very county and town in the United States, for the reception of the
aged, infirm, and destitute poor, many of whom have fled to our shores
to escape the poverty and wretchedness of their condition at home.

In the United States there is no church establishment or ecclesiastical
authority founded by government. Public worship is maintained either by
voluntary associations and contributions, or by trusts and donations of
a charitable origin.

Now, I think it safe to say, that a greater portion of the people of the
United States attend public worship, decently clad, well behaved, and
well seated, than of any other country of the civilized world. Edifices
of religion are seen everywhere. Their aggregate cost would amount to an
immense sum of money. They are, in general, kept in good repair, and
consecrated to the purposes of public worship. In these edifices the
people regularly assemble on the Sabbath day, which, by all classes, is
sacredly set apart for rest from secular employment and for religious
meditation and worship, to listen to the reading of the Holy Scriptures,
and discourses from pious ministers of the several denominations.

This attention to the wants of the intellect and of the soul, as
manifested by the voluntary support of schools and colleges, of churches
and benevolent institutions, is one of the most remarkable
characteristics of the American people, not less strikingly exhibited in
the new than in the older settlements of the country. On the spot where
the first trees of the forest were felled, near the log cabins of the
pioneers, are to be seen rising together the church and the
school-house. So has it been from the beginning, and God grant that it
may thus continue!

"On other shores, above their mouldering towns,
In sullen pomp, the tall cathedral frowns;
Simple and frail, our lowly temples throw
Their slender shadows on the paths below;
Scarce steal the winds, that sweep the woodland tracks,
The larch's perfume from the settler's axe,
Ere, like a vision of the morning air,
His slight-framed steeple marks the house of prayer.
Yet Faith's pure hymn, beneath its shelter rude,
Breathes out as sweetly to the tangled wood,
As where the rays through blazing oriels pour
On marble shaft and tessellated floor."

Who does not admit that this unparalleled growth in prosperity and
renown is the result, under Providence, of the union of these States
under a