ee a
house that promises comfortable lodging and entertainment, they
enter there, and say to the good woman of the house, "Sister,
shall I pray with you?" If the answer be favourable, and it is
seldom otherwise, he instals himself and his horse till after
breakfast the next morning. The best meat, drink, and lodging
are his, while he stays, and he seldom departs without some
little contribution in money for the support of the crucified and
suffering church. Is it not strange that "the most intelligent
people in the world" should prefer such a religion as this, to a
form established by the wisdom and piety of the ablest and best
among the erring sons of men, solemnly sanctioned by the nation's
law, and rendered sacred by the use of their fathers?

It would be well for all reasoners on the social system to
observe steadily, and with an eye obscured by no beam of
prejudice, the result of the experiment that is making on the
other side of the Atlantic. If I mistake not, they might learn
there, better than by any abstract speculation, what are the
points on which the magistrates of a great people should dictate
to them and on what points they should be left freely to their
own guidance, I sincerely believe, that if a fire-worshipper, or
an Indian Brahmin, were to come to the United States, prepared to
preach and pray in English, he would not be long without a "very
respectable congregation."

The influence of a religion, sanctioned by the government, could
in no country, in the nineteenth century, interfere with the
speculations of a philosopher in his closet, but it might, and
must, steady the weak and wavering opinions of the multitude.
There is something really pitiable in the effect produced by the
want of this rudder oar. I knew a family where one was a
Methodist, one a Presbyterian, and a third a Baptist; and
another, where one was a Quaker, one a declared Atheist, and
another an Universalist. These are all females, and all moving
in the best society that America affords; but one and all of them
as incapable of reasoning on things past, present, and to come,
as the infants they nourish, yet one and all of them perfectly
fit to move steadily and usefully in a path marked out for them.
But I shall be called an itinerant preacher myself if I pursue
this theme.

As I have not the magic power of my admirable friend, Miss
Mitford, to give grace and interest to the humblest rustic
details, I must not venture to l