CIVILTZATION. 115 



coiHitrv, liltk' siiKod ior tillairt', liuvc realized tlic ideal 

 of rural life. Uiidci- that Jiiscayan sky, the murkiest 

 Fky of Si)aiu, they ])ri'sent the rare spectacle of a coii- 

 teuted aud ha[)[)y people, disdaiuiu;^ wealth, but never 

 l<nt)win_u' ])Overty. So jx-rfect is the security whicli 

 [trevails ainong them, that the cattle and crops lie in the 

 tic'lds without fear of robbers, bein^i; (as some one finely 

 says) under <i-uard of the J'j'g-hth Commandment. 



[Father Hyacinthe insisted at leni^th ou the observance of tlic 

 Lord's Day, as the realization of the social law of prayer. The 

 Lord's Day kept by tlie coiintrj^-people in worship and festivity, 

 in the double sanctuary of church and home, is the badge of 

 civilization. On the contrary, in our great cities, the Sabbath 

 violated with labor and blasphemy, and the Monday given over 

 to drunken festivit}', are symptoms of the most abject barba- 

 rism.] 



I cannot refrain, here, from calling your attention to 

 a contrast whicli is, at the same time, a harmony. This 

 city, which has so many claims to be called illustrious, 

 which, in so many respects, is at the head of the civil- 

 ized Avorld, has always acknowledged as its jiatron saint 

 a humble country-girl, the shepherdess Genevieve. 

 Through all the vicissitudes of the centuries, the heart of 

 Paris has been constant to her ; and even now, each day, 

 about her shrine, the high and the lowly come together 

 ^^■ith common devotion and a common trust. They 

 remember how she brought the boats np the Seine to 

 feed Paris in the famine ; how, with prophetic instinct, 

 she distinguished among the incoming torrents of the 

 barbarians, those that could do nothing but destroy 

 from those that might restore; how, by the puissance 

 of her prayer, she drove back the Huns, with Attila, 

 toward Asia, and brought back the Franks, with Clovis, 

 to baptism and civilization. She who wrought these 



