er conscience, and one could no more exist in life without
what watch-makers call accommodation, in the machinery of one's heart,
than a blue-bottle fly could grow fat in the shop of an apothecary.
Every man's conscience has, like Janus, two faces--one looks most
plausibly to the world, with a smile of courteous benevolence, the
other with a droll leer seems to say, I think we are doing them. In
fact, not only would the world be impossible, and its business
impracticable, but society itself would be a bear-garden without
hypocrisy.

Now, the professional classes have a kind of licence on this subject;
just as a poet is permitted to invent sunsets, and a painter to
improvise clouds and cataracts, so a lawyer dilates upon the virtues
or attractions of his client, and a physician will weep you good round
substantial tears, at a guinea a drop, for the woes of his patient;
but the church, I certainly thought, was exempt from this practice. A
paragraph in a morning paper, however, disabused my ignorance in the
most remarkable manner. The Roman Catholic hierarchy have unanimously
decided that all persons following the profession of the stage, are
to be considered without the pale of the church, they are neither to
be baptized nor confirmed, married nor buried; they may get a name in
the streets, and a wife there also, but the church will neither bless
the one, nor confirm the other; in fact, the sock and the buskin are
proclaimed in opposition to Christianity, and Madame Lafarge is not a
bit more culpable than Robert Macaire. A few days since, one of the
most fashionable churches in Paris was crowded to suffocation by the
attraction of high mass, celebrated with the assistance of the whole
opera choir, with Duprez at their head. The sum contributed by the
faithful was enormous, and the music of Mozart was heard to great
effect through the vaulted aisles of Notre Dame, yet the very morning
after, not an individual of the choir could receive the benediction of
the church--the _rationale_ of all which is, that the Dean of Notre
Dame, like the Director of the Odeon, likes a good house and a heavy
benefit. He gets the most attractive company he can secure, and
although he makes no scruple to say they are the most disreputable
acquaintances, still they fill the benches, and it will be time enough
to damn them when the performance is over!

Whenever the respectable Whigs are attacked for their alliance with
O'Connell, they make the