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SIR SIDNEY SMITH,

tribute which is here offered to one, for whom delighted Nature, in the language of our immortal bard,

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CHAP.

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XVI.

CHAPTER XVI.

A fashionable Poem.-Frere Richart. Religion. Hotel des Invalides. - Hall of Victory.- Enemies' Colours.- Sulky Appearance of an English Jack and Ensign. -Indecorum. The aged Captain. - Military School. - Champ de Mars. - The Garden of Mousseaux.

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THE conversation whilst I was at Paris, was much engaged by a poem, describing the genius and progress of christianity written in imitation of the style of Ossian, which excited very considerable curiosity. From the remarks of some shrewd acquaintances of mine, who had perused the work, I learnt that the principles of the poem seemed strongly tinctured with the bewildered fancies of a disordered mind, conveyed in very heavy prosaic blank verse. "It was the madness of poetry, "without the inspiration."

The

This composition may be considered as a curiosity, from other reasons than those which mere criticism affords. poem was bad, the readers were many. The subject was sacred, the author a reputed atheist, and the profits which it produced exceeded two thousand pounds sterling. The fortunate writer relieved himself from the jaws of famine by this strange incomprehensible eulogy on the charms and advancement of christianity, which has been received in Paris, with a sort of fashionable frenzy. Another pseudobard has announced his intention very shortly of issuing from the

press,

a work

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a work which he conceives will be more saleable and a greater favourite with the public, in which he intends ironically to combat the doctrine of the Trinity, by gravely resembling it to the Deity taking snuff between two looking glasses, so that when he sneezes, two resemblances of him are seen to sneeze also, and yet that there are not three sneezers, but one

sneezer.

Some other outlines of this work were imparted to me at Paris, but the pen turns with disgust and detestation, from such low and nauseous profanation. I have only condescended to mention the composition, and the last anecdote, to show how much the world is deluded, by the received opinion that the french are become a new race of exemplary devotees. The recoil from atheism to enthusiasm, is not unusual, but the french in general have not, as yet, experienced this change. That they are susceptible of extraordinary transitions, their history and revolution have sufficiently manifested. In the Journal de Paris, written in the reigns of Charles VI and VII, is preserved rather a curious account of the velocity with which religious zeal has, in former periods, been excited. "On the "4th day of April, 1429," says the journal, "the duke of "Burgundy came to Paris, with a very fine body of knights "and esquires; and eight days afterwards there came to Paris,

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a cordelier, by name Frere Richart, a man of great prudence,

very knowing in prayer, a giver of good doctrine to edify "his neighbour, and was so successful, that he who had not "seen him, was bursting with envy against those who had. "He was but one day in Paris, without preaching. He began "his

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CHAP.
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"his sermon about five o'clock in the morning, and con"tinued preaching till ten or eleven o'clock, and there

were always between five and six thousand persons to hear "him preach. This cordelier preached on St. Mark's Day, "attended by the like number of persons, and on their

return from his sermon, the people of Paris were so turned, " and moved to devotion, that in three or four hours time, "there were more than one hundred fires lighted, in which

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they burnt their chess boards, their back gammon tables, and "their packs of cards."

To this sort of fanaticism, the parisians are unquestionably not arrived. A more eloquent man than the Frere Richart, must appear amongst them, before such meliorations as are recorded in the Paris journal, can be effected in the dissolute and uncontrolled habits of that gay and voluptuous city. I do not mean, from any previous remark which I have made, to infer that there are not many good and very pious people in France, and it has been a favourable circumstance to the ancient religion of France, that the revolution never attempted any reform in it, or to substitute another mode of worship. That great political change in the ebullition of its fury, prostrated the altars of the old church, without raising others of a new, or improved construction. It presented a hideous rebellion against the glorious author of all good, and declared an indiscriminate war of extermination against his ministers and followers, and every principle of the Gospel and morality. Every form of faith, every mode of adoration, fell indiscriminately under the proscriptions of its unsparing wrath.

The

RELIGION.

The towering abbey and humble oratory, were alike swept
away in the general tornado, and mingled their ruins toge-
ther. But the race of the good were not all expelled from
this scene of havoc and outrage. The voice of piety still
found a passage to her God. The silent prayer pierced through
the compact covering of the dungeon, and ascended to
of
Within the embowering unscarchable recesses
the soul, far beyond the reach of revolutionary persecution,
the pure unappalled spirit of devotion erected her viewless
temple, in secret magnificence, sublime, and unassailable!

Heaven.

The child who had never heard the bell of the sabbath sound, who had never beheld the solemn ceremonies of authorized adoration, was told that those awful and splendid piles, which filled his eyes with wonder, and his mind with instinctive reverence, were raised for other purposes than those of becoming auxiliary to the ferocity of war. That genius and taste, and toil and cost, had not thus expended their unrivalled and lavished their munificent resources, in powers, erecting gothic magazines of gunpowder, and saron sheds for the accommodation of atheistic fabricators of revolutionary cannon balls.

The young observer in private, and by stealth imbibed, from parental precept or example, the sentiment of a national religion, suppressed, not extinguished, or in the gloomy absence of all indications of it, remained unsolicited by any rival mode of worship to bestow his apostacy upon an alien creed. Thus the minds of the rising generation, who were engaged in favour of the catholic persuasion, during the

frightful

CHAP.

XVI.

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