n fat," but also a pocket-book through
which millions of dollars were passing daily in an easy and
comfortable flow, to the great advantage of many of his
fellow-creatures no less than himself; and somehow or other he was
pig-headed in the idea that the Bible and the Ten Commandments
had something to do with that stability of things which made this
necessary flow easy and secure.

He was slow-moulded, accurate, and fond of security; and was of
opinion that nineteen centuries of Christianity ought to have settled
a few questions so that they could be taken for granted, and were not
to be kept open for discussion.

Moreover, Mr. Van Astrachan having read the accounts of the first
French revolution, and having remarked all the subsequent history of
that country, was confirmed in his idea, that pitching every thing
into pi once in fifty years was no way to get on in the affairs of
this world.

He had strong suspicions of every thing French, and a mind very ill
adapted to all those delicate reasonings and shadings and speculations
of which Mr. Charlie Ferrola was particularly fond, which made every
thing in morals and religion an open question.

He and his portly wife planted themselves, like two canons of the
sanctuary, every Sunday, in the tip-top highest-priced pew of the
most orthodox old church in New York; and if the worthy man sometimes
indulged in gentle slumbers in the high-padded walls of his slip, it
was because he was so well assured of the orthodoxy of his minister
that he felt that no interest of society would suffer while he was off
duty. But may Heaven grant us, in these days of dissolving views and
general undulation, large armies of these solid-planted artillery on
the walls of our Zion!

Blessed be the people whose strength is to sit still! Much needed are
they when the activity of free inquiry seems likely to chase us out of
house and home, and leave us, like the dove in the deluge, no rest for
the sole of our foot.

Let us thank God for those Dutch-Reformed churches; great solid
breakwaters, that stand as the dykes in their ancestral Holland to
keep out the muddy waves of that sea whose waters cast up mire and
dirt.

But let us fancy with what quakings and shakings of heart Mrs.
Follingsbee must have sought the alliance of these tremendously solid
old Christians. They were precisely what she wanted to give an air of
solidity to the cobweb glitter of her state. And we can also see
how necessary