I have heard frequently from them until quite lately; and they have been living very handsomely (Mr. Rivers always boasted that he would live like a gentleman) in one of the Eastern cities on the spoils of the Tinkerville Wild-cat.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

I say the pulpit, (and I name it, filled
With solemn awe, that bids me well beware
With what intent I touch that holy thing.)

COWPER.

ONE of the greatest deficiencies and disadvantages of the settler in the new world, is the lack of the ordinary means of public religious instruction. This is felt, not only when the Sabbath morn recurs without its call for public worship, and children ask longingly for that mild and pleasing form of religious and moral training, to which they are all attached as if by an intuition of nature; but it makes itself but too evident through. out the entire structure and condition of society. Those who consider Religion a gloom and a burden, have only to reside for a while where Religion is habitually forgotten or wilfully set aside. They will soon learn at least to appreciate the practical value of the injunction, "Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together."

We have never indeed been entirely destitute for any length of time of the semblance of public worship. Preachers belonging to various denominations have, from the beginning, occasionally called meetings in the little log school-house, and many of the neighbours always make a point of being present, although a far greater proportion reserve the Sunday for fishing

and gunning. And it must be confessed that there has generally been but little that was attractive in the attempts at public service. A bare, cold room, the wind whistling through a thousand crevices in the unplastered walls, and pouring down through as many more in the shrunken roof, seats formed by laying rough boards on rougher blocks, and the whole covered thick with the week's dirt of the district school; these are scarcely the appliances which draw the indolent, the careless, the indifferent, the self-indulgent, to the house of worship. And the preacher, "the messenger of Heaven," "the legate of the skies,"-Alas! I dare not trust my pen to draw the portraits of some of these well-meaning, but most incompetent persons. only say that a large part of them seem to me grievously to have mistaken their vocation.

"All are not such." We have occasionally a preacher whose language and manner, though plain, are far from being either coarse or vulgar, and whose sermons, though generally quite curious in their way, have nothing that is either ridiculous or disgusting. If we suffer ourselves to be driven from the humble meeting-house by one preacher with the dress and air of a horse-jockey, who will rant and scream till he is obliged to have incessant recourse to his handkerchief to dry the tears which are the natural result of the excitement into which he has lashed himself, we may perhaps lose a good plain practical discourse from another, who with only tolerable worldly advantages, has yet studied his Bible with profit, and offers with gentle persuasivenesss its message of mercy. Yet to sit from two to three hours trying to listen to the blub

berer, is a trial of one's nerves and patience which is almost too much to ask; greater I confess, than I am often willing to endure, well convinced as I am, that the best good of all, requires the support of some form of public worship.

I have often been a little amused not only at the very characteristic style of the illustrations which are freely made use of, by all who are in the habit of preaching in the new settlements, but at the extreme politeness with which certain rather too common classes of sins, are touched upon by these pioneers among us. They belong to various denominations, and they are well aware that a still greater number of differing sects are represented in their audience; and each is naturally desirous to secure as many adherents as possible to his own view of religious truth. It becomes therefore particularly necessary to avoid giving personal offence. Does the speaker wish to show the evils and penalties of Sabbath-breaking, of profanity, of falsehood, of slander, of dishonest dealings, or any other offence which he knows is practised by some at least among his auditors, he generally begins with observing that he is quite a stranger, very little acquainted in the neighbourhood, entirely ignorant whether what he is going to say may or may not be especially applicable to any of his hearers, and that he only judges from the general condition of human nature, that such cautions or exhortations may be necessary, &c., exhibitting a constant struggle between his sense of duty and his fear of making enemies.

The illustrative style to which I have alluded, is certainly much better calculated to excite the atten

tion, and keep alive the interest of an unlettered audience, than the most powerful argument could possibly be, but it is sometimes carried so far that the younger part of the congregation find it hard to maintain the gravity befitting the time. It is not long since I heard a good man preach from the text "Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth." He began by saying that it could not be necessary to show the literal truth of this observation of the Apostle; "For you yourselves know, my friends, especially at this time of year, when most of you have had to fight fire more or less, how easy it is to kindle what is so difficult to put out. You know that what fire a man can carry in his hand, applied to the dry grass on the marshes, will grow so, that in ten minutes a hundred men could not put it out, and, if you do n't take care, it will burn up your haystacks and your barns too, aye, and your houses, if the wind hap. pens to be pretty strong. And if you get a cannon loaded up with powder, it wont take but a leetle grain of fire to produce a great explosion, and maybe kill somebody. And I dare say that some of you have seen the way they get along in making rail-roads in the winter, when the ground's froze so hard that they can't dig a bit; they blast off great bodies of the hard ground, just as they blast rocks. And it do n't take any more than a spark to set it a-going. Even so, a woman's tongue, can set a whole neighbourhood together by the ears, and do more mischief in a minute, than she can undo in a month." At this all the young folks looked at each other and smiled, and as the preacher went on in a similar strain, the smile was fre