y kind of fearful person in
black, has pounced upon him; nor has he been seized by any claimant for
leaving the world unshriven, as he did.

Poor Will Thackeray! it has been a great disappointment to him! He
expected some kind of sensational reception--thunder or lightning, or
some big God whose towering front might vie with Chimborazo--to awe him
into the consideration that he had become a spirit and was launched into
the awful precincts of eternity! No wonder he feels dogged and put upon
to find himself thus bamboozled! He undertook a long and venturesome
journey to "see the elephant," but it wasn't there!

He can't complain against the citizens of this famous "undiscovered
bourne"; they have done all that's fair and square by him; they have
shown all that they have got; and he is too much of a gentleman to taunt
them. He knows they feel ashamed that they haven't those curiosities that
their Vicegerents on earth had vouched for their having; he can see it in
their faces; but he considers himself in duty bound to prepare his
fellow-citizens for what they are to expect.

ARCHBISHOP HUGHES.

_TWO NATURAL RELIGIONS_.

There are two great natural religions before the world, the Roman
Catholic and the Spiritualistic; and both are adapted to the wants of the
race.

Man naturally gives expression to his thoughts by external forms
corresponding to his ideas.

The Roman Catholic religion is accused of being a system of forms and
ceremonies, but therein lies its wonderful adaptation to humanity.
Thought ever seeks expression in form, even as a mother's love for her
infant finds expression in her ardent embrace.

Love is the prevailing element of the Catholic religion, as shown by the
love of the Son of God for poor, ignorant, sinful creatures.

We do not present this to the mind ideally. We call in the outcast and
the beggar, and we expose to their view, in the great cathedrals, the Son
of God, as he appeared in all his various experiences of human life.

The parent who can earn but a scanty pittance for his offspring, sees
before him Jesus lying in the manger, equal in squalid poverty with the
lowest of mankind.

The majesty and glory of the courts of Heaven are symbolized in the Roman
Church. _There_ is gathered the wealth of the world! All that is yet
attained in the representation of the grand, the beautiful, the majestic,
the sublime, and the devotional, is collected in the Mother of Churches.

What