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in their places of worship in this town did not amount to more than 8006. Another instance might also be mentioned in reference to the parish of St Giles, where the sittings for Roman Catholics were only 460, and yet the number attending them was inserted in the Census as 3000. He

had heard, also, of a case in which the number of persons attending Divine service during the day at one of our churches was inserted as 236, whereas, at one service alone, the clergyman of the place knew that 550 had attended ; and, upon his remonstrating on the subject, the numbers were re-examined, and found to amount, including both morning and afternoon services, to upwards of 800."

I must give you, Eusebius, the authority of another Bishop:

"The Bishop of St David's concurred in most of the observations of the right reverend prelate who had just sat down,

and from the instances which had come under his notice, believed it would have been better if the clergy of the Church of England had refused to give the returns in the manner they were required to do; because, by giving them, they were in fact countenancing and encouraging the improper returns that had been made. He knew the feeling of the great body of the clergy was, that the "Religious Census," as it was called, was a mere farce, and could not be said, by any means, to represent a fair estimate of what really was the number of the different denominations.

He held in his hand letters from

several persons, corroborative of much that the right reverend prelate had stated; and in one of these letters it was said, that a dissenting chapel was returned in the report as having in it, on the day of the return, 2000 persons; whereas, according to the Dissenters' own statement, the largest number it could hold was 1200 persons. From the various facts which had been laid before him, and in which he had every reason to place confidence, there were many cases in which the return of the Dissenters exceeded the num

ber of the population of the place they were supposed to be living in; and, in other cases, there was no doubt that the Dissenters had been counted over and over again. It was also known that the Dissenting Sunday Schools had clubbed together to take it in turn to attend each others' places of worship at different times of the day." "We ought not to have trusted these matters to the persons that we did, many of whom were interested in putting forward exaggerated reports of the particular sects to which they belonged, and he firmly believed that no future returns would accomplish the

object which their lordships had in view namely, that of getting a true report of the number of all religious denominations, unless they were made upon a very different principle from the present returns."

A pretty exposure is this, Eusebius. The Census, then, is not only an impertinence, but a mischief. I have given you very grave authority-they settle the case. The Census is condemned. It is nailed down to the counter of fair dealing, like a false coin, bearing the sovereign image, which never came from the sovereign mint-no, nor the Parliamentary.

I must stay my hand. It will never do to tack on, as a supplement, the worsted fringe of my poor style to the rich texture of Episcopal orations. I know you laugh at my hypocrisy. You are right. I don't believe a word about the poverty of style. Mother-wit can Swagger when it will: nor will I be thankless of its gift, to disparage its power of rising. Do you not know it is occasionally light for a purpose? Bishops may not deal with ridicule; but it is a legitimate weapon for such as we are, who may wear a comic mask, and yet tell grave truths

"Interdum tamen et vocem comodia tollit,

Iratusque Chremes tumido delitigat ore." You and I are old enough to be privileged, when provoked, to put on the angry Chremes. But I will not swell out just now after these Episcopal and Parliamentary orations, remembering the fable-The Frogs and the Ox. The motley style, neither all too serious nor too gay, does its work. The clown and the judge are characters in the same play, and needful to the plot-often the first the most amusing. A light manner may hold severe matter. It is a world of light readers; you are one, and will not object to this letter on that account. The famous Dr Prideaux, when he took a copy of his Connexion of the Old and New Testament to the publisher, had it returned to him with the remark, that it was a dry subject, and he (the publisher) could not venture on it unless it could be enlivened with a little humour. Let this be an excuse for mine, and no damage will be done to the sobriety of the sense that is under it.

VIVE VALEQUE.

A PEEP AT PARIS.

LETTER TO IRENÆUS.

MY DEAR IRENEUS,-There are many ways of beginning a new year. Some people begin it with a series of parties given and received; others with good resolutions; others by endeavouring to carry out those good resolutions; others by intending to pay their debts; others-fewer, I fear -by paying them; most good men by either propositions of amendment, or an endeavour to act accordingly; many, and that a large class, after a short effort in the same direction, by putting off the beginning of the new year for themselves to their own birth-days, which are likely to occur at some time in the course of the year, and, when their own birth-days come, by lapsing into their old courses. Such being the case, it struck a certain friend of yours, that no bad way of beginning 1855 would be to have a look at our gallant allies and their new empire, at the other side of the Channel, to jot down some of the impressions he had received during his flying visit, and to send them off to you and Maga. The only difficulty was how to begin; for to begin with a description of a railroad-and-steamer journey would be even impudently trite. I wonder why so many travellers take the trouble to describe so unpleasant a thing as travelling. You open your eyes; for you know that, if I am not a fanatic in anything else, I am a fanatical traveller. I must explain. The pleasure of travelling consists in the stopping, not in the going on, but because to stop you must go on first. The disagreeables of travelling are necessary evils, to be encountered for the sake of the agreeables of resting and looking round you. And these agreeables, in my opinion, far outweigh the other disagreeables, therefore am I a fanatical traveller; and I hold that the impressions received during a week of travelling are commonly equal to those received during a twelvemonth of ordinary life. We all wish and pray for long life, and this long life may be either relative or absolute. Absolute long life

VOL. LXXVII.-NO. CCCCLXXIII.

is of little value to man, and in the realisation of it he can never vie with the raven or the oak. Relative long life may be secured in two ways, even by those whom the gods love, and who die young, by multiplying actions, or by multiplying impressions. In this view, there is a wise philosophy in the expression "a short life and a merry one."

To the indolent it is easier to multiply impressions than actions, and for this purpose we love books, we love gossip, and, above all, we love travelling; for in travelling we get the cream of books through the prismatic colours, not the dull black and white of letterpress. Apropos of what I said about the agreeables and disagreeables of travelling, Tennyson has written two beautiful pieces, one called the "Lotos-Eater," the other

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Ulysses." In the first he describes the unpleasantness of the évépycia, or action; in the second the pleasantness of the pyov, or production; in the first he describes the sweetness of rest, in the second the staleness of rust. By the way, what a pleasant book for a journey is a volume of the Laureate, published by Mr Moxon, of Dover Street-clear type and plenty of margin, like the white paper left round a water-colour drawing, setting off the poetry to the best advantage-not too large for the pocket, or too small for. the eyes; not too heavy in hand, or too light for the wind that comes through the open window. I have a great dislike to cheap railway literature in general, not on account of the cheapness, but on account of the density of the print, which, with the jarring of the carriage, becomes mere confusion. Light reading ought to be lightly bound and easily legible, not requiring to get fairly into it, a "pons asinorum" of material difficulties; in short, to compare it with persons, its mental beauty ought not to labour under the disadvantage of Curran, who, being an ugly, but a pleasant man, boasted that he was not a quarter of an hour behind the handsomest man in London. Maga is the closest

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book admissible on a journey; but Maga's columnar structure makes up for the closeness of the type in facilities for reading; and Maga professes rather to be the philosophic companion of a fireside than a mere railway acquaintance, to be buried in the greatcoat pocket when the tickets are given up.

I said that I was in difficulty where to begin, being forbidden to begin at the beginning. Shall I begin at the end? That will not do, as the end is the same as the beginning. I must begin in the middle, then. And as I did not keep a journal during my flying visit-for who can write flying? -I must take the middle in place, not in time. I fear in doing this I shall be as commonplace as if I began at the beginning. We have all heard of "the golden mean," many of us of "medio tutissimus;" many of us, too, of Aristotle's dogma, of all good being a mean between extremes. It is odd that the word mean should have become degraded. It meant well at first; but that very degradation seems to me an argument against Aristotle. He was a man of mean-that is, of middle stature-himself, so he perhaps delighted in glorification of the mean. It seems that I have no other alternative but to follow his example. I have before me a beautiful map"Paris illustrée et ses Fortifications" -showing all the streets and squares, plainly and pleasantly marked, with portraits of the public buildings. I put my finger on the middle of that map as nearly as possible; and I put my finger on the glorious Louvre, the very centre of the attractions of the French capital, and of the grand architectural doings of Napoleon III. Which gallery shall we see first? we have seen them all before. We are in the great quadrangle. It is paved with asphalt, the Turkey-carpet of pavements, clean, and seeming soft, and free from risk to elderly gentlemen; for there are no basset edges of strata sticking up to trip the foot; and there are grass-plots in the corners, with a broad border of something. It looked like a number of hepaticas not yet in blossom. No, it is ivy pegged down, the "very ivy" off" the ruin," forming a border to a carpet of sward.

Unless the ivy feels itself insulted, it looks very well there. We go to the door of the Museum. It is not a public day, but strangers are privileged; the porter looks at the outside of our passports, and in we walk. I have often found a passport convenient in France; and if it were not, I have never felt disposed to quarrel with a custom in any country to which the inhabitants have to submit. We go "away and away and away" through the Salle d'Apollon, with its fine views of the river Seine; and, turning to the right, are in the middle of chefs d'œuvre of the old masters, the best pictures being sufficiently marked to the uninitiated by the number of easels set up before them, and the number of copiers. When the artists leave the gallery, they put their names on the backs of their bundles of painting materials, and they are perfectly safe. The Raphaels in the Louvre are well known. My friend dared to dispute the authenticity of St Michael, alleging that the features were not Raphaelesque; but there is one thing about that picture unmistakable-the exquisite poise of the figure, which seems balanced by its divinity, like the famous Madonna di San Sisto at Dresden, the latter being, in our humble opinion, the finest picture ever painted. What a heresy it is to prefer the pre-Raphaelites to Raphael! Raphael painted truth and beautythey painted truth without beauty; and therefore, forsooth, Raphael sacrificed truth to beauty. But, in keeping what was unsightly out of sight, he only sacrificed a lower to a higher truth, and followed the example of nature, in whose doings reparation is the rule, and the concealment of what is painful; for does she not cover the ruin with ivy? The grandest example I know of that rule of nature is, the scene of the fall of the Rossberg in Switzerland: that catastrophe, which caused so much affliction, has produced in time a landscape of broken ground, rocks, and water, and various vegetation, such as scarcely any other cause could have produced. In one "preRaphaelite" picture at the Louvre, the eye painfully dwells on the anatomical exactness of the wound produced by the spear in the Saviour's

side, whereas such details should be subordinated to the glory of his passion. But the pre-Raphaelites knew no better, for the very reason that they came before Raphael; so there was a time when we used to draw a smaller and a larger circle, and four lines to represent a man. Young artists have a perfect right to be preRaphaelites in their studios, but as such they have no right to exhibit, except in privacy, as immature farmers' daughters exhibit their samplers as specimens of their precocious embroidery.

The pictures in the long gallery are not seen to the best advantage, except those of Rubens. Rubens sheds a sort of electric light, which puts everything else out; the air swims with pink flesh, and the eyes tire of the one nude Dutch woman looking as if the violence with which she is drawn up to the skies, or let down to Hades, would shake all the pink flesh off her bones, and leave her a "memento mori." His male figures are certainly grand. But the Louvre is very rich in the life-like pictures of the Flemish and Dutch schools, very few of which can be studied without a painter gaining some ideas from them. There is one of not much significance by Quentin Matsys. Was he not the painter who became a painter from a blacksmith, by falling in love with the painter's daughter? Le Sueur flourishes at the further end of the gallery; he delights in two classes of subjects of different character,-nuns and monks enduring austerities, and nymphs and cupids with wreaths of flowers floating in the air. The Cupid and Psyche, so popular and so often copied, is by Eustace Le Sueur. Away we go through the galleriesthere is a most valuable collection of drawings, the notes and raw material of the old masters; there is a most valuable collection of antiques, the chair of Dagobert bringing us back to the earliest times, and reminding us that we are in the newest as well as one of the oldest countries in Europe; and the apparently gigantic armour of François Premier telling of the Field of the Cloth-of-Gold, and suggesting a hope that we may see in our own day a similar fraternisation of the sovereigns of England and France.

But which is the way down? It is hard to find: we go round and round, we make one ineffectual plunge into an Egyptian saloon, but we are warned back, for there are workmen in it, and it is not yet open to the public; at last we make a successful dive into the Hall of Sculpture, and find ourselves in the midst of Greek and Roman art. Is it, or is it not, good taste to complete the torsos, and put modern arms and legs on classical trunks? It looks better at first, doubtless, but is rather a desecration. I love the mutilated Theseus and Ilissus, and would not on any account finish them, for fear of impairing the perfect and reposeful symmetry of the originals. Besides, if any addition be false, it is a flagrant falsehood. Better leave them as they were, as the best scholars would leave the fragmentary passages of Eschylus to the incompleteness in which they have come to us. Such would be, at all events, the more reverential course as regards the ancients. We stop to sketch the Venus of Arles; it is a figure of pure and simple beauty, such a one as the ancients loved: she has just half drawn on her drapery after the famous goddess show, in which another Paris was the judge, and is holding in her hand the fatal apple, looking at it as if it were worth possessing, but as if she had had a perfect right to it from the first. But who goes there? A fine bearded man, who might have been a model for a sculptor, with traces of suffering on his countenance, in a weather-beaten scarlet uniform, which is crowned by that ugly undress-cap with which the questionable taste of our military authorities has thought proper to finish off the guardsmen. He is a Crimean hero, a sergeant of the fusiliers: he is on his way home with a hole through his lungs, which he got at Alma, though now in a fair way of recovery. How respectfully, though not obtrusively, the officials come round him, and converse with him through his French companion, who is explaining to him the lions of Paris! There he passes off, six feet high, down the avenue of statues of that Valhalla, by Achilles and Hector and the Roman emperors, and the thought

strikes us that there are as good heroes now as in the days of Troy and the Cæsars, and as good heroes British born and British bred. We came across two more such during our short visit to France. One, a cap tain of dragoons, accosted us in the Place de la Concorde as we were expanding our map; the other, an officer of rank, we saw on our way home. They came passing through that brilliant world of Paris, and called to mind the sterner scene where our countrymen were suffering. They did us good, and they, doubtless, did the French good too-the kind of good that solemn thoughts do those who are enjoying the pleasant passages of life.

But we pass through the open air into the gallery of modern sculpture. What an uncomfortable statue that is of Milo of Croton writhing back from the split oak in which his hand is fixed, with a lion hard at work eating him, having established his base of operations at a very substantial part of the wrestler's person. It is the offspring of a bad age, which could not see that sudden and violent action was destructive of the peculiar character of sculpture, and of the pleasure which sculpture gives. In fact, I doubt whether, in both painting and sculpture, repose is not a necessary element of all the finest works, for without repose there is no permanency of impression; and to satisfy the soul, there should be a permanency of impression on which the eye might rest for ever without tiring. This essential repose must not be misunderstood. There is a Diana in the centre of one of the rooms, a bronze figure in the act of running. We may look at this figure for a long time, yet it produces no unpleasant impression. There is action there, but an action which, to all appearance, might be eternal without painful effort on the part of the acting person. Were the goddess of the chase seen in repose, and rightly represented, such repose would seem uncomfortable, so strongly suggestive would it be of action not carried out; and as for fatigue, we must not imagine her as a goddess capable of that. It is a pleasure to imagine her so running, balanced on

her compact slender foot, and so roaming the woods for ever. This statue appears to me the best expression of Diana, for it represents her, not as most of her statues do, as a merely muscular Hebe, or the emblem of maiden pride, like Athene without her armour, but as the very incarnation of perpetual motion amongst goddesses as Mercury is amongst gods. And in the perpetuity of this motion there is a repose like that in the motion of the spheres, which it does the soul good to contemplate; for it is full of youth, full of strength to perform its purposes, full of the calm unconsciousness of divinity.

In the inmost saloon the most striking figure is perhaps a stooping nymph by Pradier, very graceful and soft of outline, with the classicality of Thorwaldsen. This artist died about two years ago, and might have achieved greater things had he lived longer.

The nymph Salmacis, stooping, and apparently detaching her sandal, is much in the same style, though not quite so good, by another artist; and there is a recumbent figure of Hyacinthus, elegant in attitude, though the limbs appear either too starved or destitute of muscle, in the same room. As we pass out, we are struck by the statue of Amalthea sitting on a rock with the goat by her, with whose milk the nymph is said to have nursed Jupiter. There is much dignity in this figure, and in the countenance a proud consciousness of the sacredness of her charge. On the whole, we are impressed with the improvement of the most modern sculpture on the school immediately preceding it, the moderns appearing more thoroughly to appreciate the chastity of design characteristic of the antique spirit.

But the short winter-day is going fast, and we must have a look at the Gallery of the Luxembourg before dinner-time. So we cross the Seine and pass down a long clammy street of the Faubourg St Germain, paved with those round-topped slippery stones so especially uncomfortable to walk upon. They seem to indicate that the old nobility, who still haunt this " quartier," ignored pedestrianism, and only respected the convenience of carriage

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