114: DISCOURSES OF FATHER HYACINTHE. 



duty. The cibsentecism of tlie ricli, forerunner of the 

 absenteeism of the peasantry, was the beginning of our 

 phigues. Their only remedy will l)e to revive, under 

 such new forms as may suit the present state of society, 

 the traditions of the cottage and tlie manor-house. We 

 shall never be effectually decentralized, until this con- 

 viction is carried into the minds, and still more into 

 the hearts of men. The best dwelling-place for man is 

 not in capitals, nor even in provincial cities, but in the 

 country. Whenever I see, in any nation, the setting 

 of a current against nature, the tide of population run- 

 ning in a fatal direction, the blood of the body politic 

 all determining toward the head, I look with dread for 

 the result. I have no applause for these factitious splen- 

 dors, and I cry out, like Henry HI., in the presence of 

 what was, even then, the overgrown metropolis, that 

 " Paris is too big a head for France to carry." 



III. TliG Law of Frayer in the Temjue. 



The law of tlie family and the law of labor yield their 

 rich delights only at cost of many sacrifices. And to 

 these, men would not long submit, but for the help of 

 religion. The law of prayer, binding in itself, is more 

 ])inding in view of these two other laws, the fulfilment 

 of which it secures. 



I like facts ; especially the sort of facts in which we 

 find at once i)oetry, morality, and utility. Permit me, 

 tlien, to refer once more to the example of that little 

 population of Basques, on whose frontiers I passed my 

 childliood. Thanks to their isolated dwellings, their 

 old traditionary freedom, larger and more practical than 

 our modern liberties, thanks es])ecially to their inlier- 

 ited morality and religion, the lîasques, in a mountain 



