The American in Paris; vol. 2 of 2

by John Sanderson

The intrigues and libertinism of the French and Italian clergy are matters of authentic history. There was a time when a cardinal’s hat depended on the patronage of the candidate’s mistresses. The Cardinals de Retz, Richelieu, Mazarin and Dubois were the notorious roués of the day. I see here every where a set of jovial-looking monks, with their caps over the right eye, who would drink your health in the sacristy. Besides, when the cares of men are limited to themselves, they lose some of the best qualities of the human heart; they become selfish. I never knew an old maid, a bachelor, or even a married woman without children, who was not an insupportable egoist, unless the affections nourished by matrimony were supplied from other sources; and the concern men have for their children brings out their religious as well as their social qualities into continual exercise. Not only the strongest defence against immorality, but the foundation of every public virtue is laid in the domestic affections. The Athenians would not allow any one to vote who had not a child; if I were pope, I would not permit any one to preach who had not a wife, and I would take one myself to set them the good example.

I am sorry the interior arrangements of our American churches, both catholic and protestant, are so opposed to architectural beauty. The pew has an air of habitation; it has the comfort, it has the sacredness of home. Families, accustomed to see each other, the year round, grow into acquaintance; and, even without the intercourse of words, experience the joy of a friendly meeting. The humble man, also, has the satisfaction, one day in seven, of seeing himself in company with those of better fortunes, on something like terms of equality. When one gets the apostles and all the saints on one’s side, one rises almost to the dignity of any body. A great man, too, can, in a church, associate a little with his inferiors without compromising his importance: all which is lost in this random and desultory way of sitting about upon chairs, as in the French churches.

A great evil of our American churches is, their great respectability, or exclusiveness. Here, being of a large size, and paid by government, the church is open to all the citizens, with an equal right and equal chance of accommodation. In ours, the dearness of pew-rent, especially in the Episcopal and Presbyterian, turns poverty out of doors. Poor people have a sense of shame; and I know many a one who, because he cannot go to church decently, will not go at all. This is an evil we must bear, to avoid the greater one of a church establishment. We suffer disadvantages, also, from want of religious uniformity. A thin settled community, which is just able to support one clergyman, starves three or four, or dispenses altogether with their services. A first-rate Methodist would rather not go to church at all, than take part in the litany; and what good Presbyterian, would not rather be d—d, ten times over, than be seen at a mass?

In a diversity of sects, also, we are given to dogmatise too much, and define articles of faith; to follow the letter rather than the spirit of religion. The French catholic believes (if he believes any thing) in the power of absolution, in the real presence, and in the infallibility of the pope; without inquiry into the absurdity of such belief, we dogmatise and doubt and reason ourselves into infidelity; and, though we can see no essential difference in the prayers and sermons of our different clergymen, we cling to our own, as indispensable to our salvation.

Our clergy, too, of the same denomination, are often falling into schisms, in which they too often show jealousy, malice, and other bad passions, which brings religion itself into disrepute. Are these things worse than the abuses and corruptions of undivided church establishments?

The manner of keeping Sunday is a subject of general censure amongst our American visitors at Paris. There is no visible difference between this day and the others, except that the gardens and public walks, the churches in the morning, and the ball-rooms and theatres in the evening, are more than usually crowded. In London, the bells toll on the Sunday most solemnly; the theatres and dancing rooms are silent, and all the shops (but the gin-shop) shut; yet the poor get drunk, and the equipages of the gentry parade their magnificence in Hyde Park, of a Sunday afternoon.

“How do you spend your Sundays,” said a Frenchman, condoling with another, “in America?” He replied: “Monsieur, je prends médecine.” A Frenchman has a tormenting load of animal spirits that cannot live without employment: he has no idea of happiness in a calm; and it is not likely that he will remain endimanché chez-lui during the twelve hours of the day, or that his Sunday evenings would be better employed than in the theatre and ball-room.

This is my opinion; but I have great doubts whether a man ought to have an opinion of his own, when it does not correspond with that of others, who are notoriously wiser than himself. I cannot easily persuade myself, that nature has intended the whole of this life to be given up to a preparation for the next, else had she not given us all these means of enjoyment, all these “delicacies of taste, sight, smell, herbs, fruits and flowers, walks and the melody of birds.”—Now this is enough about French churches.

LETTER XIII.

Père la Chaise.—Funeral of Bellini.—Grave-Merchants. Description of the Cemetery.—Graves of the Rich and the Poor.—The Fête des Morts.—Tomb of Abelard and Heloise.—Remarkable personages buried there.—The Aristocracy of the Grave.—Monument of Foy.—Inscription.—Grave yards in Cities and Towns.—French regulations for the inhumation of the dead.