lusively devoted to war and conquest--placed their
consciences and the direction of public affairs in the hands of the
clergy, who were then the monopolisers of learning and literature. The
clergy spared no means of consolidating their power, and it was their
interest to brutalise the people, in order to domineer over them with the
greater facility; and nothing could contribute more certainly to carry
out that view than the puerilities of a worship solely limited to the
adoration of the physical man. The pageantry of processions, the jewels,
the splendid vestments and ornaments with which their images were
covered, the miracles attributed to them, and the incense burned on their
altars, were so many other soporiferous drugs administered to the
understanding to lull its energy, and deprive it of every devoted thought
and of all liberty of examination. There is, moreover, in the
representation of a human being of the size and colour of life, a certain
character of reality, which at first sight cannot do less than make a
profound impression on the mind, leaving it for a time in a state of some
perplexity between truth and fiction. That immovable attitude, those
fixed eyes, those features which never alter the expression of the grief
or the joy impressed upon them by the hand of the artist, have in
themselves something of the awful and mysterious, which powerfully
affects us, despite our reason and experience. How many persons are
there who could look, without shuddering, on the statue of Fieschi, the
celebrated French murderer, in the collection of Madame Tussaud? How
many, on coming out from the chamber of horrors, in the same
establishment, resolve and vow never to go into it again? How many, who
would not, for any money, pass a night in the apartment in which these
disagreeable objects are exhibited? And to what extreme may not that
imperium extend, which these works of art exercise on the imagination,
if, in addition to their resemblances to nature, superstition endows them
with a supernatural power, and when reason persuades us that they hear
what we say to them,--that they receive our homage, and are able to
favour us with their protection?

But the Roman Catholic clergy have had another motive for promoting a
belief in such things, viz., the immense wealth which they draw from them
in the name of oblations, alms, and legacies. To contribute money to the
adornment of a saint, and to the celebration of rites w