478 Singular Religious Ceremony in France. [MAY, 



as to the nature of man, and the same fearful ones as to that of his 

 Maker the same pious horror of all that is known by the name of plea- 

 sure, and the same holy love for and yearning after the things that are 

 ft not of this world" finally, the same straightforward, fearless, and 

 familiar (not to say insolent and vulgar) mode of enforcing their opinions, 

 and exciting the feelings that they would wish to result from them. In 

 short, they have (whether by a holy instinct or a judicious imitation., I 

 cannot pretend to say) hit upon the exact secret so successfully practised 

 by their fellow-labourers in England, of rousing the fears and exalting 

 the hopes of their auditors ; and, accordingly, even the walls of the 

 Rotunda in Blackfriars'-road never echoed with more fearful anathemas 

 and fruitful promises than have lately astonished the hitherto peaceful 

 aisles of all the parish churches in this town, twice every day for the last 

 six weeks ; and all of which have been listened to, day after day, during 

 all that time, by crowds such as the above-named Rotunda never boasted 

 even in the days of its early glory. Further let us add, that the outward 

 and visible effects of all this have been such as might well excite the 

 pious envy of the patriarch of Hatton Garden himself. Balls have ceased 

 in the town as utterly as if the Pope had issued a bull against them ; 

 a soiree is looked upon as an open sin against the religion of the state ; 

 the fair, which commenced a few days ago, is almost deserted ; and it is 

 a literal and an unprecedented fact, that in a French town of five-and- 

 twenty thousand inhabitants, you might have walked for hours together, 

 during the whole three days of the Carnival, without seeing a single 

 mask! Assuredly, Sterne was quite right in insisting that, if the 

 French have a fault, they are a thought too serious ! 



In order to place the reader under the most favourable circumstances 

 for witnessing (in imagination) the singular ceremony which occupied 

 all eyes and thoughts in the town of , in France, on the first Mon- 

 day of the Carnival, we would ask him, first, to fancy himself near the 

 great closed doors of a gothic cathedral, out of which the procession issues 

 to take its course through the principal streets of the city. But, before 

 the procession appears, let him look down the fine spacious street at the 

 upper extremity of which he is standing, and observe the (so called) 

 decorations of the houses : for, on the occasion of every religious pro- 

 cession of any very particular nature, in a Catholic town, the inhabitants 

 of every house in the streets through which it passes are compelled (if 

 not absolutely by law, at least by the law of public opinion) to put 

 forth some outward and visible sign of the reverence they pay to the 

 ceremony of the day. On this occasion, you would suppose that all the 

 rags and rolls of brown holland in the department had been put in 

 requisition so profusely are they fluttering and festooned about from 

 every window, and on the intermediate spaces of every wall. When w r e 

 say " rags and rolls of brown holland/' we would be understood literally 

 these forming the staple of the exhibition. Where these are deficient, 

 their place is supplied by sheets, fragments of fringed bed or window 

 draperies, pocket-handkerchiefs fastened on sticks to represent flags, 

 and here and there wreaths of artificial flowers, that would seem to have 

 served the purposes of May-day in England till they were no longer 

 deemed worthy of that honour. At the distance also of about every two 

 or three hundred yards, you will observe triumphal arches stretching 

 across the street, beneath the symbolical shade of every one of which the 

 cross is destined to halt in its progress it being of immense size #nd 



