outbreak of selfish fanaticism, which had, in June last, wellnigh buried the last relics of liberty in France beneath the very monuments which she had raised to the memory of her liberals,* this Raspail was committed to prison. It does not appear that in bonds he has learnt wisdom. A story is current in Paris, at once significant of the temper of the times and the madness of the democrat. It is said that recently, while shaving, he turned to his attendants, and declared that his physiognomy was like that of the Blessed Redeemer. The motto of his Almanack, which is prominent in nearly every bookseller's window of Paris, is, "LE SOCIALISME, C'EST L'EVANGILE. Y CROYEZ VOUS?" And his infatuated disciples (females!) are about to celebrate the holy season of Christmas by a banquet to "Jesus, the first Socialist."+ I trust that the schoolmasters of England will take warning by the awful example of these fanatics. There is a danger lest the HOLY BIBLE should be treated with irreverence in elementary schools. Let our teachers show, even while they turn over its leaves, that it is to them a sacred volume, the very syllables of which are like the consecrated censers of the sanctuary. Allow me to offer another reflection, which helps me in solving the enigma of the revolutionary spirit of France. The general neglect of the Holy Scriptures is closely connected with the absence of all family life. When an eminent American visited England, and wandered among our ten thousand families, he said, everywhere murmuring within himself, LAND OF HOMES, LAND OF HOMES. Prague and Vienna are cities of Folks-gartens. Paris is a city of theatres, estaminets, cafés. boulevards, but not, distinctly and prominently, of HOMES. Louis Napoleon, the new President of the Republic, tells us that the basis of society is to be found in religion, the family, and property. But religion must bless the family, and sanctify * The central citadel of the insurgents of June was the Pantheon, dedicated to the memory of the great men of France, which yet bears upon its portico the marks of the sanguinary conflict carried on before and within its walls. The enormous bars of its iron railing are twisted and broken by the cannon, as though by the hand of a giant. + I quote the following passage from the same popular manual. I will not translate it:-Having occasion to defend his system against the charge of Utopism, he proceeds to define the term, "Utopie est le titre d'un ouvrage que Thomas Morus, grand chancelier d'Angleterre, publia au commencement du seizième siècle, sur un plan nouveau du gouvernement. * * * * On l'écouta, mais en 1535 il eut la tête tranchée. On ne traita pas autrement Jesus Christ, le plus grand et le plus tendre des Utopistes du monde; et s'il revenait sur la terre, je pense qu'aujourdhui on ne le traiterait pas mieux; ne voyez vous pas ceux qui osent se dire ses pontifes appeler d'infâmes leur frères, qui prêchent la liberté, l'egalitè, et la fraternité, Sainte Trinité, évangélique, et ceux qui auraient l'audace qu'ont eu les Apôtres de conseiller la vie en communauté." Public gardens for the people. The property, or society is convulsed. Property in Paris is felt by the poor to be an insult, because it is not sanctified. Now the Romish Church is practically unfavourable to the first element of the religion of the family, I mean family prayer. members of a pious Roman Catholic family may go occasionally to church, but not as a family. For myself, I cannot but look upon family prayer as the first and highest element of the life of the family. The late Henry Thornton has always appeared to me a great political philosopher, as well as a devout and intelligent Christian, in having laboured so long and so successfully in promoting the social worship of Christian households. Daily service in church may be a blessing to single men and single women to those who are not engaged in the entangled business of the world; or to those who, being so engaged, wish to occupy a part of the day in holier occupations; but daily service at church must not supersede family prayer. Here the Christianity of children finds a pure nutriment, making them strong for public worship and the duties of mature life. Here the servants and domestics can all attend. In olden times, the retainers and the lord of the household used to feast together; the dish and the saltcellar alone separated them. Better is it for religion, for property, and for the family, that they should now kneel together confessing their sins, and interceding for each other and the world. I am tempted to pursue this desultory train of reflection, and to inquire how far the habit of living en pièce, that is, in flats, and in lodgings, is at once a cause and a consequence of the absence of family life. The best French writers attribute partly to this national habit the excesses of the first Revolution. The extremes of penury and opulence often met on the same staircase. The artizan, who earned his bread by the sweat of his brow on the level of the street, imagined that he saw it torn from his grasp by the merry masquers, who might be carousing on the first floor. Tabula secernitur unda. Higher up, misery found a habitation in gloomy garrets. The façade of a London street may be meaner than one of Paris or Berlin, but surely there is more proportion and a better security for the permanence and progress of the nation within each separate house. than in overgrown quadrangles and stories piled to the skies. * * * We set out from Amiens by the railroad, and arrived in Paris the same evening (Thursday, Dec. 21, 1848). Many of the stations on the line were temporary, the original erections having been destroyed in the revolutionary excitement of February. Paris is little changed as to its outward aspect. The sites of the great barricades are hardly distinguishable. The guardhouses, which were the principal scenes of conflict between the municipal troops and the rabid mob, have, with the exception of that which stood opposite to the gates of the Palais Royale, been rebuilt. All the world is talking of Louis Napoleon, the new President of the Republic. Every one who can button up his coat like the "Petit Caporal," and recall a reminiscence of the empire, is popular. Lamartine is as little thought of as Charles Martel or Dagobert. The dress of the young men is wilder and less controlled by the usages of society than it used to be. They look as if they could be murderous or polite, according to the humour of the moment. The simious faces have obviously increased. Few countenances express tranquil benevolence; everywhere are marks of care, anxiety, or excitement. Does not the human face cease to be divine? Does it not gradually grow like that of some fearful and unknown beast of prey when the human heart has long ceased to reverence the Most High? We saw some of the Garde Mobile to-day. Such a set of wild, active, cat-like beings I never before beheld. Dressed in a coarse mockery of military costume, with hats on their heads such as our sailors use; they seem the apt representatives of vulgar petulance* and libertinism. When they march, their very order is disorderly. Their bayonets are turned in every direction. They seem to be mostly big, bad boys; monsters, I dare say, of audacity in fight, for they look as if they feared neither God nor man. Are these legalized brigands the fruits of education apart from religion? of the cultivation of the memory and imagination without the discipline of the heart? or are they the representatives of popular ignorance? May the Almighty God save the British government from the necessity of ever enrolling such a froward band for the defence of old England against her undutiful and degenerate children. * ** * * SUNDAY, DEC. 24.-Of all days in the week, THE LORD'S-DAY is the most saddening to an English Christian in a great continental city. In Paris it is spent as a day of public worship, of wild revelry, or of business, as the case may be ; but it has altogether lost its holy charm as a day of rest. Let us see how this great FOURTH SUNDAY IN ADVENT, the DAY BEFORE THE NATIVITY, has been passed-not by the gamins, not by the habitually dissipated, but by the great body of the most respectable heads of families. Let us seriously consider how far PARISIAN SABBATH-BREAKING serves to explain the revolutionary spirit, which is so unfavourable to the public liberty it professes to achieve. Yesterday it was determined by the authorities that with a view of hastening to a conclusion the ceremonies proper to the inauguration of the new President of the Republic, a grand review of *The petulantia of Sallust. • the national guard and soldiers of the line should be held today. At an early hour in the morning, which was bitterly cold, the respectable citizen was summoned, by the beating of drums, to join his regiment. He then was marched, amidst thousands of his fellows, to the Champs Elysées and the Champs de Mars. Here he had to stand by his piled arms, supplied with drams by the vivandières, who are showy young women dressed in a sort of offensive epicene costume. Hour after hour he was surrounded with military parade; officers galloping with messages; generals accompanied each by his staff; revolutionary airs set as marches. Perhaps he thought that the mobiles would proclaim Prince Louis Emperor, as it had been rumoured that there would be a disturbance. Possibly that the new President would be shot. But why particularize his natural reflections on such an occasion? He was amidst a field of trophies. The obelisk from Egypt; the dome of the Invalides, where the great warrior of his country lies entombed-pillars, arches, towers, all were rich in historical associations, and all those associations belonging to the pomp and circumstance of war. A grave and quiet man would hardly escape from the excitement of the scene. It becomes an epidemic. We mounted the vast steps of the western portico of the Madeline church on on our way to the English service, and the gorgeous spectacle which met our gaze as we looked along the broad street which leads to the Place de la Concorde was enough to arouse the most phlegmatic. The street was full, the vast square full, the whole space to the very steps of the former chamber of deputies,bridge and road, terrace and quay, all full of brilliant costumes and flashing bayonets. I said that this excitement was epidemic. A young man of my acquaintance, one who loves peace and is usually sober-minded, confessed to me that he was sorry when the glorious Three Days were over, because they had been so full of startling events. Well, such is the morbid excitement, amidst which this solemn Christian festival has been passed. What time has there been (in the case of the national guards) for Divine worship-for the secret confession of sin, for the play of quiet family affection, for the development of home life? What sympathy or what love is left in that man's bosom for his private parlour and his frugal dinner with his wife and his children? Little or none. It is gone, one may fear, for ever-that sacred reverence for the hearth and the home. The holy fires are extinct. He has been lounging in cafés and cabarets, talking politics, reading newspapers, and thinking himself a great man. He who has no fixed day for holy rest, will, as the practical consequence, be restless and unhallowed for the whole week. There is another capital, two hundred miles to the north of Paris. Less magnificent in the monuments of war, it is far richer in the spoils of peace. The great mass of its middle classes (would to God I could say the same, and to the same extent of the poor!) woke this morning, not to open their shops, and buy and sell and get gain, but to spend the day as a day of quiet and rest from labour. Thousands of heads of families went up to the public sanctuary with their wives and children, while they honoured the day by attiring themselves in their best. They worshipped, and they came home wiser men. In proportion as that great city remembers the sabbath day to keep it holy, so will it possess the guarantee of public order and progress. Liberty, equality, and fraternity, which in France are mere words, will be, in that city, so far as they imply truths, grave and real things. I consider, then, the habitual desecration of the sabbath in the French capital as one moral cause of its revolutionary tendencies. How far may that desecration be charged, historically, on the maxims of the Church of Rome? One blessing which we owe, under God, to the Puritans, is the high tone of feeling, prevalent on the whole in our country on this most important subject. Esto perpetua! May it never be diminished or lowered. (To be continued.) OUTLINES OF THE GEOGRAPHY OF BRITISH THE geography of the New World is of a different and compara- With reference to the British colonies, omitting California on the one side and the south-eastern states of the Union on the other, as in no way affecting them, North America may be divided into three parts by the two mountain ranges which run throughout its whole length in comparatively close proximity to the coast. Of the eastern, which has received the name Alleghany from a |