This Prince Complained, That He Was Not Only Plagued By The
Living Scots, But Even Persecuted By Those Who Were Dead.
I know not whether I may be allowed to compare the Romish
religion to comedy, and Calvinism to tragedy.
The first amuses
the senses, and excites ideas of mirth and good-humour; the
other, like tragedy, deals in the passions of terror and pity.
Step into a conventicle of dissenters, you will, ten to one, hear
the minister holding forth upon the sufferings of Christ, or the
torments of hell, and see many marks of religious horror in the
faces of the hearers. This is perhaps one reason why the
reformation did not succeed in France, among a volatile, giddy,
unthinking people, shocked at the mortified appearances of the
Calvinists; and accounts for its rapid progress among nations of
a more melancholy turn of character and complexion: for, in the
conversion of the multitude, reason is generally out of the
question. Even the penance imposed upon the catholics is little
more than mock mortification: a murderer is often quit with his
confessor for saying three prayers extraordinary; and these easy
terms, on which absolution is obtained, certainly encourage the
repetition of the most enormous crimes. The pomp and ceremonies
of this religion, together with the great number of holidays they
observe, howsoever they may keep up the spirits of the
commonalty, and help to diminish the sense of their own misery,
must certainly, at the same time, produce a frivolous taste for
frippery and shew, and encourage a habit of idleness, to which I,
in a great measure, ascribe the extreme poverty of the lower
people. Very near half of their time, which might he profitably
employed in the exercise of industry, is lost to themselves and
the community, in attendance upon the different exhibitions of
religious mummery.
But as this letter has already run to an unconscionable length, I
shall defer, till another occasion, what I have further to say on
the people of this place, and in the mean time assure you, that I
am always - Yours affectionately.
LETTER V
BOULOGNE, September 12, 1763.
DEAR SIR, - My stay in this place now draws towards a period.
'Till within these few days I have continued bathing, with some
advantage to my health, though the season has been cold and wet,
and disagreeable. There was a fine prospect of a plentiful
harvest in this neighbourhood. I used to have great pleasure in
driving between the fields of wheat, oats, and barley; but the
crop has been entirely ruined by the rain, and nothing is now to
be seen on the ground but the tarnished straw, and the rotten
spoils of the husbandman's labour. The ground scarce affords
subsistence to a few flocks of meagre sheep, that crop the
stubble, and the intervening grass; each flock under the
protection of its shepherd, with his crook and dogs, who lies
every night in the midst of the fold, in a little thatched
travelling lodge, mounted on a wheel-carriage.
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