mmery fail to excite. It should seem indeed that
Providence, wishing gently to humble the pride of men, delights in
producing by the simplest means those physical and moral effects, which
they waste toil and expense in bringing about. The splendid procession,
for instance, which takes place on the day of Corpus Christi at Rome,
with all its assemblage of monks, horse and foot guards, cardinals,
choristers, and banners, would dwindle before the eye of reason into
"shreds and patches, were it not for the figure of the truly venerable
man who now fills the papal chair, kneeling with the same humility and
abstraction from the busy scene around him, which marked the deportment
of the penitents just mentioned.

Time, which decides all questions when they have ceased to be any longer
interesting, will probably show whether the celebrated Mission, which
has excited such a sensation in many parts of France, be a mere
political manoeuvre to strengthen the hands of government by calling in
the aid of superstition, or (which is at least as probable) a sincere
and well-meant attempt to awaken the forgotten spirit of religion. In
the mean while, it is a desirable thing to have turned the attention of
the French to a subject which, by all accounts, is become nearly
obsolete among the higher orders of the nation. Even with a view to the
ascendancy which a more simple and purified religion may ultimately
obtain under an improved and free constitution, it is better that a
religious feeling of some sort should exist. The worst and most twisted
crabstock, if alive, possesses an active principle, which allows of
successful grafting; not so with a dead branch.

I shall annex a statement of the proceedings of the Mission at Avignon,
during the Lent of 1819, copied and abridged from a short pamphlet,
written by a M. Fransoy, a lawyer of that city; which being published by
a layman on the spot where the events in question recently took place,
possesses the most probable claim to accuracy and impartiality. The
writer begins by describing the demoralization and ignorance occasioned
by the Revolution, "which had completely realised," he observes, "in the
kingdom of the lilies all the misfortunes foretold by the prophet
Jeremiah. The people of Avignon, who had remained without instruction
during this period of horror and barbarism, were soon infected with that
gross ignorance which assimilates men to brutes: and in a short time
this field of the L