their Pastors. It is to be hoped that in some instances, at least, it does so.

The parochial system of Sweden obliges the clergy to be acquainted with the state of their people; the government makes them, in fact, its moral police. All persons must by law possess a certain amount of religious knowledge and education. They must be confirmed, and for that end read and write, and undergo six months' religious instruction from the Priest. Should any person be brought to trial and found in a state of total ignorance, the officers of government write to the Priest of his parish, to inquire how that person came to be so neglected; and he is obliged to make out the cause.

The churches of Stockholm are more remarkable in general for size than for beauty. In their original state, the older ones must have presented an imposing interior; but now, lumbered up as they are with large gloomy pews and galleries, a striking contrast is presented to their general plainness by the ornamented altars and pulpits, which stand in too vivid relief to the bare, whitewashed walls and dreary, lifeless aspect of the rest of the building. And it is impossible to enter them, especially when the Priest is facing the

Altar, in his gorgeous robes and splendid cross, and the people are sitting, not kneeling, in the pews,—without being forcibly struck by that mixture of the Roman and Presbyterian worship, the existence of which the Swedes are in general indisposed to acknowledge in their Church.

We know that Gustavus Vasa was obliged to temporise and dissemble in order to bring about his reformation; assuring the people, as Geijer informs us, "that he by no means intended the introduction of a new faith, but only the correction of abuses." Writing himself to the people of Helsingborg, he says of the Priests, "When they perceive that we look to the interest of the Crown, they straightway declare that we wish to bring in a new faith and Luther's doctrine; whereas the matter is no otherwise than as ye have now heard."

The people cling as tenaciously to their Psalmbook now as they did to their Mass-books then. Perhaps for much the same reason they are theirs; they are Swedish.

The common phrase, "that was of the old time," when alluding to any vestiges of the Catholic period, or to any burlesqued representations of it, implies that such things being no longer

the established religion of Sweden, are not entitled to regard or respect.

Thus, when I have expressed the almost horror I felt at seeing the religious ceremonies of a still existing, though no longer professed, Swedish faith, acted on the stage of the opera-processions, incense, funeral ceremonies, benediction, prayer, and worse than all, not the Cross only, but the Crucifix-Actors kneeling in mockery before the representation of our dying God and Saviour!-the surprise of the friends who had brought me there was great, when, instead of admiring, I expressed a wish to withdraw from such scenes; and to the question as to how they could be permitted in a land where the Queen is a Roman Catholic, and her royal husband is in fact the actual manager of the Opera, built by Gustavus III.,-was answered by the smiling reply, "That is of the old time-yes; that is nothing to us; it is not our religion now."

Yet, "contempt of God"-that is, contempt of any of the rites, duties, or devotions of the Church of Sweden, involves a legal punishment, and that no slight one, in this same land.

If another Reformation were to come, it is not improbable that, in a hundred years hence, the

Swedes would say of their Psalm-book-" That was of the old time; that is not our religion now." But they would have a good fight for it first.

As it is, say anything of that book in Sweden, and you are answered by the lines of Wallin, with a look and tone that would ask if ever anything was heard like that:

"Upp psaltare, och harpa! Upp frästens ord !" -the introit, or, in Swedish phrase, "in-going psalm," which, after all, is but a poor rhyming paraphrase of the majestic song of the Eastern Psalmist "Awake up, my glory; awake, psaltery and harp: I myself will awake right early."

But whatever one may find fault with, in those things which have removed from "the old time," one returns with pleasure to those which still remain on "a Catholic basis." a Catholic basis." Another of these is the regulation with respect to the Burial Service --that service, so often, alas! abused, so little generally understood, in England; where those who have declined admittance into the Church by holy baptism are, sometimes even unscrupulously, committed to the grave with the rites which that Church intended for her faithful children; where laxity of doctrine, or a desire to keep well with all men, induce some of the clergy even, wil

lingly, to perform an act not only unsanctioned, but positively forbidden by their Church-an act they would not perform in the case of an unbaptised infant, but, with singular inconsistency, have been known to perform in that of an unbaptised adult without scruple.

Can we, then, criticise the religion of other lands? we, the inhabitants of one in which, while loudly professing to be the most religious of all lands, a coroner's jury uniformly obviates all scruples on the same subject in the case of suicides, by a verdict of "Temporary insanity " -a verdict on oath !-because the feelings of the survivors must be considered; and, therefore, all coroners, and coroners' jurors, agree in deciding, that every one who puts an end to his or her life is mad, and may be buried with the burial of a Christian. The burial by the road-side, the stake run the body, might, in the old time, have saved some desperate hand from taking the life which God did not require to be given.

But Sweden, in this respect, still rests her Church on a Catholic basis: the body of a known selfmurderer is treated as such; a body found dead is interred in silence, charity hoping that accident, or another hand, has caused its death; but the