ers from Nature up to Nature's
God? How eloquently does he portray the feelings awakened by fine
scenery, and the thoughts to which it gives birth!
Wordsworth is, _par excellence_, the Poet of Religion, for his
productions fill the mind with pure and holy aspirations. Fortunate is
the poet who has quaffed inspiration in the purest of all its sources,
Nature; and fortunate is the land that claims him for her own.
The influence exercised by courts over the habits of subjects, though
carried to a less extent in our days than in past times, is still
obvious at Paris in the display of religion assumed by the upper class.
Coroneted carriages are to be seen every day at the doors of certain
churches, which it is not very uncharitable to suppose might be less
frequently beheld there if the King, Madame la Dauphine, and the
Dauphin were less religious; and hands that have wielded a sword in
many a well-fought battle-field, and hold the _baton de marechal_ as a
reward, may now be seen bearing a lighted _cierge_ in some pious
procession,--the military air of the intrepid warrior lost in the
humility of the devotee.
This general assumption of religion on the part of the courtiers
reminds me forcibly of a passage in a poetical epistle, written, too,
by a sovereign, who, unlike many monarchs, seemed to have had a due
appreciation of the proneness of subjects to adopt the opinions of
their rulers.
"L'exemple d'un monarque ordonne et se fait suivre:
Quand Auguste buvait, la Pologne etait ivre;
Et quand Louis le Grand brulait d'un tendre amour,
Paris devint Cythere, et tout suivait sa cour;
Lorsqu'il devint devot, ardent a la priere,
Ses laches courtisans marmottaient leur breviaire."
Should the Duc de Bordeaux arrive at the throne while yet in the
hey-day of youth, and with the gaiety that generally accompanies that
period of life, it will be amusing to witness the metamorphosis that
will be effected in these same courtiers. There are doubtless many, and
I am acquainted with some persons here, whose religion is as sincere
and as fervent as is that of the royal personages of the court they
frequent; but I confess that I doubt whether the general mass of the
upper class would _afficher_ their piety as much as they now do if
their regular attendance at divine worship was less likely to be known
at the Tuileries. The influence of a pious sovereign over the religious
feelings of his people must be h
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