Mr. Emerson, we presume, struck with the narrowness and inconsistencies of all the religions he had studied, and finding that they are all variable and transitory in their forms, yet thought that he also discovered something in them, or underlying them all, which is universal, invariable, and permanent, and which they are all honest efforts of the great soul to realize. He therefore came to the conclusion that the sage can accept none of these narrow, variable, and transitory forms, and yet can reject none of them as to the great, invariable, and underlying principles, which in fact is all they have that is real or profitable. To distinguish between the transient and permanent in religion was the common aim of the Boston movement from 1830 to 1841, when we ourselves began to turn our own mind, though very timidly and at a great distance, toward the church. Mr. Emerson, Miss Margaret Fuller, A. Bronson Alcott, and Mr. Theodore Parker regarded the permanent elements of all religions as the natural patrimony or products of human nature. The present writer differed from them, by ascribing their origin to supernatural revelation made to our first parents in the garden, universally diffused by the dispersion of the race, and transmitted to us by the traditions of all nations. Following out this view, the grace of God moving and assisting, we found our way to the Catholic Church, in which the form and the invariable and permanent principle, or rather, the form growing out of the principle, are inseparable, and are fitted by the divine hand to each other. The others, falling back on a sort of transcendental illuminism, sunk into pure naturalism, where such of them as are still living, and a whole brood of young disciples who have sprung up since, remain, and, like the old Gnostics, suppose themselves spiritual men and women in possession of the secret of the universe. There was much life, mental activity, and honest purpose in the movement; but those who had the most influence in directing its course could not believe that any thing good could come out of Nazareth, and so turned their backs on the church. They thought they could find something deeper, broader, and more living than Christianity, and have lost not only the transient, but even the permanent in religion. FOOTNOTE: [36] _The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson_, New and revised edition. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 1870. 2 vols. 16mo. THE HOLY-WEEK OF 1869 IN HAVANA. GOOD-FRIDAY. HOLY-SATURDAY. EASTER-SUNDAY. GOOD-FRIDAY. Sad indeed was the aspect of all things within the cathedral on Good-Friday morning. Black draperies covered the pulpit, reading-desks, and seats reserved for the authorities, and every one was attired in mourning. Instead of the rose-color and blue of Holy-Thursday, the ladies now wore black or violet silks and satins with jet ornaments.