and cats, offal, garbage, leprous folk, lazars, magdalens. The stench, in some quarters, is mephitic. The single element of water (nota bene, not Croton) flows, and floods, and smells in a manner unmentionable. Cloacina herself must preside in and about the park and its purlieus. Nobody ever cares about this or any thing similar, for it is characteristic of a New Yorker to feel like a stranger within his gates: no esprit de corps, no responsibility. I think Unitarianism flourishes here; also its ally Swedenborgianism. The vast body of young New Englanders who are here, affect the easy young-lady philosophy of these teachers. I think there is a great deal in Hazlitt's Table Talk which would please you; scoffer as he sometimes is. The pews in the beautiful Jersey City Church are almost all taken. Their steeple is commanding, and is said to be the first object, on entering the Narrows. I have some hopes of erasing my pulpit scenery, [painted in perspective.] Sometimes I dream of resuming my old plan of a Comment on the New Testament, simple notes. Surely it is wanted. I can't feel easy under this deliverance [in General Assembly] anent Popish baptism, [as invalid.] Perhaps it is right: but to me it savours of Succession, Braminical orders, Puseyism, &c. Our "erring sister" is naughty enough, but I choke a little about "Antichrist," the "Son of Perdition," &c. Alas! I feel my own indecision, and know my own mistiness, on points which other men see as plain as Polus's sky-dragon: qu. didst ever read “Polus," in Erasmus's Colloquiæ? Every day I have to go to the pure New Testament, especially Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; as one goes to the hydrant, after coffee, tea, lemonade, beer, wine, brandy, and physic; in all which, natheless, are some true aqueous particles : βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι ἐσόπτρου, ἐν αἰνίγματι. I am yours and yours's.

NEW YORK, July 14, 1845. The hot weather makes the page so dripping, that epistolation is more onerous than common. Besides, we sat ten solid days in Presbytery; on one of these fourteen hours; on another I was in the room from 3 till 10 P. M., after a morning session.

I am tired of my correspondence with the "Northern Warder,"1 and now propose to you to take it; which, by agreement, I have a right to do. Terms, a column (about) a month, by the steamer, or oftener on emergency. I will send you my files, so that you can follow in the footsteps of your illustrious predecessor. I confidently expect your acceptance by next advices.

1

1A religious newspaper published in Dundee, Scotland, for which Dr. Alexander wrote as its American correspondent, a monthly letter.

Say nothing about the thermometer. I sat up much of Sunday night in Georgia summer costume. Generally towards evening there is a breeze, especially grateful down town, but it has failed us. It was our communion, and our church is very warm, and pulpit at the south end.

My mind is led a good deal more than formerly to consider the topic of gnat-filtering and camel-bolting. With all our talk about our "Pilgrim-fathers," some of the said fathers' pills are a little too grim for me. It seems to have been an indigestion of the age in England, and bred Quakerism as well as Puritanism. It rejected mince pies and the word "Sunday" as violently as crosses and bishops. Have you lighted on some “ "Sketches of Newburyport," &c.? In 1752 one Bartlett was "dealt with" for refusing communion with the pastor, because the latter wore a "wigg." In Judge Sewall's diary, these entries: "1685, Sept. 13th. Three admitted to the church. Two wore periwigs." "1697. Mr. Noyes of Salem wrote a treatise on periwigs, &c." “1708. Aug. 20. Mr. Cheever died. The welfare of the province was much upon his heart. He abominated periwigs." John Eliot, the Indian apostle, attributed King Philip's war to a judgment on periwigs. My father remembers the birth of a calf in Rockbridge, with an extraordinary tuft or top-knot: it was voted by the good people to be a monition of heaven against a prevailing mode of dressing women's hair. A Ruling Elder, being at Saratoga, set his face very sourly against the playing of nine-pins for exercise: the camel which he swallowed was something more robust.

Clirehugh, hairdresser, is a character. I never saw a man with a more decided gentlemanly air, quiet, dignified, easy, deferential. He is a collector of coins, has a volume made of all the Tartans of the different Highland clans and families, has all the Scotch music ever issued, gives lectures on Burns, with songs, and has a world of old engravings. He cuts one's hair with the gravity of an inquisitor, and talks literature and vertu. The modern schools are all humbugs. and Greek; the rest will come of course. time on a dozen branches, and he misses the lingoes: and if he misses a fair grounding in them from 10 to 13, he never gets it. In hundreds of pupils whom I have examined and taught, I never knew an exception.

Teach a boy Latin
But fritter up his

NEWARK, August 30, 1845.

For a time I did not know of your return, and then I was jaunting about in regions where for the most part writing facilities are not easy to get. My journeys afford no journals. The

whole thing was somewhat dull, especially as the burning drought, up the North River, has been universal. They are longer about our church [painting, &c.] than I had thought, and I propose to charter the cellar [basement] after to-morrow. We have made a clean riddance of the fresco painting, which had become a Nehushtan, [2 Kings, xviii. 4,] with some of the mothers in our corner of the vineyard. I traversed the Great Britain, a wonderful piece of hardware. The British steamers are intensely filthy compared with ours; and I learn that the observation is true of all their shipping. She has twenty-four fire-places, and burns 100 tons of coal per diem. When the last touch is put on, she will have cost $600,000. I am informed by one who pretends to know, that Cogswell is going on laboriously, making out the catalogue of the great Library, which Astor is to found; after which he is to go to Europe and realize the plan. We hope to re-open our house about the 12th prox. This is a beautiful town, and, near as it is to New York, is remarkable for quiet and honesty. I am at the house of three maiden ladies, at a corner, in a thinly-built part of the town; yet they have never had any fastening to their windows, or their side-door. I have not rallied as much as I need to do, to encounter another campaign. My New York experiment is by no means tried: but as I never did any thing with more wish to do right, so I now endeavour to cast myself on the Master, for the result. Yesterday I came from Staten Island. Every time I visit that delightful isle, I perceive it to be unequalled as a summer retreat; such variety of coast and prospects, such numerous drives on roads almost uniformly shaded with rows of trees, such graceful ups and downs, and green recesses, and such a feeling of remoteness from the world, though you are but an hour from the city, that I should like of all things to have a house there, and go to town every day in summer. This is done by several scores of New York merchants, &c. I saw the coffer-dam, at Caldwell's, which they are making around Capt. Kidd's vessel; $60,000 have been expended already. I saw the ruins of Anthony's Nose; they have blown the nose so hardly, that no rhinoplastic means can ever restore it.

NEWARK, September 1, 1845.

I fear my letter of this morning was as vinegar upon nitre;" for, five minutes after mailing it, I heard the news of your sister's death, and tried to get it out of the office, but in vain. Had I learnt the melancholy tidings earlier, I should certainly have hastened to the funeral: as it is, I have searched the papers in vain for the date. O what a change in your mother's household, and what a shade over her hearth! Your brothers have really lost a

guardian angel, at least from this world. Anna's qualities come very freshly before me. She was certainly a marked character. I do think I never knew any person of more honesty, truth, selfdenial, charity, or liberality. Her standard was high, and she judged fellow-Christians severely; but she judged justly in this, and condemned herself in full measure. I forbear to say what you have lost, or to indulge in ordinary condolence. God grant that this renewed call on your family may be blessed to those who remain, especially to your mother.

These gathering shades on our path, as we go onward, tell us that "the night cometh." I look back to the days of Sixth street, [his earlier visits to Philadelphia,] and my eyes fill with unaccustomed tears. What manner of persons ought we to be, &c.? How many of our cares and anxieties are very vain, when seen in the light of coming things! Under a gracious influence, our character is no doubt formed by successive dispensations of this kind. It is a new immersion, and we come out with a graver tinge. I feel unusually serious under this sudden news; and as yet know no particulars.

NEW YORK, September 25, 1845.

I should feel better and stronger, if I had taken some bonafide distant jaunts, which the state of my family did not allow. The Boston people have the good sense to put their ministers' vacation into the call as a matter of claim. In many of our congregations there is enough of the croaking sort to grudge even that recreation to a minister, which a humane drayman would give to his horse. I have a presentation copy of [Rev. Mr.] Lewis's [of Scotland] Impressions of the American churches. He censures right and left. Our preaching, in particular, he describes as characterized by want of animation and earnestness. He is very severe on slavery and democracy. In fine, very little pleases him. There is, throughout, a very offensive air of selfsufficiency and patronage. Dr. thinks there never was among our churches so general an indifference; that ministers give undue value to learning, and less than is due to piety; that such men as Payson and Nettleton were of a generation, of whom we have not one left. Lewis speaks of the total desuetude into which pastoral visiting has fallen. Cheap literature blasts religious reading. I seldom see a young professor with a spiritual book. Church extension goes on coldly. We are not quite as far behindhand, as to new churches, as Philadelphia, but we add them by threes and fours, when we should by twenties and thirties. Vacant ministers swarm in our cities, beseeching one for places, instead of rushing into the wild West and South, as

was done by the McKennies, Henrys, Blairs, Todds, Grahams, and Davieses, who founded our church. I feel the justice of Lewis's remarks on this topic, when contrasting our lethargy with the actual state of the Scotch churches. I don't wonder at the sympathy he felt with the Methodists.

NEW YORK, October 3, 1845.

Heavy rains. I have seen specimens of words and sentences, printed by the new magnetic telegraph; it works by keys, like a piano. Music is well off here; Ole Bull, Templeton, and de Meyer. One of our missionaries in India is succeeding well in teaching Hindoo boys to read the Hebrew. Its connexion with Arabic renders it both easy and desirable. Rankin, our most valuable missionary there, will have to come back; he is almost dead. Austin Dickinson thinks he has such arrangements with news-editors, as to ensure the publication of any religious paragraph, in 40,000 copies of secular prints. This is worth consid ering. He is very avid of scraps. Send me for him a bit of a sermon, and you may do good. I am just from Monthly Concert. I think our average of collection at it slowly rises. Bush goes the whole Swedenborgian figure. Some of his revelations are not so very fascinating; as of people's being conscious in their coffins, thinking themselves on earth, while they are in heaven.

One of the great Christian problems of the age seems to me to be how to carry the gospel to the thousands, in cities, who will not enter any church. Pews are high. Or they are not dressed well enough. An effort is making to establish minor religious meetings, for such purposes, here and there, all over the city. It is a fine scheme, though not a new one, being that of the old Evangelical Society of our boyhood.' But its simplicity and homeliness gives it a Bible-look. When shall we come down from our stilts, and be in earnest with a perishing world? Decorum and conservatism do not rank as the most needed

virtues just now. Lewis justly charges our church with want of aggressive power in the cities. We have lost much by stiffness. A covenanter minister said to me, last week, and I had thought it myself, "If your church had only allowed the 'Old Psalms' and a few such things, to old-country people, on their coming here, our church would by this time have had no existence here." I did not hear Wines's Lectures, but he was very well patronized.

1 Described in Life of Dr. Archibald Alexander, chap. xii. Dr. J. W. Alexander gave some thoughts on "Poverty and Crime in Cities," in the Repertory, October, 1845.