e valley. The county Leitrim-man was certainly a little
too much addicted to Santa Cruz, and he was accused of always visiting
his romantic chapel after a debauch. Of course, he was but little
pleased with Joel's remark on the present occasion; and being, like a
modern newspaper, somewhat more vituperative than logical, he broke out
as related.

"Jamie," continued Joel, too much accustomed to Mike's violence to heed
it, "it does seem to me a hardship to be obliged to frequent a church
of which a man's conscience can't approve. Mr. Woods, though a native
colonist, is an Old England parson, and he has so many popish ways
about him, that I am under considerable concern of _mind_"--
concern, of _itself_, was not sufficiently emphatic for one of
Joel's sensitive feelings--"I am under considerable _concern of
mind_ about the children. They _sit under_ no other preaching;
and, though Lyddy and I do all we can to gainsay the sermons, as soon
as meetin' is out, some of it _will_ stick. You may worry the best
Christian into idolatry and unbelief, by parseverance and falsehood.
Now that things look so serious, too, in the colonies, we ought to be
most careful."

Jamie did not clearly understand the application of the present state
of the colonies, nor had he quite made up his mind, touching the merits
of the quarrel between parliament and the Americans. As between the
Stuarts and the House of Hanover, he was for the former, and that
mainly because he thought them Scotch, and it was surely a good thing
for a Scotchman to govern England; but, as between the _Old_
countries and the _New_, he was rather inclined to think the
rights of the first ought to predominate; there being something opposed
to natural order, agreeably to his notions, in permitting the reverse
of this doctrine to prevail. As for presbyterianism, however, even in
the mitigated form of New England church government, he deemed it to be
so much better than episcopacy, that he would have taken up arms, old
as he was, for the party that it could be made to appear was fighting
to uphold the last. We have no wish to mislead the reader. Neither of
the persons mentioned, Mike included, actually _knew_ anything of
the points in dispute between the different sects, or churches,
mentioned; but only _fancied_ themselves in possession of the
doctrines, traditions, and authorities connected with the subject.
These fancies, however, served to keep alive a discussion that soon ha