gnation. I do not know if it is as a result of the
combination of these several causes, or if under a separate head, that I
should class a certain strange awe which seems to attach itself to
Romanism like its shadow, differing from the coarser gloom which we have
been examining, in that it can attach itself to minds of the highest
purity and keenness, and, indeed, does so to these more than to inferior
ones. It is an undefinable pensiveness, leading to great severity of
precept, mercilessness in punishment, and dark or discouraging thoughts
of God and man.[103]

It is connected partly with a greater belief in the daily presence and
power of evil spirits than is common in Protestants (except the more
enthusiastic, and _also gloomy_, sects of Puritans), connected also with
a sternness of belief in the condemnatory power and duty of the Church,
leading to persecution, and to less tempered indignation at oppositions
of opinion than characterizes the Protestant mind ordinarily, which,
though waspish and bitter enough, is not liable to the peculiar
heart-burning caused in a Papist by any insult to his Church, or by the
aspect of what he believes to be heresy.

Sec. 24. For all these reasons, I think Romanism is very definitely
connected with the gloom we are examining, so as without fail to produce
some measure of it in all persons who sincerely hold that faith; and if
such effect is ever not to be traced, it is because the Romanism is
checked by infidelity. The atheism or dissipation of a large portion of
the population in crowded capitals prevents this gloom from being felt
in full force; but it resumes its power, in mountain solitudes, over the
minds of the comparatively ignorant and more suffering peasantry; so
that it is not an evil inherent in the hills themselves, but one result
of the continuance in them of that old religious voice of warning,
which, encouraging sacred feeling in general, encourages also whatever
evil may essentially belong to the form of doctrine preached among them.

[Illustration: FIG. 115.]

Disease of body.

Sec. 25. III. It is assuredly connected also with a diseased state of
health. Cheerfulness is just as natural to the heart of a man in strong
health as color to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual gloom,
there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labor,
or erring habits of life. Among mountains, all these various causes are
frequently found in combination