Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/264

254 —and that is the small body of French Protestants, heirs of the Huguenots. Beside that it is fairly to be inferred that the acceptance of that kind of ostracism under which Protestants in France labor, is itself a proof of genuine religious sincerity, no one can mingle with them without observing at once a sort of Puritan tone of quiet and steadfast morality, and a total want of sympathy with the vicious tendency of so large a proportion of their neighbors. Their direct contact with the dominant Catholicism, and the disadvantages under which they labor, in comparison with the latter, seem to often drive them to the extreme of rigidity. They mingle little with the world, never indulge in Sunday public amusements, and constantly exert their influence against the prevailing vices of the age. It is very rarely that you will find a Protestant member of a club; they keep aloof from them, and strive to set an example by their simple and domestic habits.

All who have had occasion to observe French society will corroborate what has been said in the present article. What the remedy to its downward tendency will- be, when it will act, and under what social awakening, or political or religious revulsion, cannot be conjectured. Political revolution, certainly, has not mended French morals—seems, indeed, only to have aggravated the evil. Perhaps, when religious superstition shall be quite worn out, and the sad transition through atheism shall emerge into faith, enlightened by reason, that nation will awaken to its melancholy moral state.