mediately made our way to the Cathedral. The high tower, so celebrated all over France, is indeed remarkably beautiful; but the whole church far surpassed my expectations. The portals of both transepts are rich in figures as large as life, like the great portail at Rheims; the rose windows over them are very rich, and the windows all over the church are most rich in painted glass. The size is great, a very essential element, I think, in the merits of a cathedral, and all the back of the choir was adorned with groups of figures in very high relief, which had an extremely fine effect. These are all the proper and perpetual beauties of Chartres Cathedral; but we happened to see it on the Festival of the Assumption, when the whole church was full of people in every part, when the service was going on in the choir, and the whole building was ringing with the peals of the organ, and with the voices of the numerous congregation. Unchristian as was the service, so that one could have no sympathy with it in itself, yet it was delightful to contrast the crowded state of the huge building,-nave, transepts and aisles, all swarming with people, and the sharing of all in the service, with the nakedness of our own cathedrals, where all, except the choir, is now merely a monument of architecture. There is no more provoking confusion to my mind, than that which is often made between the magnificence and beauty of the Romish Church and its superstitions. No one abhors more than I do the essence of Popery, i. e. Priestcraft; or the setting up a quantity of human mediators, interpreters, between God and man. But this is retained by those false Protestants who call themselves High Churchmen; while they have sacrificed of Popery only its better and more popular parts; its beauty and its impressiveness. On the other hand, the Puritans and Evangelicals, whilst they disclaim Popery, undervalue the authority and power of the Church, not of the Clergy, and have a bibliolatry, especially towards the Old Testament, quite as foolish and as mischievous as the superstition of the Catholics. The open churches, the

varied services, the beautiful solemnities, the processions, the Calvaries, the crucifixes, the appeals to the eye and ear through which the heart is reached most effectually, have no natural connexion with superstition. People forget that Christian worship is in its essence spiritual,—that is, it depends for its efficacy on no circumstances of time or place or form,—but that Christianity itself has given us the best helps towards making our worship spiritual to us, that is, sincere and lively, by the visible images and signs which it has given us of God and of heavenly things; namely, the Person of the Man Christ Jesus, and the Sacraments.

To forbear, therefore, from all use of the Humanity of Christ, as an aid to our approaching in heart to the Invisible Father, is surely to forfeit one of the merciful purposes of the Incarnation, and to fall a little into that one great extreme of error, the notion that man can either in his understanding, or in his heart, approach to the Eternal and Invisible God, without the aid of a μeditns or "interpres;" (the English word, "Mediator," has become so limited in its sense, that it does not reach to the whole extent of the case,) we want not an interpreter only, but a medium of communication,-some middle point, in which the intelligible may unite with the perfections of the unintelligible, and so may prepare us hereafter to understand Him who is now unintelligible.

I think that this is important, for many reasons, both as regards Popery and our Pseudo-Popery, and Evangelicalism and Unitarianism. The errors of all four seem to flow out of a confusion as to the great truth of our need of a MEGÍTns, and of the various ways in which Christ is our One MEσiτns, and that with infinite perfectness.

VIII.-TOUR IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE.

Paris, July 14, 1839.

1.

... But really, when we went out on these leads, and looked down on the whole mass of the trees of the

Tuilleries garden, forming a luxuriant green bed below us, and saw over them the gilded dome of the Invalids, and the mass of the Tuilleries, and the rows of orange trees, and the people sitting at their ease amongst them, and the line of the street not vanishing, as in London, in a thick cloud of smoke or fog, but with the white houses as far as the eye could reach distinct on the sky,—and that sky just in the western line of the street, one blaze of gold from the setting sun,-not a weak watery sun, but one so mighty that his setting was like the death of a Cæsar or a Napoleon, of one mighty for good and for evil,—of one to be worshipped by ignorant men, either as God or Demon, one hardly knew whether to rejoice or to grieve at his departure;-when we saw all this, we could not but feel that Paris is full of the most poetical beauty.

Cosne, July 16, 1839.

2. . . . . The wide landscape under this bright sky looks more than joyous, and the sun in his unobstructed course is truly giant-like. Here one can understand how men came to worship the sun, and to depict him with all images of power and of beauty,-armed with his resistless arrows, yet the source of life and light. And yet feeling, as none can feel more strongly, the evils of the state of England, yet one cannot but see also, that the English are a greater people than these,-more like, that is, one of the chosen people of history, who are appointed to do a great work for mankind. We are over bustling, but there is less activity here, without more repose. But, however, "it is not expedient, doubtless ;" and have not we failed to improve the wonderful talents which have been given to us?

Arles, July 20, 1839.

3. We have just been walking round this town, after having first been down to the Rhone, and had a bathe in him, which, as we had seen so much of him, was, I thought, only a proper compliment to him. But I ought to go back

VOL. II.

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Pope's palace at Avignon,
There was an old porter,

in order, dearest M, to the only this heat makes me lazy. who opened to us the first gate, and led us into an enormous court full of soldiers, for it is now used as a barrack; then he opened a door into a long gallery,-perhaps 100 feet long, through which we were to pass.

The rooms beyond were scenes not to be forgotten :-prisons where unhappy men had engraved their names on the stones, and mottoes, mostly from Scripture, expressing their patience and their hope. One man had carved simply our Lord's name, as if it gave him a comfort to write it; there was I. H. S., and nothing more. Some of these dens had been the torture-rooms, and one was so contrived in the roof and walls as to deaden all sound; while in another there was a huge stone trough, in which the question, "à l'eau bouillante" used to be put; and in yet another the roof was still blackened by the fires in which the victims had been burnt alive. One of these same rooms, long since disused by the Inquisition, had been chosen as the prison and scene of the murder of the victims of the aristocratical party in the massacre in 1790; and in it there was a sort of trap-door, through which the bodies were thrown down into the lowest room of the tower, which was then used as an ice-house. And the walls of the intermediate room were visibly streaked with the blood of those who were so thrown down after they had been massacred a.

4.

July, 1839.

We are now between the Lion d'Or and Salon, on the famous Plaine de Crau, or Plain of Stones, one vast mass of pebbles, which cover the country for several leagues, and reduce it to utter barrenness.

We are now in the midst of this plain of stones, utter desolation on every side, the magnificent line of the Alpines,

a See Letter in p. 162.

as they are called, or Provence mountains, stretching on our left; and on our right, close along by the roadside, runs, full and fresh and lively, a stream of water, one of the channels of irrigation brought from the Durance, and truly giving life to the thirsty land. "He maketh the wilderness a running water," might be said truly of this life in the midst of death. Here are two houses just built by the roadside, and opposite to them a little patch of ground just verdured, surrounded by a little belt of cypresses and willows; now, again, all is desolate, all but the living stream on our right, and some sheep wandering on the left amidst the stones, and living one sees not how. The sun has just set over this vast plain, just as at sea. Reeds and yellow thistles fringe the stream.

5.

Point above St. Cergues, August 2, 1839.

I am come out alone, my dearest, to this spot, the point almost of our own view, to see the morning sun on Mont Blanc and on the Lake, and to look with more, I trust, than outward eyes on this glorious scene. It is overpowering, like all other intense beauty, if you dwell upon it; but I contrast it immediately with our Rugby horizon, and our life of duty there, and our cloudy sky of England-clouded socially, alas! far more darkly than physically. But, beautiful as this is, and peaceful, may I never breathe a wish to retire hither, even with you and our darlings, if it were possible; but may I be strengthened to labour, and to do and to suffer in our own beloved country and Church, and to give my life, if so called upon, for Christ's cause and for them. And if-as I trust it will this rambling, and this beauty of nature in foreign lands, shall have strengthened me for my work at home, then we may both rejoice that we have had this little parting. And now I turn away from the Alps, and from the south, and may God speed us to one another, and bless us and ours, in Him and in His Son, now and for

ever.