him. He is a pious, amiable and intelligent young man, and the first individual, of congenial spirit with myself, with whom I have met in this strange land.

I could not make a long stay with Monsieur B. having engaged to be home early, to accompany our party to the chapel of the Thuilleries, to hear high mass performed before the Royal Family and the court. At the hour appointed, a royal footman appeared at the gate of our hotel to conduct us to the Thuilleries. Thus honourably escorted, we arrived at the palace, and were received by the Père Elysée, first surgeon to the king, who politely introduced us to the officer who has the care of arranging the company in the galleries of the Chapel Royal, for no visiters are allowed to remain below. To the condescending attentions of that officer we are much indebted, and the kindness of his manners, which evidently arose from the sweetness of his disposition, I shall not easily forget. He is the first Frenchman whose physiognomy has pleased me, and with his we were all exceedingly delighted. By him we were placed next to the royal gallery, which is in front of the altar, so that we were close to the king and his attendants, when they made their appearance. The front seats of the side galleries are reserved for the ladies of the court; behind them the company are ranged, with one of the garde du corps, placed at the back of each seat. None of the visiters sit. The company was very numerous, and many were disappointed, not being able to obtain admittance. At length symptoms of prepa ration appeared in the royal gallery-the folding doors which communicated with the other parts of the palace were thrown open the chairs and cushions were adjusted-two men most curiously and gorgeously attired, as heralds, in the costume of two or three centuries back, made their appearance, and every thing indicated the approach of royalty. But the king delayed. Meanwhile, every eye was eagerly fixed upon the door by which he was to enter,and expectation was at its highest pitch, when a commotion was heard in the adjoining apartments-a gentleman hastened to the front of the gallery and cried, Le Roi! when the king entered, supported by two marshals, and attended by the Duke de Berri, the Duke and Dutchess D'Angouleme, and about thirty or forty nobles, ecclesiastics, marshals and generals of his court. The full choir, composed of all the celebrated musicians and opera singers in Paris, instantly thundered, and the mass began. It was an august spectacle, and the impression of the moment was more than I can describe. High mass in the palace, and before the court of a popish prince, with all the fascinations art could lend, to bewilder the senses by the splendour of its decorations, to overwhelm the mind by the burst of its music, or to ravish the soul by the more thrilling notes of the human voice: the brother, the dau hter, the nephew of a murdered king, worshipping in the sanctuary and in the palace, which had witnessed their predeces

sor's sufferings, and been wet with the blood of his attendants: an assemblage of personages who have been, more or less, connected with all the wonderful and tremendous revolutions by which Europe has recently been agitated, whom we have contemplated at a distance with awe, and whose names will be immortal on the page of history:-all these things were perfectly new to me, and I must have been a stoic, indeed, if I had not felt, in some degree, the influence of such a singular combination of objects, with the interesting associations they awakened in my mind.

The principal figure in the groupe, on more accounts than one, was the king his amazing corpulence would have rendered him so, had other circumstances been wanting. It was with the greatest difficulty that he walked to his chair, the possession of which was not accomplished without some inconvenience to himself, as the evident panting for breath which the exertion occasioned sufficiently indicated. The two gentlemen by whom he was attended on his entrance, took their stations, one on each side the back of his chair, and whenever he sat down, lifted up for him the laps of his coat. The effect of that ceremony was rather ludicrous. This occurred but once or twice in the course of the exhibition, for the whole seemed little else, as the king retained his seat during the greater part of the service, while the rest of the royal party frequently rose and kneeled. I presume the king's infirmities have obtained a dispensation for him from the ecclesiastical powers, whom as a good Catholic, he is bound in every particular to obey. At the elevation of the host, however, the whole court kneeled, the monarch not excepted; we were the only parties standing in the place. It was an affecting sight to see a prince and all his courtiers bending before the King of kings in the act of solemn worship-or rather it would have been an interesting spectacle, could I have been persuaded that the homage was spiritual and sincere. But, alas! the reflection, that in the monarch, and his family, and his court, I beheld the victims of superstition, of infidelity, and of vice-and in the worship in which they were prostrate, the idolatrous adoration of the image of the beast, came powerfully upon my mind; the charm was dissipated, and the emotions at first awakened, were succeeded by those of pity, abhorrence and disgust.

There was something in the expression of the king that exceedingly touched me. There was an air of dejection in his countenance, and a melancholy wildness in his eye, that spoke unutterable things. He looked around him as if uneasy and distressed; as if suspicious of some lurking danger; as it in pursuit of some object on which his eye might fix with conûdence and pleasure; but disappointed in the search, he retired again into himself, and was absorbed in his devotion. He appeared like some prodigy brought out for public exhibition and surrounded by his keepers -the mere image and representation of royalty; but his looks

when he surveyed the company, seemed to say, "I am indeed a king, but, oh! how reluctantly-how happy should I be, could I escape from this distressed pomp, this splendid misery-mine is an uneasy throne, and a crown of thorns."--I may be wrong, but this was my interpretation of his looks; and on communicating with the rest of our party, I found that others had put on them a similar construction.

The Dutchess D'Angouleme is an interesting woman: her figure is tall and graceful, and her dress was simply elegant. She was deeply engaged in the service during the whole of the performance, and seldom took her eye off the breviary, which she held in her hand. Her husband, however, was not so devotional. He is a thin, active looking man, not very tall, with a physiognomy by no means prepossessing, but a quick and piercing eye. He was very restless during the ceremony-was perpetually looking about him, and then, as if suddenly recollecting himself, he turned to his breviary, and seemed to run over his prayers with great rapidity, making the appropriate crosses and gestures with prodigious haste. The Duke de Berri is a taller and a stouter man, more sedate and thoughtful, with features strongly marked and approaching to sternness. He was more occupied with the service than his neighbour, the Duke D'Angouleme.The rest of the party seemed little concerned in the matter, and, except that they kneeled at the clevation of the host, appeared to take no interest whatever in the service; and as they stood during the whole of the time, and were a sort of exhibition to the company, they looked not a little pleased when it was over. At the close of the ceremony, the monarch was with difficulty lifted from the chair, and having moved respectfully to the company, he turned-took the arms of his attendants-the princes and the nobles followed, and the whole pageant passed away. Sic transit gloria mundi. A few minutes ago, the eye gazed upon royalty-the ear drank in the most delicious and ravishing tones of musicthe mind was dazzled and bewildered by the pomp of Catholic worship and the splendour of a court. But now the dream was ended -the sort of pleasing delirium into which the mind was thrown, was dissipated; and as the gay and giddy multitude passed away to some new exhibition, some fresh object of attraction, I began to review the scene by which it had been captivated. I am not at all surprised at the influence which the Catholic religion exercises upon the minds of its votaries. To those who never think upon the subject of religion, but are wholly absorbed in the pursuit of pleasure or of vice, and such, it must be allowed are the great body of the French people,it must possess peculiar and powerful recommendations. The service being in an unknown tongue,at once intimates to them that they have no concern but with the repetition of the words, they need not meddle with the ideas the words convey, the priest thinks for them, and that is suffi

cient while the pomp and splendour of the exhibition gratifies their vanity and meets their love of show. "Why do you read your prayers in Latin," said a friend of mine to a French lady, do you understand Latin ?" "No, sir," said she, it is very ridiculous that we do, but we cannot help it." "But why persevere in a custom which you think ridiculous ?" "Ah!" said she, and a significant shrug spoke her meaning. "Do you think the Bible enjoines all these ceremonies?" "The Bible, sir,-I dont know, I never read the Bible.” "Never read the Bible, and yet profess to be a Christian!" "Ah! you know we are Catholics." "But is a Catholic any thing different from a Christian?" "Oh! I don't know, we leave all to our priests." "The priests, then, fill a very responsible situation?" "Ah! but this is our way, and Catholics don't trouble themselves much with these things." True it is, like Gallio, they care for none of these things, and this woman is a specimen of thousands, and tens of thousands, in France. Multitudes care so little, that they never go to mass at all; and those who do, deem it enough to go and mutter over the appointed prayers, with the appropriate crosses and gestures, and return and thus infidelity and superstition divide the land between them, and shed over the thoughtless and ill-fated population the stupor and apathy of spiritual death.

(To be concluded in our next.)

Account of the Rev. Mr. Lee.

At the Annual General Meeting of the Shropshire Auxiliary Bible Society, lately held at Shrewsbury, the following very interesting account of the extraordinary talents and acquirements of the Rev. Samuel Lee was given from the chair by the Rev. Archdeacon Corbett :---

"Before I proceed to move that the able and satisfactory report we have just heard read, be printed, I cannot but advert to that part of it that records the sermons recently preached at St. Chad's Church, in this town, for the benefit of this institution. You have heard that the sum then collected was greater than had been before received by us upon any similar occasion, and that the preachers were Mr. Samuel Lec, and Mr. Langley. Of Mr. Langley it would be indecorous in me to say much at this time, for he is present; but his merits are well known to us as one of the secretaries of this Society--one of those gentlemen to whose zealous affection for this cause, and to whose gratuitous labours in it we are very deeply indebted. But Mr. Lee is not present, and at the mention of his name 1 may well say, as the Roman historian did at the mention of the names of Cato and of Cæsar, "Quoniam res obtulerat silentio præterire non fuit consilium." But I further: I not only think it would be wrong in me to pass over in silence the name of Mr. Lee, thus brought before us, but I glad

ly seize the opportunity of expressing my admiration at the rare talents with which he is endowed; and, unable as I am to do justice either to the powers of his mind or the goodness of his disposition; incompetent as I feel myself to point out either the extent of his learning or the piety of its application; yet, so difficult is it to act from motives entirely disinterested, that I may be suspected of speaking with some bias upon this subject, and when I announce Mr. Lee as a native of the parish wherein I was born, and wherein I have continued to reside; and it might be supposed, from this circumstance, that I was early acquainted with the promise of so rich an harvest; that I was familiar with the progress of such unlooked-for erudition. But the fact is quite otherwise. The only education Mr. Lee received among us was that of a village school, where nothing more was taught than reading, writing, and arithmetic; and he left this school at 12 years of age to learn the trade of a carpenter and builder, under his ingenious and respectable relative, Mr. Alderman Lee, of this town; and it was not till years after this that he conceived the idea of acquiring foreign languages; and then it was with such singleness of heart that he pursued his object, that he neither sought nor accepted opportunities of communicating it; and it was not till after an interval of six years, and then by chance, that I found out that he had in that space taught himself to read and to write in Lain, in Greek, and in Hebrew: he had taught himself the Chaldee, the Syriac, and the Samaritan languages---and all this unaided by any instructor; uncheered by any literary companion; uninfluenced by the hope either of profit or of praise. And here let me pause at this very singular feature in the portrait I am endeavouring to delineate: for where shall we meet with a devotion to letters so solitary or so pure? I know, indeed, that instances are not unfrequent where the mind has arisen superior to its original destination, or where eminence has been attained under circumstances adverse and unfavourable. But we more generally find that a foundation has been laid; and that those who have distinguished themselves as scholars, have gone through the regular routine of classical education, or have been assisted by masters of superior ability. Such was the case with Mr. James Crichton, of Clume, in Scotland, better known by the name of "the Admirable Crichton,"in the list of whose tutors we find the name even of Buchanan. And having introduced the mention of this extraordinary person, this "Phoenix of Literature," as he is designated by one of his Biographers, I would willingly run some parallel between him and Mr. Lee; for though comparisons are justly said to be odious, yet if I take my example from the 16th century, I shall scarcely be accused of sinning against the spirit of this wholesome proverb, more especially as my object is merely that of elucidation; nor is it necessary for my purpose, to endeavour to depreciate the panegyrics of Sir Thomas Urquhart, or of the authorities he quotes, by the more