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There would be no going through this world if one had not an
India-rubber conscience, and one could no more exist in life without
what watch-makers call accommodation, in the machinery of one's heart,
than a blue-bottle fly could grow fat in the shop of an apothecary.
Every man's conscience has, like Janus, two faces--one looks most
plausibly to the world, with a smile of courteous benevolence, the other
with a droll leer seems to say, I think we are doing them. In fact, not
only would the world be impossible, and its business impracticable, but
society itself would be a bear-garden without hypocrisy.
Now, the professional classes have a kind of licence on this subject;
just as a poet is permitted to invent sunsets, and a painter to
improvise clouds and cataracts, so a lawyer dilates upon the virtues
or attractions of his client, and a physician will weep you good round
substantial tears, at a guinea a drop, for the woes of his patient;
but the church, I certainly thought, was exempt from this practice. A
paragraph in a morning paper, however, disabused my ignorance in the
most remarkable manner. The Roman Catholic hierarchy have unanimously
decided that all persons following the profession of the stage, are to
be considered without the pale of the church, they are neither to he
baptized nor confirmed, married nor buried; they may get a name in the
streets, and a wite there also, but the church will neither bless
the one, nor confirm the other; in fact, the sock and the buskin are
proclaimed in opposition to Christianity, and Madame Lafarge is not a
bit more culpable than Robert Macaire. A few days since, one of the
most fashionable churches in Paris was crowded to suffocation by the
attraction of high mass, celebrated with the assistance of the whole
opera choir, with Duprez at their head. The sum contributed by the
faithful was enormous, and the music of Mozart was heard to great effect
through the vaulted aisles of Notre Dame, yet the very morning after,
not an individual of the choir could receive the benediction of the
church--the _rationale_ of all which is, that the Dean of Notre Dame,
like the Director of the Odeon, likes a good house and a heavy benefit.
He gets the most attractive company he can secure, and although he makes
no scruple to say they are the most disreputable acquaintances, still
they fill the benches, and it will be time enough to damn them when the
performance is over!
Whenever the respectable Whigs are attacked for their alliance with
O'Connell, they make the same reply the priest would probably do in this
circumstance--How can we help it? We want a mob; if he sings, we have
it--we know his character as well as you; so only let us fill our
pockets, and then------I do not blame them in the least, if the popery
of their politics has palled upon the appetite; if they can work no
more miracles of reform and revolution, I do not see how they can help
calling in aid from without.