The scanty manner in which this dearth had been occasionally supplied for some time, excited a longing to participate in the instructions of the new Mission, which had already visited Arles, Valence, and Tarascon, under the sanction of the state; and whose claims to religious authority the writer defends by precedents unnecessary to enumerate here. On the first Sunday in Lent, 1819, its proceedings were commenced at Avignon, by a solemn procession, which made the circuit of the principal streets of the town, singing penitential psalms, and halted on the hill of Notre Dame; where an inaugural sermon was delivered on a spot called Calvary, and supposed to represent that sacred place. The multitude, assembled by curiosity or a better feeling, was so great, that two of the missionaries found it expedient to address them at the same time from different stations. One of these was M. Guyon, the director of the Mission; of whose eloquence and animation, as a preacher, the author speaks highly. On the succeeding day, the nine ecclesiastics composing the Mission attached themselves respectively to the different churches of the town, and called in the assistance of the neighbouring clergy, as confessors to those persons whom their discourses might affect most strongly. This step was rendered the more necessary, inasmuch as the common people of the vicinity understand French merely as the Welsh do English, and converse only in their native Provencal with any facility. If we may believe their zealous eulogist, the effects which the missionaries had anticipated immediately followed, and their utmost exertions, as well as those of their new associates, were taxed to satisfy the spiritual wants of the populace. "The Avignonese," says the narrative, "hungered so after the word of God, that the gates of the churches were besieged from three hours before daybreak, by those who flocked to be present at the morning exhortation. The inhabitants of the country and the neighbouring communes walked during a part of the night, in order to secure seats; each anxiously sought to place his chair many hours beforehand, and caused it to be kept, in fear that another might deprive him of it; the churches were so full, that it was hardly possible to move in them. The eagerness to obtain room was so great, that indecorous and even scandalous scenes took place among the wives of the populace; they quarrelled for chairs and seats with a ferocity, _qui les mettoit souvent hors du cercle de la politesse civile et Chretienne_." (Perhaps, as a townsman, he is unwilling to be more particular). "More than twenty thousand individuals were assembled in the churches at every service; and a circumstance which proves how admirably each missionary and associate fulfilled his particular task is, that each parish gave the preference to the persons attached to it, and none allowed the superiority to its neighbouring quarter. Like mothers, who can see