cases to-day. What a remarkable respite from cholera this year, all over the country!

My "heft," as the Yankees say, has increased to 164 lbs. At Hartford I visited with pleasure the only original portraits of Pres. Edwards and his saintly wife. They are in the Edwards family. I also saw the Charter-Oak lying in massive glory on the earth: "The Charter Oak, it was the tree, that balked his sacred majesty." I have never seen so much of the country and everyday life of New England, as this summer, and it has been with increased respect. The average of domestic comfort and even refinement I believe to be unequalled in the world. We talk of Scotland, and justly; but Scotland has thousands of squalid peat-smoky hovels, where the best fare is oatmeal-porridge. There is nothing of this in Yankee-land, but by importation.

NEW YORK, September 17, 1856.

I am less surprised than pained by the tidings you give me. Requiescit in pace. My recollections go back with a sad pleasure to the old Sixth St. house. What friendly, long-continued, unvarying kindness to us and ours! What shadows flit along the back-ground-some friends and some only acquaintances-and how many gone!

It is a trial to me not to be able to go to the funeral of one of the truest friends I ever had. I have notice of an invalid passing through town, who makes an appointment with me for that very day; and the circumstances are important and delicate. You will now comprehend a feeling of family-headship, which comes heavily over one, upon the departure of a last surviving parent.

[I subjoin a letter written on the same afflicting event to a sister of my mother.]

NEW YORK, September 25, 1856.

It was impossible for me to hear of the departure of your beloved sister, without thinking very much of you. Few persons, even of the connexion, have been with her so constantly during her decline. Perhaps none on earth knew her better. Naturally, therefore, your sorrow must be great.

Among the consolatoins which you have so richly, one is the knowledge that our dear and valued friend was esteemed by so large a circle. No one of my whole acquaintance was ever more spared the deformities and disagreeable points of old age; in this resembling your father, whom I well remember, as the sweetest looking old gentleman I ever saw. Then you have the pleasing reflection for life, that it was placed in your power to minister

with sisterly affection, in the dwelling and at the couch of one whom you loved. But, above all, we must be consoled by the bright hope which we entertain, concerning the present and future happiness of our deceased sister. Though a silent and humble, she was a sincere and a consistent Christian. Her trust was in the Divine Saviour of sinners, to the rejection of all self-righteous merits. This faith diffused serenity over her closing hours. Little as is revealed to us concerning the details of the eternal blessedness, we know that the souls of the righteous are with the Lord, and that those who are absent from the body are present with the Lord.

It is a source of great comfort to those of us who survive, that your sister was not content to cherish religious sentiments in her private thoughts, but spontaneously added herself to the Lord's witnesses, by becoming a communicant in his Church.

How natural it is for our minds to go back to those who are gone! Where are our parents, and the religious teachers of our youth? Where are our own companions? Well do I remember Mr. Hall, with that spare, and dignified, and gentle form which belonged to him. My dear friend, "The fashion of this world passeth away." May we find grace to appear clad in the righteousness of Christ at his coming!

NEW YORK, September 30, 1856.

A letter of my father (1809) has turned up, in which he states that I had been at school a week. I remember it well; it was to "Madam Thomson," in Lombard street, [Philadelphia.] A sort of self-pity always comes over me when I think of my days of childhood; I do not detect it so much in others. It seems to me I had more unuttered distresses than most children. How long a poor child will harbour an afflictive scruple about religion, which would have been instantly dissipated by disclosure! Bush writes to me. He expatiates on the excellencies of Howe, Owen, and Burroughs, in precisely the terms which he would have used thirty years ago. My folks are coming in pretty fast, but many are yet absent. Mauch Chunk is looking for a pastor-not too young-man of experience; schedule of gifts-not this, not that. Webster lived and died on a stipend of $400. If it had not rained, a thousand carters were to have turned out last night for Fillmore. Within a few weeks, I hear many more voices in this state (it is very hard to say "our state") for Fillmore. Numerous private accounts speak well of Mr. Monsalvatge's preaching and labours at Carthagena. He has a great body of young Granadans on his side. He has sent me several sermons, openly printed in the city newspapers. Mr.

Pratt, late of Princeton, writes encouragingly from Bogotá. I forgot whether I wrote from Bristol about Mr. G., an accomplished Cuban gentleman, one of several persons of wealth who summer in Rhode Island. He was bred in Spain, and is an author. What is pleasing is, that he is a pious and courageous Protestant. Lecturing on Acts xv. 1-35, I find it very tough to make that Council at Jerusalem a college of Bishops, or a General Assembly, or a Synod, or a Presbytery, or a Kirk-session, or an independent congregation. The common fiction of the Church having been organized on the plan of the Synagogue is revolting" to me; incredulus odi. While the Apostles lived, they clearly had supreme authority, and they as clearly had no successors. Where they were not, Elders ordained by them had local and temporary rule. I have searched in vain for a single instance of one pastor tied to one congregation, or of the call of one congregation as necessary to orders. All the ministry, for what appears, was ministerium vagum, which the impugners of ordaining sine titulo do so eschew. My love to your environs. What a barbaric pomp about the crowning of the Czar!

P. S. October 2.--I retain the preceding in order to say that I will preserve the letters for you, and thank you for them.' All these things carry one back-back! I like the allusion to the house in 6th street. The old Philadelphia carries a great charm in my recollections. I have the only severe cold I have had in three years, and do not see how I can do duty on Sunday. At my prompting Randolph gets out a book for Business Men. I chose the subject of Clerks, and what I have written on it will probably appear also as a little tractate. Your libretto and tract were received, and would have been reviewed by me but for the heavy pressure of the above, and of completing my MS. on Sunday Schools, which went to Philadelphia yesterday.3

1 Letters of his father.

2 "The Man of Business, considered in his various relations." The contributors to this volume were Drs. Alexander, Sprague, Todd, Tyng, Ferris, and Stearns. Dr. Alexander's subject is, "The Merchant's Clerk Cheered and Counselled." This chapter was afterwards reprinted by itself, and one person sold more than a thousand copies in the stores of New York, in about four weeks. In April, 1856, Randolph published McLaren's Sermons on "Glorying in the Cross of Christ," for which Dr. A. wrote an introduction.

3 "The American Sunday-School and its adjuncts. By James W. Alexander, D. D.;" published by the American Sunday-School Union, 1856, 342 pages. In the preface he says: "More than forty years ago it was my lot to sit on an humble form in one of the earliest Sunday-Schools set up in America. In process of time I became a teacher in similar institutions; and ever since my entrance upon the Gospel ministry I have counted it an honor to work collaterally in the same cause. In attempting to promote the same ends, I have constructed and launched from the presses which now

NEW YORK, November 19, 1856.

The young woman gives very good satisfaction, and appears to like her place. She went away for one day and night without my leave. She appears to be steady and industrious; good at mending and at washing up tea-things. My wife has said nothing about baking or ironing. It is our wish to keep her during the winter.1

J

2

My sprained foot is not much better, though I go about. Thanksgiving sermon adds a somewhat to the week's writing. I intend to touch on the importance of our being united in peace with all English-speaking people. My text is Deut. xxxii. 8, to word "Adam" inclusive. Sprague's book is both valuable and entertaining. I like it all the better for the number and brevity of the articles. Some of them are quite in the manner of the late Joseph Miller, Esq. If you have not read Trench's "English Past and Present," it will give you a pleasant half-hour. What a wonderful fall we have had, for fine weather! Greatly do I feel the deprivation of walking freely, and more than ever do I sympathize with those who halt alway. Strange talk this in the papers, as if the Southern fire-eaters would not vote for Buchanan, unless after some ultra pledges on his part. I hope and pray he may give none. Dr. McCartee has come into our Presbytery, and taken the Westminster Church in 22d street. Some sermons, which I have on hand, (having preached about eight,) will perhaps grow into a book on Faith. Robinson's [Palestine] new impression puts the former three into two volumes, and adds a new third. Stewart's Brazil is not very lively, but full of information. Brazil must be a horrible country, as Portuguese is a horrible lingo. The Hungarian officer, who formerly appeared in Trenton, awakens my pity; he is now in abject mendicity-a handsome soldierly fellow too. It is a dreadful thing to be an exile in poverty. The thought is good for Thanksgiving Day.

NEW YORK, January 2, 1857. January 1st is a dies non with us, except in regard of calls,

produce the present work, more than thirty trifles, which, 'for better for worse,' have gone sailing out upon the ocean of print, some to be high and dry on the strand of oblivion, and some to be still floating on the wave, protected, like the paper-nautilus, by their very frailty." The object of this work is to prove the necessity and duty of providing for general religious education, and to show how this end is promoted by Sunday-Schools and religious reading.

This pleasantry refers to a visit from one of his correspondent's chil

dren.

2 "Annals of the American Pulpit," vols. 1 and 2.

so I now wish for you and yours a happy New Year. We had 175 calls. I am told Dr. Spring sometimes has 300. Holten's New Granada is a very entertaining book, in some places a little free. He lets you well into Granadan manners and customs. I do not see that differs materially from Wright and Garrison, save in decorum of language, when in his late book on Slavery he says: "Unless the Bible teaches my doctrine about slavery, it is not of God." A member of my church has been spending a year in North Wales. He hired a furnished house, library, &c., of ample size, with about twenty acres of pleasure-ground, for £200. The whole stood within a walled park of 400 acres, as good as his, and well-kept. He had half-a-mile of wall, ten feet high, for wall-fruit, and had every sort of fruit in plenty. In consequence of the low rent, wages, &c., he calculates that he did not add a penny to his year's expenses, though he includes the transportation, to and fro, of ten persons.

A soliciting missionary from Port Natal in South Africa, ist here; a fairspoken Scot, named Campbell. Prof. Owen of this city is about to come out with a commentary on the Gospels. He is of the Free Academy.

I lately attended high mass for the soul of Father Andrade, and saw about ten priests officiating. The incense is scarcely more than nominal. In my day, we used to get a very tolerable sniff; and in Paris, I think, I saw a dozen censers going all in a row, with a dexterous perpendicular hoist, which it must take some time to learn. Our motto for 1857 is: "Rejoice evermore.” 1

I have arrived at the 16th chapter of Acts in my exposition. Sometimes I wish no other sort of preaching had been invented. I wish I knew more about the Doverites, Derbyites, or Plymouth brethren. They seem to have made much progress among the French Protestants. An odd fish has applied to me for my life towards his "Eloquent Divines," about to appear. I have refused and derided, but experiences teach that this is no protection. This is the seventh letter at this sitting, and some of them more lengthy; this, therefore, can only be strengthy, as is the regard of, Sir, your friend and subscriber.

1 His sermon on the year-text was usually preached at the afternoon service of the first Sunday in the year. The morning service of that day had usually a reference to the annual collection made at that time for Foreign Missions. The collection on Jan. 2, 1857, amounted to $7,600. In the preceding month, the collection for Domestic Missions had been nearly $4,000. In February, 1857, the collection for the Board of Education was $4,600; in May, for Sunday-Schools, $1,300; in November, for the Bible Society, $2,600.