“There are, it seems to me, two distinct divisions in morals, one as important as the other in the eyes of God, but in which in our days his ministers instruct us with very unequal ardor.  One belongs to private life:  it embraces the relative duties of mankind as fathers, as sons, as wives, as husbands.  The other regards public life:  the duties of every citizen toward his country, and toward that human society of which he forms a special part.  Am I deceived in believing that the clergy of our time are very much occupied with the first portion of morals, and very little with the second?  This appears to me especially observable in the manner in which women think and feel.  I see a great number of them who have a thousand private virtues in which the direct and beneficent action of religion manifests itself,—­who, thanks to it, are most faithful wives and excellent mothers, who show themselves just and indulgent toward their domestics, charitable to the poor.  But as to that portion of duties which is connected with public life, they do not seem to have even the idea of it.  Not only they do not practise them themselves, which is natural enough, but they do not seem even to have the thought of inculcating them on those over whom they have influence.  It is a side of education that is, as it were, invisible to them.  It was not so under that old regime which, in the midst of many vices, developed proud and manly virtues.  I have often heard it told, that my grandmother, who was a very religious (tres sainte) woman, after impressing upon her young son the exercise of all the duties of private life, failed not to add,—­’And then, my child, never forget that a man owes himself above all to his country; that there is no sacrifice that he ought not to make for her; that he cannot remain indifferent to her fate; that God requires of him that he be always ready to consecrate, if need be, his time, his fortune, even his life, to the service of the State and of the king.”—­Vol.  II. p. 341.

“I do not ask of the priests to require of the men whose education is committed to them, or over whom they exercise influence, I do not ask of them to require of these men, as a duty of conscience, to support the republic or the monarchy; but I avow that I desire that they should oftener tell them, that, as they are Christians, so they belong to one of those great human associations which God has established, without doubt in order to render more visible and more sensible the bonds which ought to unite individuals to each other,—­associations which are named the people, and whose territory is called the country.  I desire that they should cause the fact to penetrate more deeply into the souls of men, that each man owes himself to this collective existence before belonging to himself; that in regard to this existence no man is allowed to be indifferent, still less to make of indifference a sort of feeble virtue which enervates many of the most noble instincts that have been given