a pitch far beyond the highest point reached by
the best-cultivated voice. His fancy naturally capricious, was indulged
without restraint; yet not being a learned or well-read man, he mistook
words for ideas, and hence employed without stint all the terms in his
vocabulary for the commonest thoughts. He believed, too, like most of
his brotherhood, that excitement and agitation were necessary to
conversion and of the essence of religion; and this, with a proneness
to delight in the music and witchery of his own wonderful voice, made
Mr. Novus an eccentric preacher, and induced him often to excel at
camp-meetings, the very extravagances of his clerical brethren, whom
more than once he has ridiculed and condemned at my fireside.

The camp-meeting was, in fact, too great a temptation for my friend's
temperament, and the very theater for the full display of his
magnificent voice; and naturally, this afternoon, off he set at a
tangent, interrupting the current of his sermon by extemporaneous bursts
of warning, entreaty and exhortation. Here is something like his
discourse--yet done by me in a _subdued tone_--as, I repeat, are most
extravaganzas of the ecclesiastical and spiritual sort, not only here,
but in all other parts of the work.

"My text, dear hearers," said he, "on this auspicious, and solemn, and
heaven-ordered occasion, is that exhortation of the inspired apostle,
'Walk worthy of your vocation.'

"And what, my dear brethren, what do you imagine and conjecture our holy
penman meant by 'walking?' Think ye he meant a physical walking, and a
moving, and a going backward and forward thus? (represented by Mr. N.'s
proceeding, or rather marching, _a la militaire_, several times from end
to end of the staging). No, sirs!--it was not a literal walking and
locomotion, a moving and agitating of the natural legs and limbs. No,
sirs!--no!--but it was a moral, a spiritual, a religious, ay! yes! a
philosophical and metaphorically figurative walking, our holy apostle
meant!

"Philosophic, did I say? Yes: philosophic _did_ I say. For religion is
the most philosophical thing in the universe--ay! throughout the whole
expansive infinitude of the divine empire. Tell me, deluded infidels and
mistaken unbelievers! tell me, ain't philosophy what's according to the
consistency of nature's regular laws? and what's more onsentaneous and
homogeneous to man's sublimated moral nature, than religion? Yes! tell
me! Yes! yes! I am for a philos