, the wife returned to the State from which her
husband had taken her, and there obtained a divorce without his
knowledge.--To return from this digression. In the Visitation of the
Sick they have removed that individual absolution of the minister, the
wording of which is so objectionable that, if I am rightly informed, it
is rarely used by ministers in England. In the Burial of the Dead, they
have changed the two concluding prayers in those sentences which refer
to the deceased. The Commination they have entirely expunged. They have
added a full service for Visitation of Prisoners, and a Harvest
Thanksgiving; and they have provided a form of morning and evening
prayer for families.

The foregoing constitute the leading points of difference. Of course
there are many minor ones which are merely verbal, such, for instance,
as their expunging the scriptural quotation of "King of kings, Lord of
lords," from the prayer for the President, probably out of deference to
the prejudices of the Republicans, for which omission they have
partially atoned by the substitution of the grander expression of "only
Ruler of the Universe," in lieu of the more limited term "only Ruler of
Princes." To enter into all these verbal changes would be alike tedious
and useless. Enough, I trust, has been written to convey a general idea
of the most striking and interesting points of difference.

Other churches transplanted to this hemisphere seem to differ from the
parent stock most essentially. Thus I find in the almanack for 1853,
"Methodist Episcopal Church (North) 3984 ministers, and 662,315
communicants," and below them "Methodist Episcopal Church (South)"
without any return of statistics. I regret not being able to give the
reader any history of this occidental hierarchy. I do not even know the
Episcopacizing process they go through, whether it is entirely lay or
entirely clerical, or whether it is a fusion of the two. At first I
imagined it was a Wesleyan offshoot, but I can find no indication of
that fact; and, moreover, the Wesleyan is a very small body, numbering
600 ministers and 20,000 communicants. I only allude to it because it
appears to me a totally novel feature in Dissenting bodies--as
understood in England. Another curious change produced by this Western
climate is, that it turns all my Presbyterian friends instrumentally
musical. I do not remember entering any of their churches without
finding an organ, and in many instances a ver