that these Anti-christian Iconoclasts themselves might probably have been content to “believe and say their prayers,” had not the intolerance of philosophy made them atheists and persecutors.—­The coarse legend of “death is the sleep of eternity,"* is only a compendium of the fine-drawn theories of the more elaborate materialist, and the depositaries of the dead will not corrupt more by the exhibition of this desolating standard, than the libraries of the living by the volumes which hold out the same oblivion to vice, and discouragement to virtue.—­

* Posts, bearing the inscription “la mort est un sommeil eternel,” were erected in many public burying-grounds.—­No other ceremony is observed with the dead than enclosing the body in some rough boards, and sending it off by a couple of porters, (in their usual garb,) attended by a municipal officer.  The latter inscribes on a register the name of the deceased, who is thrown into a grave generally prepared for half a score, and the whole business is finished.

The great experiment of governing a civilized people without religion will now be made; and should the morals, the manners, or happiness of the French, be improved by it, the sectaries of modern philosophy may triumph.  Should it happen otherwise, the Christian will have an additional motive for cherishing his faith:  but even the afflictions of humanity will not, I fear, produce either regret or conviction in his adversary; for the prejudices of philosophers and systemists are incorrigible.*

* "Ce ne sont point les philosophes qui connoissent le mieux les hommes.  Ils ne les voient qu’a travers les prejuges, et je ne fache aucun etat ou l’on en ait tant."—­J.  J. Rousseau. ["It is not among philosophers that we are to look for the most perfect knowledge of human nature.—­They view it only through the prejudices of philosophy, and I know of no profession where prejudices are more abundant.”]

Providence, Jan. 29.

We are now quite domesticated here, though in a very miserable way, without fire, and with our mattresses, on the boards; but we nevertheless adopt the spirit of the country, and a total absence of comfort does not prevent us from amusing ourselves.  My friend knits, and draws landscapes on the backs of cards; and I have established a correspondence with an old bookseller, who sends me treatises of chemistry and fortifications, instead of poetry and memoirs.  I endeavoured at first to borrow books of our companions, but this resource was soon exhausted, and the whole prison supplied little more than a novel of Florian’s, Le Voyage du jeune Anarcharsis, and some of the philosophical romances of Voltaire.—­They say it ennuyes them to read; and I observe, that those who read at all, take their books into the garden, and prefer the most crowded walks.  These studious persons, who seem to surpass Crambe himself in the faculty of abstraction, smile and bow at every comma, without any appearance of derangement from such frequent interruptions.