And is not the long, elaborate _credo_ answerable for the objectionable Roman practice of sitting through the greater part of it? Of course church music should be of the most perfect kind; but perfection is sure to be greater where less is attempted; and the mere repetitions of words, and the placing of the accent upon the wrong note in the English translation, make these elaborate masses unsuitable in our churches. [Illustration: PÈRE HYACINTH PREACHING AT THE MADELEINE.] The ceremonial at the Madeleine always gives strangers the impression of having been over-rehearsed. The black-clothed beadles walk about with measured steps, particularly the frog faced one; the _Suisses_ in their cocked hats leisurely saunter about with their halberds looking the essence of flunkeyism, and never issue from their stereotyped expression of importance and unmixed boredom, except upon occasions when a foreigner fails to kneel at solemn moments. Why need the good Protestant remain sitting when the bell rings, feigning a kneeling posture by a sort of zigzag attitude? Up comes the _Suisse_, and shaking the back of his chair, tries to jerk him out of it. Why not stand, if rags of popery and scarlet women prevent you kneeling? Or why go at all, if you cannot do at Rome as Rome does? I confess to feeling a sensation of distress, and am much upset when that chair-tipping begins. And the worst of if is that, although the victim is innocent of what lies in store for him, we, who know the ways of the _Suisses_, anxiously anticipate the fatal moment. Sometimes, too, the British-born struggles to look pious, while he furtively reads his Baedeker, never dreaming that the benighted foreigner knows that Classic by its blood-red exterior. We are a great people, and are justly proud of our institutions; but we should be no less great if we had a little more respect for other folks, and other folks' manners and customs. It is curious how the church beadle varies. At the Madeleine he is pure flunkey. His cocked hat is high and broad, like the old Bumble of our childhood; he is whiskered, but not bearded; he has an arrogant way with him as he precedes the priest who makes the collection; and as he carries the bag into which the alms are emptied from time to time, he looks the essence of important officialism. Likewise, when he demands, in a commanding voice, "Pour les pauvres, _s'il_ vous _plait_!" few persons would say him nay. Not so the _Suisses_ of S. Eustache; they have the military air; the cocked hat is low, and worn as by the Marshals of France. Such are they also at S. Roch, and at both churches they salute at the Elevation, _à la militaire_.