[Footnote 21:  This excludes Lichtenstein, Monaco, and Greece.]

Three or four days of leisure have enabled us to look very thoroughly at the exterior of Liege, which is certainly an interesting town, with lovely environs.  There are some very good old houses along the banks of the river, and a few of the churches are noble edifices.  The cathedral and the church of St. Jaques, in particular, are venerable and interesting structures; and I stood beneath their lofty arches, listening to the chants of the choir, and inhaling the odours of the incense, with a satisfaction that never tires.  I sometimes wish I had been educated a Catholic, in order to unite the poetry of religion with its higher principles.  Are they necessarily inseparable?  Is man really so much of a philosopher, that he can conceive of truth in its abstract purity, and divest life and the affections of all the aids of the imagination?  If they who strip the worship of God of its factious grace, earnestly presented themselves in the garb of moral humility, rendering their familiar professions conformable to their general tenets, and stood before us as destitute of self-esteem as they are of ornament, one might not so much feel the nakedness of their rites; but, as a rule, the less graceful the forms and the more intense the spirituality of the minister of the altar become, the higher is his tone of denunciation and the more palpable his self-righteousness.  In point of fact, when the proper spirit prevails, forms, of themselves, become of little account; and when men begin to deem them otherwise, it is proof rather of the want, than of the excess, of the humility and charity which are the inseparable companions of faith.  I do not say that I would imitate all the unmeaning and irreverent practices of the Romish church; and least of all could one wish to see the devout and solemn manner of the Protestant ministering at the altar supplanted by the unintelligible mumblings of the Latin breviaries:  but why have we denounced the holy symbol of the cross, the ornaments of the temple, the graceful attire, and the aid of music?  It is impossible, I think, for the American, who has visited Europe, not to feel the want of edifices reared in honour of God, which everywhere exists in his own country.  I do not mean churches, in which the comfort and convenience of the pew-holders have been mainly consulted, for these pious speculations abound; but temples to mark a sense of the superiority of the Deity, and which have been reared in his honour.  It may be easy enough to account for the absence of such buildings, in a country so peopled and still so young, but this does not make the deficiency the less obvious.