élégances du luxe, pour rivaliser avec les hommes les plus sages de la société Chrétienne. Quelques rares exceptions ne se font remarquer que pour relever tant de mérite."--Matter, _Hist. du Christianime_, Vol. I. "The tendency of this creed," to use the words of our author, "is to direct the aim and purposes of mankind to whatever can exalt human nature and improve human happiness. It represents us as gardeners in a vineyard, or servants entrusted with a variety of means, who are not 'to keep their talent in a napkin,' but to exert their skill and ingenuity to employ it to the best advantage. The moral principles themselves are fixed and unchangeable; but their application to the circumstances by which we are surrounded, must depend very much on the degree in which reason has been exercised. By no imaginable instruction could the mind be so tutored, as to see through all the errors and prejudices of its times at once, but the principles possess in themselves a power of progression. The generosity of one time will be but justice in another; the temperance that brings respect and distinction in one age, will be but decorum in one more civilized, yet the principles are at all times the same." It is difficult to read without a smile some of the passages in which the dress and manners of the first ages are described by the Fathers of the Church; the fair hair, (our classical readers will recollect the "Nigrum flavo crinem abscondente galero"