adoration of mankind at large, if we have done anything to deserve remembrance from them; at all events, of those whom we loved during life; and when they too are gone, of being included in the collective adoration paid to the Grand Etre.  People are to be taught to look forward to this as a sufficient recompense for the devotion of a whole life to the service of Humanity.  Seven years after death, comes the last Sacrament:  a public judgment, by the priesthood, on the memory of the defunct.  This is not designed for purposes of reprobation, but of honour, and any one may, by declaration during life, exempt himself from it.  If judged, and found worthy, he is solemnly incorporated with the Grand Etre, and his remains are transferred from the civil to the religious place of sepulture:  “le bois sacre” qui doit entourer chaque temple de l’Humanite.”

This brief abstract gives no idea of the minuteness of M. Comte’s prescriptions, and the extraordinary height to which he carries the mania for regulation by which Frenchmen are distinguished among Europeans, and M. Comte among Frenchmen.  It is this which throws an irresistible air of ridicule over the whole subject.  There is nothing really ridiculous in the devotional practices which M. Comte recommends towards a cherished memory or an ennobling ideal, when they come unprompted from the depths of the individual feeling; but there is something ineffably ludicrous in enjoining that everybody shall practise them three times daily for a period of two hours, not because his feelings require them, but for the premeditated, purpose of getting his feelings up.  The ludicrous, however, in any of its shapes, is a phaenomenon with which M. Comte seems to have been totally unacquainted.  There is nothing in his writings from which it could be inferred that he knew of the existence of such things as wit and humour.  The only writer distinguished for either, of whom he shows any admiration, is Moliere, and him he admires not for his wit but for his wisdom.  We notice this without intending any reflection on M. Comte; for a profound conviction raises a person above the feeling of ridicule.  But there are passages in his writings which, it really seems to us, could have been written by no man who had ever laughed.  We will give one of these instances.  Besides the regular prayers, M. Comte’s religion, like the Catholic, has need of forms which can be applied to casual and unforeseen occasions.  These, he says, must in general be left to the believer’s own choice; but he suggests as a very suitable one the repetition of “the fundamental formula of Positivism,” viz., “l’amour pour principe, l’ordre pour base, et le progres pour but.”  Not content, however, with an equivalent for the Paters and Aves of Catholicism, he must have one for the sign of the cross also; and he thus delivers himself:[23] “Cette expansion peut etre perfectionnee par des signes universels....  Afin de mieux developper l’aptitude necessaire