I would we continued as generous and as warm. We gain the cunning to veil our passions, to regulate even our vices according to the scale (and that no parsimonious one) which what we call "society" allows; we lose the enthusiasm which in some degree excused our follies, with the light-heartedness which made them delightful. Few men among us are they who can look back upon the years gone by, and not feel that, if these may be justly charged with folly, the writing of the accusation that stands against their riper age is of a graver sort.

It is melancholy, rather than amusing, to hear men of a certain age rail against the faults and extravagance of their juniors. Angry that they themselves are no longer young, they visit with a rod of iron such an intolerable offence in others. Even newspapers have of late been eloquent against the disgusting immoralities of breaking knockers and bonneting policemen. The Times turns censor upon such an "ungentlemanly outrage;" the Weekly Despatch has its propriety shocked by such "freaks of the aristocracy;" and both, in their zeal to reprobate offences so dangerous to the best interests of society, sacrifice somewhat of that "valuable space" which should have been devoted to the bulletin of the health, or the history of the travels, of the "gallant officer" who last deliberately shot his friend in a duel; or the piquant details of the last crim. con., with the extraordinary disclosures expected to be made by the "noble defendant." Society has no sympathy with vices to which it has no temptation; it might have done foolish things in its day, but has long ago seen the folly of them. So we make a graceful acknowledgment of having been wrong once, for the sake of congratulating ourselves upon being so very right now.

Let me then, for some few moments, recall those scenes which, on the stage of life, have passed away for ever; and forgetting, as memory loves to do, the evil that was in them, let it be not idle repining to lament the good.

Oh! dark yet pleasant quadrangle, round whose wide area I might wander now, a stranger among strangers, where are they who once gave life and mirth to cheer those ancient walls? There were full a score of rooms, congenial lares, in which no hour of day or night would have found me other than a welcome guest. I had friends, yea, friends, within those prison-like windows—warm hearts walled in by thy cold grey stones—friends that had thoughts, and feelings, and pursuits in common—who were not hospitable in words alone, suffering each other's presence with well-concealed ennui—but friends in something more than in the name. In vain, among the cold conventionalities of life, shall I look for the warm and kindly welcome, the sympathy of feeling, the unrestrained yet courteous familiarity of intercourse, which was part and parcel of a college life; and if for this only I should say of Oxford, that I shall not look upon its like again—if for this only, I doubt whether the years of my youthful pilgrimage were altogether evil, who shall gainsay me? Where, or in what society of wise, and orderly, and respectable "grown-up children," shall I find the sincerity and warm-heartedness that once were the atmosphere of my daily life? Where is the friend of my maturer choosing, into whose house I can walk at any time, and feel sure I am no intruder? Where is the man, among those with whom I am by hard fate compelled to associate, who does not measure his regard, his hospitality, his very smiles, by my income, my station in society—any thing but myself? Older and wiser!—oh yes!—youthful friendship is very foolish in such matters.