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13. Ye who would fain my gaze prevent, Conceal the Gospel too:

The mystery recorded there

Is here but told anew.

VII. THE CHURCH.

MACAULAY.

Lord Macaulay was a gifted essayist, and a poet of no mean pretensions. He is best known, however, as the author of a History of Eng. land, which he did not live to complete, and which betrays, frequently, strong Anti-Catholic prejudices.

1. There is not, and there never was, on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilization. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Slavian amphitheater.

2. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series from the Pope who crowned Napoleon, in the nineteenth century, to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the re

public of Venice was modern when compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigor.

3. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farther ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin; and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated her for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the vast countries which lie between the plains of Missouri and Cape Horn; countries which, a century hence, may not improbably, contain a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe.

4. The members of her community are certainly not fewer than one hundred and fifty millions: and it will be difficult to show that all the other Christian sects united amount to a hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching.

5. She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot ou

Britain-before the Frank had passed the Rhinewhen Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antiochwhen idols were still worshiped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Pauls'.

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1. Is it not strange that in the year 1799 even sagacious observers should have thought that at length the hour of the Church of Rome had come? An infidel power ascendant-the Pope dying in captivity—the most illustrious prelates of France living in a foreign country on Protestant alms-the noblest edifices which the munificence of former ages had consecrated to the worship of God turned into temples of victory, or into banquetting-houses for political societies, or into Theophilanthropic1 chapels-such signs might well be supposed to indicate the approaching end of that long domination.

2. But the end was not yet. Again doomed to death, the milk-white hind was fated not to die. Even before the funeral rites had been performed over the ashes of Pius the Sixth, a great reaction had commenced, which, after the lapse of more than forty years

appears to be still in progress. Anarchy had its day A new order of things rose out of confusion-new dynasties, new laws, new titles; and amidst them emerged the ancient religion. The Arabs had a fable that the great pyramid was built by the antediluvian kings, and alone of all the works of men, bore the weight of the flood.

3. Such was the fall of the Papacy. It had been buried under the great inundation, but its deep foundations had remained nnshaken; and when the waters abated, it appeared alone amidst the ruins of a world which had passed away. The republic of Holland was gone, and the empire of Germany, and the Great Council of Venice, and the old Helvetian League, and the House of Bourbon, and the Parliaments and aristocracy of France.

4. Europe was full of young creations-a French empire, a kingdom of Italy, a Confederation of the Rhine. Nor had the late events affected only the territorial limits and political institutions. The distribution of property, the composition and spirit of society, had, through a great part of Catholic Europe, undergone a complete change. But the unchangeable Church was still there.

I THE-O-PHI-LAN -THROP'-IC, a title assumed by some persons in France during the French Rev

olution. Their object was to entablish infidelity in the place of Christianity.

IX.--ON CONVERSATION.

COWPER.

William Cowper, a distinguished English Poet, was born in 1731, and died in 1800. His first volume of poems, published when he was over fifty years old, did not attract much attention. But his "Task," published two years later, attained a wide popularity, and established his position as a poet.

Though Nature weigh our talents, and dispense
To every man his modicum of sense,
And conversation, in his better part,
May be esteemed a gift, and not an art,
Yet much depends, as in the tiller's toil,
On culture and the sowing of the soil.
Words learned by rote a parrot may rehearse,
But talking is not always to converse;
Not more distinct from harmony divine,
The constant creaking of a country sign.

Ye powers, who rule the tongue,-if such thore

are,

And make colloquial happiness your care,
Preserve me from the thing I dread and bato
A duel in the form of a debate.

Vociferated logic kills me quite ;

A noisy man is always in the right;
I twirl my thumbs, fall back into my chair,
Fix on the wainscot a distressful stare,
And, when I hope his blunders are all out,
Reply discreetly, "To be sure, no doubt!"

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