unconscious offspring to the privileges of a great religious community. Before this great initiation it was alone in the world, loved only by her, and with all its prospects darkened by original sin, now it is purified, blessed, admitted into the fellowship of the holy and the wise. A certain relationship of a peculiar kind is henceforth established between priest and infant. In after years he prepares it for confirmation, another ceremony touching to the heart of a mother when she sees her son gravely taking upon himself the responsibilities of a thinking being. The marriage of a son or daughter renews in the mother all those feelings towards the friendly consecrating power of the church which were excited at her own marriage.

Then come those anxious occasions when the malady of one member of the family casts a shadow on the happiness of all. In these cases any clergyman who unites natural kindness of heart with the peculiar training and experience of his profession can offer consolation incomparably better than a layman; he is more accustomed to it, more authorised. A friendly physician is a great help and a great stay so long as the disease is not alarming, but when he begins to look very grave (the reader knows that look) and says that recovery is not probable, by which physicians mean that death is certain and imminent, the clergyman says there is hope still, and speaks of a life beyond the grave in which human existence will be delivered from the evils that afflict it here. When death has come, the priest treats the dead body with respect and the survivors with sympathy, and when it is laid in the ground he is there to the last moment with the majesty of an ancient and touching form of

words already pronounced over the graves of millions who have gone to their everlasting rest.1

1 Since this essay was written I have met with the following passage in her Majesty's diary, which so accurately describes the consolatory influence of clergymen, and the natural desire of women for the consolation given by them, that I cannot refrain from quoting it. The Queen is speaking of her last interview with Dr. Norman Macleod :

"He dwelt then, as always, on the love and goodness of God, and on his conviction that God would give us, in another life, the means to perfect ourselves and to improve gradually. No one ever felt so convinced, and so anxious as he to convince others, that God was a loving Father who wished all to come to Him; and to preach of a living personal Saviour, One who loved us as a brother and a friend, to whom all could and should come with trust and confidence. No one ever raised and strengthened one's faith more than Dr. Macleod. His own faith was so strong, his heart so large, that all-high and low, weak and strong, the erring and the good -could alike find sympathy, help, and consolation from him."

"How I loved to talk to him, to ask his advice, to speak to him of my sorrows and anxieties."

A little further on in the same diary her Majesty speaks of Dr. Macleod's beneficial influence upon another lady.

"He had likewise a marvellous power of winning people of all kinds, and of sympathising with the highest and with the humblest, and of soothing and comforting the sick, the dying, the afflicted, the erring, and the doubting. A friend of mine told me that if she were in great trouble, or sorrow, or anxiety, Dr. Norman Macleod was the person she would wish to go to."

The two points to be noted in these extracts are, first, the faith in a loving God who cares for each of His creatures individually (not acting only by general laws); and secondly, the way in which the woman goes to the clergyman (whether in formal confession or confidential conversation) to hear consolatory doctrine from his lips in application to her own personal needs. The faith and the tendency are both so natural in women that they could only cease in consequence of the general and most improbable acceptance by

PART II.-Art.

I have not yet by any means exhausted the advantages of the priestly position in its influence upon women. If the reader will reflect upon the feminine nature as he has known it, especially in women of the best kind, he will at once admit that not only are women more readily moved by the expression of sympathy than men, and more grateful for it, but they are also more alive to poetical and artistic influences. In our sex the aesthetic instinct is occasionally present in great strength, but more frequently it is altogether absent; in the female sex it seldom reaches much creative force, but it is almost invariably present in minor degrees. Almost all women take an interest in furniture and dress; most of them in the comfortable classes have some knowledge of music; drawing has been learned as an accomplishment more frequently by girls than by boys. The clergy have a strong hold upon the feminine nature by its æsthetic side. All the external details of public worship are profoundly interesting to women. When there is any

splendour in ritual, the details of vestments and altar decorations are a constant occupation for their thoughts, and they frequently bestow infinite labour and pains to produce beautiful things with their own hands to be used in the service of the Church. In cases where the service itself is too austere and plain to afford much scope for this affectionate industry the slightest pretext is seized

women of the scientific doctrine that the Eternal Energy is invariably regular in its operations, and inexorable, and that the priest has no clearer knowledge of its inscrutable nature than the layman.

upon with avidity. See how eagerly ladies will decorate a church at Christmas, and how they will work to get up an ecclesiastical bazaar! Even in that Church which most encourages or permits æsthetic industry, the zeal of ladies sometimes goes beyond the desires of the clergy, and has to be more or less decidedly repressed. We all can see from the outside how fond women generally are of flowers, though I believe it is impossible for us to realise all that flowers are to them, as there are no inanimate objects that men love with such affectionate and even tender solicitude. However, we see that women surround themselves with flowers, in gardens, in conservatories, and in their rooms; we see that they wear artificial flowers in their dress, and that they paint flowers in water-colour and on china. Now observe how the Church of Rome and the Ritualists in England show sympathy with this feminine taste! Innumerable millions of flowers are employed annually in the churches on the continent; they are also used in England, though in less lavish profusion, and a sermon on flowers is preached annually in London, when every pew is full of them.

It is well known that women take an unfailing interest in dress. The attention they give to it is close, constant, and systematic, like an orderly man's attention to order. Women are easily affected by official costumes, and they read what great people have worn at levees and drawingrooms. The clergy possess, in ecclesiastical vestments, a very powerful help to their influence. That many of

them are clearly aware of this is proved by their boldness and perseverance in resuming ornamental vestments, and (as might be expected) that Church which has the most influence over women is at the same time the one

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whose vestments are most gorgeous and most elaborate. Splendour, however, is not required to make a costume impressive. It is enough that it be strikingly peculiar, even in simplicity, like the white robe of the Dominican friars.

Costume naturally leads our minds to architecture. I am not the first to remark that a house is only a cloak of a larger size. The gradation is insensible from a coat to a cathedral; first, the soldier's heavy cloak, which enabled the Prussians to dispense with the little tent, then the tent, hut, cottage, house, church, cathedral, heavier and larger as we ascend the scale. "He has clothed himself with his church," says Michelet of the priest; "he has wrapped himself in this glorious mantle, and in it he stands in triumphant state. The crowd comes, sees, admires. Assuredly, if we judge the man by his covering, he who clothes himself with a Notre Dame de Paris or with a Cologne Cathedral is, to all appearance, the giant of the spiritual world. What a

dwelling such an edifice is, and how vast the inhabitant must be! All proportions change, the eye is deceived, and deceives itself again. Sublime lights, powerful shadows, all help the illusion. The man who in the street looked like a village schoolmaster is a prophet in this place. He is transfigured by these magnificent surroundings, his heaviness becomes power and majesty, his voice has formidable echoes. Women and children are overawed."

To a mind that does not analyse but simply receives impressions, magnificent architecture is a convincing proof that the words of the preacher are true. It appears inconceivable that such substantial glories, so many