Moral progress, and the cultivation of the intellect, are here not only neglected, as in the Arab or Tartar tribe, but impossible. Where can a school be placed, for the instruction of children living ten leagues apart in all directions? Thus, consequently, civilization can in no way be brought about. Barbarism is the normal condition,[1] and it is fortunate if domestic customs preserve a small germ of morality. Religion feels the consequences of this want of social organization. The offices of the pastor are nominal, the pulpit has no Audience, the Priest flees from the deserted chapel, or allows his character to deteriorate in inactivity and solitude. Vice, simony, and the prevalent barbarism penetrate his cell, and change his moral superiority into the means of gratifying his avarice or ambition, and he ends by becoming a party leader. I once witnessed a scene of rural life worthy of the primitive ages of the world, which preceded the institution of the priesthood. In 1838 I happened to be in the Sierra de San Luis, at the house of a proprietor whose two favorite occupations were saying prayers and gambling. He had built a chapel where he used to pray through the rosary on Sunday afternoons, to supply the want of a priest, and of the public divine service of which the place had been destitute for many years. It was a Homeric picture: the sun declining to the west; the sheep returning to the fold, and rending the air with their confused bleatings; the service conducted by the master of the house, a man of sixty,
- ↑ In 1826, during a year's residence at the Sierra de San Luis, I taught the art of reading to six young people of good families, the youngest of whom was twenty-two years old.
