CHAPTER III. CHILDREN.

Nothing less than an entire work would be required for the discussion of the subject of education in any country. I can only indicate here two or three peculiarities which strike the stranger in the discipline of American children; of those whose lot is cast in the northern States; for it needs no further showing, that those who are reared among slaves have not the ordinary chances of wisdom and peace.

The Americans, particularly those of New England, look with a just complacency on the apparatus of education furnished to their entire population.[27] There are schools provided for the training of every individual, from the earliest age; colleges to receive the élite of the schools; and lyceums, and other such institutions, for the subsequent instruction of working men. The provision of schools is so adequate, that any citizen who sees a child at play during school-hours, may ask "why are you not at school?" and, unless a good reason be given, may take him to the school-house of the district. Some, who do not penetrate to the principle of this, exclaim upon the tyranny practised upon the parents. The principle is, that, in a democracy, where life and society are equally open to all, and where all have agreed to require of each other a certain amount of intellectual and moral competency, the means being provided, it becomes the duty of all to see that the means are used. Their use is an indispensable condition of the privileges of citizenship. No control is exercised as to how and where the child shall be educated. It rests with the parent to send him to a public or private school, or have him taught at home: but in case of his being found in a neglected state as to education, it is in the power of any citizen to bring him to the advantage provided for him by society.

The instruction furnished is not good enough for the youth of such a country, with such a responsibility and such a destiny awaiting them as the working out the first democratic organisation that the world has witnessed in practice. The information provided is both meagre and superficial. There is not even any systematic instruction given on political morals: an enormous deficiency in a republic. But it must be remembered how young the society is; how far it has already gone beyond most other countries; and how great is the certainty that the majority, always ultimately in the right, will gradually exalt the character of the instruction which it has been already wise enough to provide. It must be remembered too, how much farther the same kind and degree of instruction goes in a democracy than elsewhere. The alphabet itself is of little or no value to a slave, while it is an inestimable treasure to a conscious young republican. One needs but go from a charity-school in an English county to a free-school in Massachusetts, to see how different the bare acquisition of reading and writing is to children who, if they look forward at all, do it languidly, and into a life of mechanical labour merely, and to young citizens who are aware that they have their share of the work of self-government to achieve. Elderly gentlemen in the country may smile, and foreigners of all ages may scoff at the self-confidence and complacency of young men who have just exercised the suffrage for the first time: but the being secure of the dignity, the certainty of being fully and efficaciously represented, the probability of sooner or later filling some responsible political office, are a stimulus which goes far to supply the deficiencies of the instruction imparted. It is much to be wished that this stimulus were as strong and as virtuous in one or two colleges whose inmates are on the very verge of the exercise of their political rights, as in some of even the primary schools. The aristocratic atmosphere of Harvard University, for instance, would be much purified by a few breezes of such democratic inspiration as issue from the school-houses of some of the country districts.

Some persons plead that there is less occasion for school instruction in the principles of politics, than for an improved teaching of some other things; because children are instructed in politics every day of their lives by what they hear at home, and wherever they go. But they hear all too little of principles. What they hear is argumentation about particular men, and immediate measures. The more sure they are of learning details elsewhere, the more necessary it is that they should here be exercised in those principles by which the details are to be judged and made available as knowledge. They come to school with their heads crammed with prejudices, and their memories with words, which it should be part of the work of school to reduce to truth and clearness, by substituting principles for the one, and annexing ideas to the other.

A Sunday-school teacher asked a child, "Who killed Abel?" "General Jackson."—Another inquired of a scholar, "In what state were mankind left after the fall?"—"In the State of Vermont."

The early republican consciousness of which I have spoken, and the fact of the more important place which the children occupy in a society whose numbers are small in proportion to its resources, are the two circumstances which occasion that freedom of manners in children of which so much complaint has been made by observers, and on which so much remonstrance has been wasted;—I say "wasted," because remonstrance is of no avail against a necessary fact. Till the United States cease to be republican, and their vast area is fully peopled, the children there will continue as free and easy and as important as they are. For my own part, I delight in the American children; in those who are not overlaid with religious instruction. There are instances, as there are everywhere, of spoiled, pert, and selfish children. Parents' hearts are pierced there, as elsewhere. But the independence and fearlessness of children were a perpetual charm in my eyes. To go no deeper, it is a constant amusement to see how the speculations of young minds issue, when they take their own way of thinking, and naturally say all they think. Some admirable specimens of active little minds were laid open to me at a juvenile ball at Baltimore. I could not have got at so much in a year in England. If I had at home gone in among eighty or a hundred little people, between the ages of eight and sixteen, I should have extracted little more than "Yes, ma'am," and "No, ma'am." At Baltimore, a dozen boys and girls at a time crowded round me, questioning, discussing, speculating, revealing in a way which enchanted me. In private houses, the comments slipped in at table by the children were often the most memorable, and generally the most amusing part of the conversation. Their aspirations all come out. Some of these are very striking as indicating the relative value of things in the children's minds. One affectionate little sister, of less than four years old, stimulated her brother William, (five,) by telling him that if he would be very very good, he might in time be called William Webster; and then he might get on to be as good as Jesus Christ. Three children were talking over the birth-day of the second, (ten) and how they should like to keep it. They settled that they should like of all things to have Miss Sedgwick, and Mr. Bryant, and myself, to spend the day with them. They did not venture to invite us, and had no intention of our knowing their wish.

In conversing with a truly wise parent, one day, I remarked on the change of relation which takes place when the superior children of ordinary parents become guides and protectors to those who have kept their childhood restrained under a rigid rule. We talked over the difficulties of the transition here, (by far the hardest part of filial duty,) and speculated on what the case would be after death, supposing the parties to recognise each other in a new life of progression. My friend observed that the only thing to be done is to avoid to the utmost the exercise of authority, and to make children friends from the very beginning. He and many others have done this with gladdening success. They do not lay aside their democratic principles in this relation, more than in others, because they happen to have almost unlimited power in their own hands. They watch and guard: they remove stumbling-blocks: they manifest approbation and disapprobation: they express wishes, but, at the same time, study the wishes of their little people: they leave as much as possible to natural retribution: they impose no opinions, and quarrel with none: in short, they exercise the tenderest friendship without presuming upon it. What is the consequence? I had the pleasure of hearing this friend say, "There is nothing in the world so easy as managing children. You may make them anything you please." In my own mind I added, "with such hearts and minds to bring to the work as the parents of your children have."—One reason of the pleasure with which I regarded the freedom of American children was that I took it as a sign that the most tremendous suffering perhaps of human life is probably lessened, if not obviated, there:—the misery of concealed doubts and fears, and heavy solitary troubles,—the misery which makes the early years of a shy child a fearful purgatory. Yet purgatory is not the word: for this misery purges no sins, while it originates many. I have a strong suspicion that the faults of temper so prevalent where parental authority is strong, and where children are made as insignificant as they can be made, and the excellence of temper in America, are attributable to the different management of childhood in the one article of freedom. There is no doubt that many children are irrecoverably depressed and unnerved for want of being convinced that anybody cares for them. They nourish doubts, they harbour fears and suspicions, and carry within them prejudices and errors, for want of its occurring to them to ask questions; and though they may outgrow these defects and errors, they never recover from them. Unexplained and inexplicable obstacles are thrown in the way of their filial duty,—obstacles which not even the strongest conscientiousness can overcome with grace: the vigour of the spirit is prostrated, or perverted into wilfulness: the calmness of self-respect is forfeited, and so is the repose of a loving faith in others. In short, the temper is ruined, and the life is spoiled; and all from the parents not having made friends of their children from the beginning.—No one will suppose that I mean to represent this mistake as general anywhere. But I am confident it is very common at home: and that it cannot, in the nature of things, ever become common in America. I saw one or two melancholy instances of it: and a few rare cases where parents attempted unjustifiably to rule the proceedings of their grown up sons and daughters; not by express command, but by pleas which, from a parent, are more irresistible than even commands. But these were remarkable, and remarked upon, as exceptions. I saw two extreme contrasting cases, in near neighbourhood, of girls brought up, the one in the spirit of love, the other in that of fear. Those two girls are the best teachers of moral philosophy that ever fell in my way. In point of birth, organisation, means of education, they were about equal. Both were made to be beautiful and intelligent. The one is pallid, indolent, (with the reputation of learning,) tasteless, timid, and triste, manifesting nothing but occasionally an intense selfishness, and a prudery beyond belief. The education of this girl has been the study of her anxious parents from the day of her birth: but they have omitted to let her know and feel that anybody loved her. The other, the darling of a large family, meeting love from all eyes, and hearing tenderness in every voice, is beautiful as a Hebe, and so free and joyous that her presence is like sunshine in a rainy day. She knows that she is beautiful and accomplished; but she is, as far as eye can see, absolutely devoid of vanity. She has been apprised, over and over again, that people think her a genius: she silently contradicts this, and settles with herself that she can acquire anything, but originate nothing. She studies with her whole being, as if she were coming out next year in a learned profession. She dances at balls as if nothing lay beyond the ball-room. She flits hither and thither, in rain or sunshine, walking, riding, or driving, on little errands of kindness; and bears the smallest interests of her friends in mind in the heights of her mirth and the depths of her studies. At dull evening parties, she can sit under the lamp, (little knowing how beautiful she looks) quietly amusing herself with prints, and not wanting notice: and she can speak out what she thinks and feels to a circle of admirers, as simply and earnestly as she would to her own mother. I have seen people shake their heads, and fear lest she should be spoiled; but my own conviction is that this young creature is unspoilable. She has had all the praise and admiration she can have: no watchfulness of parents can keep them from her. She does not want praise and admiration. She has other interests and other desires: and my belief is, that if she were left alone to-morrow, the last of her family, she would be as safe, busy, and, in due time, happy, as she is now under their tender guardianship. She is the most complete example I ever witnessed of a being growing up in the light and warmth and perfect freedom of love; and she has left me very little toleration for authority, in education more than in anything else.

A question was asked me, oftener than once, which indicates the difference between family manners in England and America. I was asked whether it was possible that the Bennet family would act as they are represented in "Pride and Prejudice:" whether a foolish mother, with grown up daughters, would be allowed to spoil the two youngest, instead of the sensible daughters taking the case into their own hands. It is certainly true that in America the superior minds of the family would take the lead; while in England, however the domestic affairs might gradually arrange themselves, no person would be found breathing the suggestion of superseding the mother's authority. The most remarkable difference is, that in England the parents value the authority as a right, however lenient they may be in the use of it. In America, the parent disapproves of it, as a matter of reason: and, if he acts rationally, had rather not possess it. Little revelations of the state of the case were perpetually occurring, which excited my wonder at first, and my interest throughout. It appeared through the smallest circumstances; as, for instance, when a lady was describing to me the wedding-day of her eldest daughter. She mentioned that two or three of the children were not in the drawing-room at the time of the ceremony. Why? They were so angry at their brother-in-law for taking away their sister, that they kept out of the way till he had driven from the door with his bride. What children in England would have dreamed of absenting themselves in such a way?

It is amusing to observe what the ability for self-preservation is among children in a country where nursemaids are scarce. It frightened me at first to see mere babies playing on broken wooden bridges, where the rushing water below might be seen through large holes; and little boys climbing trees which slanted over a rocky precipice; or getting into a canoe tossing on a rough river. But I find that accidents to children are rarely or never heard of. The obvious results of such training are a dexterity, fearlessness, and presence of mind, and aptitude for bodily exercises, which are of eminent use in mature life.

I was sorry to perceive in some of the cities, especially in Boston, an unconsciousness on the part of many parents of the superior value of the discipline of circumstance to that of express teaching, in the work of education. Perhaps no one would be found to deny in words that the best training is that which exercises the whole being of a child: yet there is a method of education somewhat in fashion in Boston just now, which bids fair to kill off its victims in early life; and irreparably injure,—morally as well as physically,—those whom it may spare. The good people of Boston are more fond of excitement than of consistency: or, rather, that part of society is so which professes to constitute the city. When Spurzheim was there, the brain was everything; and his wise and benevolent remonstrances about the neglect or abuse of the bodily powers were received with great candour, and with much apparent conviction. Short as the interval has been, a considerable number of his disciples have gone directly over to the opposite philosophy; and in their spiritualism out-herod Herod. They frame their theory and practice on the principle that human beings are created perfect spirits in an infant body. Some go further back than this, and actually teach little children dogmatically that spirit makes body; and that their own bodies are the result of the efforts of their spirits to manifest themselves. Such outrageous absurdities might be left to contempt, but for the consequences in practice. There is a school in Boston, (a large one, when I left the city,) conducted on this principle. The master presupposes his little pupils possessed of all truth, in philosophy and morals; and that his business is to bring it out into expression; to help the outward life to conform to the inner light; and, especially, to learn of these enlightened babes, with all humility. Large exposures might be made of the mischief this gentleman is doing to his pupils by relaxing their bodies, pampering their imaginations, over-stimulating the consciences of some, and hardening those of others; and by his extraordinary management, offering them every inducement to falsehood and hypocrisy. His system can be beneficial to none, and must be ruinous to many. If he should retain any pupils long enough to make a full trial of his methods with them, those who survive the neglect of bodily exercises and over-excitement of brain, will be found the first to throw off moral restraints, on perceiving at length that their moral guide has been employing their early years in the pursuit of shadows and the contempt of realities. There is, however, little fear of such a full trial being made. A few weeks are enough to convince sensible parents of the destructiveness of such a system; and it will probably issue in being one of the fancies of the day at Boston; and little heard of anywhere else.

The fundamental principle is, however, working mischief in other directions. It affects, very unfortunately, the welfare of the blind; and yet more of the deaf and dumb who are taken under the benevolent protection of society. As long as there are many of the most distinguished members of the community who hold that the interior being of these sufferers is in a perfect state, only the means of manifestation being deficient; that their training is to proceed on the supposition of their being possessed of a complete set of intellectual and moral intuitions; and that they therefore only need to be furnished with types, being already full of the things typified; and even that they have the advantage over others in the exclusion of false and vulgar associations,—the pupils will have little chance of benefit beyond the protection and comfort secured to them in their appropriate institutions. In the conversation of those who verbally pitied their case, I could frequently trace an inward persuasion that the deaf and dumb were better off than those who could hear and speak: and there were few who discovered, while admiring the supposed allegorical discourse or compositions of the pupils, that the whole was little more than a set of images, absolutely empty of the abstract truth which they were supposed to involve. I had witnessed this tremendous error in the teaching of the deaf and dumb elsewhere; but I little thought ever to meet with it beyond the confines of the particular, and almost inscrutable case under notice. In the school above mentioned, however, error nourishes, blessed as the pupils are with their five senses and the instrument of speech.

Putting aside such cases of eccentricity, the children of America have the advantage of the best possible early discipline; that of activity and self-dependence. The grand defect is a subsequent one. Education is not made appropriate to the aims of its subjects. All, whatever may be their views in life, are educated nearly alike up to nineteen. This is an absurdity copied from the old world, but unworthy of the good sense of the new. It will be rectified when the lives of rich men become as steadily aimed as those of citizens who have their way to make. Young men of fortune, who may have a taste for science or literature, do not yield themselves up to these pursuits, because "there is yet no scientific or literary class for them to fall into." Where is the necessity to them of such a class to fall into? And, supposing the necessity, how is there ever to be such a class, unless somebody begins to supply the elements?—It will be done. No restraint of custom will long be powerful enough to curb the force of intellectual tendency. The passion for truth, the craving for knowledge, are ever found, in the long run, irrepressible by the incubus of conventionalism. A genius will arise, now here, now there, to startle society out of its rules and precedents: and when America has had, now a philosopher and now a poet, who, like Schiller's "true artist," shall "look upwards to his dignity and his calling, and not downwards to his happiness and his wants," society will enlarge its discipline, and become a great preparatory school for the fruition of whatever the hand of man findeth to do, or his understanding to investigate, or his imagination to reveal.

CHAPTER IV. SUFFERERS.

"One of the universal sentiments which Christianity has deeply imbedded in the human heart is that of the natural equality of men.... It has produced the spectacle, which I believe to be peculiar to christian times, of one class uplifting another, the happy toiling for the miserable, the free vindicating the rights of the oppressed. With all the noble examples of disinterested friendship and patriotism, which ancient history affords, I can remember no approach to that wholesale compassion, that general action of one order of society on another, that system of benevolent agitation in behalf of powerless and forgotten suffering, which characterises the history of modern times."

Rationale of Religious Inquiry.

The idea of travelling in America was first suggested to me by a philanthropist's saying to me, "Whatever else may be true about the Americans, it is certain that they have got at principles of justice and mercy in the treatment of the least happy classes of society which we may be glad to learn from them. I wish you would go and see what they are." I did so; and the results of my investigation have not been reserved for this short chapter, but are spread over the whole of my book. The fundamental democratic principles on which American society is organised, are those "principles of justice and mercy" by which the guilty, the ignorant, the needy, and the infirm, are saved and blessed. The charity of a democratic society is heart-reviving to witness; for there is a security that no wholesale oppression is bearing down the million in one direction, while charity is lifting up the hundred in another. Generally speaking, the misery that is seen is all that exists: there is no paralysing sense of the hopelessness of setting up individual benevolence against social injustice. If the community has not yet arrived at the point at which all communities are destined to arrive, of perceiving guilt to be infirmity, of obviating punishment, ignorance, and want, still the Americans are more blessed than others, in the certainty that they have far less superinduced misery than societies abroad, and are using wiser methods than others for its alleviation. In a country where social equality is the great principle in which all acquiesce, and where, consequently, the golden rule is suggested by every collision between man and man, neglect of misery is almost as much out of the question as the oppression from which most misery springs.

In the treatment of the guilty, America is beyond the rest of the world, exactly in proportion to the superiority of her political principles. I was favoured with the confidence of a great number of the prisoners in the Philadelphia penitentiary where absolute seclusion is the principle of punishment. Every one of these prisoners, (none of them being aware of the existence of any other,) told me that he was under obligations to those who had the charge of him for treating him "with respect." The expression struck me much as being universally used by them. Some explained the contrast between this method of punishment and imprisonment in the old prisons, copied from those of Europe; where criminals are herded together, and treated like anything but men and citizens. Others said that though they had done a wrong thing, and were rightly sequestered on that ground, they ought not to have any farther punishment inflicted upon them; and that it was the worst of punishments not to be treated with the respect due to men. In a community where criminals feel and speak thus, human rights cannot but be, at length, as much regarded in the infliction of punishment as in its other arrangements.

Much yet remains to be done, to this end. An enormous amount of wrong must remain in a society where the elaboration of a vast apparatus for the infliction of human misery, like that required by the system of solitary imprisonment, is yet a work of mercy. Milder and juster methods of treating moral infirmity will succeed when men shall have learned to obviate the largest possible amount of it. In the meantime, I am persuaded that this is the best method of punishment which has yet been tried. Much as the prisoners suffer from the dreary solitude, cheered only by their labour and the occasional visits of official superintendents, they testified, without exception and without concert, to their preference of this over all other methods of punishment. The grounds of preference were, that they could preserve their self-respect, in the first place; and, in the next, their chance in society on their release. They leave the prison with the recompense of their extra labour in their pockets, and without the fear of being waylaid by vicious old companions, or hunted from employment to employment by those whose interest it is to deprive them of a chance of establishing a character. There is no evidence, at present, that solitary imprisonment, with labour, is more injurious to health than any other condition which is attended with anxiety of mind. The Philadelphia prisoners certainly appeared to me to be more healthy-looking than those at Auburn, or at any other prison I visited.

There is at present a deficiency in the religious ministrations of the prison. This is a fact which, I believe, has only to be made known to cease to be true. Among the clergy of all denominations in Philadelphia, there must be many who would contrive to afford their services in turn, if they were fully aware how much they are needed. I know of no direction that can be taken by charity with such certainty of success as visiting the solitary prisoner. I think it far from desirable that prisoners should be visited for the express purpose of giving them religious, and no other, instruction and sympathy. The great object is to occupy the prisoner's mind with things which interest him most; to keep up his sympathies, and nourish his human affections; and especially to promote the activity and cheerfulness of his mind. His situation is such,—he is so driven back upon the realities of life in his own mind, that the danger is of his accepting religion as a temporary solace, of his separating it in idea from active life, and craving for the most exciting kind of it; so as that when he returns to the world, he will discard it as something suiting his prison-life, but no longer needed, no longer appropriate. If, keeping this in view, a very few good men and women of Philadelphia would go sometimes to spend an hour with a prisoner, honourably observing the rules, telling no news, but cheerfully conversing on the prisoner's affairs,—his work, his family, his prospects on coming out, the books he reads, &c.—if they would carry him good and entertaining books, and if religious ones, only those of a moderate and cheerful character, (such being indeed not easy to be found,)—these friendly visitors could scarcely fail of restoring, more or less completely, the moral health of the objects of their benevolence. None who have not tried can imagine the ease with which sufferers so placed are influenced; in the absence of all that is pernicious, and in absolute dependence, as they are, on the sympathy of those who will be kind to them. If watchful observance were united with common prudence and kindness, I believe that a prisoner of five years would rarely re-enter society unqualified for the discharge of his duties there. It must be remembered that the criminals of the United States are rarely the depraved, brutish creatures that fill the prisons of the old world. Even in the old world, I have no doubt that every prison visitor has been conscious, on first conversing privately with a criminal, of a feeling of surprise at finding him so human: but in America, convicts are even more like other men. The reason of my visiting them, as I told them, was to satisfy myself about the causes of crime in a country where there is almost an absence of that want which occasions the greater proportion of social offences in England. Sooner or later, all told me their stories in full: and I found that in every case some domestic misery had been the poison of their lives. A harsh step-mother, an unfaithful wife, a jilting mistress, an intemperate son or father,—these were the miseries at home which sent them out to drink: drinking brought on murder, or caused vicious wants, which must be supplied by theft. The stories, infinitely varied in their circumstances, were all alike in their moral.

I do not like the principle of the Auburn prison: and I am confident that very little effectual reformation can take place under it. The disadvantages of the prisoners being waylaid and dogged on their discharge are very great; but there are some within the prison quite as serious. The spy system is abominable, in whatever light it is viewed. It is the deepest of insults; and if there be a case rather than another in which insult is to be avoided, it is where a reformation is desired. The great point to be gained with the criminal is to regenerate self-respect. A virtuous man may preserve his self-respect under the eyes of a spy; (though even he is in some danger); but a morally infirm man can never thus acquire it. Arrangements should be made for his secure custody and harmless outward conduct, and then he should be left to himself. And what is the purpose of the spying,—of the loop-holes to peep through, and the moccasins which are to make the tread of the spies as stealthy as that of a cat? To detect talking; talking subjecting a man to the lash. Talking is an innocent act; and, in the case of men secluded from the world and their families, and all that has hitherto interested them, an unavoidable act. They ought to talk; and they do, in spite of spies, governor, and the whip. They learn to murmur intelligibly behind their teeth, without moving the lips, and to take advantage of the briefest instants when the superintendent turns his back. It is surprising to me that any effectual reformation can be looked for from men who, convicted of grave crimes, have the prohibition to speak set up before their minds as the chief circumstance and interest of their lives for five, seven, or ten years. Their interest in it makes it the chief circumstance. How the disordered being is to be rectified, how the prostrated conscience is to be reinstated, while an innocent and necessary act is thus erected into an offence, I leave those who are most versed in moral proportions to decide. I do not believe in the possibility of effectual reformation in any but a few cases, under such a discipline.

The will of the majority has not yet wrought out the right practice from good principles, in two cases which regard the treatment of the guilty: and great evil arises in the interval. It is extremely difficult, in some parts of the States, and with regard to some particular offences, to get the laws enforced against offenders. In those parts of the States where personal conflicts are countenanced by opinion, offences against the person go too often unpunished; elsewhere, riot is passed over without notice; and in some few places, the most heinous crimes of all are nearly certain to be got over without the conviction of the offender. The impunity of riot arises from the reliance society has on the moral sense of the whole: a reliance very honourable in itself, but found of late to be inadequate under the pressure of such a crisis as that of the anti-slavery question. Nothing can be more honourable to the people, than the fact that they have been safe and virtuous under the superintendence of principle, while the laws have slept so long, that it is now found difficult to put them in force: but now that the time has come for a conflict of classes and opinions, the time has also come for the law to be vigilant and inexorable. The frequent impunity of the most serious crimes arises from the growing enmity of opinion to the punishment of death. There can be little doubt that in a short time capital punishments will be abolished throughout the northern States: and if this is to be done, the sooner it is done the better: for the present impunity is a tremendous evil.

In passing the City Hall of one of the northern cities with a friend, I asked what was the meaning of a great crowd that was about the doors, and even clustered on the windows of the building. My friend told me, that a young man was being examined on the charge of being the murderer in a most aggravated case, which had been related to me the day before. I observed, that no one seemed to have any doubt of his guilt. She replied, that there never was a clearer case; but that he would be acquitted: the examination and trial were a mere form, of which every one knew the conclusion beforehand. The people did not choose to see any more hanging; and till the law was so altered as to allow an alternative of punishment, no conviction for a capital offence would be obtainable. I asked, on what pretence the young man would be got off, if the evidence against him was as clear as was represented. She said, some one would be found to swear an alibi: the young man would be wholly disgraced, and would probably set out westwards the morning after his acquittal. I watched the progress of the case. The trial was a long one. There was no doubt of the suppression of large portions of the evidence against him. A tradesman swore an alibi: the young man was thereupon acquitted; and next morning he was on his way to the west.

On the principle that punishment should be reformatory, the practice of pardoning criminals has gone to far too great an extent, from the belief of reformation in each particular case. The consequence is very injurious. A sentence of life-imprisonment is generally understood to mean imprisonment for a shorter term than if ten or seven years had been named. Every one of the prisoners I conversed with was in anxious expectation of a pardon. In the cases of those who were in for five years, and who I knew would not be pardoned, I reasoned the matter; and found that the fact of all their fellow-prisoners having the same expectation with themselves, made a strong impression. They were, amidst their dreadful disappointment, easily convinced: but I could not but mourn that they did not learn the philosophy of the case in society, rather than in prison.

Whenever the abolition of the punishment of death takes place, it will be essential to the safety of virtue and society, that it should be understood that the practice of pardoning is, except on rare and specified occasions, to cease; and that punishment is to be certain in proportion to its justice.

The pauperism of the United States is, to the observation of a stranger, nothing at all. To residents, it is an occasion for the exercise of their ever-ready charity. It is confined to the ports, emigrants making their way back into the country, the families of intemperate or disabled men, and unconnected women, who depend on their own exertions. The amount altogether is far from commensurate with the charity of the community; and it is to be hoped that the curse of a legal charity, at least to the able-bodied, will be avoided in a country where it certainly cannot become necessary within any assignable time. I was grieved to see the magnificent pauper asylum near Philadelphia, made to accommodate luxuriously 1200 persons; and to have its arrangements pointed out to me, as yielding far more comfort to the inmates than the labourer can secure at home by any degree of industry and prudence. There are so many persons in the city, however, who see the badness of the principle, and regret the erection, that I trust a watch will be maintained over the establishment, and its corridors kept as empty as possible. In Boston, the principles of true charity have been better acted upon. There, many of the clergymen,—among the rest, Father Taylor, the seaman's friend,—are in possession of wisdom, derived from the mournful experience of England; and seem likely to save the city from the misery of a debasing pauperism among any class of its inhabitants. I know no large city where there is so much mutual helpfulness, so little neglect and ignorance of the concerns of other classes, as in Boston: and I cannot but anticipate that from thence the world may derive the brightest lesson that has yet been offered it, in the duties of the rich towards the poor. If the agents of the benevolence of the wealthy will but be scrupulously careful to avoid all that mental encroachment and moral interference, which have but too generally ruined the efficacy of charity, and go on to exhibit the devotion of the philanthropist, without the inquisitiveness and authoritativeness of the priest, they may deserve the thanks of the whole of society, as well as the attachment of those whom they befriend.

In Boston, an excellent plan has been adopted for the prevention of fraud on the part of paupers, and the mutual enlightenment and guidance of the agents of charity. A weekly meeting is held of delegates, from all societies engaged in the relief of the poor. The delegates compare lists of the persons relieved, so as to ascertain that none are fraudulently receiving from more than one society: they discuss and investigate doubtful cases; extend indulgence to those of peculiar hardship; and, in short, secure all the advantages of co-operation. Perhaps there are no cities in England but London too large for a somewhat similar organisation: and its adoption would be an act of great wisdom.

In the south, I was rather amused at a boast which was made to me of the small amount of pauperism. As the plague distances all lesser diseases, so does slavery obviate pauperism. In a society of two classes, where the one class are all capitalists, and the other property, there can be no pauperism but through the vice or accidental disability of members of the first. But I was beset by many an anxious thought about the fate of disabled slaves. Masters are, of course, bound to take care of their slaves for life. There are doubtless many masters who guard the comfort of their helpless negroes all the more carefully from the sense of the entire dependence of the poor creatures upon their mercy: but, there are few human beings fit to be trusted with absolute power: and while there are many who abuse the authority they have over slaves who are not helpless, it is fearful to think what may be the fate of those who are purely burdensome. I observed, here and there, an idiot slave. Those whom I saw were kindly treated, humoured, and indulged. These were the only cases of natural infirmity that I witnessed among the negroes; and the absence of others struck me. At Columbia, South Carolina, I was taken by a benevolent physician to see the State Lunatic Asylum, which might be considered his work; so diligent had he been in obtaining appropriations for the object from the legislature, and afterwards in organising its plans, with great wisdom and humanity. When we were looking out from the top of this building, watching the patients in their airing grounds, I observed that no people of colour were visible in any part of the establishment. I inquired whether negroes were as subject to insanity as whites. Probably; but no means were known to have been taken to ascertain the fact. From the violence of their passions, there could be no doubt that insanity must exist among them. Were such insane negroes ever seen?—No one present had ever seen any.—Where were they then?—It was some time before I could get a clear answer to this: but my friend the physician said, at length, that he had no doubt they were kept in out-houses, chained to logs, to prevent their doing harm. No member of society is charged with the duty of investigating cases of disease and suffering among slaves who cannot make their own state known. They are wholly at the mercy of their owners. The physician told me that it was his intention, now he had accomplished his object of establishing a lunatic asylum for the whites, to persevere no less strenuously till he obtained one for the blacks. He will probably not find this a very difficult object to effect; for the interest of masters, as well as their humanity, is concerned in having an asylum provided by the State for their useless or mischievous negroes.

The Lunatic Asylums of the United States are an honour to the country, to judge by those which I saw. The insane in Pennsylvania hospital, Philadelphia, should be removed to some more light and cheerful abode, and be much more fully supplied with employment, and with stimulus to engage in it. I was less pleased with their condition than with that of any other insane patients whom I saw. The institution at Worcester, Massachusetts, is admirably managed under Dr. Woodward. So was that at Charlestown, near Boston, by Dr. Lee; a young physician who has since died, mourned by his grateful patients, and by all who had their welfare at heart. The establishment at Bloomingdale, near New York, is of similar excellence. The only great deficiency that I am aware of is one which belongs to most lunatic asylums, and which it does not rest with the superintendent to supply;—a want of sufficient employment. Every exertion is made to provide a variety of amusements, and to encourage all little undertakings that may be suggested: but regular, important business is what is wanted. It is to be hoped that in the establishment of all such institutions, the provision of an ample quantity of land will be one of the prime considerations. Watchful and ingenious kindness may do much to alleviate the miseries of the insane; but if cure is sought, I believe it is agreed by those who know best, that regular employment, with a reasonable object, is indispensable.

The Asylum for the Blind at Philadelphia was a young institution at the time I saw it; but it pleased me more than any I ever visited: more than the larger one at Boston; whose institution and conduct are, however, honourable to all concerned in it. The reason of my preference of the Philadelphia one is that the pupils there were more active and cheerful than those of Boston. The spirits of the inmates are the one infallible test of the management of an institution for the blind. The fault of such in general is that mirth is not sufficiently cultivated, and religion too exclusively so. It should ever be remembered that religion comes out of the mind, and not in at the eye or ear; and that the truest way of cultivating religion is to exercise the faculties, and enlarge the stock of ideas to the utmost. The method of printing for the blind, introduced with such admirable ingenuity and success into the American institutions, I should like to see employed to bring within the reach of the blind the most amusing works that can be found. I should like to see it made an object with benevolent persons to go and give the pupils a hearty laugh occasionally, by reading droll books, and telling amusing stories. The one thing which the born blind want most is to have their cheerlessness removed, to be drawn out of their abstractions, and exercised in play on the greatest possible variety of familiar objects and events. They should hear no condolence: their friends should keep their sympathetic sorrow to themselves; and explain, cheerfully and fully, the allusions to visual objects which must occur in all reading and conversation. It grieves me to hear the hymns and other compositions put into the mouths of blind pupils, all full of lamentation and resignation about not seeing the stars and the face of nature. Such sorrow is for those who see to feel on their behalf; or for those who have lost sight: not for those who never saw. Put into their mouths, it becomes cant. When a roving sea-captain tells his children of the glories of oriental scenery which they are destined never to behold, does he teach them to sigh, and struggle to submit patiently to their destiny of staying at home? Does he not rather make them take pleasure in mirthfully and eagerly learning what he can teach? The face of nature is a foreign land to the born blind. Let them be taught all that can possibly be conveyed to them, and in the most spirited manner that they can bear. There is a nearer approach to the realisation of this principle of teaching the blind in the Philadelphia house than I ever saw elsewhere. It would be enough to cheer a misanthrope to see a little German boy there, picked up out of the streets, dull, neglected, and depressed; but within a few months, standing in the centre of the group of musicians, fiddling and stamping time with all his might, and quite ready to obey every instigation to laugh. Mr. Friedlander, the tutor, is much to be congratulated on what he has already done.

It may be worth suggesting here that while some of the thinkers of America, like many of the same classes in England, are mourning over the low state of the Philosophy of Mind in their country, society is neglecting a most important means of obtaining the knowledge requisite for the acquisition of such philosophy. Scholars are embracing alternately the systems of Kant, of Fichte, of Spurzheim, of the Scotch school; or abusing or eulogising Locke asking who Hartley was, or weaving a rainbow arch of transcendentalism, which is to comprehend the whole that lies within human vision, but sadly liable to be puffed away in dark vapour with the first breeze of reality; scholars are thus labouring at a system of mental philosophy on any but the experimental method, while the materials for experiment lie all around and within them. If they object, as is common, the difficulty of experimenting on their conscious selves, there is the mental pathology of their blind schools, and the asylums for the deaf and dumb. I am aware that they put away the phenomena of insanity as irrelevant; but the same objections do not pertain to the other two classes. Let the closet speculations be pursued with all vigour: but if there were joined with these a close and unwearied study of the phenomena of the minds of persons deficient in a sense, and especially of those precluded from the full use of language, the world might fairly look for an advance in the science of Mind equal to that which medical science owes to pathology. It will not probably lodge us in any final and total result, any more than medicine and anatomy promise to ascertain the vital principle: but it will doubtless yield us some points of certainty, in aid of the fluctuating speculations amidst which we are now tossed, while few can be found to agree even upon matters of so-called universal consciousness. I should like to see a few philosophers interested in ascertaining and recording the manifestations of some progressive minds, peculiar from infirmity, for a series of years. If any such in America, worthy to undertake the task, from having strength enough to put away theory and prejudice, and record only what is really manifested to them, should be disposed to take my hint, I hope they will not wait for a philosophical "class to fall into."

I was told at Washington, with a smile half satirical and half complacent, that "the people of New England do good by mania." I watched accordingly for symptoms of this second or third-rate method of putting benevolence into practice. The result was, that I was convinced that the people of New England, and of the whole country, do good in all manner of ways; some better and some worse, according to their light. I met with pious ladies who make clothes for the poor, but who took work (her means of bread) out of the hands of a sempstress, (who had three children,) because her husband was in prison. They told me it would be encouraging vice to have anything to do with the families of persons who had committed offences: and when I asked how reformed offenders were to put their reformation in practice, I was told that if I would employ anybody who had been in prison, I deserved the censure of society. The matter ended in the sempstress (a good young woman) having to go home to her father's house. I met with others, both men and women, who make it the business of their lives, or of their leisure from yet more pressing duties, to seek out the sinners of society, and give them, not threats, nor scorn, nor lectures, but sympathy and help. So does light vary in this glimmering age; so eloquently does the conduct of Jesus speak to some, while to others it seems to preach in an unknown tongue. With regard to some methods of charity, nothing could exceed the ingenuity, shrewdness, forethought, and determination with which they were managed: in others, I was reminded of what I had been told about mania.

In regarding the Temperance movement, the word perpetually occurred to me. How the vice of intemperance ever reached the pass it did in a country where there is no excuse of want on the one hand, or of habits of conviviality on the other, was sometimes attempted to be explained to me; but never to my satisfaction. Much may be said upon it, which cannot find a place here. Certain it is that the vice threatened to poison society. It was as remarkable as licentiousness of other kinds ever was in Paris, or at Vienna. Men who doubted the goodness of the principle of Association in opposition to moral evil, were yet carried away to countenance it by seeing nothing else that was to be done. Some few of these foresaw that, as every man must be virtuous in himself and by himself; as the principle of temperance in a man is incommunicable; as no two men's temptations are alike; and as, especially in this case, the temptations of the movers were immeasurably weaker than those of the mass to be wrought upon, there could be no radical truth, no pervading sincerity to rely upon. They foresaw what had happened; that there would be a vast quantity of perjury, of false and hasty promising, of lapse, and of secret, solitary drinking; that if some waverers were saved, others would be plunged into hypocrisy in addition to their intemperance; that schisms must arise out of the ignorance of bigots, which would cause as much scandal to good morals as intemperance itself; and that, worst of all, this method was the introduction of new and fatal perils to freedom of conscience. A few foresaw all this; but a very few had strength to resist the movement. A sort of reproach was cast upon those who refused to join, like that which is now visited upon such as adhere to the principle on which they first joined;—a kind of insinuation that their temperance is not thorough.—What have the consequences already been?

The amount of visible intemperance is actually lessened prodigiously; perhaps to the full extent anticipated by the originators of the movement. Spirit-shops have been shut up by hundreds; some few drunkards have been reformed; and very large numbers of young men, entering life, are now sober citizens, who seemed in danger of becoming a curse to society. The question is whether the causes of the preceding intemperance have been discovered and obviated. If not, there is every reason to expect that the control of opinion over them will be but temporary; and that the late sweeping and garnishing will give place to a state of things at least as bad as before.

At present, the effect of example is perishing, day by day. The example of those who have not pledged themselves is the only one morally regarded; all other persons being known to be bound. Virtue under a vow has no spiritual force. The more reasonable of those who are pledged have confined their pledge to the distinct case of not touching distilled liquors. They have the utmost difficulty in maintaining their ground, as examples, (their sole object,) under the assaults of bigots who complain that they are not "getting on;" and who, on their part, have got on so far as to refuse the communion to persons who will not abjure as they have done; to banish the sacramental wine; and to forbid malt liquors, and even coffee, in taverns and private houses. The superstition,—the attachment to the form without the spirit,—is fearfully revealed upon occasion. A man was brought dead drunk into a watch-house; and before the magistrate next morning, persisted that he could not have been drunk, because he was a member of a Temperance Society. The subservience of conscience to control is as necessary and remarkable. For instance, a gentleman, whose wife, in a state of imminent danger, was ordered brandy, ran and knocked up his minister to get leave before he would procure any for her. It is true that these are extreme cases: but the effect of such institutions upon weak minds must be studied, as it is for weak minds that they are created.

My own convictions are that Associations, excellent as they are for mechanical objects, are not fit instruments for the achievement of moral aims: that there is yet no proof that the principle of self-restraint has been exalted and strengthened in the United States by the Temperance movement, while the already too great regard to opinion, and subservience to spiritual encroachment have been much increased: that, therefore, great as are the visible benefits of the institution, it may at length appear that they have been dearly purchased. I have reason to think that numbers of persons in the United States, especially enlightened physicians, (who have the best means of knowledge,) are of the same opinion. This is confirmed by the fact that there is a spreading dislike of Associations for moral, while there is a growing attachment to them for mechanical, objects. The majority will show to those who may be living at the time what is the right.

Though scarcely necessary, it may be well to indicate the distinction between Temperance and Abolition societies with regard to this principle. The bond of Temperance societies is a pledge or vow respecting the personal conduct of the pledger. The bond of the Abolitionists is agreement in a principle which is to be proposed and exhibited by mechanical means,—lecturing, printing, raising money for benevolent purposes. Nobody is bound in thought, word, or action. There have been a few Temperance societies which have avoided pledges, and confined their exertions to spreading knowledge on the pathology of intemperance, and its effects on the morals of the individual and of society. Associations confined to these objects are probably not only harmless, but highly useful.

CHAPTER V. UTTERANCE.

"A country which has no national literature, or a literature too insignificant to force its way abroad, must always be, to its neighbours, at least in every important spiritual respect, an unknown and misestimated country. Its towns may figure on our maps; its revenues, population, manufactures, political connexions, may be recorded in statistical books: but the character of the people has no symbol and no voice; we cannot know them by speech and discourse, but only by mere sight and outward observation of their manners and procedure. Now, if both sight and speech, if both travellers and native literature, are found but ineffectual in this respect, how incalculably more so the former alone!"

Edinburgh Review.—Vol. xlvi. p. 309.

There is but one method by which most nations can express the general mind: by their literature. Popular books are the ideas of the people put into language by an individual. To a self-governing people there are two methods open: legislation is the expression of the popular mind, as well as literature.

If the national mind of America be judged of by its legislation, it is of a very high order; so much less violence to the first principles of morals is exhibited there than in any other social arrangements that the world has yet seen. If the American nation be judged of by its literature, it may be pronounced to have no mind at all.

The two appearances are, however, reconcilable. The mind of a nation grows, like that of an individual; and its growth follows somewhat the same course. There may be in each a mind, vigorous and full of promise, unerring in the recognition of true principles, but apt to err in the application of them; ardent in admiration of all faithful and beautiful expression of mind by others; but not yet knowing how to utter itself. The youthful philosopher or poet is commonly a metaphysician before he indicates what he is ultimately to become. In the age of vivid consciousness, before he is twenty, the invisible and intangible world of reality opens to him with a distinctness and lustre which make him in after time almost envy himself his youthful years. In this bright spiritual world, much is as indisputably revealed to him as material objects to the bodily eye: principles in full prominence; and a long perspective of certainties melting imperceptibly into probabilities; and lost at last in the haze of possibility, bright with the meridian sun of faith. To him

But of all this he can, for some time, express nothing. He burns with convictions, but can testify them to others only by recognising the expression which others have obtained the power of affording. If he makes the attempt, he is either unintelligible or trite.

This appears to me to be the stage at which the mind of America has arrived. That the legislation of the country is, on the whole, so noble, is owing to the happy circumstance (a natural one in the order of Providence, by which great agents rise up when a great work has to be done) that accomplished individuals were standing ready to help the people to an expression of its first convictions. The earliest convictions of a nation so circumstanced are of their fundamental and common rights: and the expression must be legislation. This has been done so well by the Americans that there is every reason to anticipate that more will follow; since principles are so linked together that it is scarcely possible to grasp one without touching another. Accordingly, though there is no contribution yet to the Philosophy of Mind from America, many thinking men are feeling after its principles amidst the accumulations of the old world: though no light has been given to society from the American press on the principles of politics, Americans may be heard quoting Burke from end to end of the country, infallibly separating the democratic aspirations of his genius from the aristocratic perversions of his temper and education: though America has yet witnessed no creation, either in literature or the arts, and cannot even distinguish a creation from a combination, imitation, or delineation, yet the power of admiration which she shows in hailing that which is far inferior to what she needs,—the vigour with which, after incessant disappointment, she applies herself to the produce of her press, to find the imperishable in what is just as transient as all that has gone before,—is a prophecy that a creator will arise. The faith that America is to have an artist of some order is universal: and such a faith is a sufficient guarantee of the event. Every ephemeron of a tale-writer, a dramatist, novelist, lyrist, and sonnetteer, has been taken by one or another for the man. But he has not come out of his silence yet; and it is likely that it may still be long before he does. Every work of genius is, as has been said, a mystery till it appears. What its principles and elaboration may be, it is for one man only—its author—to conceive: but it is plain what it will not be. It will not be, more or less, a copy of anything now existing. It will not be a mere delineation of what passes before the bodily eye, unillumined and unvivified by the light and movement of principles, of which forms are but the exponents. It will not be an exhibition of the relations which conventionalisms mutually bear, however fine may be the perception, and however clever the presentation may be. Further than this American literature has, as yet, produced nothing.

There is another reason, besides those which have been mentioned, why it would be highly unjust and injurious to conclude that there is nothing more in the nation's heart and brain than has come out before the eye. The American nation is made up of contributions from almost all other civilised nations: and, though the primary truths of God, and the universal characteristics of Man are common to them all, there are infinite diversities to be blended into unity before a national character can arise; before a national mind can be seen to actuate the mass of society. It is probable that the first great work of genius that appears will be the most powerful instrument for effecting this blending and reconciling: but the appearance of such a work is doubtless retarded in proportion to the checks and repression of social sympathy, caused by the diversity of influences under which society proceeds. The tuning for the concert has begun; some captious persons are grumbling at the discord; some inexperienced expectants take a wail here, and a flourish there, to be music: but the hour has not struck. The leader has not yet come to his place, to play the chord which shall bring the choral response that must echo over the world.

I saw the house which Berkeley built in Rhode Island,—built in the particular spot where it is, that he might have to pass, in his rides, over the hill which lies between it and Newport, and feast himself with the tranquil beauty of the sea, the bay and the downs, as they appear from the ridge of the eminence. I saw the pile of rocks, with its ledges and recesses, where he is said to have meditated and composed his "Minute Philosopher." It was at first melancholy to visit these his retreats, and think how empty the land still is of the philosophy he loved. But the more one sees of the people, and the less of their books, the stronger grows the hope of the stranger. One finds the observation of many turned inwards. Fragments of spiritual visions occur to one and another. Though some dogmatise, and others wait for revelation, and none seem to remember the existence of the experimental method, still there is a reaching after the Philosophy of Mind. At Harvard University, the chair of Mental Philosophy has been vacant for above eight years: it having been the custom formerly to indoctrinate the students with a certain number of chapters of Locke; and no man being now found hardy enough to undertake to discharge the duty thus; and the way not being yet clear to any one who would lay open the whole field of this philosophy, and let the students gather what they could out of it. Such impediments do not exist beyond the walls; and many young minds are at work without guidance, to whom guidance, however acceptable, is not necessary. If the lectures which are given to young ladies, who are carefully misinformed from Reid and Stewart,—if the reviews and panegyrics of Dr. Brown, hazarded without the slightest conception of the nature and extent of his meaning, are likely to throw the observer into despair;—if he is amazed to see a coterie disputing upon the ultimate principles perceived by Pure Reason, while he finds within himself no evidence of the existence of this Pure Reason, and believes that if it did universally exist, ultimate principles could admit of no dispute,—he is yet cheered by finding, not only eagerness in the pursuit of the philosophical ideas of others, but traces of some originality of speculation. There is a little book, by a Swedenborgian, called "The Growth of the Mind," which is, I believe unquestionably, an original work. From its originality, and the beauty of some of its images, and yet more of its exhibition of certain relations, it is highly interesting, though it is not found to command that extensive assent, which is the only guarantee of the soundness of works on the Philosophy of Mind. Mankind may demur for ages to the earth being round, and to its moving through space; but where the primary appeal, as in the Philosophy of Mind, must be to consciousness, works which do not command assent to their fundamental positions are failures as philosophy, though they may have inferior merits and attractions.

The best productions of American literature are, in my opinion, the tales and sketches in which the habits and manners of the people of the country are delineated, with exactness, with impartiality of temper, and without much regard to the picturesque. Such are the tales of Judge Hall of Cincinnati. Such are the tales by the author of Swallow Barn; where, however, there is the addition of a good deal of humour, and a subtraction of some of the truth. Miss Sedgwick's tales are of the highest order of the three, from the moral beauty which they breathe. This moral beauty is of a much finer character than the bonhommie which is the charm of Irving's pictures of manners. She sympathises where he good-naturedly observes; she cheerily loves where he gently quizzes. Miss Sedgwick's novels have this moral beauty too; as has everything she touches: but they have great and irretrievable faults as works of art. Tale-writing is her forte: and in this vocation, no one who has observed her striking progression will venture to say what she may not achieve.

Among the host of tales which appear without the names of their authors are three, which strike me as excellent in their several ways: "Allen Prescott," containing the history of a New England boy, drawn to the life, and in a just and amiable spirit: "The New England Housekeeper," in which the ménage of a rising young lawyer, with its fresh joys and ludicrous perplexities, is humorously exhibited: and "Memoirs of a New England Village Choir," a sketch of even higher merit.

Irving's writings have had their meed. He has lived in the sunshine of fame for many years, and in the pleasant consciousness that he has been a benefactor to the present generation, by shedding some gentle, benignant, and beguiling influences on many intervals of their rough and busy lives. More than this he has probably not expected; and more than this he does not seem likely to achieve. If any of his works live, it will be his Columbus: and the later of his productions will be the first forgotten.

Cooper's novels have a very puny vitality. Some descriptions of scenery, and some insulated adventures, have great merit: but it is not human life that he presents. His female characters are far from human; and in his selections of the chances of mortal existence, he usually chooses the remotest. He has a vigour of perception and conception, which might have made him, with study and discipline, a great writer. As it is, he is, I believe, regarded as a much-regretted failure.

The Americans have a poet. Bryant has not done anything like what he can and will do: but he has done some things that will live. Those of his poems which are the best known, or the most quoted, are smooth, sweet, faithful descriptions of nature, such as his own imagination delights in. I shall always remember the voice and manner with which he took up a casual remark of mine, about sights to be seen in the pine-barrens. When the visitors had all departed, his question "And what of the pine-barrens?" revealed the spirit of the poet. Of his poems of this class, "The Evening Wind" is to me the most delicious. But others,—"The Past," and "Thanatopsis"—indicate another kind, and a higher degree of power. If he would live for his gifts, if his future years could be devoted to "clear poetical activity," "looking up," like the true artist, "to his dignity and his calling," that dignity and that calling may prove to be as lofty as they no doubt appeared in the reveries of his boyhood; and he may be listened to as lovingly over the expanse of future time, as he already is over that of the ocean.

The Americans have also a historian of promise. Mr. Bancroft's History of the United States is little more than begun: but the beginning is characterised by an impartial and benevolent spirit, and by the indications which it affords of the author's fidelity to democratic principles; the two primary requisites in a historian of the republic. The carrying on the work to a completion will be a task of great toil and anxiety: but it will be a most important benefit to society at large, if it fulfils its promise.

The periodical literature of the United States is of a very low order. I know of no review where anything like impartial, enlightened criticism is to be found. The North American Review had once some reputation in England; but it has sunk at home and abroad, less from want of talent than of principle. If it has any principle whatever at present, it seems to be to praise every book it mentions, and to fall in as dexterously as possible with popular prejudice. The American Quarterly, published at Philadelphia, is uninteresting from the triteness of its morals, and a general dearth of thought, amidst a good deal of cleverness. The Southern Review, published at Charleston,—sometime ago discontinued, but I believe lately renewed,—is the best specimen of periodical literature that the country has afforded. After the large deductions rendered necessary by the faults of southern temper, this Review maintains its place above the rest; a rank which is, I believe, undisputed.

I met with one gem in American literature, where I should have least expected it:—in the Knickerbocker; a New York Monthly Magazine. Last spring, a set of papers began to appear, called "Letters from Palmyra,"[28] six numbers of which had been issued when I left the country. I have been hitherto unable to obtain the rest: but if they answer to the early portions, there can be no doubt of their being shortly in everybody's hands, in both countries. These letters remain in my mind, after repeated readings, as a fragment of lofty and tender beauty. Zenobia, Longinus, and a long perspective of characters, live and move in natural majesty; and the beauties of description and sentiment appear to me as remarkable as the strong conception of character, and of the age. If this anonymous fragment be not the work of a true artist,—if the work, when entire, do not prove to be of a far higher order than anything which has issued from the American press,—its early admirers will feel yet more surprise than regret.

It is continually said, on both sides of the water, and with much truth, that the bad state of the laws of literary property is answerable for some of the depression of American literature. It is true that the imperfection of these laws inflicts various discouragements on American writers, while it is disgracefully injurious to foreign authors. It is true that American booksellers will not remunerate native authors while they can purloin the works of British writers: and that the American public has a strong disposition to listen to the utterance of the English in preference to the prophets of their own country. It is true that in America, where every man must work for his living, it is a discouragement to the pursuit of literature that a living cannot, except in a few rare cases, be got by it. But all this is no solution of the fact of the non-existence of literature in America: which fact is indeed no mystery. The present state of the law, by which the works of English authors are pirated, undefended against mutilation, and made to drive native works out of the market, is so conspicuously bad, that there is every prospect of a speedy alteration: but there is nothing in the abuse which can silence genius, if genius is wanting to speak. It ought by this time to be understood that there is no power on earth which can repress mental force of the highest kinds; which can stifle the utterance of a thoroughly-moved spirit: certainly no power which is held by piratical booksellers under defective laws. Such discouragement is unjust and harsh; but it cannot be fatal. If a native genius, of a far higher order than any English, had been existing in America for the last ten years, he would have made himself heard ere this, and won his way into the general mind and heart through a host of bookselling harpies, and a chaos of lawlessness: he would have done this, even if it had been necessary to give his dinner for paper, and sell his bed to pay the printer;—expedients which it is scarcely conceivable that any author in that thriving land should be driven to. The absence of protection to foreign literary property is injurious enough, without its being made answerable for the deficiency of literary achievement. The causes lie deeper, and will not have ceased to operate till long after the law shall have been made just in this particular.

Some idea of the literary taste of the country may be arrived at through a mention of what appeared to me to be the comparative popularity of living or recent British authors.

I heard no name so often as Mrs. Hannah More's. She is much better known in the country than Shakspeare. This is, of course, an indication of the religious taste of the people; and the fact bears only a remote relation to literature. Scott is idolised; and so is Miss Edgeworth; but I think no one is so much read as Mr. Bulwer. I question whether it is possible to pass half a day in general society without hearing him mentioned. He is not worshipped with the dumb self-surrendering reverence with which Miss Edgeworth is regarded: but his books are in every house; his occasional democratic aspirations are in every one's mouth; and the morality of his books is a constant theme of discussion, from among the most sensitive of the clergy down to the "thinking, thoughtless school-boy" and his chum. The next name is, decidedly, Mrs. Jameson's. She is altogether a favourite; and her "Characteristics of Women" is the book which has made her so. At a considerable distance follows Mrs. Hemans. Byron is scarcely heard of. Wordsworth lies at the heart of the people. His name may not be so often spoken as some others; but I have little doubt that his influence is as powerful as that of any whom I have mentioned. It is less diffused, but stronger. His works are not to be had at every store; but within people's houses they lie under the pillow, or open on the work-box, or they peep out of the coat-pocket: they are marked, re-marked, and worn. Coleridge is the delight of a few. So is Lamb; regarded, however, with a more tender love. I heard Mr. Hallam's name seldom, but always in a tone of extraordinary respect, and from those whose respect is most valuable.

No living writer, however, exercises so enviable a sway, as far as it goes, as Mr. Carlyle. It is remarkable that an influence like his should have been gained through scattered articles of review and speculation, spread over a number of years and a variety of periodicals. The Americans have his "Life of Schiller;" but it was not that. His articles in the Edinburgh Review met the wants of several of the best minds in the society of New England; minds weary of cant, and mechanical morals, and seeking something truer to rest upon. The discipleship immediately instituted is honourable to both. Mr. Carlyle's remarkable work, "Sartor Resartus," issued piecemeal through Fraser's Magazine, has been republished in America, and is exerting an influence proportioned to the genuineness of the admiration it has excited. Perhaps this is the first instance of the Americans having taken to their hearts an English work which came to them anonymously, unsanctioned by any recommendation, and even absolutely neglected at home. The book is acting upon them with wonderful force. It has regenerated the preaching of more than one of the clergy; and, I have reason to believe, the minds and lives of several of the laity. It came as a benefactor to meet a pressing want; how pressing, the benefited testify by the fervour of their gratitude.

I know of no method by which the Americans could be assisted to utter what they may have in them so good as one which has been proposed, but which is not yet, I believe, in course of trial. It has been proposed that a publication should be established, open to the perfectly full and free discussion of every side of every question, within a certain department of inquiry;—Social Morals, for instance. There are difficulties at present in the way of presenting the whole of any subject to the public mind; difficulties arising from the unprincipled partiality of the common run of newspapers, the cautious policy of reviewers, the fear of opinion entertained by individual writers, and the impediments thrown in the way of free publication by the state of the laws relating to literary property. A publication devoted to the object of presenting, without fear or favour, all that can be said on any subject, without any restriction, except in the use of personalities towards opponents, would be the best possible remedy, under the circumstances, for the inconveniences complained of; the finest stimulus to the ascertainment of truth; the best education in the art of free and distinct utterance. A publication like this, under the editorship of such a man as Dr. Follen, a man full of learning, philosophy, and that devout love of truth which is a guarantee of impartiality, would be a high honour to the country, and a good lesson to some older societies, from which the fear of free discussion has not yet vanished. An editor worthy of the work would decline the responsibility of suppressing any views, coming within the range of subjects embraced. He would merely weed out personalities; cherish the spirit of justice and charity; and for the sake of these, strengthen the weaker side, where he saw that it was inadequately defended. It may be said that editors who would thus discharge their function are rare. They are so: but there is Dr. Follen; a living reply to the objection.

I have not the apprehension which some entertain that such a publication would be feared and rejected by the public. At first, it would excite some surprise and perplexity; one-sidedness being so generally the characteristic of periodicals in America, that it would take some time to convey the idea of a consistent opposite practice. But the American public has given no evidence of a dislike to be made acquainted with truth; but quite the contrary. My own conviction is, that before two years from its commencement, such a work would be in the houses of all the honest thinkers and most principled doers in the country; and that eloquent voices would, by its means, make themselves heard from many a remote dwelling-place; using with delight their means of utterance; and proving that the dearth of American literature is not owing to vacuity of thought or deadness of feeling. At any rate, such an experiment would ascertain whether the want is of means of utterance, or of something to utter.

PART IV.

CHAPTER I. RELIGION.

"Der Grund aller Democratie; die höchste Thatsache der Popularität."

Novalis.

"The Christian Religion is the root of all democracy; the highest fact in the Rights of Man."

Religion is the highest fact in the Rights of Man from its being the most exclusively private and individual, while it is also a universal, concern, of any in which man is interested. Religion is, in its widest sense, "the tendency of human nature to the Infinite;" and its principle is manifested in the pursuit of perfection in any direction whatever. It is in this widest sense that some speculative atheists have been religious men; religious in their efforts after self-perfection; though unable to personify their conception of the Infinite. In a somewhat narrower sense, religion is the relation which the highest human sentiments bear towards an infinitely perfect Being.

There can be no further narrowing than this. Any account of religion which restricts it within the boundaries of any system, which connects it with any mode of belief, which implicates it with hope of reward or fear of punishment, is low and injurious, and debases religion into superstition.

The Christian religion is specified as being the highest fact in the rights of man from its embodying (with all the rest) the principle of natural religion—that religion is at once an individual, an universal, and an equal concern. In it may be found a sanction of all just claims of political and social equality; for it proclaims, now in music and now in thunder,—it blazons, now in sunshine and now in lightning,—the fact of the natural equality of men. In giving forth this as its grand doctrine, it is indeed "the root of all democracy;" the root of the maxim (among others) that among the inalienable rights of all men are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The democracy of America is planted down deep into the christian religion; into its principles, which it has in common with natural religion, and which it vivifies and illumines, but does not alter.

How does the existing state of religion accord with the promise of its birth? In a country which professes to secure to every man the pursuit of happiness in his own way, what is the state of his liberty in the most private and individual of all concerns? How carefully are all men and women left free from interference in following up their own aspirations after the Infinite, in realising their own ideas of perfection, in bringing into harmonious action the functions of their spirits, as infinitely diversified as the expression of their features?

The absence of such diversity is the first striking fact which presents itself on the institution of such an inquiry. If there were no constraint,—no social reward or penalty,—such an approach to uniformity of profession could not exist as is seen in the United States. In a society where speculation and profession were left perfectly free, as included among the inalienable rights of man, there would be many speculative (though probably extremely few practical) atheists: there would be an adoption by many of the principles of natural religion, otherwise than in and through Christianity: and Christianity would be adopted in modes as various as the minds by which it would be recognised. Instead of this, we find laws framed against speculative atheists: opprobrium directed upon such as embrace natural religion otherwise than through Christianity: and a yet more bitter oppression exercised by those who view Christianity in one way, over those who regard it in another. A religious young christian legislator was pitied, blamed, and traduced in Boston, last year, by clergymen, lawyers, and professors of a college, for endeavouring to obtain a repeal of the law under which the testimony of speculative atheists is rejected in courts of justice: Quakers (calling themselves Friends) excommunicate each other: Presbyterian clergymen preach hatred to Catholics: a convent is burnt, and the nuns are banished from the neighbourhood: and Episcopalian clergymen claim credit for admitting Unitarians to sit in committees for public objects! As might be expected under such an infringement of the principle of securing to every man the pursuit of happiness in his own way, there is no such endless diversity in the action of minds, and utterance of tongues, as nature and fidelity to truth peremptorily demand. Truth is deprived of the irrefragable testimony which would be afforded by whatever agreement might arise amidst this diversity: religion is insulted and scandalised by nominal adherence and hypocritical advocacy. There are many ways of professing Christianity in the United States: but there are few, very few men, whether speculative or thoughtless, whether studious or ignorant, whether reverent or indifferent, whether sober or profligate, whether disinterested or worldly, who do not carefully profess Christianity, in some form or another. This, as men are made, is unnatural. Society presents no faithful mirror of the religious perspective of the human mind.

It may be asked whether this is not true of the Old World also. It is. But the society of the Old World has not yet grasped in practice any one fundamental democratic principle: and the few who govern the many have not yet perceived that religion is "the root of all democracy:" they are so far from it that they are still upholding an established form of religion; in which a particular mode of belief is enforced upon minds by the imposition of virtual rewards and punishments. The Americans have long taken higher ground; repudiating establishments, and professing to leave religion free. They must be judged by their own principles, and not by the example of societies whose errors they have practically denounced by their adoption of the Voluntary Principle.

The almost universal profession in America of the adoption of Christianity,—this profession by many whose habits of thought, and others whose habits of living forbid the supposition that it is the religion of their individual intellects and affections, compels the inquiry what sort of Christianity it is that is professed, and how it is come by. There is no evading the conviction that it is to a vast extent a monstrous superstition that is thus embraced by the tyrant, the profligate, the worldling, the bigot, the coward, and the slave; a superstition which offers little molestation to their vices, little rectification to their errors; a superstition which is but the spurious offspring of that divine Christianity which "is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the Rights of Man." That so many of the meek, pure, disinterested, free, and brave, make the same profession, proves only that they penetrate to religion through superstition; or that they cast away unconsciously the superstition with which their spirits have no affinity, and accept such truth as all superstition must include in order to live.

The only test by which religion and superstition can be ultimately tried is that with which they co-exist. "By their fruits ye shall know them."

The Presbyterian body is a very large one; the total number in communion, according to the minutes of the General Assembly for 1834, being then 247,964. New England contains a very small, and the south and west a very large, proportion of the body. Some of the most noble of the abolitionists of the north are Presbyterians; and from the lips and pens of Presbyterians in the south, come some of the defences of slavery which evince the deepest depravity of principle and feeling. This is only another proof, added to the million, that religion comes out of morals. In the words of a pure moralist,[29] "Morality is usually said to depend upon religion; but this is said in that low sense in which outward conduct is considered as morality. In that higher sense in which morality denotes sentiment, it is more exactly true to say, that religion depends on morality, and springs from it. Virtue is not the conformity of outward actions to a rule; nor is religion the fear of punishment, or the hope of reward. Virtue is the state of a just, prudent, benevolent, firm, and temperate mind. Religion is the whole of those sentiments which such a mind feels towards an infinitely perfect being." With these views, we may account for the different morality of the Presbyterians of the south from that of such of the friends of the slave in the north as are of the same communion. Of the Presbyterian, as well as other clergy of the south, some are even planters, superintending the toils of their slaves, and making purchases, or effecting sales in the slave-markets, during the week, and preaching on Sundays whatever they can devise that is least contradictory to their daily practice. I watched closely the preaching in the south,—that of all denominations,—to see what could be made of Christianity, "the highest fact in the Rights of Man," in such a region. I found the stricter religionists preaching reward and punishment in connexion with modes of belief, and hatred to the Catholics. I found the more philosophical preaching for or against materialism, and diverging to phrenology. I found the more quiet and "gentlemanly" preaching harmless abstractions,—the four seasons, the attributes of the Deity, prosperity and adversity, &c. I heard one clergyman, who always goes out of the room when the subject of negro emancipation is mentioned, or when slavery is found fault with, preach in a southern city against following a multitude to do evil. I heard one noble religious discourse from the Rev. Joel Parker, a Presbyterian clergyman, of New Orleans; but except that one, I never heard any available reference made to the grand truths of religion, or principles of morals. The great principles which regard the three relations to God, man, and self,—striving after perfection, mutual justice and charity, and christian liberty,—were never touched upon.—Meantime, the clergy were pretending to find express sanctions of slavery in the Bible; and putting words to this purpose into the mouths of public men, who do not profess to remember the existence of the Bible in any other connexion. The clergy were boasting at public meetings, that there was not a periodical south of the Potomac which did not advocate slavery; and some were even setting up a magazine, whose "fundamental principle is, that man ought to be the property of man." The clergy, who were to be sent as delegates to the General Assembly, were receiving instructions to leave the room, if the subject of slavery was mentioned; and to propose the cessation of the practice of praying for slaves. At the same time, the wife of a clergyman called upon me to admire the benevolent toils of a friend, who had been "putting up 4000 weight of pork" for her slave household: and another lady, kindly and religiously disposed, told me what pains she took on Sunday mornings to teach her slaves, by word of mouth, as much of Christianity as was good for them. When I pressed her on the point as to why they were to have Christianity and not the alphabet, and desired to know under what authority she dared to keep from them knowledge, which God has shed abroad for all, as freely as the the air and sunshine, I found that the idea was wholly new to her: nothing that she had heard in church, or out of it, from any of the Christians among whom she lived, had awakened the suspicion that she was robbing her brethren of their birth-right. The religion of the south strictly accords with the morals of the south. There is much that is gentle, merciful, and generous: much among the suffering women that is patient, heroic, and inspiring meek resignation. Among these victims, there is faith, hope, and charity. But Christianity is severed from its radical principles of justice and liberty; and it will have to be cast out as a rotten branch.

A southern clergyman mentioned to me, obviously with difficulty and pain, that though he was as happily placed as a minister could be, treated with friendliness and generosity by his people, and so cherished as to show that they were satisfied, he had one trouble. During all the years of his ministry, no token had reached him that he had religiously impressed their minds, more or less. They met regularly and decorously on Sundays, and departed quietly, and there was an end. He did not know that any one discourse had affected them more than any other; and no opportunity was offered him of witnessing any religious emotion among them whatever.—Another, an Unitarian clergyman of the south, was known to lament the appearance of Dr. Channing's work on slavery, "the cause was going on so well before!" "The cause going on!" exclaimed another Unitarian clergyman in the north; "what should the ship go on for, when they have thrown both captain and cargo overboard?"

What is to be said of the southern fruits of "the root of all democracy?" Excluding the debased slaves, and the helpless, suffering victims of the system, there remain the laity, who, as they do not abolish slavery, must be concluded not to understand the religion with whose principles it cannot coexist; and the acquiescing clergy, who, if they do not understand its principles, are unfit to be clergymen: and if they do, are unfit to be called Christians.

The Presbyterians of the south have reason to perceive that the principles of christian liberty are not fully embraced by their brethren of the north, though acted upon by some with a disinterested heroism in the direction of abolition. Those who would exclude slave-holders from the communion-table are usurping an authority which the principles of their religion forbid. The hatred to the Catholics also approaches too nearly in its irreligious character to the oppression of the negro. It is pleaded by some who most mourn the persecution the Catholics are at present undergoing in the United States, that there is a very prevalent ignorance on the subject of the Catholic religion; and that dreadful slanders are being circulated by a very few wicked, which deceive a great many weak, persons. This is just the case: but there is that in the true christian religion which should intercept the hatred, whatever may be the ignorance. There is that in the true christian religion which should give the lie to those slanders, in the absence of all outward evidence of their untruth. There is that in true Christianity which should chasten the imagination, allay faithless apprehensions, and inspire a trust that, as heart answers to heart, no vast body of men can ever bind themselves by the name of Jesus, to become all that is most the reverse of holy, harmless, and undefiled. The question "where is thy faith?" might reasonably have been put to the Presbyterian clergyman who preached three long denunciations against the Catholics in Boston, the Sunday before the burning of the Charlestown convent: and also to parents, who can put into their children's hands, as religious books, the foul libels against the Catholics which are circulated throughout the country. In the west, I happened to find in the chamber of a very young lady, the only child of an opulent and influential citizen, a book of this kind, which no epithet but filthy will suit. It lay with her Bible and Prayer-book; the secular part of her library being disposed elsewhere. If religion springs from morals, those who put the book into the hands of this young girl will be answerable, if her religion should be as little like that which is "first pure, then peaceable," as their own.

I was seriously told, by several persons in the south and west, that the Catholics of America were employed by the Pope, in league with the Emperor of Austria and the Irish, to explode the Union. The vast and rapid spread of the Catholic faith in the United States has excited observation, which grew into this rumour. I believe the truth to be that, in consequence of the Pope's wish to keep the Catholics of America a colonial church, and the Catholics of the country thinking themselves now sufficiently numerous to be an American Catholic church, a great stimulus has been given to proselytism. This has awakened fear and persecution; which last has, again, been favourable to the increase of the sect. While the Presbyterians preach a harsh, ascetic, persecuting religion, the Catholics dispense a mild and indulgent one; and the prodigious increase of their numbers is a necessary consequence. It is found so impossible to supply the demand for priests, that the term of education has been shortened by two years.—Those observers who have made themselves familiar with the modes in which institutions, even of the most definite character, adapt themselves to the wants of the time, will not be made uneasy by the spread of a religion so flexible in its forms as the Catholic, among a people so intelligent as the Americans. The Catholic body is democratic in its politics, and made up from the more independent kind of occupations. The Catholic religion is modified by the spirit of the time in America; and its professors are not a set of men who can be priest-ridden to any fatal extent. If they are let alone, and treated on genuine republican principles, they may show us how the true, in any old form of religion, may be separated from the false, till, the eye being made clear, the whole body will be full of light. If they cannot do this, their form of religion will decay, or at least remain harmless; for it is assuredly too late now for a return of the dark ages. At all events, every American is required by his democratic principles to let every man alone about his religion. He may do with the religion what seems to him good; study, controvert, adopt, reject, speak, write, or preach, whatever he perceives and thinks about its doctrines and its abuses: but with its professors he has nothing to do, further than religiously to observe his fraternal relation to them; suffering no variance of opinion to seduce him into a breach of the republican and christian brotherhood to which he is pledged.

What other fruits are there of the superstition which pervades society, comprehending under the term Christian many who know little of its doctrine, and exhibit less of its spirit? The state and treatment of infidelity are some of the worst.

There is in this respect a dreadful infringement on human rights throughout the north; though a better spirit is being cherished and extended by a few who see how contrary to all christian and all democratic principles it is that a man should be the worse for his opinions in society. I have seen enough to know how little chance Christianity has in consequence of this infringement. I know that very large numbers of people are secretly disinclined to cherish what is imposed upon them, with perpetual and unvarying modes of observance, from their childhood up; and how the disgust grows from the opprobrium with which unbelief is visited. I know that there are minds in New England, as everywhere else, which must, from their very structure, pass through a state of scepticism on their way to stability; and that such are surrounded with snares, such as no man should lay in his brother's path; with temptations to hypocrisy, to recklessness, to despair; and to an abdication of their human prerogative of reason, as well as conscience. I know how women, in whom the very foundations of belief have been ploughed up by the share of authority, go wearily to church, Sunday after Sunday, to hear what they do not believe; lie down at night full of self-reproach for a want of piety which they do not know how to attain; and rise up in the morning hopelessly, seeing nothing in the day before them but the misery of carrying their secret concealed from parents, husband, sisters, friends. I know how young men are driven into vice, by having only the alternative of conformity or opprobrium: feeling it impossible to believe what is offered them; feeling it to be no crime to disbelieve: but, seeing unbelief treated as crime, and themselves under suspicion of it, losing faith in others and in themselves, and falling in reality at last. All this, and very much more, I know to be happening. I was told of one and another, with an air of mystery, like that with which one is informed of any person being insane, or intemperate, or insolvent, that so and so was thought to be an unbeliever. I was always tempted to reply, "And so are you, in a thousand things, to which this neighbour of yours adds one."—An elderly, generally intelligent, benevolent gentleman told me that he wanted to see regulations made by which deists should be excluded from office, and moral men only admitted. Happily, the community is not nearly so far gone in tyranny and folly as to entertain such a project as this: but it must be a very superstitious society where such an idea could be deliberately expressed by a sane man.

One circumstance struck me throughout the country. Almost as often as the conversation between myself and any other person on religious subjects became intimate and earnest, I was met by the supposition that I was a convert. It was the same in other instances: wherever there was a strong interest in the christian religion, conversion to a particular profession of it was confidently supposed. This fact speaks volumes.

Happy influences are at work to enlighten and enlarge the mind of society. One of the most powerful of these is the union of men and women of all religions in pursuit of objects of common interest; particularly in the abolition cause. Persons who were once ready to excommunicate each other are now loving friends in their mutual obedience to the weightier matters of the law. The churches in Boston, and even the other public buildings, being guarded by the dragon of bigotry, so that even faith, hope, and charity are turned back from the doors, a large building is about to be erected for the use of all, deists not excepted, who may desire to meet for purposes of free discussion. This is, at least, an advance.

A reflecting and eminently religious person was speculating with me one day, on the influences by which the human mind is the most commonly and the most powerfully awakened to vivid and permanent religious sensibility. We brought cases and suppositions of its being now strong impressions of the beauty and grandeur of nature; now grief, and now joy, and so on. My friend concluded that it was most frequently the spectacle of moral beauty in an individual. I have no doubt it is so: and if it be, what tremendous injury must be done to the highest parts of man's nature by the unprincipled tyranny of the religious world in the republic! Men declare by this very tyranny how essential they consider belief to be. Belief is essential,—not only to safety, but to existence. Every mind lives by belief, as the body lives by the atmosphere: but the objects and modes of belief must be various; and it is from disallowing this that superstition arises. If men must exercise the mutual vigilance which their human affections prompt, it would be well for religion and for themselves that they should note how much their brethren believe, rather than what they disbelieve: the amount would be found so vast as immeasurably to distance the deficiency. If this were done, religion would be found to be so safe that the proportions of sects, and the eccentricities of individuals would be lost sight of in the presence of universal, living, and breathing faith. I was told of a child who stood in the middle of a grass-plat, with its arms by its sides, and listening with a countenance of intense expectation, "to hear God's tramp on that high blue floor." Who would care to know what christian sect this child belonged to; or whether to any?—I was told of a father and mother, savages, who lost their only child, and were overwhelmed with grief, under which the father soon sank. From the moment of his death, the solitary survivor recovered her cheerfulness. Being asked why, she said she had been miserable for her child, lest he should be forlorn in the world of spirits: he had his father with him now, and would be happy. Who would inquire for the creed of this example of disinterested love?—I was told of a young girl, brought up from the country by a selfish betrayer, refused the marriage which had been promised, and turned out of doors by him on her being seized with the cholera. She was picked up from a doorstep, and carried to the hospital. In the midst of her dying agonies, no inducement could prevail on her to tell the name of her betrayer; and she died faithful to him, so that the secret of whose treachery we are abhorring is dead with her. With such testimony that the very spirit of the gospel was in this humble creature, none but those who would dare to cast her out for her fall would feel any anxiety as to how she received the facts of the gospel. Religion is safe, and would be seen to be so if we would set ourselves to mark how universal are some few of men's convictions, and the whole of man's affections. While men feel wonder, and the universe is wonderful; while men love natural glory, and the heavens and the earth are resplendent with it; while men revere holiness, and the beauty of holiness beams at times upon the dimmest sight, religion is safe. For the last reason, Christianity is also safe. If the beauty of its holiness were never obscured by the defilements of human passion with which it is insulted, it is scarcely conceivable that all men would not be, in some sense or other, Christians.

Those who are certain that Christianity is safe, (and they are not a few,) and who, therefore, beware of encroaching on their brother's liberty of conscience, will be found to be the most principled republicans, the firmest believers that Christianity is "the root of all democracy: the highest fact in the Rights of Man."

CHAPTER I. SCIENCE OF RELIGION.

"And therefore the doctrine of the one (Christ) was never afraid of universities, or endeavoured the banishment of learning like the other (Mahomet.) And though Galen doth sometimes nibble at Moses, and, beside the apostate Christian, some heathens have questioned his philosophical part or treatise of the creation; yet there is surely no reasonable Pagan that will not admire the rational and well-grounded precepts of Christ, whose life, as it was conformable unto his doctrine, so was that unto the highest rules of reason, and must therefore flourish in the advancement of learning, and the perfection of parts best able to comprehend it."

Sir Thomas Browne.

Religion has suffered from nothing, throughout all Christendom, more than from its science having been mixed up with its spirit and practice. The spirit and practice of religion come out of morals; but its science comes out of history also; with chronology, philology, and other collateral kinds of knowledge. The spirit and practice of religion are for all, since all bear the same relation to their Creator and to their race, and are endowed with reason and with affections. But the high science of religion is, at present at least, like all other science, for the few. The time may come when all shall have the comprehension of mind and range of knowledge which are requisite for investigating spiritual relations, tracing the religious principle through all its manifestations in individuals and societies, studying its records in many languages, and testing the interpretations which have been put upon them, from age to age. The time may possibly come when all may be able thus to be scientific in theology: but that time has assuredly not arrived. It is so far from being at hand, that by far the largest portion of christian society seems to be ignorant of the distinction between the science of theology and the practice of religion. The scientific study and popular administration of religion have not only been confided to the same persons, but actually mixed up and confounded in the heads and hands of those persons. Contrary to all principle, and to all practice in other departments, the student who enters upon this science is warned beforehand what conclusions he must arrive at. The results are given to him prior to investigation; and sanctioned by reward and punishment. The first injury happens to the student, under a method of pursuing science as barbarous as any by which the progress of natural knowledge was retarded in ages gone by. The student, become an administrator, next injures his flock in his turn, by mixing up portions of his scholastic science with religious sentiment. He teaches dogmatically that which bears no relation to duty and affection; requiring assent where, for want of the requisite knowledge, true assent is impossible; where there can be only passive reception or ignorant rejection. The consequences are the corruptions of Christianity, which grieve the spirit of those who see where and how the poison is mixed with the bread of life.

The office of theological science is to preserve,—we must now say to recover,—the primary simplicity of Christianity. It is a high and noble office to penetrate to and test the opinions of ages, in order to trace corruptions to their source, and separate them from the pure waters of truth. It is a high and noble task to master the associations of the elder time, and look again at the gospel to see it afresh in its native light. It is a high and noble task to strip away false glosses, not only of words but of ideas, that the true spirit of the gospel may shine through the record. But these high and noble labours are but means to a higher and nobler end. The dignity of theological study arises from its being subservient to the administration of religion. The last was Christ's own office; the highest which can be discharged by man: so high as to indicate that when its dignity is fully understood, it will be confided to the hands of no class of men. Theologians there will probably always be; but no man will be a priest in those days to come when every man will be a worshipper.

On some accounts it may seem desirable that the theologians of this age should be the clergy. It was once desirable; for reasons analogous to those which constituted priests once the judges, then the politicians, then the literati of society. It has been, and is, the plea that those who professed to clear Christianity from its corruptions, and to master its history, were the fittest persons to present it to the popular mind.

If this were ever the case, the time seems to have passed by. The press affords the means of placing the clear results of theological inquiry in the hands of those whom they concern. There seems to be no other relation between the theologian, as a theologian, and the worshipper, which should constitute him the organ of their worship. The habits of mind most favourable to the pursuit of theological study are not those which qualify for a successful administration of religious influences. This is proved by fact; by the limited efficacy of preaching, and by the fatal confusion which has been caused by the clergy having given out fragments of their studies from the pulpit, with annexations of promise and threatening. It does not follow that the administrators should be ignorant; only that their knowledge should be other than scholastic and technical. The organ of a worshipping assembly should be furnished with the clear results of theological study; and with such intellectual and moral science as shall enable him, if his sympathies be warm enough, to identify himself with the mind and heart of humanity. He must have that knowledge of men's relations and interests in life which shall enable him to look into infinity from their point of view; to give voice to whatever sentiments are common to all; to appeal to whatever affections and desires are stirring in all. For this purpose, he must be practically engaged in the great moral questions of the time, carrying the principles of religion into them with his whole experimental force; and bringing out of them new light whereby to illustrate these principles, new grounds on which to reason in behalf of duty, and new forces with which to animate the convictions of his fellow-worshippers into practice.

The fluctuations through which the Methodist body in America, as well as elsewhere, is arriving at the true principle as to the ministering of religion, are well known. First, they clearly saw the corruption of christian doctrine and the deadness of religious service which must follow from putting closet students into the pulpit: and, holding the belief of immediate and special inspiration, they abjured human learning. The mischiefs which have followed upon the ministry of ignorant and fanatical clergy have converted large numbers to the advocacy of human learning. It will probably yet be long before they can put in practice the true method of having one set of men to be theologians, and another to be preachers or other organs of worship. The complaint of every denomination in the United States is of a scarcity of ministers. This is so pressing that, as we have seen in the case of the Catholics, the term of study is shortened. Now seems the time, and America the place, for dispensing with the formalities which restrict religious worship. It would be an incalculable injury to have theological study brought to an end by every youth who devotes himself to it being called away to preach, before he can possibly possess many of the requisites for preaching. It would be far better to throw open the office of administration to all who feel and can speak religiously, and so as to be the genuine voice of the thoughts of others. Even if it were necessary to reconstitute religious societies, making the meetings for worship smaller, and the exercises varying with the nature of the case, there could no evil arise so serious as the interruption of theological study, and the deterioration of public worship. In the wild west, where the people can no more live without religion than they can anywhere else, the farmer's neighbours collect around him from within a circuit of thirty miles, and he reads or speaks, and prays, and they are refreshed. If this is not done, if it is not frequently done, the settlers become liable to the insanity of camp-meetings and revivals. If the national want can be thus naturally supplied in the heart of the forest or prairie, why not also in the city? The city has the advantage of a greater number of persons qualified to express the common desires, and meet the common sympathies of the worshippers.

There are enlightened and religious persons who think it would be a great advantage to religion if the present system of dogmatical theological study in America were broken up. It might be so, if it were sure to be reconstituted upon better principles, and if it were not done for the purpose of supplying the pulpit with men who might be even less fit for their office than they are now. But there is no prospect of such a breaking up at present; and, I am afraid, as little of any great improvement in the principles of research. Though there are differences arising about creeds; though there are schisms within the walls of churches and of colleges, and trials for heresy before synods and assemblies, which promise a more or less speedy relaxation of the bonds of creeds, and the tyranny of church government, there is no near prospect of theological science being left as free as other kinds. There is no near prospect of evidence on the most important of all subjects being consigned to the heaven-made laws of the human mind. There is no near prospect of inquiry being left to work out its results, without any prior specification, under penalty, of what they must be. There is no near prospect of the clergy having such faith in the religion they profess as to leave it to the administration of Him who sent it, free from their pernicious and arrogant protection.

If other science had its results mixed up with hope and fear, its pursuit watched over by tyranny, and divergence from old opinions punished by opprobrium, the world, instead of being "an immense whispering gallery, where the faintest accent of science is heard throughout every civilised country as soon as uttered," would be a Babel; where all utterance would be vociferation, and life one interminable quarrel. It would be an extreme exemplification of the principle of making convictions the object of moral approbation and disapprobation. As it is, though natural philosophers sometimes fall out, yet there is a practical admission of the right of free research, and of the innocence of arriving, by strict fidelity, at any conclusions whatever, in natural science. The consequence is that, instead of men being imprisoned for their discoveries, and made to do penance for the benefits they confer on the community, science proceeds expeditiously and joyously, under the hands of intent workers, mutually aiding and congratulating, while society gratefully accepts the results, and adopts the knowledge evolved, as it becomes necessarily and regularly popularised.

Whenever moral science shall be undertaken, and religious science emancipated, such will be the harmonious progress of each, and the christian religion will be anew revealed to men. Meantime, the religious world is in one aspect like an inquisition; in another, like a Babel. The religious world: not by any means the intercourse of all religious persons. Some of the most religious persons are quite out of the religious world; voluntarily retreating from it that they may retain their reverence; or driven from it, because they are faithful to convictions which are prescribed to them only by God, without the sanction of man.

Is it thus that religion should be followed and professed in a democratic republic? Does it carry with it any dispensation from democratic principles? any authority for despotism in this one particular? any denial of human equality? any sanction of human authority over reason and conscience? Is it not rather "the root of all democracy; the highest fact in the Rights of Man?" America has left it to the Old World to fortify Christianity by establishments, and has triumphantly shown that a great nation may be trusted to its religious instincts to provide for its religious wants. In order to the complete following out of her principles, she must leave religious speculation and pursuit of knowledge and peace as open as any other; and beware of making the ascertainments of science an occasion for the oppression of a single individual in fortune, name, or natural inheritance of spiritual liberty.

CHAPTER II. SPIRIT OF RELIGION.

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind."

Paul the Apostle.

Society in America is as much in a transition state about religion as France and England are about politics. The people are in advance of the clergy in America, as the English are in advance of such of their political institutions as are in dispute. Discouraging as the aspect of religious profession in America is on a superficial survey, a closer study will satisfy the observer that all will be well; that the most democratic of nations is religious at heart; and that its superstitions and offences against the spirit of Christianity are owing to temporary influences.

In order to ascertain what the spirit of religion really is in the country, we must not judge by the periodicals. Religious periodicals are almost entirely in the hands of the clergy, who are in no country fair representatives of the religion of the people. These periodicals are, almost without exception, as far as my knowledge of them goes, extremely bad. A very few have some literary and scientific merit; and many advocate with zeal particular methods of charity, and certainly effect a wide and beneficent co-operation for mutual help which could not be otherwise so well secured. But arrogance and uncharitableness, cant, exclusiveness, and an utter absence of sympathy with human interests and affections, generally render this class of publications as distasteful as the corresponding organs of religious bodies in the Old World. They are too little human in their character, from the books of the Sunday School Union to the most important of the religious reviews, to be by any possibility a fair expression of the spiritual state of some millions of persons. The acts of the laity, and especially of those who are least under the influence of the clergy, must be looked to as the only true manifestations.

If religion springs from morals, the religion must be most faulty where the morals are so. The greatest fault in American morals is an excessive regard to opinion. This is the reason of the want of liberality of which unbelievers, and unusual believers, have so much reason to complain. But the spirit of religion is already bursting through sectarian restraints. Many powerful voices are raised, within the churches as well as out of them, and even from a few pulpits, against the mechanical adoption and practice of religion, and in favour of individuality of thought, and the consequent spontaneousness of speech and action. Many indubitable Christians are denouncing cant as strongly as those whom cant has alienated from Christianity. The dislike of associations for religious objects is spreading fast; and the eyes of multitudes are being opened to the fact that there can be little faith at the bottom of that craving for sympathy which prevents men and women from cheerfully doing their duty to God and their neighbour unless sanctioned by a crowd. Some of the clergy have done away with the forms of admission to their churches which were formerly considered indispensable. There is a visible reaction in the best part of society in favour of any man who stands alone on any point of religious concern: and though such an one has the more regularly drilled churches against him, he is usually cheered by the grasp of some trusty right hand of fellowship.

The eagerness in pursuit of speculative truth is shown by the rapid sale of every kind of heretical work. The clergy complain of the enormous spread of bold books, from the infidel tract to the latest handling of the miracle question, as sorrowfully as the most liberal members of society lament the unlimited circulation of the false morals issued by certain Religious Tract Societies. Both testify to the interest taken by the people in religion. The love of truth is also shown by the outbreak of heresy in all directions. There are schisms among all the more strict of the religious bodies, and large secessions and new formations among those which are bound together by slight forms. There are even a few places to be found where Deists may come among Christians to worship their common Father, without fear of insult to their feelings, and mockery of their convictions.

I know also of one place, at least, and I believe there are now several, where the people of colour are welcome to worship with the whites,—actually intermingled with them, instead of being set apart in a gallery appropriated to them. This is the last possible test of the conviction of human equality entertained by the white worshippers. It is such a test of this, their christian conviction, as no persons of any rank in England are ever called upon to abide. I think it very probable that the course of action which is common in America will be followed in this instance. A battle for a principle is usually fought long, and under discouragement: but the sure fruition is almost instantaneous, when the principle is but once put into action. The people of colour do actually, in one or more religious assemblies, sit among the whites, in token that the principle of human brotherhood is fully admitted. It may be anticipated that the example will spread from church to church—in the rural districts of the north first, and then in the towns;[30] so that the clergy will soon find themselves released from the necessity of veiling, or qualifying, the most essential truth of the gospel, from the pastoral consideration for the passions and prejudices of the white portion of their flocks, which they at present plead in excuse of their compromise.

The noble beneficence of the whole community shows that the spirit of the gospel is in the midst of them, as it respects the condition of the poor, ignorant, and afflicted. Of the generosity of society there can be no question; and if it were only accompanied with the strict justice which the same principles of christian charity require; if there were as zealous a regard to the rights of intellect and conscience in all as to the wants and sufferings of the helpless, such a realisation of high morals would be seen as the world has not yet beheld. I have witnessed sights which persuade me that the principle of charity will yet be carried out to its full extent. It gave me pleasure to see the provisions made for every class of unfortunates. It gave me more to see young men and women devoting their evening and Sunday leisure to fostering, in the most benignant manner, the minds of active and trustful children. But nothing gave me so much delight as what was said by a young physician to a young clergyman, on their entering a new building prepared as a place of worship for children, and also as a kind of school: as a place where religion might have its free course among young and free minds. "Now," said the young physician, "here we are, with these children dependent upon us. Never let us defile this place with the smallest act of spiritual tyranny. Watch me, and I will watch you, that we may not lay the weight of a hair upon these little minds. If we impose one single opinion upon them, we bring a curse upon our work. Here, in this one place, let minds be absolutely free." This is the true spirit of reverence. He who spoke those words may be considered, I believe and trust, as the organ of no few, who are aware that reverence is as requisite to the faithful administration of charity, as to the acceptable offering of prayer.

The asceticism which pervades large sections of society in America, testifies to the existence of a strong interest in religion. Its effects are most melancholy; but they exhibit only the perversion of that which is, in itself, a great good.—The asceticism of America is much like that of every other place. It brings religion down to be ceremonial, constrained, anxious, and altogether divested of its free, generous, and joyous character. It fosters timid selfishness in some; and in others a precise proportion of reckless licentiousness. Its manifestations in Boston are as remarkable as in the strictest of Scotch towns. Youths in Boston, who work hard all the week, desire fresh air and exercise, and a sight of the country, on Sundays. The country must be reached over the long bridges before-mentioned, and the youths must ride to obtain their object. They have been brought up to think it a sin to take a ride on Sundays. Once having yielded, and being under a sense of transgression for a wholly fictitious offence, they rarely stop there.[31] They next join parties to smoke, and perhaps to drink, and so on. If they had but been brought up to know that the Sabbath, like all times and seasons, was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath; that their religion is in their state of mind, and not in the arrangement of their day, their Sabbaths would most probably have been spent as innocently as any other day; and the chances would have been much increased of their desiring the means of improving their religious knowledge, and cherishing their devotional affections, by social worship. I was struck by the fact that at the Jefferson University, at Charlottesville, Virginia, where no fundamental provision is made for worship, where not the slightest authority is exercised over the students with regard to religious observances, there is not only a most regular administration of religion, but the fullest attendance upon it. Every one knows what a burden and snare the public prayers are at our English Universities, where the attendance is compulsory. At Charlottesville, where the matter is left to the inclination of the students, the attendance is punctual, quiet, and absolutely universal.[32]

The ascetic proscription of amusements extends to the clergy throughout the country; and includes the whole of the religious world in New England. As to the clergy, the superstition can scarcely endure long, it is so destitute of all reason. I went to a large party at Philadelphia, with a clergyman and other friends. Dancing presently began. I was asked a question, which implied that my clerical friend had gone home. "There he is," I replied. "O, I concluded that he went away when the dancing began;" said the lady, in a tone which implied that she thought he ought to have gone home. It was observed of this gentleman, that he could not be a religious man, he was seen at so many parties during my visit to his house. No clergyman ever enters the theatre, or touches a card. It is even expected that he should go away when cards are introduced, as from the ball-room. The exclusion from the theatre is of the least consequence, as large portions of society have reasonable doubts about the encouragement of an amusement which does seem to be vitiated there, almost to the last degree. The Americans have little dramatic taste: and the spirit of puritanism still rises up in such fierce opposition to the stage, as to forbid the hope that this grand means of intellectual exercise will ever be made the instrument of moral good to society there that it might be made: and the proscribed race of dramatic artists is, in talent and in morals, just what a proscribed and depressed class might be expected to be. The attempt to raise their condition and their art has been strenuously made by the manager of the Boston theatre, who has sternly purified his establishment, excluding from his stage everything that could well give offence even to Boston prudery. But it is in vain. The uncongeniality is too great: and those who respect dramatic entertainments the most highly, will be the most anxious that the American theatres should be closed. I even know of more families than one, unconnected with clergy, and not making any strict religious profession, where Shakspeare is hidden, for prudish reasons. I need not add, that among such persons there is not the remotest comprehension of what the drama is. If a reader of Shakspeare occurs, here and there, it usually turns out that he considers the plays as collections of passages, descriptive, didactic, &c. &c. Such being the state of things, it is no matter of surprise and regret that the clergy, among others, abstain from the theatre. But, as to the dancing,—either dancing is innocent, or it is not. If not, nobody should dance: if innocent, the clergy should dance, like others, as they have the same kind of bodies to be animated, and of minds to be exhilarated. Once admit any distinction on account of their office, and there is no stopping short, in reason, of the celibacy of the clergy, and the other gloomy superstitions by which the free and genial spirit of Christianity has been grieved.

This ascetic practice of taking care of one another's morals has gone to such a length in Boston, as to excite the frequent satire of some of its wisest citizens. This indicates that it will be broken through. When there was talk of attempting to set up the Italian opera there, a gentleman observed that it would never do: people would be afraid of the very name. "O!" said another, "call it Lectures on Music, with illustrations, and everybody will come."

Lectures abound in Boston: and I am glad of it; at least in the interval before the opening of the public amusements which will certainly be required, sooner or later. These lectures may not be of any great use in conveying science and literature: lectures can seldom do more than actuate to study at home. But in this case, they probably obviate meetings for religious excitement, which are more hurtful than lectures are beneficial. The spiritual dissipations indulged in by the religious world, wherever asceticism prevails, are more injurious to sound morals than any public amusements, as conducted in modern times, have ever been proved to be. It is questionable whether even gross licentiousness is not at least equally encouraged by the excitement of passionate religious emotions, separate from action: and it is certain that rank spiritual vices, pride, selfishness, tyranny, and superstition, spring up luxuriantly in the hotbeds of religious meetings. The odiousness of spiritual vices is apt to be lost sight of in the horror of sensual transgressions. If a pure intelligence, however, had to decide between the two, he would probably point out that the vices which arise from the frailty of nature are less desperate and less revolting than those which are mainly factitious, and which arise from a perversion of man's highest relation. It is difficult to decide which set of vices (if indeed the line can be drawn between them) spreads the most extensive misery, and most completely ruins the unhappy subjects of them; but it is certain that the sympathies of unsophisticated minds turn more readily to the publicans and sinners, than to the pharisees of society: and they have high authority for so doing.

Still, the asceticism shows that a strong religious feeling, a strong sense of religious duty exists, which has only to be enlarged and enlightened. A most liberal-minded clergyman, a man as democratic in his religion, and as genial in his charity, as any layman in the land, remarked to me one day on the existence of this strong religious sensibility in the children of the Pilgrims, and asked me what I thought should be done to cherish and enlarge it, we having been alarming each other with the fear that it would be exasperated by the prevalent superstition, and become transmuted, in the next generation, to something very unlike religious sensibility. We proposed great changes in domestic and social habits: less formal religious observance in families, and more genial interest in the intellectual provinces of religion: more rational promotion of health, by living according to the laws of nature, which ordain bodily exercise and mental refreshment. We proposed that new temptations to walking, driving, boating, &c. should be prepared, and the delights of natural scenery laid open much more freely than they are: that social amusements of every kind should be encouraged, and all religious restraints upon speech and action removed: in short, that spontaneousness should be reverenced and approved above all things, whatever form it may take. Of course, this can only be done by those who do approve and reverence spontaneousness: but I am confident that there are enough of them, in the very heart of the most ascetic society in America, to make it unreasonable that they should any longer succumb to the priests and devotees of the community.

Symptoms of the breaking out of the true genial spirit of liberty were continually delighting me. A Unitarian clergyman, complaining of the superstition of the body to which he belonged, while they were perpetually referring to their comparative freedom, observed, "We are so bent on standing fast in our liberty, that we don't get on." Another remarked upon an eulogy bestowed on some one as a man and a Christian: "as if," said the speaker, "the Christian were the climax! as if it were not much more to be a man than a Christian!"

The way in which religion is made an occupation by women, testifies not only to the vacuity which must exist when such a mistake is fallen into, but to the vigour with which the religious sentiment would probably be carried into the great objects and occupations of life, if such were permitted. I was perpetually struck with this when I saw women braving hurricane, frost, and snow, to flit from preaching to preaching; and laying out the whole day among visits for prayer and religious excitement, among the poor and the sick. I was struck with this when I saw them labouring at their New Testament, reading superstitiously a daily portion of that which was already too familiar to the ear to leave any genuine and lasting impression, thus read. Extraordinary instances met my knowledge of both clergymen and ladies making the grossest mistakes about conspicuous facts of the gospel history, while reading it in daily portions for ever. It is not surprising that such a method of perusal should obviate all real knowledge of the book: but it is astonishing that those who feel it to be so should not change their methods, and begin at length to learn that which they have all their lives been vainly trusting that they knew.

The wife of a member of Congress, a conscientious and religious woman, judges of persons by one rule,—whether they are "pious." I could never learn how she applied this; nor what she comprehended under her phrase. She told me that she wished her husband to leave Congress. He was no longer a young man, and it was time he was thinking of saving his soul. She could not, after long conversation on this subject, realise the idea that religion is not an affair of occupation and circumstance, but of principle and temper; and that, as there is no more important duty than that of a member of Congress, there is no situation in which a man can attain a higher religious elevation, if the spirit be in him.

The morality and religion of the people of the United States have suffered much by their being, especially in New England, an ostensibly religious community. There will be less that is ostensible and more that is genuine, as they grow older. They are finding that it is the possession of the spirit, and not the profession of the form, which makes societies as well as individuals religious. All they have to do is to assert their birth-right of liberty; to be free and natural. They need have no fear of licence and irreligion. The spirit of their forefathers is strong in them: and, if it were not, the spirit of Humanity is in them; the very sanctum of religion. The idea of duty (perverted or unperverted) is before them in all their lives; and the love of their neighbour is in all their hearts. As surely then as they live and love, they will be religious. What they have to look to is that their religion be free and pure.