brother to the clergy, had broken the charm of the preacher's speech-his brain was pressed down with the incubus of chagrin. The war-note was changed for the evening hymn; the bugle gave place to the shepherd's pipe. The sermon closed; the announcement was given out that the "ord'nance of feet-washin' 'ud take place" on the morrow, in connection with the administration of the Lord's Supper. What? Did I hear aright? Feet-washing ?-what did it mean? Silence again was the best resort, through fear of exposing myself to laughter, by inquiring into the matter, or confessing to a scoffing spirit if found in error. My perplexity was broken by a short discussion in the course of the day, during which a "Hard" quoted the passages of "Scriptér," taken as authority by the sect, for the institution and performance of public "feet-washing," as a religious rite.

Here was an episode in a school-master's life, unforeseen by Henry Brougham, when he sent the pedagogue "abroad;" for which, perhaps, the great reformer is unaccountable, as the rite is out of the establishment, and would be looked upon by High or Low Church with the same amazement as the old Roman Flamens portrayed, when told of the barbarous ritual of interior Germany.

On next day, the concourse of people at the "meetin' house was larger than the day before. A new brother was expected to hold forth, causing some little bustle. His sermon, when begun, was original beyond the possibility of a doubt. His object seemed to be to delineate some of the proprieties of familiar intercourse, and check such of the practices as were unauthorized by "Hard Shell" usage. Several of the popular reforms and associations were bluntly rebuffed, or scouted as "in folly ripe and reason rotten." Maine Liquor Law was not then known as a political measure; yet the same ultimate end was foreshadowed by Temperance Societies and Sons of Temperance; this enough for the spirit of the speaker, who levelled his heaviest guns against their batteries and felt himself successful in planting some stunning blows. He was a prose Anacreon in his adherence to Bacchus, as a duty in acknowledging the good things of the world, by a moderate use, reproving their abuse, keeping the golden mean and avoiding all extremes. Excess and Tee-totalism were his Scylla and Charybdis. To show that

was

he was within the pale of the "Primitives" in this matter, he narrated a case of discipline, in which Brother Dupeasy had been reproved by the church for over-indulgence in peach-brandy; and upon the assertion of Brother Dupeasy that he would never touch another drop so long as he lived, he was again reproved for rejecting the manifest gifts of mercy, and, moreover, the brother was ordered to continue his occasional glass but never to be overcome by the use. "That's the Primitive dectrine, is'nt it breetheren?"— a nodding of heads and bonnets on right and left fortified the worthy laborer in his exposition of tenets.

The General Mission spirit was slightly touched, as being a subject of too much magnitude to be embraced in a single sermon; still there was promised a future hour of reckoning against this Gorgon of Hydras.

As a final shifting of pulpit light, notice was taken of colloquial expressions, by this censor of public morals; in his appeals to the congregation for confirmations of his positions, he frequently turned to his associate in the desk, who sat behind him, and asked if such and such an assertion was not trueand was uniformly answered in the affirmative. His objurgations were mostly hurled towards idle words, cant forms of speech and popular slang: he was distressed in this matter, and labored loudly, dogmatically, and hotly, for thorough reform in these particulars. There was room for complaint, as his reception exhibited.

Breethereen, it won't do, this talk ain't primitive; we must give up them worldly remarks-must we not brother? must we not sister?" The appeal direct was answered by a favoring nod from said brother and said sister. "Yes sir-ee and no sir-ee is slang terms and is forbidden. I don't like 'em, nor no brother don't like 'em; they despise 'em-they jeest 'bhor 'em, kind o' naturally (and wheeling to his clerical brother in the back of the pulpit, exclaimed)-I'm detarmined to set my face agin 'em, now and for ever, like them brothers and sisters, ain't you brother?"

"Yes sir-ce, hoss!" replied the tripping divine. There was need of "line upon line," &c., to such a waiting people.

Exhortation finished the exercise; then followed an actual general washing of feet, by the members of the church; the women occupying one side, behind

a screen; the men openly and boldly presenting themselves for cleansing. They advanced in couples; one took his seat and bared his foot and leg to the knee, while the other laying aside his coat, girding himself with a towel, kneeled at the basin and washed and wiped the ready member; offices were then exchanged, the couple retired, and another brace of the unwashed came up to the water. Four or more couples were busy together-exhorting each other with good counsel, and flattering unction, familiarly quoting the words of "Brother Peter and Brother Paul." Day's worship being closed, all went homeward, the young pairing off in couples through the woods.

My object in visiting this region was

HA

ANS tucked in the last edge of the blanket, placed a rod slant against the wall, to support a copy of "The Times," which, like a head tent, kept the flies and the sun from my eyes, and then left me for two hours, like one of the swathed effigies on a cathedral monument. I was packed-arms bound to my sides, feet wrapped together, a pile of fabrics rising ten inches from my chest, and a wet sheet clinging to my skin; thus made statuesque, and vision itself shut in by the paper canopy not an ell from my nose, there was clearly but two things for a patient man to dosleep or think. I did both, and the result of the united and the alternate process, was a dream of water, its wonders and blessings, which rendered me, for the first time, really conscious of the extent and the degree of my obligations, physical, intellectual, and economical, to that unappreciated element. As it oozed in and out of every pore, sounded in the adjacent douche, dripped as the incubating philosophers of the sitz-baths rose up near by,-presenting itself thus to the senses as a great healing agent, I mused of its virtues, its history, and its power: follow, gentle reader, for a moment, that water study, become aquatic awhile; lose thyself in water as a gold

fish in his teeming globe, and submit thy fancy to the sceptre of Aquarius.

Enshrined in water, let us meditate its office, recall our walks by rivers, and our sensations in the midst of the ocean, our vigils on cliff and strand, with a boundless seaward landscape, the mystery of the tides, the fable of Arethusa, the enormous leviathan, and tiny nautilus, the luxury of a glass of iced Croton, and, what Mrs. Kemble calls "ablutionary privileges." Water!-it overflowed the primeval world; its sublimest altar is the goal of pilgrims on this continent; it constitutes three-quarters of the globe; to tunnel and bridge it, is the highest art of engineer and architect; its natural direction ordains the first paths of mankind, and the course of empire; thrown on the strained ropes that at Rome failed to bring the precious obelisk to its base, the quivering mass of Egyptian granite settled at once, amid the breathless expectancy of thousands. How like a conscious thing of beauty it sparkles, winds, foams, whirls, dances, leaps, nestles and rushes in the rapids of Niagara! To wander along them and gaze down from the bridge upon that evolution of water, and stand in the tower, between the two great cataracts, or to track the rocky gorge at Trenton, and watch the amber

the royal gardens; the canals of the low countries typify the plodding industry of the Dutch, and the lakes and rivers of America are on the same broad scale as her national development.

How naturally do these associations glide into the verse of the poet! Each sings his favorite stream. The "dolci acque" inspired Petrarch at Vaucluse; Byron sang the "blue and arrowy Rhone." Can we behold the Danube and not think of the dying gladiator's "young barbarians there at play ;-they and their Dacian mother?"

or the

Thames, and not breathe a sigh to the memory of Thomson and Hood?-watch the "hissing urn," unmindful of Cowper; or drink from "the moss-covered bucket that hangs in the well," nor repeat the household tribute of a native bard? "The white swan spreads her snowy sail," in Percival's lyric to Seneca Lake; "my name was writ in water," is the meek epitaph of Keats; to celebrate a cloud was akin to Shelley's genius, and "The Fountain" is one of Bryant's most felicitous poems; the lakes of Windermere reflect the benign serenity of Wordsworth; and every rustic mill in England enshrines the name of Tennyson; Irving's fame, as well as home, is identified with the Hudson, and the Tweed gurgles over its stony bed the dirge of Scott. Goldsmith's flute seems yet to echo "beside the murmuring Loire," and Campbell's spirit to haunt the Susquehanna; when the Po is swollen by freshets, we quote Tasso's line, "pare che porta guerra e non tributo al mare." Falconer, Childe Harold, Dibdin, the bard of Hope, and Barry Cornwall, have sung of the sea as the scene of shipwreck, of freedom, of cheery toil, of deadly strife, and of immortal valor, of beauty, of grandeur, of delight and of death, in numbers attuned to its own changeful moods and noble rhythm.

When, indeed, the poets draw near to the waters and celebrate their grace and marvels, it is as if a votary of Nature laid his tender homage before her crystal altar. Hear Byron apostrophe to Velino, and Brainard prociaiming that Niagara's proud flood is poured from the hand of Deity; how grand the simple phrase of the psalmist:-"The sea is His and He made it," so expressive of the unchanging phenomena and uninvaded sphere of that element which man can but cautiously traverse, but whose aspect and power his inventions leave identical with the dawn of creation. The briny fields are eternally the same. Perhaps

the indirect tributes of the bard most emphatically suggests the beauty of this element. Shakespeare's lover wishes his mistress, when she moves, a wave of the sea," to be for ever graceful; Othello's passion, "like to the Pontick Sea," has no ebb; "a little water clears us of this deed," huskily whispers Lady Macbeth; Cleopatra's barge "burns on the water;" the moon 66 sees her silvery visage in the watery glass;" "the hungry sea;" "like a circle in the water;" as profitless as water in a seive;" and "like a dew-drop on a lion's mane, be shook to air," are significant metaphors. How the waters ooze, fume, curl, roar, and mantle in his description, as in nature!

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No poet, however, in the widest range of his fancy, can imagine variety of effects like those native to water. Spread into a boundless waste, it is the most sublime; concentrated into the most lovely shapes, it is the most beautiful object in nature. The crystal blocks of the ice-quarry, the fairy globe of dew, the white plumes of the fountain, and the prismatic hues of the iris, the transparent emerald of the billow, and the scenic illusion of the mirage, how wonderful as mere phases of form and color, derived from a common element! Sublimated by heat, it expands into fleecy piles or long scintillations radiant with every tint of jasper and ruby, opal and amethyst; congealed by frost, it shoots into crystals more brilliant than diamonds or stalactites. The snow-plain glittering in the sun, the fog wreathing in the breeze, the lake spreading as a boundless mirror, the ocean heaving like the mighty heart of the universe, and the brook winding at random through rocks and woodland-what diverse features of an identical landscape! Now a stainless amplitude, now a spectral medium, the majestic emblem of perpetual unrest, of heavenly repose, and wayward frolic! The evanescent charms of aerial perspective that Claude and Turner strove, with all the self-devotion of genius, to represent; the delicate pictures which momently gleam on a bubble, and the eternal foam of torrents attest the same origin. No element appeals to the sense of beauty with such versatile grace; cheerful in the fount, solemn in the ocean, winsome in the brook, soothing in the breezeless lake. To the eye, water is the most Protean minister in the universe, and, combined with vegetation, atmosphere and light, the most prolific source of its gratification.

TERY few men, we venture to say, have

VER

carefully noted the steep and steady climax of the long succession of public men in the United States, from 1783 to 1854;-how, although we may have begun at the former date with fair selections, we have continued to make better, antil for the last twenty years our leaders and representatives at home and abroad-our whole force of officials, executive and legislative, national, state and municipal, has mustered as a host of high-souled, noble-minded, unspotted men, distinguished by every private and public excellence ;-by surpassing talents, suspicionless disinterestedness, translucent purity of motive, invincible modesty and patience-crowned, in short, with starry coronals of virtues whose pure lustre might befit a white-robed choir of angels.

While George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, and James Madison were Presidents, and generally, while they were in public life, an impression decidedly favorable to their reputation as statesmen, thinkers and citizens, extensively prevailed. There were many who thought them honest, wise and trustworthy. In fact it was currently believed that they were the ablest men in the nation.

All that may be so. But those obscure and old-fashioned virtues of theirs, well enough in their small way, and in the slow times of our earlier history, would now, amidst the sparkling skyrocketing glories of Young America, be tedious and insignificant to extremity. Are those dull and square-toed worthies to be compared to the gigantic men who have lately shed upon the presidential chair the lambent light of their respective coronals as aforesaid to the splendid intellects and grand achievements, in war, in peace, and in the hearts of their countrymen, of Van Buren, Harrison, Tyler, Polk, Taylor, Fillmore and Pierce?

It has been claimed, for instance, that there was glory in the stubborn and steady resolution with which our nation, under the presidency of a Washington or a Madison, fought victoriously or with even success, against a nation more powerful than herself, by land and sea— the most powerful nation in the world. But no such insane risk as accompanied those foolhardy contests has marred the

warlike renown of our commanders of a later day. Why should our blood and treasure be expended, when they might be saved? Why should men be used up, when a judicious outlay of dog would serve? Why should costly glory be sought, when a cheap article is accessible? And so the kind wisdom of our national leaders directed the yelping of our bloodhounds, the points of our bayonets, and the thunder of our guns against the Seminoles; against Mexico; against Greytown.

"And dogs crawled in, where soldiers feared to tread."

Land

A few hundred half-starved Indians may be stabbed, mangled, or knocked in the head, with much more ease than veteran English regiments of the line. may be stolen-conveyed, if you please -from a crew of lazy, pepper-eating Mexicans, much more safely than from the beef-eating British. "Carajo!" is not half so terrible a shout as "Hurra!" It does not require as many Paixhan charges (at eight or twelve dollars each) to bang down a few dozen Central-American shanties, as would need to be expended upon the fortifications of Quebec or Havana. And-most gloriously transcendent wisdom of all-for Greytown there was absolutely nobody to strike back. Neither pop-gun nor protocol replied to the Cyanean thunders, nor to the Hollinsian proclamations. The operation was as safe and as bold as that of the young hero who thrashed a rickety old man of eighty. "How could you,' expostulated a mild reprover, "thrash an old man of eighty?" "How could I?" answered the Achilles-"I could have thrashed him if he had been a hundred years old!"

Nor do the civil virtues of "the earlier

Presidents" escape irremediable eclipse, by the results in action of the broader and deeper philosophy upon which have been based the actions of their successors. Washington, fettered by obsolete notions, and complaisantly obedient to the "shrieks of locality," declined to appoint or to remove officials, except for matters determining their honesty or capacity. But our recent giants in politicizing have nobly scorned to be holden within such narrow bounds. "What," they have reasoned, can be a more important function of government, than to perpetuate the ascendency