The ceremony of the benediction, though solemn and grand, is confined to mere gestures, so far as the people beneath are concerned. The voice of the Pope cannot be heard, but his gestures were graceful and pleasing. The Catholics kneeled, but the Protestants did not; to my surprise, for the blessing of no good man is to be despised. There is too much of the “D—n my eyes! change my religion? never,” of the sailor, in us Protestants, who seem often to think there is a merit in intolerance, and irreverence, provided the liberality and respect are to be paid to Catholics. He who comes voluntarily into a Catholic ceremony is bound to pay it suitable deference; and then, God is omnipresent. I never saw any thing wrong in kneeling to the Host; for, while we may not believe in the real presence as to the wafer itself, we are certain that a homage to God himself can never be out of place or out of season. All men would be of the same way of thinking, had not politics become so much mixed up with religion. If you ask for the general impressions left by these ceremonies, I answer, that these people appear to me to be the only people I know who are perfectly drilled in such things. The vastness of the edifices, the richness of the dresses, the works of art, the music, and the consciousness that one is in the heart of Christendom, serve to heighten the effect; and yet, after all, the soul of worship, it struck me, was sadly wanting. I have seen a decent solemnity in the congregation of our own little Christ’s Church at C——n, that left a deeper impression than all the laboured pageantry of St. Peter’s at Rome: and you know I am not of the class that has no sympathies with another parish. Want of reverence in the manner—the hurried and undignified mode in which the Romish offices are usually performed, and the obvious fact that the audience were assembled as curious observers, rather than as those who joined in the worship, were sad drawbacks on the more sublime sentiments that properly belong to such occasions.