as Denver, beyond the prairies and the plains, as it were, welcomed by the houses of God, which are the most conspicuous buildings of the place; and then, again, a few miles further on, as you pass through the first gorge of the mountains at Golden City, to find yourself surrounded by a cluster of three churches; and when you have got up among the little mining towns perched like eagles' nests in the clefts of the mountains, still to find that the object which first of all attracts your attention is the little tower or spire, albeit of wood, that marks the building consecrated to God's service. I was astonished at the amount collected in the offertory at many of the churches in which I attended the service. I found the Sunday as well observed in America as I ever saw it anywhere else. I know that there are some facts to be set down on the other side, but they do not counterbalance what I have just been pointing And so the conclusion that I arrived at on this question was, that I should have liked some direct Christian teaching in the primary schools, and still more in the grammar schools; but this I knew was impossible. And on the whole I was not dissatisfied with the results of the American system of education on the religious character of the people."

out.

One of the things needed in this country is a university in every county of England, a university at every man's door. At Chicago there is a university, including: 1, an academy for boys above twelve; 2, a college with three courses-classical, scientific, special; and 3, a law department. The buildings and situation on the shore of the lake are unsurpassed in beauty, convenience, and healthfulness. It was founded in 1855, and yet has a library of 25,000 volumes, and the largest refracting telescope in America. The library includes now the magnificent collections of Hengstenberg and Schultz.

At Chicago, as throughout the northern portion of the United States, the general tone in reference to religion is healthy. It is not, as so often here, a theme tabooed. Religion is treated with respect. Theology, religious life, the acts of ecclesiastical assemblies, are prominent in the newspapers. The ministers of religion are in general esteem. There is a spirit of hearing. A recent visitor to the States was invited to go a few miles-only 150 (!)—to hear an eloquent preacher. In America there is no grain of sand in the eye-a perpetual irritant-no Established Church, consequently good feeling among ministers and churches is general, always excepting the "priests." There were close on 200 churches in Chicago-about one church to every 1,500 people! Leaving out the aged, sick, and infants, persons necessarily unable to attend, we may say that voluntaryism in religion at Chicago had kept pace with the population. Of no place in

Great Britain is this true; while in London the disproportion between persons that could attend public worship and church accommodation is simply shocking. In a large hall in a public building in La Salle Street, there was for merchants and others a noon-day prayer meeting, largely attended and sustained with immense enthusiasm. The Sunday-schools at Chicago were, are, will be again, vastly better in every way than any Sunday-schools in this country. They are attended by all classes of society, of all ages, and by all religious denominations. The Chicago Sundayschools seem to have been on the Unsectarian principle. In 1867 there were seventy-five in the city; and one held in a Congregational church had on a particular Sunday-when a certain English visitor was present-998 scholars in attendance, and eightyfour teachers. The Young Men's Christian Association was more like a young men's club than anything else, surrounded of course by a healthy religious atmosphere, and it had a magnificent club house. It contained fifty bed-rooms, at a moderate rental; a dining-room, with meals at a simply equitable charge; readingroom, bath-room, spacious gymnasium, class-room, great hall for lectures and music, offices to secure situations for young men and employés for masters; and one of the Association's organisations was for the relief of incidental poverty and sickness.

Enough! May this great city speedily rise again out of its ashes! With its noble people we are at this moment in affectionate and earnest sympathy. May He, who doubtless in infinite wisdom and love has permitted this tempest of fire, enable them to learn the lessons well-whatsoever they may be-and bring them out of the fire" as silver tried in a furnace of earth purified seven times." "I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, it is my people; and they shall say, the Lord is my God."

MY WIFE AND I; OR, HARRY HENDERSON'S HISTORY. BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE,

Author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin,” “Minister's Wooing," &c.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.-MAKING LOVE TO ONE'S FATHER-IN-LAW. LIFE has many descents from romance to reality that are far from agreeable. But every exalted hour, and every charming passage in our mortal pilgrimage, is a luxury that has to be paid for with something disagreeable. The German story teller, Tieck, has a

pretty legend of a magical region where were marvellous golden castles, and fountains, and flowers, and bright-winged elves, living a life of ceaseless pleasure; but all this was visible only to the anointed eyes of some favoured mortal to whom was granted the vision. To all others this elfin country was a desolate wilderness. I had had given me within a day or two that vision of Wonderland, and wandered-scarce knowing whether in the body or out-in its enchanted bowers. The first exhilarating joy of the moment when every mist rose up from the landscape of love; when there was perfect understanding, perfect union, perfect rest; was something that transfigured life. But having wandered in this blessed country and spoken the tongue of angels, I was now to return to every-day regions and try to translate its marvels and mysteries into the vernacular of mortals. In short, I was to wait upon Mr. Van Arsdel and ask of him the hand of his daughter.

Now however charming, with suitable encouragement, to make love to a beautiful lady, making love to a prospective father-in-law is quite another matter.

Men are not as a general thing inclined to look sympathetically on other men in love with any fine woman of their acquaintance, and are rather provoked than otherwise to have them accepted. "What any woman can see in that fellow!" is a sort of standing problem. But possessors of daughters are, a fortiori, enemies ready made to every pretender to their hands. My own instincts made me aware of this, and I could easily fancy that had I a daughter like Eva I should be ready to shoot the fellow who came to take her from me.

Mr. Van Arsdel, it is true, had showed me, hitherto, in his quiet way, marked favour. He was seldom much of a talker, though a shrewd observer of all that was said by others. He had listened silently to all our discussions and conversations in Ida's library, and oftentimes to the reading of the articles I had subjected to the judgment of the ladies; sometimes, though very rarely, interposing little bits of common sense criticism which showed keen good sense, and knowledge of the world.

Mr. Van Arsdel, like many of our merchant princes, had come from a rural district, and an early experience of the hard and frugal life of a farm. Good sense, acute observation, an ability to take wide and clear views of men and things, and an incorruptible integrity, had been the means of his rise to his present elevation. He was a true American man in another respect, and that was his devotion to women. In America, where we have a clear democracy, women hold that influence over men that is exerted by the aristocracy in other countries. They are something to be looked up to, petted, and courted. The human mind seems to require some

thing of this kind. The faith and fealty that the middle-class Englishman has toward his nobility is not all snobbery. It has something of poetry in it-it is his romance of life. Up in those airy regions where walk the nobility he is at liberty to fancy some higher, finer types of manhood and womanhood than he sees in the ordinary ways of life, and he adores the unseen and unknown. The American life would become vulgar and common-place did not a chivalrous devotion to women come in to supply the place of recognised orders of nobility. The true democrat sees no superior in rank among men, but all women are by courtesy his superiors.

Mr. Van Arsdel had married a beauty and a belle. When she chose him from among a crowd of suitors he could scarcely believe his own eyes or ears, or help marvelling at the wondrous grace of the choice; and, as he told her so, Mrs. Van Arsdel believed him, and their subsequent life was arranged on that understanding. The Van Arsdel house was an empire where women ruled, though as the queen was a pretty, motherly woman, her reign was easy and flowery.

Mr. Van Arsdel delighted in the combinations of business for its own sake. It was his form of mental activity. He liked the effort, the strife, the care, the labour, the success of winning; but when money was once won he cared not a copper for all those forms of luxury and show, for the pride, pomp, and circumstance of fashion,. which were all in all to his wife.

In his secret heart he considered the greater part of the proceedings in and about his splendid establishment as a rather expensive species of humbug; but then it was what the women wanted and desired, and he took it all quietly and without comment. I felt somewhat nervous when I asked a private interview with him in Ida's library.

"I have told mamma, Harry," whispered Eva, "and she is beginning to get over it."

Mrs. Van Arsdel received me with an air of patient endurance, as if I had been the toothache or any of the other inevitable inflictions of life, Miss Alice was distant and reserved, and only Ida was cordial.

I found Mr. Van Arsdel dry, cold, and wary, not in the least encouraging any sentimental effusion, and, therefore, I proceeded to speak to him with as matter-of-fact directness as if the treaty related to a bag of wool.

"Mr. Van Arsdel, I love your daughter. She has honoured me so far as to accept of my love, and I have her permission to ask your consent to our marriage."

He took off his spectacles, wiped them deliberately while I was speaking, and coughed drily.

"Mr. Henderson," he said, "I have always had a great respect for you so far as I knew you, but I must confess I don't know why I should want to give you my daughter."

"Simply, sir, because in the order of nature you must give her to somebody, and I have the honour to be chosen by her."

"Eva could do better, her mother thinks."

"I am aware that Miss Van Arsdel could marry a man with more money than I have, but none who would love her more or be more devoted to her happiness. Besides, I have the honour to be the man of her choice, and perhaps you may be aware that Miss Eva is a young lady of very decided preferences.

He smiled drily, and looked at me with a funny twinkle in his eye.

"Eva has always been used to having her own way," he remarked. "Then, my dear sir, I must beg leave to say that the choice of a companion for life is a place where a lady has a good right to insist on her own way."

“Well, Mr. Henderson, you may be right. But perhaps her parents ought to insist that she shall not make an imprudent marriage."

“Mr. Van Arsdel, I do not conceive that I am proposing an imprudent marriage. I have not wealth to offer, it is true, but I have a reasonable prospect of being able to support a wife and family. I have good firm health, I have good business habits, I have a profession which already assures me a certain income, and an influen tial position in society."

"What do you call your profession?"

"Literature," I replied.

He looked sceptical, and I added-"Yes, Mr. Van Arsdel, in our day literature is a profession in which one may hope for both fame and money."

"It is rather an uncertain one, isn't it?" said he.

"I think not. A business which proposes to supply a great, permanent, constantly increasing demand you must admit to be a good one. The demand for current reading is just as wide and steady as any demand of our life, and the men who undertake to supply it have as certain a business as those who undertake to supply cotton, cloth, or railroad iron. At this day fortunes are being made in and by literature."

Mr. Van Arsdel drummed on the table abstractedly.

"Now," said I, determined to speak in the language of men and things, "the case is just this: If a young man of good, reliable habits, good health, and good principles, has a capital of seventy thousand dollars invested in a fair paying business, has he not a prospect of supporting a family in comfort?"