harvests. In signing their receipts, they would say, "I trust that this is the last time." Concord, a little village of New Hampshire, was entirely drawn into the movement. Between Plymouth and Boston several proprietors sold their estates, and gave the money for the construction of a tabernacle wherein were to be gathered all the faithful, clad in white for their ascension. The Bostonians made a good affair of it. In many shop-windows you read, "White robes of every texture, size, and shape, for the ascension on the 23d." Some Methodist preachers and some journals encouraged this strange hallucination. Some New Yorkers passed the nights of the 23d and 24th awaiting the trumpet of the angel. A young girl, having received from her betrothed a precious necklace, desired to conscerate it to preparations for this ascension. Accordingly, she took it to a jeweller, to whom she revealed her motive. Why," "said he, "here are some silver spoons which I am now engraving for your minister; so that you see he does not believe in his own predictions."

In the most public part of Boston they built a huge shantee, capable of holding two or three thousand persous. The edifice was about to fall, and the magistrates interfered and required them to build it more strongly. The crazy troup, passed the night in it in prayer, robed in white, and singing,

I'm all in white; my soul is clear,

I'm going up; nought keeps me here

The flower-decked room was lighted by seven-branched candlesticks, and hung with Hebrew texts. The night passed, the morning came, nobody "went up," and the society became bankrupt. The hall became a theatre, and Mr. Lyell was amused to hear there, IIccate singing in the play of Macbeth,

"Hark, I'm called! My little spirit, sce,
Sits in a foggy cloud and stays for me."

Charlatanism, speculation, hyprocrisy mingle in these customs, and make out of them what they can. A preacher establishes himself in a village, kindles the ininds, inflames the hearts, and makes the credulous contribute. Rigor is pure mockery in many pretended fanatics. "Madam, "said an innkeeper, gravely, to Mrs. Houston, "this is a religious house; prayers take place regularly, but if you do not wish to assist at them, we will shut our eyes to it."

Variety, liberty, tradition reign then in America in the religious spliere, as well as in the political. The free division. of the Protestant sects, themselves sub-divided into constantly sub-dividing sects perfectly realizes the prediction of Bossuet. The Methodists count 1,200,000 communicants and 7,009 ministers; the Baptists a few less; the Presbyterians 350,000 members and 3,000 ministers; Congregationalists 200,000 members and 1,800 ministers; Evangelical Lutherans, mostly Germans, 145,000 communicants and 7,500 ministers; the Episcopalians 86,000 communicants and 13,000 ministers; the Universalists 60,000 communicants and 700 ministers. The Presbyterians, conservators of the severe tradition, despite their numerical inferiority, are the richest. and most influential; the Baptists and Methodists are distinguished by an ardent zeal often excessive.

The Catholic movement in this country merits attention. Repulsed at first by the general sentiment of the English Protestant Colonists, the Catholic emigrants who gave to their settlement Maryland, the name of Queen Mary Tudor, and to their capital that of Lord Baltimore, were on the defensive for a century; nevertheless the very principle of Protestantism and Germanic independence protected them in

their isolation. Now they count nine hundred priests and 1,750,000 laymen. Not only do they nearly equal in numbers the most flourishing Protestant sect, but in the large cities they have powerful congregations; considerable rural districts are entirely Catholic, and the valley of the Mississippi, with its rapidly doubling population cannot help being theirs. Already are the Sisters of Charity at work in the wilderness; nineteen twentieths of the valley are sown with chapels; the cross hangs from the branches of the old trees, the mass is celebrated by the Missionaries amid those antique shades. At St. Louis and at New Orleans the best schools are Catholic; and nothing is so visible as the perfect capability of conciliation of Catholic dogma with that personal independence and social energy which the regions of Southern Europe havo so irreparably, wrongly refused to favor.

A witness of this usurpation of its dominion, the old Puritan spirit awakes in revivals, which are religious fevers common among the Baptists, and excited by Nomadic preachers. Amid tears, sobs and convulsions four or five hundred men are plunged into the waters of regeneration. Debauchées, prodigals, adulterers, seat themselves before the people upon the "anxious seat," and confess their crimes. This fury of moral regeneration seizes sometimes upon whole provinces. Sometimes calmer parties take part against the instigators of these revivals, and cite them before the Courts of justice as "troubling the peace," or as "slanderers," if some rather vivid personality may have been uttered. "I saw one," says a traveller, "whom a band of musicians were playing out of town with the Rogue's March.. A fight ensued, and when the parties came into Court and the Judge enquired why the accused had not quitted the place without noise, he replied, "I have my idea; the devil has his.'

"But you break the peace.'

"Nehemiah refused to yield to the enemies of the

Lord.'

"But,' said the judge, 'you should have followed the example of St. Paul, who had himself let out of a window in a basket. It is a more peaceful and modern precedent.'

"The laugh that ensued gave the victory to the magistrate."

One sees that such manners do not result from political mechanism.

Beneath universal suffrage and the appearance of a democracy, tradition exists. The old sap-circulates in the veins of that society composed of millions of Anglo-Saxons worthy of their fathers, and who, hammer and axe in hand, continue their work and clear up an immense field for their future ;— their instruments are moral and value far more than iron or steel.

SECTION V.

THE POLITICAL SYSTEM BORN OF TRADITION AND CUSTOMFEDERATIVE HARMONY-DANGERS-WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS -FEDERALS AND ANTI-FEDERALS.

It is a profound error to regard the American institutions as new, simple, or reducible to an abstract type. It is precisely the contrary. Diversity, inseparable from liberty, is their proper characteristic. They are old as the Europe of Charlemagne, varied as humanity, practical as Reality.

The Mississippi Catholics and the Mormon Protestants, the Texan so vividly and wrathfully painted by Jonathan Sharp; the Blue Nose of Maine, the butt of Sam Slick, the

Alabamian, whose bony energy frightened Mr. Mackay, and forty other varieties of the American species crowded in that continent, having not only diverse manners and customs, but ever-conflicting interests, need a legislation and a political formula of a complexity equal to their varieties. It is not by an ingenious labor, by a judicious arrangement of the political wheels that so many cogs play within one another, that so many little spheres describe their respective clipses without striking and breaking one another. Admit that all men are equal, and the war of interests becomes naturally legitimate, society would be but one carnage, if the customs of which we have spoken, if the traditions of the Protestant hive and its laborious bees did not prevent the universal destruction, inevitable result of the strife of so many opposing interests. Now thirty-one States move freely, each in its sphere, all enclosed by the common sphere, and if there be shocks and unfortunate gratings, still the development of the national prosperity goes on.

How has this difficult end been attained? Is it by the a priori system, the metaphysical unity, the philosophical method? Ilave they divided the States by Domesday Book ? or made partial or general revolutions? er broken violently the old feudal system?

The Americans have effaced the word "King," and that is all. The clectoral system is the same; the States are governed by their ancient laws. They have not passed a garden-roller after the various characters and customs. They have developed not strangled.

As the corporations of the Middle Ages were governed by their own laws, which their neighbors had no power to change, so each State has its own constitution, suitable not only to the needs of the day, but elastic enough for future acquisition. There are then thirty-one local politics, thirty-one executives,