A lady, belonging to the Presbyterian Church at which I preached, kindly sent her carriage to take us about to see the city.  We visited the new Roman Catholic Cathedral, one of the principal “lions.”  It was begun in 1841, and, though used for public worship, is not yet finished.  The building is a parallelogram of 200 feet long by 80 feet wide, and is 58 feet from the floor to the ceiling.  The roof is partly supported by the side walls, and partly by two rows of freestone columns—­nine in each row—­at a distance of about 11 feet from the wall inside.  These columns are of the Corinthian Order, and are 35 feet high, and 3 feet 6 inches in diameter.  There is no gallery, except at one end, for the organ, which cost 5,400 dollars, or about 1,100_l._ sterling.  The floor of the building is furnished with a centre aisle of 6 feet wide, and two other aisles, each 11 feet wide, along the side walls, for processional purposes.  The remainder of the area is formed into 140 pews, 10 feet deep.  Each pew will accommodate with comfort only six persons; so that this immense edifice affords sitting room for no more than 840 people!  It is a magnificent structure, displaying in all its proportions a remarkable degree of elegance and taste.  The tower, when finished, will present an elevation of 200 feet, with a portico of twelve Corinthian columns, six in front and three on either side, on the model of the Tower of the Wind at Athens.  The entire building will be Grecian in all its parts.  One-fourth of the population of Cincinnati are Roman Catholics.  They have lately discontinued the use of public government-schools for their children, and have established some of their own, I am not so much alarmed at the progress of Popery in America as I was before I visited that country.  Its proselytes are exceedingly few.  Its supporters consist chiefly of the thousands of Europeans, already Roman Catholic, who flock to the New World.  The real progress of Popery is greater in Britain than in America.

In the evening I preached for Mr. Boynton in the “Sixth-street Church,” Mr. Boynton and his Church, heretofore Presbyterians, have recently become Congregationalists.  This has given great umbrage to the Presbyterians.  Congregationalism is rapidly gaining ground in the Western World, and seems destined there, as in England since Cromwell’s time, to swallow up Presbyterianism.  I make no invidious comparison between the two systems:  I merely look at facts.  And it does appear to me that Congregationalism—­so simple, so free, so unsectarian, and so catholic—­is nevertheless a powerful absorbent.  It has absorbed all that was orthodox in the old Presbyterian Churches of England; and it is absorbing the Calvinistic Methodists and the churches named after the Countess of Huntingdon.  It has all along exerted a powerful influence on the Presbyterianism of America.  The Congregational element diffused among those churches occasioned the division of the Presbyterian Church into Old School and New School.