ning from
his daily labour, enters an open church from accident or curiosity,
crosses himself from habit, and is led on by the momentary feeling of
reverence which that act must generally awaken, to employ five minutes
in his devotions, a well spent portion of time, which probably would not
otherwise have been rescued from the business of the day, but which may
influence his conduct during the rest of it.

[Footnote 31: Vide Cooke's Views.]

On ascending the Mont Don, we found it the scene of a graver ceremony
than the infantine gambols which we had just witnessed. In the centre of
the terrace facing the river, a new and highly gilt crucifix of colossal
size has been erected at the expense of the Mission, round which a
number of monks and inhabitants were collected on their knees, the still
evening increasing the effect of a solemn mass which they were singing,
and in which we heard the name of St. Paulus several times repeated.
Several nuns, belonging to an establishment lately revived, knelt on the
steps of the cross, enveloped in their black hoods; and the prisoners at
the palace window united their deep tones to the chant, pausing every
now and then to solicit the charity of passers by. Scattered at
different distances from the cross, eight or ten separate groups of
persons were kneeling farther off, in attitudes of the deepest
devotional abstraction, though surrounded on all sides by sauntering
soldiers, children playing, and groups of loungers laughing or
whispering. The different distances at which they knelt were regulated,
as we were told, by the degrees of penance imposed upon them, and the
place which their respective consciences allowed them to assume. Some,
in the true spirit of the poor Publican, were kneeling at a considerable
distance, just within view of the cross, to which they hardly lifted
their eyes; others, whose penance was originally lighter, or its term
abridged by frequent visits to this place, had approached the cross more
nearly, and with greater signs of satisfaction.

I must confess, that we observed these poor penitents with an interest
and attention which the other parts of the ceremony had failed to
excite. The manifestation of a deep and genuine religious feeling is
respectable in Catholic, Turk, or Bramin, and seldom or never to be
mistaken; and though attended by no circumstances of external pomp, must
impress upon serious beholders of every creed a reverence which
trappings and mu