water-melon was brought on. He cut off the end, and pouring a bottle of wine into it, said, "This is the blood of Christ. This" (feeling of the melon) "is the body; and the two, coming together, make a soul." He said this blandly, and as though he were getting off a good religious thought. Even the freethinking members of that party shrank from that unconscious profanity. So thoroughly are this people saturated with form and void of power, under the education of mere form, in which they have for so many generations been trained.
I went out, after my coffee, to church; for though I have little faith in Romanism, I feel that it is better to go to the house of God, strangely perverted though it be, than to idle the day away in outward non-observances. One can himself pray aright, if the others pray awry. The plaza before the cathedral was crowded with trades-people. Bazars had been formed by temporary shanties, and the streets adjoining were lined on both sidewalks; the stores were in full blast. Never a day more busy. The divine names given by the priests do not prevent the desecration of the divine day. It would be easy to stop all this. But the Sabbath, and the Bible, and the very titles of our God and Saviour are alike cast out and trodden underfoot. Is it any wonder God has cast them out? Over all this land nothing is writ so plain as the annihilation of ecclesiastical power and wealth. Every church they hold, not as their own, but as a loan of the government, while convents, immense in extent and costliness, are everywhere deserted and in ruins. This city is full of them, not yet driven through by the plowshare of the street commissioner; for there is not money enough to level them, and make them into highways. Yet they are all the more desolate from their utter emptiness and silent crumbling into dust. One of these plazas, and the most beautiful, was made from the garden of a convent belonging to the cathedral, and along one side of it, coming up to that church and covering not less than ten acres, is a heap of ruins, in the very heart of the city. You wander under lofty arches, and into courts without a window, door, or dweller—a ruin as complete as Melrose Abbey or
