rendered himself ridiculous, had he ever, during that long period, preached a sermon against it." At what a distance," thought I, " am I arived from London and Paris!"

When we took our leave of Lavater, he begged we would write our names and place of abode in a book, which he appropriates to the use of inscribing the long list of his foreign visitors. An hour after my return from his house, he came to pay me a visit, which I was taught to consider as an unusual compliment, since it is his general rule not to return the visits of strangers. Religion was the theme of his discourse, and he talked of its pleasures, its consolations, and its hopes, with a solemn sort of enthusiastic fervor, which shewed how much his heart was interested in the subject, and how warmly his sensibility was awake to devotional feelings. Although his zeal was not without knowledge, yet it was somewhat difficult to discover what was his system of belief: whether he was of Paul or Apollos, a follower of Calvin, according to the established creed of the Swiss church, or whether he was not in some sort, the frame of a new doctrine himself.

One of my fellow-travellers, who was anxious to wrest from the venerable pastor his confession of faith, brought in review before him the various opinions of the fathers, orthodox and heretic; from Justin Martyr and Origin, down to the bishop of St. David's and Dr, Priestley. But Lavater did not appear to have made polemics his study. He seemed to think right and wrong, in historical fact, offar less importance than right and wrong in religious sentiment; and, above all, in human action. There was more of feeling than of logic in his conclusions; and he appeared to have taken less pains to examine religion, than to apply its precepts to the regulations of those frailties and passions of the human heart, the traces of which, hidden from others, he had marked with such admirable accuracy in the character and expression of outward forms. For myself, I own the solemn, meek, affectionate expression of Lavater's pious sentiments, was peculiarly soothing

to my feeling, after having been so long stunned with the cavils of French philosophers, or rather the impertinent comments of their disciples, who are so proud of their skepticism, that they are forever obtruding it in conversation. The number of those disciples is augmented since the revolution, which has spread far and wide the writings of Rousseau and Voltaire; and every Frenchman, after having read those authors, though he may neither have taste enough to admire the charms of their genius, nor virtue to feel the philan. thropy of their sentiments, has, at least, acquired sufficient knowledge to assume the appellation of philosopher, and prove his claim to that title, by enlisting himself under the banner of infidelity, without knowing the use of his arms.

This irreverence for religion, however, which Mr. Burke considered as one of the primary causes of the French revolution, is not, as heretofore, the ton amongst persons of former rank and fashion; infidelity has been in disgrace with that class, ever since it was profaned by the vulgar Jacobin touch; and the only distinguished trophies that system can now boast, are a few Anti-Newtonian flights with respect to final causes, from astronomic infidels. The aristocracy were no sooner convinced that the Catholic establishinent, and, above all, the non-juring priests, were their best auxiliaries, than all the elegant women of Paris became immediately devotees, and nothing was heard of in fashionable saloons but professions of attachment and respect" pour la réligion de nos peres ;" by which it was well understood that "more was meant than inet the ear;" and that these sentiments included the government, as well as the creed, of their fathers.

The great director of the consciences of these fair converts, drest à la Psyché, was Mons. de la Harpe, a literary man of considerable infidel reputation under the old regime, the disciple and friend of Voltaire, d'Alembert, Diderot, and other encyclopedists, and in some sort a leader of the sect after their decease, or, according to their own creed, after their annihilation. The Gama

liel of Mons, La Harpe, was Madame C-T-; it was at her feet, in the gloom of a prison, during the terrific ty ranny of the Jacobins, that this philosopher was brought to the knowledge and belief of Christianity. I have before observed, that the noblest examples of fortitude and resignation under sufferings were, during revolu tionary government, displayed by women. It was, no doubt, in the calmness and and imperturbability of Madame CT's mind, under the certain expecta tion of the scaffold, that Mons. La Harpe was first led to admire the effects of a persuasion which, her eloquence and his own conviction made him afterwards adopt; and of which he became, in defiance of all his former opinions, the zealous and fashionable advocate.

The cruel persecution which the Catholic religion had sustained from the intolerant Jacobins, had produced the usual effect of persecution, that of rekindling the pious zeal of a great portion of the people of France. They returned to the religion of their fathers, not from the same motives as those which influenced the fine ladies and gentlemen of Paris, because it was connected with regal government; but because, wearied with revolutionary calamities, they stood in need of the soothing consolations of devotion; and the churches became crowded places of resort.

It was not, however, in those religious temples that the illustrious convert to the Catholic faith, Mons. La Harpe, became a preacher of its doctrines. Like the hero of Mr. Greaves's novel, Mons. La Harpe took courage to attack the devil in his strongest holds. Being a person of high literary merit, he had been chosen to fill the rhetorical chair in the Lyceum. From that place, where, a few moons before, he had descanted on the glorious conquests of philosophy over superstition, and of liberty and the rights of man over despotism and slavery, he now poured forth the recantation of his errors in so eloquent and touching a strain, that the neighbouring square and streets re-echoed the long and tumultuous applauses of his fair auditory, for the majority were always ladies.

The lecturer, not satisfied with the victory gained over infidelity in this seat of science, of which it had been so long in possession, pursued that pernicious system into another of its fortresses, the regions of pleasure. Mons. La Harpe becoming a Catholic, was too singular an event not to attract general notice; and as Catholicism happened to be in fashion, the proprietors of various places of amusement thought a few lectures from Mons. La Harpe, on the religion of our fathers," would be no unprofitable speculation. Accordingly the splendid walks and fairy bowers of Idalia, which, till then, had only re-echoed the sounds of gaiety and pleasure, now resounded with the vehement imprecations of La Harpe against that vile revolutionary philosophy of the rights of man, which had overthrown the religion of our fathers.

Mons. La Harpe continued to be the rage in Paris, till he was succeeded by another fashionable novelty, which happened to be Abraham Effendi, the Turkish ambassador. Upon Abraham Effendi's arrival, the fashionable and butterfly tribe forsook once more" the religion of their fathers," a fabric long since undermined, and now hastening to decay, after gilding, for a moment, its venerable ruins with their glittering wings.

SECT. CXIII.

MISS WILLIAMS.

OF THE THEOPHILANTHROPISTS.

ABOUT this time a sect arose, which threatened more formidable danger to the Roman Catholic religion than all the edicts of Jacobin ferocity. This sect, distinguished by the name of Theophilanthropists, the friends of God and man, had formed various little societies in Paris before their opinions were publicly known. The simplicity of their worship, somewhat resembling that of the Dissenters in England, gained the attention of a few lettered men, and the benevolence of their doctrines became the public theme of panegyric of a mem

ber of the directory, Lareveillere Lepaux, who pubFished a pamphlet, the object of which was to raise these doctrines into repute, by shewing the inconsistency of the Roman Catholic religion with liberty. This pamphlet was answered by Gregoire, the learned and patriotic bishop of Blois, with much warmth, as a calumny against the nation; since the great majority, he asserted, were both Catholics and Republicans, and the most democratic governments in Europe, the smaller cantons of Switzerland, were steadfast in that belief.

Lareveillere Lepaux obtained the title of high-priest of the new sect, which, thus raised into notice, became the object of various calumnies. Some asserted it to be a nest of terrorists, who, under the mask of religion, and the liberty allowed to every kind of worship, met only to frame the means of bringing round again their late system. Others were assured that this sect was nothing but a band of atheists and philosophers, who assembled only to propagate principles which, disbelieving themselves, they intended to make instruments of rooting out the Catholic faith.

Atheists and Jacobins, perhaps, mingle in these congregations; but the mass appears to be composed of people of decent characters and manners, who, discontented with their former creeds, have embraced this worship till they are provided with a better.

In their prayers they invoke the Supreme Being as the author and governor of the universe; they sing hymns of grateful acknowledgment for his bounties, and fill up the hours of their worship with a discourse on some moral subject, in which the obligations to maintain liberty, and keep inviolate the laws of the republic, are never forgotten. The better informed among the Theophilanthropes are believers in Christianity, while others affect to talk with disdain of what they call the Christian sect, unwilling to admit, or probably ignorant. that Christianity is the sole foundation on which rests their own scanty belief.

MISS WILLIAMS.