"I'll go and see, now directly; but tell me first you are really not hurt at all!" Constance assured him that she had merely suffered from fright, and begged him again to go and see that they were not harmed. Quick, please, Mr. Fisher; every instant may be precious! Stop! I'll come too." And the fair speaker endeavoured to rise from her seat and accompany Horace. She failed signally; the shock had left her too weak for any such attempt at present, so she was fain to sit down, and let Horace go alone. He hurried back again to the train. A scene of indescribable confusion met his eye, now that he had time to contemplate it. The engine attached to the train appeared to have taken a spring, and to have alighted on the other side of a hedge bordering the line. There it lay, silent, but steaming, the boiler burst, and fragments of the case scattered around. The mangled body of the driver was extended on the ground close by, so hideously disfigured, that it was scarcely possible to recognize it as a human form. The tender had been forced up, and remained, half-standing, half-lying against the embankment. The coke had fallen in a shower on the ground, and a pool of boiling water surrounded the place. Horace hurried to the carriage of his mistress. After some search he succeeded in finding it. Its body had been so battered by the accident, that it was not easy to recognize at first. Doctor Everard had extricated Mrs. Somers from her perilous position, and placed her on some timber near. She sat there as composed and placid as though she had been in her own drawing-room. Greyson had not fared so well. "No; thank God she is safe!" answered Horace, eagerly. "I left her sitting under that tree beyond the bank." Mrs. Somers looked up, with a kind of meek inquiry, to the speaker, which seemed to say, "What could it matter to him to that extent whether Miss Shirley was safe or not?" The look brought Horace back to himself, and he recollected that it would be well to ask how Mrs. Somers herself had fared. "Thank you," replied the lady, coldly, "I am none the worse: but, if you would kindly make yourself useful to any of the poor sufferers around, I will go to Miss Shirley. Where do you say she is?" "Under the chestnut-tree beyond the bank." Very well. When you have done what you can, come to us there." Horace, as he turned away to obey her behests. "Is this the meek and gentle lady?" thought Doctor Everard just at this moment called to But he had not much time for thought, for our hero to come and assist him. He went immediately. Near the engine lay a man, his face burnt and scalded, and his form writhing had fallen upon his legs, and aid was required in agony. A heavy piece of the burst boiler to remove it; this the two Englishmen effected together, and the Doctor did what he could to alleviate the suffering of the poor creature; in the meantime some French surgeons had arrived on the spot, and the rest of those who were injured by the accident were placed under proper care. Horace, having nothing more to do, returned to the tree where he had left Constance, and there found a further addition to the party, viz., Greyson. Stretched at full-length on the grass lay the unfortunate man: he was uttering low, melancholy groans, and ever and anon rolled over from side to side. The sobriquet that he once owned could now no longer be said to be applicable, for the blood had deserted his cheeks, and settled in his nose. This was the organ which had most severely suffered. It appeared afterwards that the Doctor and Dean, having both been thrown from their seats to the floor of the carriage, had alternately bumped upon one another during the jolts which had preceded the final catastrophe of the accident. The last shock had come most severely upon the Dean of St. Bride's, as the Doctor's person had descended on his nose, and nearly flattened it. Miss Shirley was now quite composed, and begged Horace to take her to the scene of the accident. The meek lady, however, roused herself, and put a decided veto on this proceeding; so Constance was fain to submit, more especially as they were assured that every kind of assistance had been rendered. In the meantime a gang of labourers had arrived at the spot, and the débris of the carriages were being removed, and the line repaired. The had sunk from its position, owing to the late cause of the disaster proved to be that a sleeper rains, and a previous train had snapped and displaced the iron. This left the line ready prepared for the accident which occurred to the Brussels train, as related. In an hour's time matters were so far arranged that the party were enabled to proceed on their way, an empty train having been sent down the line to convey them. Half-an-hour later they were safely lodged in an hotel on the Place Verte. THE PURITAN MINISTER. It is nine o'clock upon a summer Sunday morning, in the year sixteen hundred and something. The sun looks down brightly on a little forest settlement, around whose expanding fields the great American wilderness recedes each day, withdrawing its bears and wolves and Indians into an ever remoter distance,-not yet so far but that a stout wooden gate at each end of the village street indicates that there is something outside which must stay outside, if possible. It would look very busy and thriving in this little place, to-day, but for the Sabbath stillness which broods over everything with almost an excess of calm. Even the smoke ascends more faintly than usual from the chimneys of these abundant log-huts and scanty framed houses, and since three o'clock yesterday afternoon not a stroke of this world's work has been done. Last night a preparatory lecture was held, and now comes the consummation of the whole week's life, in the solemn act of worship. In which settlement of the Massachusetts Colony is the great observance to pass before our eyes? If it be Cambridge village, the warning drum is beating its peaceful summons to the congregation. If it be Salem village, a bell is sounding its more ecclesiastic peal, and a red flag is simultaneously hung forth from the meeting-house, like the auction-flag of later periods, but offering in this case goods without money and beyond price. But if it be Haverhill village, then Abraham Tyler has been blowing his horn assiduously for half an hour, a service for which Abraham, each year, receives a half-pound of pork from every family in town. is stuck in the ground, ready to support the weapon; and he is girded with his bandoleer, or broad leather belt, which sustains a sword and a dozen tin cartridge-boxes. The meeting-house is the second to which the town has treated itself, the first having been "a timber fort, both strong and comely, with flat roof and battlements,"-a cannon on top, and the cannonade of the gospel down below. But this one cost the town sixty-three pounds, hard-earned pounds, and carefully expended. It is built of brick, smeared outside with clay, and finished with clay-boards, outside of all. It is about twenty-five feet square, with a chimney half the width of the building, and projecting four feet above the thatched roof. The steeple is in the centre, and the bell-rope, if they have one, hangs in the middle of the broad aisle. There are six windows, two on each of the two sides, and two more at the end, part being covered with oiled paper only, part glazed in numerous small panes. And between the windows, on the outside, hang the heads of all the wolves that have been killed in the township within the year. But the Quakers think that the wolves have cheated the parish and got inside, in sheep's clothing. The people are assembling. The Governor has passed by, with his four vergers bearing halberds before him, The French Popish ambassadors, who have just arrived from Canada, are told the customs of the place, and left to stay quietly in the Governor's house, with sweetmeats, wines, and the liberty of a private walk in the garden. The sexton has just called Be it drum, bell, or horn, which gives the for the minister, as is his duty twice every Sunsummons, we will draw near to this important day, and, removing his cocked hat, he walks building, the centre of the village, the one pub- before his superior officer. The minister enters lic edifice,-meeting-house, town-house, school- and passes up the aisle, dressed in Geneva cloak, house, watch-house, all in one. So important black skull-cap, and black gloves open at thumb is it, that no one can legally dwell more than and finger, for the better handling of his manua half-mile from it. And yet the people ride to script. He looks round upon his congregation, meeting, short though the distance be, for at a few hundred, recently seated anew for the year, yonder oaken block a wife dismounts from be- arranged according to rank and age. There are hind her husband;-and has it not, moreover, the old men in the pews beneath the pulpit. been found needful to impose a fine of forty There are the young men in the gallery, or near shillings on fast trotting to and fro? All sins the door, with ruffs, showy belts, gold and silver are not modern ones, young gentlemen. buttons, "points" at the knees, and great boots. We approach nearer still, and come among There are the young women, with "silk or tiffthe civic institutions. This is the pillory, yon- any hoods or scarfs," "embroidered or needleder the stocks, and there is a large wooden cage, worked caps," "immoderate great sleeves," a terror to evil-doers, but let us hope empty "cut works," a mystery,-" slash apparel,”— now. Round the meeting-house is a high another mystery,-"immoderate great vayles, wooden paling, to which the law permits citizens long wings," etc.,--mystery on mystery, but all to tie their horses, provided it be not done too recorded in the statutes, which forbid these near the passage-way. For at that opening splendours to persons of mean estate. There stands a sentry, clothed in a suit of armour are the wives of the magistrates in prominent which is painted black, and cost the town twenty-seats, and the grammar-school master's wife four shillings by the bill. He bears also a next them; and in each pew, close to the moth heavy matchlock musket; his rest, or iron fork, er's elbow, is the little wooden cage for the youngest child, still too young to sit alone. All boys are held too young to sit alone also; for, though the emigrants left in Holland the aged deaconess who there presided, birch in hand, to control the rising generation in Sunday meetings, yet the urchins are now herded on the pulpit and gallery staire, with four constables to guard them from the allurements of sin. And there sits Sin itself embodied in the shrinking form of some humiliated man or woman, placed on a high stool in the principal aisle, bearing the name of some dark crime written on paper and pinned to the garments, or perhaps a Scarlet Letter on the breast. 66 It may be some very special and famous effort. Perhaps Increase Mather is preaching on "The Morning Star," or on "Snow," or on "The Voice of God in Stormy Winds;" or it may be his sermon entitled " Burnings Bewailed," to improve the lesson of some great conflagration, which he attributes partly to Sabbath-breaking and partly to the new fashion of monstrous periwigs. Or it may be Cotton Mather, his son, rolling forth his resounding discourse during a thunder-storm, entitled "Brantologia Sacra,". consisting of seven separate divisions or thunderbolts, and filled with sharp lightning from Scripture and the Rabbinical lore, and Cartesian Oh, the silence of this place of worship, after natural philosophy. Just as he has proclaimed, the solemn service sets in! 'People do not "In the thunder there is the voice of the glorious sneeze or cough here in public assemblies," says God," a messenger comes hastening in, as in one writer, triumphantly, "so much as in Eng- the Book of Job, to tell him that his own house land." The warning caution, "Be short," has just been struck, and though no person is which the minister has inscribed above his study- hurt, yet the house hath been much torn and door, claims no authority over his pulpit. He filled with the lightnings. With what joy and may pray his hour, unpausing, and no one thinks power he instantly wields above his audience it long; for, indeed, at prayer-meetings four this providential surplus of excitement, remindpersons will sometimes pray an hour each,- ing one irresistibly of some scientific lecturer one with confession, one with private petitions, who has nearly blown himself up by his own a third with petitions for church and kingdom, experiments, and proceeds beaming with fresh and a fourth with thanksgiving,-neither part confidence, the full power of his compound of the quartette being for an instant confused being incontestably shown. Rising with the with the other. Then he may preach his hour, emergency, he tells them grandly, that, as he and, turning his hour-glass, may say-but that once had in his house a magnet which the thunhe will not anticipate the levity to be born in a der changed instantly from north to south, so it later century with Mather Byles-"Now, my were well if the next bolt could change their hearers, we will take another glass." stubborn souls from Satan to God. But afterward he is compelled to own that Satan also is sometimes permitted to have a hand in the thunder, which is the reason why it breaks oftener on churches than on any other buildings; and again he admits, pensively, at last, that churches and ministers' houses have undoubtedly the larger share. In short, this is the pomp and circumstance of glorious preaching. Woe to any one who shall disturb its proprieties! It is written in the statute, "If any one interrupt or oppose a preacher in season of worship, they shall be reproved by the magistrate, and on repetition shall pay £5, or stand two hours on a block four feet high, with this inscription in capitals, 'A Wanton Gospeller."" Nor this alone, but the law stands, by the minister's doctrine, even out of the meeting-house. It is but a few days since Nathaniel Hadlock was sentenced to be severely whipped for declaring that he could receive no profit from Mr. H-'s preaching; since Thomas Maule was mauled to the extent of ten stripes for declaring that Mr. H-preached lies, and that his instruction was the doctrine of devils; since even the wife of Nicholas Phelps was sentenced to pay five pounds or be whipped, for asserting that this same Mr. H-sent abroad his wolves and bloodhounds among the sheep and lambs. Truly, it is a perilous thing to attend public worship in such reverential days. However, it is equally dangerous to stay at home; there are tithing-men to look after the absentees, and any one unnecessarily absent must pay five shillings. He may be put in the stocks or in the wooden cage, if delinquent for a month together. But we must give our attention to the sermon. It is what the congregation will pronounce a large, nervous, and golden discourse," a Scriptural discourse,-like the skeleton of the seaserpent, all backbone and a great deal of that. The sermon is over. The more demoralized among the little boys, whose sleepy eyes have been more than once admonished by the hare's-foot wand of the constables-the sharp paw is used for the boys, the soft fur is kept for the smooth foreheads of drowsy maidens-look up thoroughly awakened now. Bright eyes glance from beneath silk or tiffany hoods, for a little interlude is coming. Many things may happen Questions may in this pause after the sermon. be asked of the elders now, which the elders may answer,-if they can. Some lay brother may "exercise" on a text of Scripture,-rather severe exercise, it sometimes turns out. Candidates for the church may be proposed. A baptism may take place. If it be the proper month, the laws against profaning the Sabbath may be read. The last town-regulations may be read; or, far more exciting, a new marriage may be published. Or a darker scene may follow, and some offending magistrate may be required to stand upon a bench, in his worst garments, with a foul linen cap drawn close to his eyes, and acknowledge his sins before the pious people, who reverenced him so lately. These things done, a deacon says impressively, "Brethren, now there is time for contribution; 66 wherefore, as God hath prospered you, so freely offer." Then the people in the galleries come down and march two abreast, "up one aisle and down the other," passing before the desk, where in a long pow" sit the elders and deacons. One of these holds a moneybox, into which the worshippers put their offerings, usually varying from one to five shillings, according to their ability and good-will. Some give paper pledges instead; and others give other valuables, such as "a fair gilt cup, with a cover," for the communion-service. Then comes a psalm, read, line after line, by some one appointed, out of the "Bay Psalm-Book," and sung by the people. These Psalms are sung regularly through, four every Sunday, and some ten tunes compose the whole vocal range of the congregation. Then come the words, "Blessed are they who hear the word of the Lord and keep it," and then the benediction. And then the reverend divine descends from his desk and walks down the aisle, bowing gravely right and left to his people, not one of whom stirs till the minister has gone out; and then the assembly disperses, each to his own home, unless it be some who have come from a distance, and stay to eat their cold pork and peas in the meeting-house. Roll aside the pauorama of the three-hours' Sunday service of two centuries ago, lest that which was not called wearisome in the passing prove wearisome in the delineation now. It needed all this accumulation of small details to show how widely the externals of New-England church-going have changed since those early days. But what must have been the daily life of that Puritan minister for whom this exhausting service was but one portion of the task of life! Truly, they were "pious and painful preachers" then, as I have read upon a stone in the old Watertown graveyard ;-" princely preachers" Cotton Mather calls them. He relates that Mr. Cotton, in addition to preaching on Sunday and holding his ordinary lecture every Thursday, preached thrice a week besides, on Wednesday and Thursday early in the morning, and on Saturday afternoon. He also held a daily lecture in his house, which was at last abandoned as being too much thronged, and frequent occasional days occurred, when he would spend six hours "in the word and in prayer.' On his voyage to America he being accompanied by two other ministers, they commonly had three sermons a day-one after every meal. He was a universal scholar and a walking library;" he studied twelve hours a day, and said he liked to sweeten his mouth with a piece of Calvin before he went to sleep. A fearful rate of labour; a strange, grave, quaint, ascetic, rigorous life. It seems a mystery how the Reverend Joshua Moody could have survived to write four thousand sermons, but it is no mystery why the Reverend John Mitchell was called "a truly aged young man" at thirty, especially when we consider that he was successor at Cambridge to "the holy, heavenly, sweet-affecting, and soul-ravishing Mr. Shepard," in continuance of whose labours he kept a monthly lecture, "wherein he largely handled man's misery by sin and made a most entertaining exposition of the Book of Genesis." For the minister's week-days were more arduous than his Sundays, and to have for each parish both pastor and teacher still left a formidable duty for each. He must visit families during several afternoons in every week, sending previous notice, so that children and domestics might be ready for catechizing. He was "much visited for counsel" in his own home, and must set apart one day in the week for cases of conscience, ranging from the most fine-drawn self-tormentings up to the most unnatural secret crimes. He must often go to lectures in neighbouring towns, a kind of religious dissipation which increased so fast that the Legislature at last interfered to restrict it. He must have five or six separate seasons for private prayer daily, devoting each day in the week to special meditations and intercessions,-as Monday to his family, Tuesday to enemies, Wednesday to the churches, Thursday to other societies, Friday to persons afflicted, and Saturday to his own soul. He must have private fasts, spending whole days locked in his study and whole nights prostrate on the floor. Cotton Mather "thought himself starved," unless he fasted once a month at farthest, while he often did it twice in a week. Then there were public fasts quite frequently, "because of sirs, blastings, mildews, drought, grasshoppers, caterpillars, small pox," "loss of cattle by cold and frowns of Providence." Perhaps a mouse and a snake had a battle in the neighbourhood, and the minister must expound it as "symbolizing the conflict betwixt Satan and God's poor people," the latter being the mouse triumphant. Then if there were a military expedition, the minister might think it needful to accompany it. If there were even a muster, he must open and close it with prayer, or, in his absence, the captain must officiate instead. One would naturally add to this record of labours the attendance on weddings and funerals. It is strange how few years are required to make a usage seem ancestral, or to reunite a traditional broken one. Who now remembers that our progenitors for more than a century disused religious services on both these solemn occasions? Magistrates alone could perform the marriage ceremony; though it was thought to be carrying the monopoly quite too far, when Governor Bellingham, in 1641, officiated at his own. Prayer was absolutely forbidden at funerals, as was done also by Calvin at Geneva, by John Knox in Scotland, by the English Puritans in the Westminster Assembly, and by the French Huguenots. The bell might ring, the friends might walk, two and two, to the grave; but there must be no prayer uttered. The secret was, that the traditions of the English and Romish Churches must be avoided at all sacrifices. "Doctor," said King James to a Puritan divine, "do you go barefoot because the Papists wear shoes and stockings?" Even the origin of the frequent New-England habit of eating, salt fish on Saturday is supposed to have been the fact that Roman Catholics eat it on Friday. But if there were no prayers said on these occasions, there were sermons. Mr. John Calf, of Newbury, described one specimen of funeral sermon in immortal verse : "On Sabbath day he went his way, God's house unto, that they might know God's holy will he must fulfil, For to declare a sermon rare Concerning Madam Fryer." The practice of wedding discourses was handed down into the last century, and sometimes beguiled the persons concerned into rather startling levities. For instance, when Parson Smith's daughter Mary was to marry young Mr. Cranch, -(what graceful productions of pen and pencil have come to this generation from the posterity of that union!)—the father permitted the saintly maiden to decide on her own text for the sermon, and she meekly selected, "Mary hath chosen the better part, which shall not be taken away from her," and the discourse was duly pronounced. But when her wild young sister Abby was bent on marrying a certain Squire Adams, called John, whom her father disliked and would not even invite to dinner, she boldly suggested for her text, "John came, neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and ye say he hath a devil." But no sermon stands recorded under this prefix, though Abby lived to be the wife of one President of the United States and mother of another. The Puritan minister had public duties also upon him. Indeed, for many years they virtually controlled the franchise, inasmuch as only male church-members could vote or hold office, at least in the Massachusetts Colony. Those malecontents who petitioned to enlarge the suffrage were fined and imprisoned in 1646, and even in 1664 the only amendment was by permitting non-church-members to vote on a formal certificate to their orthodoxy from the minister. The government they aimed at was not democracy, but theocracy: "God never did ordain democracy as a fit government," said Cotton. Accordingly, when Cotton and Ward framed their first code, Ward's portion was rejected by the colony as heathen, that is, based on Greek and Roman models, not Mosaic,-and Cotton's was afterwards rebuked in England as "fanatical and absurd." But the government finally established was an ecclesiastical despotism, tempered by theological controversy. In Connecticut it was first the custom, and then the order, lasting as late as 1708, that "the ministers of the gospel should preach a sermon, on the day appointed by law for the choice of civil rulers, proper for the direction of They the town in the work before them." now. One would expect that the effect of this predominant clerical influence would have been to make the aim of the Puritan codes lofty, their consistency unflinching, their range narrow, and their penalties severe, and it certainly was so. Looking at their educational provisions, they seem all noble; looking at their schedule of sins and retributions, one wonders how any rational being could endure them for a day. Communities, like individuals, furnish virtues piecemeal. Roger Williams, with all his wise toleration, bequeathed to Rhode Island no such system of schools as his persecutors framed for Massachusetts. But the children who were watched and trained thus carefully might be put to death, if they "cursed their orderly parents" after the age of sixteen;-not that the penalty ever was inflicted, but it was on the statute-book. Sabbath-breaking was placed on a level with murder,-though Calvin himself allowed the old men to play at bowls and the young men to practise military_training, after afternoon service, at Geneva. Down to 1769 not even a funeral could take place on Sunday in Massachusetts, without licence from a magistrate. Then the stocks and the wooden cage were in frequent use, though "barbarous and cruel" punishments were forbidden in 1641. Scolds and railers were set on a ducking-stool and dipped over head and ears three times, in running water if possible. Mrs. Oliver, a troublesome theologian, was silenced with a cleft stick applied to her tongue. Thomas Scott, in 1649, was sentenced for some offence to learn "the catachise," or be fined ten shillings, and, after due consideration, paid the fine. Sometimes offenders, with a refinement of cruelty, were obliged to "go and talk to the elders." And if any youth made matrimonial overtures to a young female without the consent of her parents, or, in their absence, of the County Court, he was first fined and then imprisoned. A new etymology for the word "courting." An exhibition of this mingled influence was in the relation of the ministers to the Indian wars. Roger Williams, even when banished and powerless, could keep the peace with the natives. But when the brave Miantonimo was to be dealt with for suspected treason, and the civil authorities decided, that, though it was unsafe to set him at liberty, they yet had no ground to put him to death, the matter being finally referred to five "elders," Uncas was straightway authorized to slay him in cold blood, |