Paci funesta dies! en tristia erynnis—
Atlantiaca pulsa resurgit humo!
Ecce alias tœdas Helenæ, atque incendia Trojæ
Oceani, oceani prodita claustra vomunt!
It was for a nation like France, to demolish the altar of the living God (to use the words of Montalivert) to make room for the ashes of a Deist dead!
While memory retraces the page of history, written in blood on the smiling landscape beneath us, the eye rests once more on the pyramidal block which marks the fall of one of the ablest and best children of the revolution. Some dastard, under the cover of night, nearly effaced the word “hero,” and substituted for it that of “traitor.” Man is judged in this world by his actions—in the next world by his motives. If Moreau warred against his country, he was a traitor—if he warred against a tyrant, who usurped the sceptre and destroyed the liberties of his country, he was a patriot.
Taking a last circumspective view of the splendid prospect around us, we descended from the dome of the cathedral, and bent our steps to the Catholic church, where high mass was about to be celebrated. Here we found a sacred precept at once completely violated. “Whom God has joined let no man separate.” But the wife is here severed from her husband, and the sister from the brother—for what good purpose I am unable to divine. If the two sexes are not allowed to pray together, lest the scandal of assignations should result, the priesthood of Saxony are as little acquainted with human nature as they are with the Aborigines of New Holland.
But what becomes of this regulation, when we see that it only extends to the pit, while in the galleries of this holy opera (for high mass is neither more nor less than a sacred drama), the ladies and gentlemen are allowed to listen and laugh—or peradventure to pray, during the service?
The music here is said to be the best in Germany—and I suppose it must be so. If the object of sacred music be the elevation of the soul to the highest pitch of religious fervor and devotional enthusiasm, the accomplishment of that object may be doubted where a multiplicity of violins and other instruments drown rather than accompany the choir and the organ. There is, however, one exception to this doubt. When, in the performance of the solemn requiem, and at the words—
Tuba, mirum spargens sonum