newood. On one side a rude platform was erected to
accommodate the preachers, fifteen of whom attended this meeting,
and with very short intervals for necessary refreshment and
private devotion, preached in rotation, day and night, from
Tuesday to Saturday.

When we arrived, the preachers were silent; but we heard issuing
from nearly every tent mingled sounds of praying, preaching,
singing, and lamentation. The curtains in front of each tent
were dropped, and the faint light that gleamed through the white
drapery, backed as it was by the dark forest, had a beautiful and
mysterious effect, that set the imagination at work; and had the
sounds which vibrated around us been less discordant, harsh, and
unnatural, I should have enjoyed it; but listening at the corner
of a tent, which poured forth more than its proportion of
clamour, in a few moments chased every feeling derived from
imagination, and furnished realities that could neither be
mistaken or forgotten.

Great numbers of persons were walking about the ground, who
appeared like ourselves to be present only as spectators; some
of these very unceremoniously contrived to raise the drapery of
this tent, at one comer, so as to afford us a perfect view of
the interior.

The floor was covered with straw, which round the sides was
heaped in masses, that might serve as seats, but which at
that moment were used to support the heads and the arms of the
close-packed circle of men and women who kneeled on the floor.

Out of about thirty persons thus placed, perhaps half a dozen
were men. One of these, a handsome looking youth of eighteen
or twenty, kneeled just below the opening through which I looked.
His arm was encircling the neck of a young girl who knelt beside
him, with her hair hanging dishevelled upon her shoulders, and
her features working with the most violent agitation; soon after
they both fell forward on the straw, as if unable to endure in
any other attitude the burning eloquence of a tall grim figure
in black, who, standing erect in the centre, was uttering with
incredible vehemence an oration that seemed to hover between
praying and preaching; his arms hung stiff and immoveable by
his side, and he looked like an ill-constructed machine, set
in action by a movement so violent, as to threaten its own
destruction, so jerkingly, painfully, yet rapidly, did his
words tumble out; the kneeling circle ceasing not to call in
every variety of tone on the name of