e easiest thing in the world. We, I say,
have set the example in this kind of composition, and all the sects
of the earth will, doubtless, speedily follow it. I can point you out
blasphemies in famous pious tracts that are as dreadful as those above
mentioned; but this is no place for such discussions, and we had better
return to Madame Sand. As Mrs. Sherwood expounds, by means of many
touching histories and anecdotes of little boys and girls, her notions
of church history, church catechism, church doctrine;--as the author
of "Father Clement, a Roman Catholic Story," demolishes the stately
structure of eighteen centuries, the mighty and beautiful Roman Catholic
faith, in whose bosom repose so many saints and sages,--by the means
of a three-and-sixpenny duodecimo volume, which tumbles over the vast
fabric, as David's pebble-stone did Goliath;--as, again, the Roman
Catholic author of "Geraldine" falls foul of Luther and Calvin, and
drowns the awful echoes of their tremendous protest by the sounds of
her little half-crown trumpet: in like manner, by means of pretty
sentimental tales, and cheap apologues, Mrs. Sand proclaims HER
truth--that we need a new Messiah, and that the Christian religion is
no more! O awful, awful name of God! Light unbearable! Mystery
unfathomable! Vastness immeasurable!--Who are these who come forward to
explain the mystery, and gaze unblinking into the depths of the light,
and measure the immeasurable vastness to a hair? O name, that God's
people of old did fear to utter! O light, that God's prophet would
have perished had he seen! Who are these that are now so familiar with
it?--Women, truly; for the most part weak women--weak in intellect,
weak mayhap in spelling and grammar, but marvellously strong in
faith:--women, who step down to the people with stately step and voice
of authority, and deliver their twopenny tablets, as if there were some
Divine authority for the wretched nonsense recorded there!

With regard to the spelling and grammar, our Parisian Pythoness stands,
in the goodly fellowship, remarkable. Her style is a noble, and, as far
as a foreigner can judge, a strange tongue, beautifully rich and pure.
She has a very exuberant imagination, and, with it, a very chaste style
of expression. She never scarcely indulges in declamation, as other
modern prophets do, and yet her sentences are exquisitely melodious
and full. She seldom runs a thought to death (after the manner of some
prophets,