ny sentiments and customs affect, while they appear to us childish,
and foolish. Let no severe judge expunge these feelings from our
religion, for even, these sucklings will hang on their mother's breast,
and while they nourish themselves, they gaze in her dark eyes, whose
expression they understand more from the instinct of childhood than
from knowledge. We have here in our little church a miraculous portrait
of the mother of God, which is renowned and honored far and wide by the
country-people of the mountain. An old shapeless figure cut in wood of
small size, probably in the early age of art, when it was yet scarcely
aware of its own existence. I have seen the sick, when they prayed
before the altar, restored to health, for faith and the commotions of
the mind are able to bring forth the strongest phenomena in our
delicate nature. Now when I reflect that upon this little spot so many
thousands have for centuries derived consolation and joy, I cannot look
upon her without emotion. The war has rendered a festival impossible
this year, which otherwise has annually been celebrated on the morrow.
From several village communities, even from those which lie twelve
leagues off, processions of the communities arrived; eight young girls
crowned with flowers bore the portrait of the Madonna of their church,
singing all those hymns, which sound so beautifully in the mountain
dialect in their tunes: Thus they walked round the church and one
procession after another brought many with spiritual songs into our
temple, here the strange visitor must bow low before ours, who then in
a chaunt thanked and praised the Lord, in the song which our young
women here sing most enchantingly in alternate chorusses. Thus all the
processions bring in their mother of God quite similar to the theories
of the ancient Greeks, and retired again in praise and thanks. This
ceremony, which to the wise may only appear puerile, has, since I have
been able to observe the people here, always produced much good and
salutary fruit. The common man (though what do I say, who among us that
calls himself the educated,) need not such things at times. The whole
village all the winter long rejoiced in the anticipation of this day,
the possession of this Marie endears this spot of the mountain, and
renders it invaluable to them, the pilgrimage church here dazzles to
the absent from a distance as if surrounded with a glory. The wandering
through unknown districts encourag