while. Meantime, by friend, note this, respecting what I have told you, that in the very centre of Europe, in a country which is visited for their chief pleasure by the most refined and thoughtful persons among all Christian nations-a country made by God's hand the most beautiful in the temperate regions of the earth, and inhabited by a race once capable of the sternest patriotism and simplest purity of life, your modern religion, in the very stronghold of it, has reduced the song and dance of ancient virginal thanksgiving to the howlings and staggerings of men betraying, in intoxication, a nature sunk more than half way towards the beasts; and you will begin to understand why the Bible should have been "illustrated" by Gustave Doré.

One word more is needful, though this letter is long already. The peculiar ghastliness of this Swiss mode of festivity is in its utter failure of joy; the paralysis and helplessness of a vice in which there is neither pleasure, nor art. But we are not, throughout Europe, wholly thus. There is such a thing, yet, as rapturous song and dance among us, though not indicative by any means of joy over repentant sinners. You must come back to Paris with me again. I had an evening to spare there, last summer, for investigation of theatres; and as there

oching it my of them that I cared much about see ing Ikeda vlet-le-place at Meurice's, what people were generallying to. He salAll the English went to see the Lonte me Mage" I do not care to tell you wis generii entertainment I received in following, for one, the lead of my ecuntrymen; but it closed with the representation of the characteristic dancing of all ages of the world; and the dance given as characteristic of modern time was the Canean, which you will see alluded to in the extract given in the note at page 92 of Sesame and Lilies. "The ball terminated with a Devilish Chain and a Cancan of Hell, at seven in the morning." It was led by four principal dancers (who have since appeared in London in the Huguenot Captain), and it is many years since I have seen such perfect dancing, as far as finish and accuracy of art and fulness of animal power and fire are concerned. Nothing could be better done, in its own evil way, the object of the dance throughout being to express in every gesture the wildest fury of insolence and vicious passions possible to human creatures. So that you see, though for the present we find ourselves utterly incapable of a rapture of gladness or thanksgiving, the dance which is presented as characteristic of modern civilization is still rapturous enough—but it is with rapture of blasphemy. Now, just read from the 17th to the 20th page of the pre

face to Sesame and Lilies, and I will try to bring all these broken threads into some warp and woof, in my next two letters-if I cannot in one.

Letter 10.

The Meaning, and Actual Operation, of Satanic or Demoniacal Influence.

March 16, 1867.

I AM afraid my weaving, after all, will be but rough work-and many ends of threads ill-knotted-but you will see there's a pattern at last, meant by them all.

You may gather from the facts given you in my last letter, that as the expression of true and holy gladness was in old time statedly offered up by men for a part of worship to God their Father-so the expression of false and unholy gladness is in modern times, with as much distinctness and plainness, asserted by them openly to be offered to another spirit: "Chain of the Devil, and Cancan of Hell" being the names assigned to these modern forms of joyous procession.

Now, you know that among the best and wisest of our present religious teachers, there is a gradual tendency to disbelieve, and to preach their disbelief, in the commonly received ideas of the Devil, and of his place, and his work. While, among some of our equally well-meaning, but fai

less wise, religious teachers, there is, in consequence, a panic spreading, in anticipation of the moral dangers which must follow on the loss of the help of the Devil. One of the last appearances in public of the author of the Christian Year was at a conclave of clergymen assembled in defence of faith in damnation. The sense of the meeting generally was, that there must be such a place as hell, because no one would ever behave decently upon earth unless they were kept in wholesome fear of the fires beneath it: and Mr. Keble especially insisting on this view, related a story of an old woman, who had a wicked son, and who having lately heard with horror of the teaching of Mr. Maurice and others, exclaimed pathetically, "My son is bad enough as it is, and if he were not afraid of hell, what would become of him!" (I write from memory, and cannot answer for the words, but I can for their purport.) Now, my friend, I am afraid that I must incur the charge of such presumption as may be involved in variance from both these systems of teaching.

I do not merely believe there is such a place as hell. I know there is such a place; and I know also that when men have got to the point of believing virtue impossible but through dread of it, they have got into it.

I

mean,

that according to the distinctness with which they hold such a creed, the stain of nether fire has passed