If there was in France, as in other countries there visibly is, a great abatement, rather than any increase of these vices, instead of loading the present clergy with the crimes of other men and the odious character of other times, in common equity they ought to be praised, encouraged, and supported, in their departure from a spirit which disgraced their predecessors, and for having assumed a temper of mind and manners more suitable to their sacred function.

When my occasions took me into France, towards the close of the late reign, the clergy, under all their forms, engaged a considerable part of my curiosity.  So far from finding (except from one set of men, not then very numerous, though very active) the complaints and discontents against that body which some publications had given me reason to expect, I perceived little or no public or private uneasiness on their account.  On further examination, I found the clergy, in general, persons of moderate minds and decorous manners:  I include the seculars, and the regulars of both sexes.  I had not the good fortune to know a great many of the parochial clergy:  but in general I received a perfectly good account of their morals, and of their attention to their duties.  With some of the higher clergy I had a personal acquaintance, and of the rest in that class a very good means of information.  They were almost all of them persons of noble birth.  They resembled others of their own rank; and where there was any difference, it was in their favor.  They were more fully educated than the military noblesse,—­so as by no means to disgrace their profession by ignorance, or by want of fitness for the exercise of their authority.  They seemed to me, beyond the clerical character, liberal and open, with the hearts of gentlemen and men of honor, neither insolent nor servile in their manners and conduct.  They seemed to me rather a superior class,—­a set of men amongst whom you would not be surprised to find a Fenelon.  I saw among the clergy in Paris (many of the description are not to be met with anywhere) men of great learning and candor; and I had reason to believe that this description was not confined to Paris.  What I found in other places I know was accidental, and therefore to be presumed a fair sample.  I spent a few days in a provincial town, where, in the absence of the bishop, I passed my evenings with three clergymen, his vicars-general, persons who would have done honor to any church.  They were all well-informed; two of them of deep, general, and extensive erudition, ancient and modern, Oriental and Western,—­particularly in their own profession.  They had a more extensive knowledge of our English divines than I expected; and they entered into the genius of those writers with a critical accuracy.  One of these gentlemen is since dead:  the Abbe Morangis.  I pay this tribute without reluctance to the memory of that noble, reverend, learned, and excellent person; and I should do the same with equal cheerfulness to the merits of the others, who I believe are still living, if I did not fear to hurt those whom I am unable to serve.