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A VISIT TO THE DEVIL-WORSHIPERS OF ARMENIA.

only revered as the altar on which the Melek Taous, the religious symbol of the Yezidis, is exposed. A burning lamp hung before the curtain. A little further on was another recess containing a somewhat smaller box or altar, which is called the tomb of Sheikh Hussein. The curtain in this case was not so richly worked, and the lamp was smaller; the shrine being evidently of a secondary rank. We now descended a few steps into the second division of the building, which exactly resembled the first in construction, but it was empty and unornamented. At the end was a door which brought us out to the court again. The sheikh assured me that I had now seen the whole of the sacred edifice, and finished by conducting me over the buildings set apart for the more distinguished pilgrims, and their horses, which adjoin the temple.

The Yezidis have of late years been brought somewhat before the notice of the public through the travels of Mr. Layard and Mr. Badger; but as, unfortunately, these gentlemen seem unable to agree either in their books or out of them, the world is not much the wiser as to the real tenets of this singular people. In fact, the principal point in their religion seems to be to conceal their doctrines from the uninitiated, and for this purpose every kind of falsehood is resorted to. To a Mohammedan, a Yezidi will say he believes in Mohammed; to a Christian that he believes in Christ; and among Mohammedans they circumcise their children, while among Christians they baptize them. It seems certain, however, that, if possible, every member of the tribe makes a pilgrimage once in his life to the sacred valley of Sheikh Adi, and is immersed in its waters.

With regard to their worship of the devil, it is now evident that at most they but endeavor to propitiate him. I have been told by those who, more fortunate than myself, were present at the great festival in the year of my visit, that the word Yesdan constantly recurred in their sacred songs, and the priests themselves acknowledged that this was the name by which they adored the Supreme Being. Their reverence for fire is very great, and it is considered sinful to spit into it, or to scatter it upon the earth. They have, too, a small temple in the valley of Sheikh Adi, which bears the name of Sheikh Shems,

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or the sun; and although it has been alleged that it is merely the tomb of a man of the name of Shems, such a report would be one likely to spread by the Yezidis to conceal its real import. In fact, so far as their doctrines are known, they present an extraordinary resemblance to those which long were held in Persia, when the precepts of Zoroaster had been corrupted by admixture with a grosser Sabæanism.

The Yezidis have many peculiar customs which separate them from the other inhabitants of Armenia and Mesopotamia. One of their greatest grievances was being enrolled in the Turkish army, by which many of their prejudices were shocked. Their uniforms were blue-a sacred color -and one which no Yezidi can conscientiously wear; they were compelled to eat lettuces and other vegetables forbidden by their religion; and they were forced to go to the public baths with Mohammedans, which is the height of abomination: for although as a people they are very cleanly, yet their ablutions must be performed apart, and, if possible, in a running stream. However, now, through the exertions of Lord Stratford, they are permitted to pay a fixed sum annually, which secures their exemption from military service.

Fish, too, is a forbidden article of food, and appears to be held sacred; a superstition which reminds one of the tanks of sacred fish which are maintained in India at the present day, and of the account of the reservoir filled with them in the great temple of the Syrian goddess at Hierapolis.

At a distance a Yezidi may at once be known by his shirt, which is closed at the neck, instead of being left open like those worn by the Kurds and Arabs; and on nearer approach it is impossible to mistake their large noses and strongly-marked features. They are evidently a distinct people from their neighbors, and the purity of the race is kept up by stringent laws, which excommunicate any person who marries out of the tribe. They are industrious and warlike, and were it not for the constant persecution they suffer from the Mohammedans, they would be far more prosperous than the other inhabitants of these provinces.

Every creed in the East has its kubleh, or sacred point to which to turn in prayer, and that of the Yezidis is toward the north. The common people do not appear to pray

at all. They leave that duty to the priests, who occasionally meet, and perform mystic dances, at the same time chanting verses in honor of Yezdan and Sheikh Adi. The dead are buried with their faces toward the north.

On the evening before the new year the Yezidi villages present a very gay appearance, as the door of every house is decorated with bunches of scarlet anemones, and on feast-days the people wear these and others twisted into their turbans.

PROTESTANTISM IN GERMANY.

THE

HE mission of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Germany, yet in its infancy, is nevertheless exerting a most salutary influence. The erection of a church in Bremen, by the liberality of Christians in the United States, is an event of great importance; and the circulation of books, evangelical in their character, is an omen of great good. Considering the indebtedness of the Church to the land of Luther, and the present low state of religion in that country, we regard the missionary field there as one of the most important, and likely to be one of the most successful in which the Church is engaged. The following account of the present state of Protestantism in Germany will be read with interest. We condense it from the Church of England Magazine for May.

It must always be a painful subject of thought to the Christian world that the country which gave birth to the great reformers should have gradually lapsed into a state of religious decay. I propose in the following paper to take a slight review of the present religious condition of Germany, and the hopes we may form from it for the future.

The thunders of Luther against the Romish religion, and his prominent defense of that grand doctrine of justification by faith, have, it is well known, been superseded by an utter indifference to true religion, in many of the clergy, and in almost all the people.

priest is bowing to it, turned away from the people; pictures and images are all around you. This is a Lutheran church. In another part you will find cold, gray, bare walls, a service entirely unadorned: a hymn, one of those simple, yet grand expressions of love and faith descended from the days of Luther, is sung: a prayer is offered, and a sermon preached. This is the Reformed church. But in both the congregation is scanty, chiefly composed of women and children: all is lifeless; and the sermon, far from rousing or warming the feelings, is of a milk-andwater sort, coldly moralizing, without that exhibition of the love of Christ which is the only effectual stimulant.

The Germans generally are not orators; and even the best are tame in their pulpit efforts, in this respect standing far behind the French preachers, who are characterized by much affectionate earnestness. There are among these clergy many men of great benevolence and goodness, whom it is impossible not to love and admire in their home circle, where the affectionate and sincere manners of every member of the family present the most lovely aspect of German character. But in the minds of all the men, doubt and irreligion have the ascendency. Not that they are, or can be, happy in this state of things: far from it. There is a wide-spread dissatisfaction, a longing for change, and a looking forward to they know not what, expending their strength of mind in trying to solve endless problems in politics and religion, and thus completely reducing the moral powers of their nature.

Of our Sabbath they can form no conception: it is a day, they say, intended for rational recreation, and the enjoyment of nature: so, after the service in the morning, which but few attend, they take a long walk into the country with their children, desiring to make the day one of rejoicing to the young. This is what the better and more religious part of the community do: as for the mass of the people, they do not look upon it in a religious light at all, but meet to smoke, drink beer, and play at nine-pins, or attend the theaters; as if it were an ordinary holiday.

If you enter a church in one part of Germany, you will perhaps be surprised Everywhere you hear in private conto find that ceremonies are going on, so versation the clergy regretting deeply the similar to a Roman Catholic ritual as want of religious faith and motive of acscarcely to be distinguished from it. The tion in the young: Rationalism seems unicandles are burning before the altar the versally spread among the thinking portion

of the population. No charity is excited by religion nothing is done or suffered for that sacred cause. Consequently, you find none of those noble and disinterested efforts for the poor and helpless, which excite every mind, more or less, in England and America. There has lately, however, been a little reaction in this way, which is spreading among the higher ranks of life, and principally among the ladies, who, desiring a purer and more active piety, are the leaders in many excellent institutions. One lady of rank, in Berlin, is the superintendent of a hospital: several, both in that city and in Hamburg, are usefully engaged.

There has also been much conversation lately upon what is called the "inner mission;" which is intended as a strong protest against Rationalism, and an endeavor to gain a firmer hold of the minds of the people in favor of religion. The leaders of this mission say their desire is to Anglicize Germany; to restore the Sabbath to its true position, as a day consecrated to God; and to obtain for the ministers of religion a respect and attention which is almost entirely lost.

Herr Wiehern, well known as the founder of the Rauhe Haus, a most successful reformatory institution for the young, near Hamburg, is the leader of this movement. He has traveled over all Germany to promote its object, and holds a high place in the esteem of many of its rulers and kings. The King of Prussia, who, though so vacillating as a monarch, has yet many virtues, supports and desires the success of this mission. The young men, who are at the head of each Rauhe Haus, are imbued with its doctrines; and, as they are sent for into all parts of the country to conduct similar reformatory institutions, they carry with them the praises of Herr Wiehern and the " inner mission ;" and the apprentices who leave the Home, and who are received with open arms by the masters, though gathered from the dregs of the people, so complete is the reform effected, are all converts to the same doctrines.

It is difficult to say what will be the result of this effort. Disappointment may be the portion of many of its enthusiastic advocates; but, at any rate, it is rousing from lethargy, and will awaken some to a higher sense of their social and religious duty.

VOL. VII.-18

The great disappointment which has been felt about the movement of Ronge, which at the time of the pilgrimage to Trèves it was hoped would prove a second Reformation, obliges us to be cautious in forming another judgment. His sect of German Catholics still remain in Prussia. They have been exposed to bitter persecution everywhere, and entirely suppressed in Vienna, owing to their democratic tendencies; not fearing, even from the pulpit, to speak of the oppression of the rulers, and want of freedom among the people. They are, in fact, the only people who speak out in Germany. Their leader was obliged to fly to England to escape imprisonment; and many wild doctrines have now spread among his followers. They believe that the spirits of the good, instead of having a separate existence in the world to come, will be absorbed into the essence of God; and many of the nembers refuse a belief in Christ as divine, or in the inspiration of the Scriptures. As a religious party it will soon die out; but its influence upon politics may be extensive, containing, as it does, the only elements of freedom in the country.

*I think, then, we may gather that, upon the whole, there is some ground for the hope that among all these jarring elements of religious belief, a brighter day of pure religion and worship will arise for Germany-when dreaming and speculation are reduced to practice, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them, we come nearer to the life of Christ, and are more likely to obtain the wished-for results, than from all the philosophers who hope to penetrate by the light of reason into what was only intended to be discerned by faith-and that, where the morning star of the Reformation was first seen, the Sun of Righteousness will again shine with redoubled brightness, and shed healing from his wings.

CHARLES IV. AND THE WATCHES.-After his abdication, Charles amused himself in his retirement at St. Juste by attempting to make a number of watches go exactly together. Being constantly foiled in this attempt, he exclaimed: "What a fool have I been to neglect my own concerns, and to waste my life in a vain attempt to make all men think alike on matters of religion, when I cannot even make a few watches keep time together!"

MA

SPLENDID MISERY.

A SKETCH FROM REAL LIFE.

[ARGARET, or, as she preferred to call herself, Marguerite, the late Countess of Blessington, rose from one of the lowest stations in life to the possession of wealth and all the enjoyments that wealth can purchase. She was surfeited with the pleasures of the world; flattered and caressed, almost idolized, but yet never happy. Her history carries with it a profound moral lesson, and is as strange and improbable as the novelist could portray; the scenes of her life are as full of marvelous and striking contrasts as the dramatist might venture to imagine. We meet her first in a plain, middle-class Irish home, in the obscure village of Knockbrit, when about five years old. Her family removed to the little town of Clonmel, where the father followed first the business of a corn-merchant and butter-seller, which was afterward relinquished for that of proprietor of a local paper-a change which proved ruinous to his fortunes. This father, Edmund Power, is bad and repellant enough for any tale. Abroad, he is cohsidered a handsome, thoughtless, jovial fellow; with pleasant manners-a sufficiently merry and agreeable companion; at home, he is perfectly brutal-a man whose very presence carries terror to his wife and children. Now and then, too, the savageness of his temper bursts out beyond the domestic circle. A magistrate he must needs be; and, albeit he is a Roman Catholic, he chooses to distinguish himself by the fierce zeal with which he hunts for supposed rebels. On one of his excursions he shot mortally a poor innocent lad, and was tried for the murder, but acquitted.

As years passed on, the home of the Powers at Clonmel became more and more wretched. Increasing poverty and embarrassments irritated the father's temper to fury, and his outbursts of rage became more frequent and more terrific. It was an awful place for the training of young hearts; yet three of the daughters of this misery-stricken house lived to wear a coronet-Marguerite, Countess of Blessington; Ellen, Viscountess Canterbury; and Mary Anne, Countess de St. Marsault.

Provincial gayeties now and then some

what relieved to the girls the sadness of their gloomy home. Their father had all an Irishman's love of company; and. though very young, his graceful daughters were reigning belles with the military and other gentlemen who frequented the Clonmel balls. It is curious to find these girls, notwithstanding the unpropitious environments of their home, and the training of their very commonplace mother, exhibit, when almost children, a rare elegance in dress and manner-native elegance it may well be called. Ellen was then the fairer of the two; but Marguerite charmed all by the vivacity of her conversation and the fascination of her manners. Ere she was fifteen the poor child had the misfortune to receive two offers of marriage. The gentlemen were both officers, both men of good family—either a great match for the daughter of a worthless, ruined man. One, Captain Murray, was favored by the young lady; the other, Captain Farmer, she held in the utmost dread and abhorrence. Yet he was the richer of the two; and the heartless, mercenary parents hesitated not to sell the unhappy child, in spite of her passionate remonstrances, to a man she detested, and whom they knew to be frequently insane. With this husband she lived three months, during which time "he frequently treated her with personal violence; he used to strike her on the face, pinch her till her arms were black and blue, lock her up whenever he went abroad, and often left her without food till she felt almost famished."

Bad as was the Clonmel home, this was worse; and the miserable girl-wife escaped to her father's house. But there she found no welcome; "her father was unkind, and more than unkind to her." She was considered as standing in the way of her sisters' prospects, and ere long she again left the paternal roof. At little more than fifteen, Marguerite Farmer, with a living husband and a living father, is thrown on the world, an outcast from both the homes which nature and law had given her, and utterly unprepared by sound moral training to meet the perils of such a position. No fear and love of a heavenly Father had ever been inculcated on the child; respect for her earthly one was impossible. Naught that was high and noble, good or worthy, had she ever been taught by precept or example. The world,

miserable as to her it hitherto had been, was all she had been taught to think of from her cradle; to snatch such of its shallow joys as were within her reach was all the solace she had learned to expect.

A long gap now occurs in the history of her life. Whither she wandered, or how she employed herself, for a period of about a dozen years, we know not. In 1816 she is resident in Manchester-square, London, with a brother, and has renewed her acquaintance with the Earl of Blessington. She had met this nobleman, as Lord Mountjoy, long before in Clonmel, when he was there with a regiment of militia. After that time he had married. In 1814 his wife died, and the disconsolate husband chose to display his grief by the most costly funeral honors. The body lay in state in his house in Dublin, and some four thousand pounds were required to defray the expenses. On the 16th of February, 1818, he married Mrs. Farmer, she having become a widow four months previously by the death of her husband, from an accident which befell him in a drunken revel.

The newly-wedded couple repair to Dublin. A party of his lordship's friends are asked to meet them. Some of these knew nothing of the marriage, which had been kept a secret, till Lord Blessington "entered the drawing-room with a lady of extraordinary beauty, and in bridal costume, leaning on his arm, whom he introduced as Lady Blessington." Then they remembered that when in that room before, it was draped in the emblems of mourning, and contained the lifeless remains of another Countess of Blessington, in her life beautiful and pleasure-seeking, like the fair lady now entering on the same paths, but all-forgetful that at length she must reach the same goal.

In her husband's magnificent mansion in St. James's-square, Lady Blessington commenced her London life of fashion. What though she be but the daughter of an Irish trader, she will not submit to be looked coldly on as a parvenu; she is now a countess, nay, she will be more than an ordinary countess; she has grace, and talent, and energy, and she will aim at fashionable leadership, of the most flattering kind too-leadership in the world of aristocratic intellect. And she accomplishes her object. Holland-house and Charleville-house had each its own attrac

tions for political and literary men; yet Lady Blessington speedily succeeds in filling her saloons with as distinguished a circle as any to be found in the metropolis. "The Blessingtons' splendid mansion in St. James's-square," writes Dr. Madden, "in a short time became the rendezvous of the élite of London celebrities, of all kinds of distinction; the first literati, statesmen, artists, eminent men of all professions, in a short time became habitual visitors at the abode of the newly-married lord and lady."

"Two royal English dukes condescended, not unfrequently, to do homage at the new shrine of Irish beauty and intellect in St. James's-square. Canning, Lord Castlereagh, the Marquis of Lansdowne, Scarlett and Jekyll, Erskine and many other celebrities, paid their devoirs there. Whig and Tory politicians and lawyers, forgetful of their party feuds and professional rivalries for the nonce, came there as gentle pilgrims. Kemble and Matthews, Lawrence and Wilkie; eminent divines too, Dr. Parr, and others; Rogers, Moore, and Luttrel, were among the votaries who paid their vows in visits there, not angel-like, for theirs were neither 'few nor far between.'

Brilliant as this life was, my lord soon got tired of it. He had pursued pleasure so long that the chase itself had become wearisome, and the goal naught. A sad story was his. Born to a fortune of £30,000 per annum, with the large capacities for good and the many objects of interest open to a great land owner, with good abilities and an amiable disposition, he yet passed through life with no thought of responsibility, no one worthy aim. He lived to amuse himself; and, while yet in the prime of life, had the horror to find that he was no longer amusable. When grasped, all his delights fell into ashes in his hands. Still he would pursue the same weary, fruitless road, only try another of its many paths. Fresh excitement must be sought abroad, and a long continental tour was determined on. His lordship travels in magnificent style; and nothing which John Bull could wish for comfort, or aristocratic pride demand for show, is wanting. All arrangements are made in Paris, and my lord and lady are en route for Italy, accompanied by her ladyship's youngest sister, Miss Mary Anne Power, Mr. Matthews, the cele

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