eHotel Vouillemont Rue de Champs
Elysees July 31st, 1859. Paris.
My dear Fanny
Paris and France do not altogether
ignore the fact that this is Sunday a religious day
a day for devotion. I went this morning to the "American
Church". The edifice is neat and capacious and the
situation entirely respectable and proper. Certainly
Protestantism ought to exhibit among this people the
superiority it has in point of spirituality and morality over
the established Roman Catholic Church. It tries to do
so, but its light is feebly thrown into the dark
places - for Protestantism is divided within itself while
Catholicity is one. There is the English Church, the Lutheran
and the Scottish Church. Certainly the Americans who
truly estimate the religious forces of society may well
desire to maintain a church here. They have within
the last two years built and dedicated the Church
I attended. They made what seems to me to be a
fair compromise among themselves in regard to
form. Thus th while there is an altar or a communion
booth, within a Chancel, there is no reading desk
and the lessons are read on the pulpit or desk.
The Clergyman is an Episcopalian and wears a
black gown, but no surplice. Any Clergyman of
any denomination may conduct worship and wear
any or no appointed costume - Before the sermon the
hominy service is read from the American prayer

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Book of Common Prayer and the psalms and hymns
sung are from the same. Instead of a special invocation
for Bishops and all other Clergy, the prayer is read
for the Clergy "all ministers to whom is committed
the ministering of thy word and the Congregations
committed to their charge" - To adapt the service to
the English and French Protestants here, the prayers
for the President of the United States is enlarged by
adding the words, the Emperor of the French and
the Queen of Great Britain" The Ante Communion service
so wearisome to others than episcopalians is omitted.
The sermon to day was a very great one delivered
by Dr Stone a Congregational clergyman from Boston
who closed the services with an unwritten prayer
and the benediction. So suitable as all this is
I am grieved to learn that some strenuous American
Episcopalians here got up a secession and organized
a Church exclusively and completely in the persons of
their own association -
This afternoon I attended worship at
Saint Roch, where I heard prayers that I could
not understand but I doubt not their devotional spirits
and music that was sublime and . How
strange it was that the at the American Church where
there were 200 Americans of both sexes almost every
one was known to me at home - To say both, they

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seemed with few exceptions to be very paternal. This is
the devotional side of the day - now for the other side. Every
theatre, circus, ball room, garden or other place of
amusement is open and not only open but offers its most
recherche tables of and elaborate schemes to attract
visitors, and the few who enter the Church at all
are not one of fifty, and even then when the service
is over surrender themselves to dissipations numerous
in its thousand forms. How is society here to be renewed?
How to be trained to self government - Surely the Republicans
of France and of Europe have a Herculean task before
them -