Atlantic. You must, however, make great allowance for errors in so difficult and delicate an undertaking, and will receive with peculiar caution, on such a subject, any general conclusions deduced from the observations of an individual traveller. You may, however, consider the favourable representations which I made, in a letter from Boston last autumn, with respect to opportunities of public worship, and the prevalence of evangelical preaching, as applicable to all the principal towns and cities from Portland to Savannah.

But churches are not religion; nor are the ministrations of a pastor an unerring criterion of the piety of his hearers. In a country, however, in which contributions to places of public worship are for the most part voluntary, a liberal dissemination of sacred edifices is a very favourable symptom; while the number of faithful ministers, and the frequent occurrence of large congregations listening attentively to unwelcome truths from pastors appointed by their own election, and dependent on them for support, afford something more than a vague presumption of the existence of no inconsiderable degree of vital piety in the community.

My favourable impressions were strengthened as I proceeded, by noticing the attention generally paid on the Atlantic coast to the external observance of the Sabbath; by meeting continually with Bibles, and other religious books, in the steamboats and houses of entertainment; and by witnessing the efforts every where apparent for the extension of Christian piety.

Theological institutions for the education of ministers, extensive, well-endowed, and respectable, frequently arrest the attention of the traveller as he passes along the road; while a very little intercourse with society convinces him that associations of a more private nature, for preparing indigent young men for missionary services, together with Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, and Sunday School and Tract Societies, are liberally scattered.

I felt neither disposed nor called upon to deprive myself of the pleasure I derived from these favourable indications, by reflecting that they were no accurate measure of the degree in which personal religion prevails. I was quite aware that, in many cases, and especially where there is no establishment, churches are sometimes multiplied by the very dissentions of a congregation; that a proportion of the active effort engaged in the promotion of religious objects, is often very little connected with Christian principle; and that respect for the form of godliness may survive its power. But at the same time I felt persuaded that, although a love of popularity may enrol the worldly in the list of contributors to religious societies, or engage them as public advocates in a sacred cause, still that diligent performance of the routine of official duties, and those self-denying and persevering efforts, to which religious societies are usually indebted both for their origin and prosperity, imply, in most cases, the existence of a higher principle, and spring from a purer

source.

My subsequent experience has convinced me that I was not incorrect in the persuasion in which I indulged myself as I passed along, that I was always in the vicinity of some at least who were united in Christian sympathy with the whole church militant on earth, and were travelling to a better country amidst the hopes and fears, the trials and consolations, which chequer the lot and form the character of the Christian in every quarter of the globe. Sometimes, in the course of my route, some little incident would give peculiar force to this persuasion, or the surrounding scenery impart to it a particular interest.

On my return from Canada through Vermont and New Hampshire, I visited the Theological Institution at Andover; where the handsome collegiate edifice, the spacious grounds, the houses of the professors, and the excellent inn in some degree attached to the establishment, bore as am. ple testimony to the munificence, as the object of the institution to the piety, of its founders. It is from this establishment that the American Board of Missions has drawn nearly all its labourers. After tea we adjourned to the college chapel, where religious intelligence from various parts of the United States was communicated by the students or professors. We had then prayers, after which we separated. It was a beautiful star-light night in autumn; and while looking out of my window, at midnight, on this quiet scene-where many who were then labouring in distant regions of the globe first felt those ardent aspirings after extensive future usefulness, which prompted them

to encounter the trials of a missionary life, and where many were then preparing for the same honourable enterprise-I could not but contrast the privileges of a life thus early and entirely dedicated to the noblest cause, with those of the most successful commercial or political career, where the flame of piety, if not extinguished by the very atmosphere which surrounds it, is exposed to a thousand blasts from which the religious zeal of the missionary is sheltered by his peculiar situation.

At Hartford, in Connecticut, in a church so richly adorned with "Christmas" (either winding round the pillars, or hung in festoons,) as to appear almost like a grove, I was gratified by a sermon in vindication of our Liturgy; and my heart warmed when I heard the minister enumerate among its claims to the affectionate regards of the congregation, "the opportunity which it afforded them of worshipping in the very words in which saints for centuries had breathed their devotions in the land of their fathers, and of still offering their incense in the same censer with their brethren in Britain, that brightest star in the firmament of the Reformation."-In the afternoon I attended the Presbyterian chapel, where the minister announced, at the close of the service, that it was the wish of many of the congregation that the following Friday should be set apart for prayer and fasting, and that it was expected it should be so observed by the members of the church. I felt that I was among the descendants of the puritanie exiles, (for exiles may many of them be con

sidered rather than emigrants;) and I could not but breathe a wish that the spirit of an Elijah might linger in the land which still preserved these vestiges of more devotional times.

At Newhaven, in the same state, after visiting Yale College,in the library of which I was pleased to recognise, under the titles " Berkeley," and "The Dean's Bounty," substantial proofs of the liberality of our celebrated countryman, Bishop Berkeley, I spent the evening with Dr. Morse, whom I found engaged in drawing up a report on the state of the Indians, to be submitted to Congress. He had been selected by the President to travel among the Indians with reference to this object, in consequence of having been long employed by a society in Scotland in the promotion of their benevolent designs among some of the northern tribes. He has devoted a very long and very active life to the interests of literature and religion in his infant country, combining the attainments of a scholar with the apostolic zeal of a missionary, and often exchanging domestic endearments and literary ease for the perils of the wilderness, and the privations of solitary journeys in swamps and forests. When Mr. Hall's sermon on Infidelity appeared, he printed an edition at his own expense, although in very moderate circumstances, and has since endeavoured to introduce among his countrymen a high standard of practical excellence, by exhibiting to their view that extraordinary combination of the lowly and the splendid virtues of the Christian character which adorned the life, and has embalmed the memory of the late Mr. Reynolds of Bristol.