MEDICINE FOR THE POOR.

405

language, too, respecting regeneration and grace; and, as one means of regaining the hold they had lost upon the human mind, they now anathematize all recreations, as if their congregations were so many aspirants to the sublime purifications of La Trappe, or so many groaning fanatics just made over to them from Lady Huntingdon's Chapel. That there is, however, a pretty strong force to stem this fresh spring-tide of moon-struck superstition, is very certain. The doctrinaires, I am told, taken as a body, are not much addicted to this species of weakness. I remember, during the prevalence of that sweeping complaint called the influenza, hearing of a "good lady," of the high evangelical clique, who said to some of the numerous pensioners who flocked to receive the crumbs of her table and the precepts of her lips, that she could make up some medicine that was very good for all POOR people that were seized with this complaint.

"What can be the difference, ma'am," said the poor body who told me this, "between us and Madame C in this illness? Is not what is good for the poor, good for the rich too?"

The same pertinent question may, I think, be asked in Paris just now respecting the medicine called religion. It is administered in large doses to the poor, to which class a great number of the fair sex of all ranks happily seem to have joined them

406

O'CONNELL AND THE CATHOLICS.

selves, intending, at least, to rank themselves as among the poor in spirit; nay, parish doctors are regularly paid by authority; yet, if the tale be true, the authorities themselves take little of it. "It is very good for poor people ;" but, like the hot-baths which Anstie talks of,

"No creature e'er view'd

Any one of the government gentry stew'd."

Whether the returning power of this pompous and aspiring faith will mount as it proceeds, and embrace within its grasp, as it was wont to do, all the great ones of the earth, is a question that it may require some years to answer; but one thing is at least certain,-that its ministers will try hard that it shall do so, whether they are likely to succeed or not; and, at the worst, they may console themselves by the reflection of Lafontaine :

"Si de les gagner je n'emporte pas le prix,

J'aurais au moins l'honneur de l'avoir entrepris."

One great one they have certainly already got, besides King Charles the Tenth, even the immortal Daniel; and however little consequence you may be inclined to attach to this fact, it cannot be considered as wholly unimportant, since I have heard his religious principles and his influence in England alluded to in the pulpit here with a tone of hope and triumph which made me tremble.

PARISIANS' NOTION OF O'CONNELL.

407

I heartily wish that some of those who continue to vote in his traitorous majority because they are pledged to do so, could hear him and his power spoken of here. If they have English hearts, it must, I think, give them a pang.

LETTER XLII.

Old Maids-Rarely to be found in France.-The reasons for this.

SEVERAL years ago, while passing a few weeks in Paris, I had a conversation with a Frenchman upon the subject of old maids, which, though so long past, I refer to now for the sake of the sequel, which has just reached me.

We were, I well remember, parading in the Gardens of the Luxembourg; and as we paced up and down its long alleys, the "miserable fate," as he called it, of single women in England was discussed and deplored by my companion as being one of the most melancholy results of faulty national manners that could be mentioned.

"I know nothing," said he with much energy, "that ever gave me more pain in society, than seeing, as I did in England, numbers of unhappy women who, however well-born, well-educated, or estimable, were without a position, without an état, and without a name, excepting one that they would generally give half their remaining days to get rid of."

"I think you somewhat exaggerate the evil," I replied: "but even if it were as bad as you state it to be, I see not why single ladies should be better off here,"

"Here!" he exclaimed, in a tone of horror: "Do you really imagine that in France, where we pride ourselves on making the destiny of our women the happiest in the world,—do you really imagine that we suffer a set of unhappy, innocent, helpless girls to drop, as it were, out of society into the néant of celibacy, as you do? God keep us from such barbarity!"

"But how can you help it? It is impossible but that circumstances must arise to keep many of your men single; and if the numbers be equally balanced, it follows that there must be single women too."

"It may seem so; but the fact is otherwise : we have no single women."

"What, then, becomes of them ?"

"I know not; but were any Frenchwoman to find herself so circumstanced, depend upon it she would drown herself."

"I know one such, however," said a lady who was with us: "Mademoiselle Isabelle B *** is an old maid."

"Est-il possible!" cried the gentleman, in a tone that made me laugh very heartily." And how old is she, this unhappy Mademoiselle Isabelle ?"