"Or ——?"
"No. He is not in society."
"Or ——?"
"Oh no! His works live an hour (too long!) and are forgotten."
Should I therefore, my friend, return from France with an higher idea of its good taste and morality than I had when I entered it, think not that my own standard of what is right has been lowered, but only that I have had the pleasure of finding it differed much less than I expected from that of our agreeable and hardly-judged neighbours on this side the water. But I shall probably recur to this subject again; and so, for the present, farewell!
LETTER X.
Lonchamps.—The "Three Hours' Agony" at St. Roch.—Sermons on the Gospel of Good-Friday.—Prospects of the Catholics.—O'Connell.
I dare say you may know, my friend, though I did not, that the Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of Passion-week are yearly set apart by the Parisians for a splendid promenade in carriages, on horseback, and on foot, to a part of the Bois de Boulogne called Lonchamps. What the origin could be of so gay and brilliant an assemblage of people and equipages, evidently coming together to be stared at and to stare, on days so generally devoted to religious exercises, rather puzzled me; but I have obtained a most satisfactory explanation, which, in the hope of your ignorance, I will communicate. The custom itself, it seems, is a sort of religious exercise; or, at any rate, it was so at the time of its institution.
When the beau monde of Paris first adopted the practice of repairing to Lonchamps during these days of penitence and prayer, a convent stood there, whose nuns were celebrated for performing the solemn services appointed for the season with peculiar piety and effect. They sustained this reputation for many years; and for many years all who could find admittance within their church thronged to hear their sweet voices.