ch they are totally absorbed, and
only living in their supplication: nothing can disturb them. On me the
simple and entire sincerity of these men, and the spirit which appeared
to be within and upon them, made a far greater impression than any
general rite which was ever performed in places of worship, of which I
have seen those of almost every persuasion under the sun; including most
of our own sectaries, and the Greek, the Catholic, the Armenian, the
Lutheran, the Jewish, and the Mahometan. Many of the negroes, of whom
there are numbers in the Turkish empire, are idolaters, and have free
exercise of their belief and its rites; some of these I had a distant
view of at Patras; and, from what I could make out of them, they
appeared to be of a truly Pagan description, and not very agreeable to a
spectator.

[For this profession of "natural piety," compare Rousseau's
_Confessions_, Partie II. livre xii. (_Oeuvres Completes_, 1837, i.
341)--

"Je ne trouve pas de plus digne hommage a la Divinite que cette
admiration muette qu'excite la contemplation de ses oeuvres, et qui
ne s'exprime point par des actes developpes. Je comprends comment
les habitants des villes, qui ne voient que des murs, des rues et
des crimes, ont peu de foi; mais je ne puis comprendre comment des
campagnards, et surtout des solitaires, peuvent n'en point avoir.
Comment leur ame ne s'eleve-t-elle pas cent fois le jour avec
extase a l'Auteur des merveilles qui les frappent? ... Dans ma
chambre je prie plus rarement et plus sechement; mais a l'aspect
d'un beau paysage je me sens emu sans pourvoir dire de quoi."

Compare, too, Coleridge's lines "To Nature"--

"So will I build my altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields,
Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee,
Thee only, God! and Thou shalt not despise
Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice."
_Poetical Works_, 1893, p. 190.]

20.

The sky is changed!--and such a change! Oh Night!
Stanza xcii. line 1.

The thunder-storm to which these lines refer occurred on the 13th of
June, 1816, at midnight. I have seen, among the Acroceraunian mountains
of Chimari, several more terrible, but none more beautiful.