en in Ireland. But we own we
have a different reading of the lesson, and consider that the peculiar
perils here described must as yet have been scarcely felt among the
priesthood of a peasantry. It is in circles where there is less physical
privation and more sentimental excitement, that the evils of spiritual
fascination and domestic division are likely to arise.

Michelet has shown that "Direction," in its worst forms, did not
terminate with the seventeenth century, but has revived in his own
times. We may be allowed to follow out his opinions, and suggest that
Jesuits and Directors are not confined to the Romish faith. It behoves
even a Protestant people to be on their guard against the recurrence of
Popery and its Practices under a new aspect. The same erroneous position
may be reached from opposite directions. The same constitutional malady
may show itself in different diseases. Caesar was inaccessible to all
flattery, except that which told him he hated flatterers. And many are
most in danger of Popish error when it approaches under an
ultra-Protestant disguise. We are saved, indeed, from the evils of a
celibatary clergy. We are not exposed to that ignorance or that envy of
family life which such a institution involves. But ambition and interest
will supply the place of most other vices; and we shall be wise to watch
whether the same battle is not now being fought among ourselves, and for
the same immediate object--the occupancy of the female heart. The
pictures that have been sometimes drawn of our own doings may have only
a limited resemblance. Methodist preachers, and evangelical vicars, may
be exaggerated delineations or mere individual portraits. But still, is
it not true that the minds of our women, particularly those that are
unmarried or childless, are here, as well as in France, sought to be
engrossed, and alienated from their natural attachments, through
priestly influences and for priestly purposes? Look at any new sect
springing up among us--Look at the last example of the kind, where a
peculiar religious body is forcing or feeling its way towards an
ascendency. Powerful as it seems to be in numbers and in wealth, in what
does its main strength consist? It was frankly avowed by one of its
apostles, that the female mind alone seemed properly fitted to
appreciate its tenets. A strange confession! We doubt if Luther, Calvin,
or Knox, would have boasted of such a fact as characterizing the
religious moveme