is the open, fearless manner in which the French give their opinions. No attention is paid to time or place in the street, or the café; with a friend, or in a crowd, native or stranger, they talk out and loud, and seem to bid defiance to what any one thinks. One of these coffee-house politicians delivered himself the other day to the following effect:" If our rulers are anxious for bringing about the old state of things, it would be much less offensive to be more explicit. At present they add hypocrisy to insult: they would have it believed that the restrictions of the press are intended for preserving the morals of the nation, and vapour a great deal about its licentiousness, as an enormous and a growing evil, embarrassing and clogging the operations of the Government. "C'est en dirigeant sans cesse," says our minister, "contre l'administration des accusations mensongeries qu'on lui enlève cette force morale, dont elle a besoin pour la bonne direction et la marche des affaires." But what has a sound Government, he added, or a pure religion, to apprehend from the freest discussion?

So much the reverse; it is that government, and that religion alone which will not bear the truth, that are the just objects of suspicion; and when we see men loving darkness more than light, we do not want a régime of Jesuits to tell us what common sense as well as religion says in such a case. If some occasional inconveniencies do now and then spring from a free press, where is the good under the sun without its alloy?* But granting that the press were guilty of any flagrant violations of decency or duty, when a clear case is made out, why not let the proper remedy be applied? We have law courts to decide; and why should

*That there may be circumstances in which a country would not be benefited by a free press, I conceive very possible, e. g. in the infancy of a political society torn by faction, such as Greece. Before men have acquired any just views. of the value of liberty, and while the elements of a state are in their chaos, a free press would be almost as objectionable a gift as a magazine of gun-powder for the common use of the parties at variance: but when a free constitution has once been established, it is then, most indisputably, its best palladium.

not governments, as well as individuals, stand upen the basis of their own character, when assailed by calumny? If it be calumny, it is to be hoped they have nothing to fear,—if wholesome truth, the sooner they know it the better. We are accused severely for writing and speaking contemptuously of religion, and of the Jesuits. If the absurdities or vices of these men be such as to bring both the religion and the teacher into bad odour with all rational men ; to what service can the press be more fitly consecrated than in exposing these things, together with their authors?

There was a time when we were disposed to have settled in a rational Christianity, and such I believe were the ultimate views of the Emperor himself; but the gross conduct, the disgusting forfanterie of these spiritual char

• If we attend to the language which the Romish Catechism puts into the mouths of both children and grown up persons, we shall be obliged to admit that this gentleman did not very much overcharge his account of these impostors. The Catechism exacts the following admission: Sacram Scripturam, juxta eum sensum quem tenuit et tenet Sancta Mater

latans has completely annihilated every chance of so happy an event." Such was the purport of this gentleman's tirade, and such nearly the opinion of every intelligent Frenchman whom I have happened to hear deliver himself on these subjects.

18th.-Visited Notre Dame. This cathedral is considered by the French one of the most magnificent samples of their antique church architecture: it is a mixture of the Gothic and Arabic. I am no architect; but it strikes me those 120 enormous columns or buttresses, which form the double colonnade, extending the whole length of the church, and which

Ecclesiæ, cujus est judicare de vero sensu et interpretatione Sanctarum Scripturarum, admitto. This surrender of himself every one must make, though he may never have read a chapter, or have seen a copy of the Scriptures in his life; nay, though he may positively have been hindered from perusing them by the very priest who exacts this subscription to their contents. The people tell you the clergy make no scruple of saying that the Bible is a very dangerous possession; to be caught reading it they consider an infallible sign of freethinking.

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appear to me to belong to no order of architecture since the deluge, give an appearance of heaviness more in keeping with a prison or a dungeon than a temple. I entered the church just as the morning service had closed, and was fortunately in time to be present at the operations of an école Chrétienne. About 150 children, from the age of five to ten, were gabbling at the same moment something exceedingly unintelligible to my most inquisitive ear. Two priests officiated en pedagogue. The lesson, I could see, was from the breviary; but the evolutions of kneeling, and performing the sign of the cross, evidently were by far the most important part of the business. The whole resembled a drill, in which padre was flugelman. When he crossed himself, so did they; and no awkward squad ever copied with a more eager observance.

The leading view Napoleon had in promoting popular education, beside that of raising a nursery for men of talent, was to attach all classes to his government, by opening to all alike the road of ambition. The people saw some of his