arances do not prevent the
attendance of congregations more numerous, and, I think, more fervent,
than were usual when the altars shone with the offerings of wealth, and
the walls were covered with the more interesting decorations of pictures
and tapestry.

This it is not difficult to account for. Many who used to perform these
religious duties with negligence, or indifference, are now become pious,
and even enthusiastic--and this not from hypocrisy or political
contradiction, but from a real sense of the evils of irreligion, produced
by the examples and conduct of those in whom such a tendency has been
most remarkable.--It must, indeed, be acknowledged, that did Christianity
require an advocate, a more powerful one need not be found, than in a
retrospect of the crimes and sufferings of the French since its
abolition.

Those who have made fortunes by the revolution (for very few have been
able to preserve them) now begin to exhibit equipages; and they hope to
render the people blind to this departure from their visionary systems of
equality, by foregoing the use of arms and liveries--as if the real
difference between the rich and the poor was not constituted rather by
essential accommodation, than extrinsic embellishments, which perhaps do
not gratify the eyes of the possessor a second time, and are, probably of
all branches of luxury, the most useful. The livery of servants can be
of very little importance, whether morally or politically considered--it
is the act of maintaining men in idleness, who might be more profitably
employed, that makes the keeping a great number exceptionable; nor is a
man more degraded by going behind a carriage with a hat and feather, than
with a bonnet de police, or a plain beaver; but he eats just as much, and
earns just as little, equipped as a Carmagnole, as though glittering in
the most superb gala suit.*

* In their zeal to imitate the Roman republicans, the French seem to
forget that a political consideration very different from the love
of simplicity, or an idea of the dignity of man, made the Romans
averse from distinguishing their slaves by any external indication.
They were so numerous that it was thought impolitic to furnish them
with such means of knowing their own strength in case of a revolt.

The marks of service cannot be more degrading than service itself; and it
is the mere chicane of philosophy to extend reform only to cuffs and
collars,