On ascending the Mont Don, we found it the scene of a graver ceremony than the infantine gambols which we had just witnessed. In the centre of the terrace facing the river, a new and highly gilt crucifix of colossal size has been erected at the expense of the Mission, round which a number of monks and inhabitants were collected on their knees, the still evening increasing the effect of a solemn mass which they were singing, and in which we heard the name of St. Paulus several times repeated. Several nuns, belonging to an establishment lately revived, knelt on the steps of the cross, enveloped in their black hoods; and the prisoners at the palace window united their deep tones to the chant, pausing every now and then to solicit the charity of passers by. Scattered at different distances from the cross, eight or ten separate groups of persons were kneeling farther off, in attitudes of the deepest devotional abstraction, though surrounded on all sides by sauntering soldiers, children playing, and groups of loungers laughing or whispering. The different distances at which they knelt were regulated, as we were told, by the degrees of penance imposed upon them, and the place which their respective consciences allowed them to assume. Some, in the true spirit of the poor Publican, were kneeling at a considerable distance, just within view of the cross, to which they hardly lifted their eyes; others, whose penance was originally lighter, or its term abridged by frequent visits to this place, had approached the cross more nearly, and with greater signs of satisfaction. I must confess, that we observed these poor penitents with an interest and attention which the other parts of the ceremony had failed to excite. The manifestation of a deep and genuine religious feeling is respectable in Catholic, Turk, or Bramin, and seldom or never to be mistaken; and though attended by no circumstances of external pomp, must impress upon serious beholders of every creed a reverence which trappings and mummery fail to excite. It should seem indeed that Providence, wishing gently to humble the pride of men, delights in producing by the simplest means those physical and moral effects, which they waste toil and expense in bringing about. The splendid procession, for instance, which takes place on the day of Corpus Christi at Rome, with all its assemblage of monks, horse and foot guards, cardinals, choristers, and banners, would dwindle before the eye of reason into "shreds and patches, were it not for the figure of the truly venerable man who now fills the papal chair, kneeling with the same humility and abstraction from the busy scene around him, which marked the deportment of the penitents just mentioned.