Note 4-24 — Chapter IV

For the sake of comparing the pollution, and reversal of its once glorious religion, in the modern French mind, it is worth the reader's while to ask at M. Goyer's (Place St. Denis) for the 'Journal de St. Nicholas' for 1880, and look at the 'Phénix,' as drawn on p. 610. The story is meant to be moral, and the Phœnix there represents Avarice, but the entire destruction of all sacred and poetical tradition in a child's mind by such a picture is an immorality which would neutralize a year's preaching. To make it worth M. Goyer's while to show you the number, buy the one with 'les conclusions de Jeanie' in it, p. 337: the church scene (with dialogue) in the text is lovely.