At midnight a horn sounded through the camp, which, we were told, was to call the people from private to public worship; and we presently saw them flocking from all sides to the front of the preachers’ stand.  Mrs. B. and I contrived to place ourselves with our backs supported against the lower part of this structure, and we were thus enabled to witness the scene which followed without personal danger.  There were about two thousand persons assembled.

One of the preachers began in a low nasal tone, and, like all other Methodist preachers, assured us of the enormous depravity of man as he comes from the hands of his Maker, and of his perfect sanctification after he had wrestled sufficiently with the Lord to get hold of him, et cetera.  The admiration of the crowd was evinced by almost constant cries of “Amen!  Amen!” “Jesus!  Jesus!” “Glory!  Glory!” and the like.  But this comparative tranquility did not last long:  the preacher told them that “this night was the time fixed upon for anxious sinners to wrestle with the Lord;” that he and his brethren “were at hand to help them,” and that such as needed their help were to come forward into “the pen.”  The phrase forcibly recalled Milton’s lines—­

    “Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
     A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else, the least
     That to the faithful herdsman’s art belongs! 
     —­But when they list their lean and flashy songs,
     Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw;—­
     The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed! 
     But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw,
     Rot inwardly—­and foul contagion spread.”

“The pen” was the space immediately below the preachers’ stand; we were therefore placed on the edge of it, and were enabled to see and hear all that took place in the very centre of this extraordinary exhibition.

The crowd fell back at the mention of the pen, and for some minutes there was a vacant space before us.  The preachers came down from their stand and placed themselves in the midst of it, beginning to sing a hymn, calling upon the penitents to come forth.  As they sung they kept turning themselves round to every part of the crowd and, by degrees, the voices of the whole multitude joined in chorus.  This was the only moment at which I perceived any thing like the solemn and beautiful effect, which I had heard ascribed to this woodland worship.  It is certain that the combined voices of such a multitude, heard at dead of night, from the depths of their eternal forests, the many fair young faces turned upward, and looking paler and lovelier as they met the moon-beams, the dark figures of the officials in the middle of the circle, the lurid glare thrown by the altar-fires on the woods beyond, did altogether produce a fine and solemn effect, that I shall not easily forget; but ere I had well enjoyed it, the scene changed, and sublimity gave place to horror and disgust.