afterwards found. I bethink me of coming through the Palais Royal, on a Sunday evening, and such a scene is only to be paralleled in the fictitious wonders of the Arabian Nights. The cafés and shops were one universal glare. Groups of gentlemen and ladies, without number, enjoyed different species of regale. In truth, amusement is carried on in Paris with an 'energy and universality, that is almost frightful; and the solemn, modest, and sequestered delights of piety rejected and forfeited.

In surveying, however, for the first time, a population of thirty millions, it is a fearful judgment that charity herself is driven to form, that only a few, a very few, shall be saved from such a sum of destruction; the awful majority choosing deliberately to perish, and pass their long eternity far from the smiles of the countenance of the Eternal. But although such pensive contemplations force themselves on us in France, will Scotland, upon narrow inspection, much better stand the scrutiny? Truly, if we are of this opinion, we only deceive ourselves and our country. Having gone forth of the town by the way of the sea-shore, I mounted an eminence, where was an expanded sea view; the ocean smiled in light, and stretched far and wide up to the horizon; the shores extended on either side, retreated into beautiful bays, became salient again in points and promontories in the distance, among the bright waters,

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and finally receded out of sight, in places very far

away.

The spot being solitary, and out of ear-shot, I en+ deavoured to wean my affections from this world, and chaunted psalms, and tried to delight myself amid the leaves of the record of truth. After some time spent in this exercise, I turned my eyes once more on France, and bethought myself, is this the auspicious land whose courteous inhabitants we Islanders have been for years pursuing to the end of the earth, with flame, bullet, and bayonet; whose women it has been our chief glory to make widows, and their children orphans? In the confusion of face for myself and my country, I almost forgot that the fatal enmity had been reciprocal; and on the heights around this very Boulogne, was encamped the army once destined to attempt the subjugation of Britain.

Nevertheless, I felt at the moment an unwillingness amounting to horror, that the two sister nations should ever, ever again mingle in the ruthless strife; and being much excited, turned in thought to that propitious passage in Isaiah, Chapter XI., Verses 6 to 9“ The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed, their young ones shall lie down together, and the lion shall

eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.".

This most benevolent portion of Holy Writ stirred in me emotions of a touching and delightful kind; and in gazing on the scene around, and repeating the passage slowly, I fell into that sort of recitative, or sing-song, with which words drop from a mind in a high state of excitation. But I desist from farther troubling the reader with a detail of feelings, which sometimes, alas! are as the morning cloud and early dew; besides, there are secrets between a man and his own soul, that ought to be kept faithfully, and must not be divulged in vain.

Another thing which I would take the liberty of recommending to ordinary travellers wishing really to know France, is to study a little the state of the Protestant Church there, and the transactions of the Continental Society. I am not sure that there is any set account of the former. The Archives du Christianisme, a monthly religious publication of Paris, may be found useful; and is to be had at Truttel and Wurtz, Soho Square; and from thence any country bookseller may order it. It costs only eight shillings per annum. Some acquaintance with the Swiss Church, and the persecu

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tions of M. M. Malan, Mejanel, Olivier, and others, may be useful; and it will be remembered that the form, government, and service of the Geneva, French, and Scotch Churches, are the same, viz., Presbyterial, according to their respective standards. I presume, also, that the following may be consulted with advantage, viz., Rose's Protestant Religion in Germany; Dr. Pye Smith's Vindication of the Citizens of Geneva; that part of the late Apocryphal Controversy which relates to the state of Religion in Continental Europe, and exhibited in Mr. Haldane's writings.

In returning from English service in the afternoon, I was tempted to look into a Catholic Church-I say tempted, because it is well known that there is a strong feeling in our country, among the stricter sort, of the impropriety of even witnessing the errors of the Roman Service on a Sunday; yea, even of going to an Episcopal Chapel on that day. Here was a dark solemn temple, the people sitting on a great number of small chairs. Something was chaunted at the further end, in the semblance of man's voice, accompanied by a discordant bass instrument, of an unpleasant sound; the words were pronounced in a prolonged grunting tone; and, on the whole, it was not without feelings of antipathy and horror that I came close to, and beheld this wretched service, and those idolatrous images of pictures, candles, and figures, in the dark and lofty aisle, in flying from

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whose deadly profanation our ancestors were caught and burnt in cruel flames. Alas! it is but just to say, that the congregation appeared to be devout, each reading a Romish Catechism, in the French language, charged, as I afterwards saw, with error and treachery, but with some mixture of the truth. At this most painful sight, I could only hope that some hidden ones amid all this coverture of ignorance and misrepresentation, had settled their trust upon a higher and more spiritual object than the figure hanging over their heads, with his hands and feet nailed to the board. In going down the town, I found the principal congregations dismissing-saw some of the black-robed gentry of the priesthood, with episcopal hats and bands—some nuns also in a pale woollen dress, with beads hanging to their sides, like bunches of keys. I got home, not in the best frame, with all this circumstance of popery; and though my landlord informed me that the steam-packet had arrived, and that it was usual to go and see the company, I preferred retiring to my chamber, over the beautiful garden, with its lofty walls; and so passed the evening in those studies and meditations I had been accustomed to in my native land, and escaped the affliction of witnessing the afternoon of a French Sabbath.

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