seem, where they discern weakness. The old good institutions and monuments of past time, still keeping Frenchmen united in mind and heart, are gradually and ruthlessly disappearing by the decrees of babyish officials; and the social superiority and refinement of the French nation are being replaced by a patent corruption of morality and literature, manners and social tone. Religion, with her devoted and unselfish ministers, missionaries, Sisters, and Jesuit Fathers even, is good only abroad, in Tunis, Madagascar, or the far East, where the inconsistent policy of a Government helpless at home regards them as the pioneers of French civilization!
A sad picture of the Benedictine Abbey at Solesmes, illustrious by so many literary reminiscences, is given by a correspondent from Paris. The expelled clergy are lodging where they can in the village, surrounded indeed by the love and respect of the people, but doomed to watch their Abbey and Church left to the mercy of only three gendarmes, who amuse themselves in rummaging all over the building, playing the grand organ, and letting the grass and fruit of the orchard rot away. In days gone by, it was a pleasure to watch the peaceful inhabitants of those cloisters at work. "Toiling at the cultivation of their vegetables, pruning their trees, they recall the heroic ages, when the sons of St. Benedict cleared the forests of Gaul and transplanted to Western soil the flowers of science and poetry exiled from the East." Still more touching are the memories of its great and learned Abbot, the famous Dom Guéranger, whose glorious works fittingly adorn the shelves of our best libraries in England. "And now thorns and briars have covered the profaned earth, and silence reigns over the habitation." These words might have been written in England in the days of Henry VIII., and not in the midst of so-called civilized France in the Nineteenth Century! International Democracy and Socialism are truly hard at work just now in rooting out in all countries every vestige of chivalrous, generous, and cultivated patriotism from the mind of younger men. Our own young men are being set very bad and most iniquitous examples indeed; and it is impossible to disguise, and it is foolish to ignore, that if we fall victims to the manifest attacks of Radical and anti-Monarchical men, we shall have, in large measure, to blame ourselves for our
