woods, to hear a funeral sermon from one of their own number, himself a slave. It consisted of about 200 slaves, sitting on little planks under a large elm-tree; and I found I was the only White person, and the only freeman, in the assembly. The preacher first gave a sort of general address, explaining the occasion of the meeting. We then had prayer; then sung the hymn,

Why do we mourn departed friends ?" and then had a sermon from the text, "The Lord is a sun and shield;" a text which the preacher assured them was somewhere in the Bible, although he could not undertake to tell them where." It was with mingled emotions that I beheld these degraded fellow-creatures, after drawing near to the Throne of the Creator of the universe, the Mercy Seat of our common Father, disperse to their several plantations, to resume on the morrow their extorted labours, and to smart under the lash of a fellow-mortal.

Even in that land of darkness, the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, in Mobile, until lately a nest of pirates, and still without a Protestant place of worship, I found, to my surprise, "The Dairyman's Daughter," and "Little Jane," in a bookseller's shop. In the seclusion of the forests of the Mississippi, I have seen a solitary planter take down a number of Dr. Clarke's Bible, and inquire, with great interest, if I could tell him any particulars of so good a man: his wife listening attentively, and pronouncing a eulogium which would have made the Doctor blush.

I have attended divine service at the confluence

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of two beautiful rivers in East Tennessee, where the congregation was so numerous that we were compelled to adjourn from the meeting-house into the adjoining woods, where tables were laid under the trees for communicants, who were flocking from miles in every direction, as in Scotland, and to whom the sacred ordinance was administered by four clergymen, of serious deportment, and apparently of respectable acquirements and fervent zeal. At the foot of the Alleghany mountains, where I slept in a little log-hut, kept by a poor old woman and her only son, our hostess gladly availed herself of the accidental presence of a young minister, in his way to Brainerd, to have family prayer and reading: and, in a large popular inn in Virginia, I was asked whether I would like to retire to the private apartments of the family, who assembled morning and evening at the domestic altar.

But it was at the missionary settlements at Brainerd and Yaloo Busha, that my feelings were most strongly excited. Never shall I forget my sensations the two nights I passed in Mr. Kingsbury's little room, which was kindly and courteously assigned to me during my stay. A logcabin, detached from the other wooden buildings, in the middle of a boundless forest, in an Indian country, consecrated, if I may be allowed the expression, by standing on missionary ground, and by forming at once the dormitory and the sanctuary of a "man of God;" it seemed to be indeed the prophet's chamber, with "the bed and the table, and the stool and the candlestick."

tained, also, a little book-case, with a valuable selection of pious books, periodical, biographical, and devotional; among which I found many an old acquaintance in this foreign land, and which enable Mr. Kingsbury, in his few moments of leisure, to converse with many, who have long since joined the spirits of just men made perfect, or to sympathize with his fellow labourers in Otaheite, Africa, or Hindoostan.

Mr. Kingsbury spent a great part of the second night in my room, inquiring with great interest, about England, and other parts of Europe, with respect to which his intelligence had been very scanty since his seclusion among the Indians. About midnight, we became thirsty with talking so much; and Mr. Kingsbury proposed that we should walk to the spring at a little distance. The night was beautifully serene after the heavy showers of the preceding evening, and the coolness of the air, the fresh fragrance of the trees, the deep stillness of the midnight hour, and the soft light which an unclouded moon shed on the log-cabins of the missionaries, contrasted with the dark shadows of the surrounding forest, impressed me with feelings which I never can forget. We looked cautiously around us, lest we should be surprised by wild beasts; and Mr. Kingsbury stopped to point out to me a plant, which, if swallowed immediately after the attack of a rattlesnake, proves an effectual antidote to the poison. He said that he never stirred from home, without some of it in his waistcoat pocket: and that in the state of Mississippi, it was commonly carried by

all persons who traversed the forest. I could not help regarding this as a fresh illustration of that providential kindness which so frequently ordains the proximity of the bane and antidote.

The preceding particulars will convince you that some indications of genuine, influential, religious principle occur, even to the rapid traveller in almost every part of the United States. During my residence in Boston, New-York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Charleston, I have seen that there is in each of them an extensive society of exemplary christians; and I have had the pleasure of forming an acquaintance with many whose virtues I would gladly emulate, and whose characters are an ornament to their profession.

But you will wish to know in what degree vital piety prevails in the community; and I regret that I cannot tell you more explicitly; the subject does not admit of precision. The extent in which religion prevails here is known only to the Searcher of hearts; but there is the strongest reason to believe that it is very considerable. Indeed I am disposed to think, that a cursory traveller visiting England and America, without prejudice, and with equal opportunities of observation, would draw a more favourable inference, with respect to the state of religion in the Atlantic cities of the latter, than in the towns or cities of the former. Whether a long residence in the respective places, would not lead to some change in his opinions, or at least hold them in suspense, I am at a loss to decide; but I believe it would.

I confine my supposition to the Atlantic cities, because the benighted shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and many portions of the western wilds, possess few features in common with our favoured country, and should rather be compared with our colonial possessions in the East or West Indies;indeed I might include extensive districts in the back parts of many of the Atlantic States, where population is thinly scattered, and opportunities of public worship occur only once or twice a month. In some of these, I thought I observed great coldness in religious concerns; the unfrequency of public ordinances rendering the inhabitants rather less willing than more so to avail themselves of them when offered. I felt more disappointed in such districts, than in the frontier settlements. In the latter some spiritual as well as temporal privations are naturally to be expected; though I thought their inhabitants exhibited much greater solicitude for schools and churches than those of the former. In fact, the new settlers from the Atlantic States have, in many cases, participated in the advantages of that general revival of religion which promises to be the characteristic of modern times; and before their zeal has had time to cool in solitude and separation, it has often secured a provision for those religious ordinances by which it may be cherished and sustained. But the back parts of Pennsylvania and Virginia were settled in less auspicious days; and we must not be surprised if the flame of piety, burning less brightly at that time even on the coast, should grow pale and sickly when removed into