dressed in their long black cloth cassocks (soutanes), in the court of the building. The system of education is confessedly not very profound, from the great present demand for clergy in France, and from the consequent necessity of making the course of their professional training as expeditious as possible. For instance, there is no regular course of ecclesiastical history.

This is the archiepiscopal seminary for the diocese of Paris, and together with its country house at Issy educates 220 clerical students. The students appeared to be about nineteen years of age; they never quit the precincts of the College without permission; they rise at five o'clock in the morning, and remain for an hour in silent meditation (without books) on some religious subject which has been proposed the night before; they then listen to the reading of Scripture for a stated time, upon their knees; they attend mass daily; and breakfast follows, which is merely bread. Then comes a lecture of an hour; and at twelve o'clock they dine. During dinner, at certain seasons, the students exercise themselves by turns in preaching; and the professors make critical observations publicly on the sermons, pointing out their defects, and collauding their excellences. It is well known to be the usual habit of the French clergy to learn their sermons by heart. The professors said that many preach from shorthand notes only. They mentioned the sermons of

Père Mc Arthy with special praise (he is no longer living); and the eloquence of the Jesuit, Père de Ravignan, and the Dominican, Làcordaire, attracted immense crowds, especially of young men, to Nôtre Dame, in the carême of the present year. The library of the seminary is a very respectable one; it has been formed entirely since the great Revolution, all the literary property of the society (which was re-established at the Restoration) having been dispersed at that time. I observed a considerable number of books upon Canon Law; and was informed, that although this department of jurisprudence has no authority in the civil courts, yet ecclesiastical causes are often decided, as the professor expressed it, by the bishops, sine strepitu, and then the canon law has its weight. It will, doubtless, have greater weight, in proportion as Gallicanism gives way to pure Romanism. There is a professor of canon law in this seminary.

Our companion, the professor of moral theology, on being asked some question with respect to reading the Scripture, drew forth from his pocket a small Latin New Testament, bound up with the De Imitatione Christi, and buttoned up in a cover of black cloth; he said that it was one of their rules to carry that volume always about with them, adding, with evident satisfaction, that one of their order having been once asked by a Protestant minister, whether he studied the Bible? brought forth out of his pocket

a volume of this kind, bearing evident marks of habitual perusal, and then asked the other if he could show him the like; which he was unable to do.

This evening, dined with a dignified English clergyman, long resident in France, who complained bitterly of the great irregularities of French Protestant ministers and congregations at Paris. The pulpit of the church of the Oratoire is frequently occupied by teachers of Socinianism. Miserable indeed appears to be the condition to which the Lutherans and Calvinists in France are reduced. Unhappily too, in Paris, they are led by one or two persons of considerable ability and eloquence.

Bishop Luscombe has given me a copy of his pastoral letter just published, which throws much light on this subject: in it he deplores "the present state of the Protestants in France, particularly of those who belong to what is called the reformed Church; their pastors (he says) are mostly rigid Calvinists, or are Socinians. The most opposite doctrine is the natural consequence, and is preached from the same pulpits; on alternate Sundays preachers and congregations are changed-Lutheran and Reformed pastors exchange pulpits, thus giving proof of the laxity of their religious principles, and disregard of uniform doctrine and order, and of all that churchmen hold dear." The Bishop says, that in the organ of the (so-called) Reformed Church, the Archives du Christianisme, are numerous attacks upon the doctrine of

the Divine efficacy of the sacraments, and of the necessity of a duly ordained ministry for their administration. He has referred to the same subject in his essay on the True Church, translated into French, and dedicated to the King of Prussia. He found it necessary (I understand) to speak publicly on these matters, because many English parents, thinking all kinds of Protestantism to be equally good, are in the habit of taking their families to hear the preaching at the Oratoire; for, as they say, "in addition to the benefit of their hearing a sermon, it is such an excellent lesson of French!" He says that many of the French Protestant pastors in the provinces are much perplexed about their own position, and would gladly receive Episcopal Orders if they knew how to obtain them without adopting the errors of Rome.

Friday, August 9.-Went by the railroad, on the rive gauche of the Seine, to Versailles, where we spent a very agreeable afternoon from one to eight o'clock with a French literary friend of great ability. We drove round the park and walked in the gardens of the château, which are too well known to be described. Shortly after our entrance to the town an object struck us as new, indeed it has just been erected, a statue to the abbé L'Epée, the famous teacher of the Sourds-muets, who was, I believe, born at Versailles. The clergy were invited to the inauguration of the statue, but as the abbé was a Jan

senist, none of them would attend. Very near the château and the orangerie, a building was pointed out to us as being now under preparation for the reception of the Jesuits. The complaints against the clergy, which I heard strongly stated on this visit, are their want of learning, their encouragement of superstition from love of money and power, and their lack of patriotism.

The instruction of the clergy is certainly in a very unsatisfactory state; first, from the depression and impoverishment to which they have been reduced, and next, because all the literary and scientific institutions of the country, and all the encouragement there given to intellectual exertions, are virtually in the hands of the government, which looks with an unfriendly eye upon the clergy, and endeavours to keep them under a rigorous constraint. It is a consequence of the indigence of the clerical body, taken together with the peculiar tenets of Romanism, that they encourage very objectionable and superstitious modes of acquiring influence for themselves. As an instance of this, which now attracts a good deal of attention, and affords room not only for the scoffs of the profane, but scandalizes and alienates the reflecting, is the religious excitement which the priests are producing at Argenteuil, only two and a half leagues north of Paris, by means of exhibitions of, and subscriptions for, the pretended relic of the robe of our Lord, which a correspondent of the Constitu