They have removed the objectionable opening of the Marriage Service; but, not content with that, they have also removed the whole of the service which follows the minister’s blessing after the marriage is pronounced, and thus reduced it to a five minutes’ ceremony.  While on this subject, I may as well observe that, from inquiries I made, I believe but few of those marriages take place by which husband and wife are prevented from kneeling at the same altar, by which their highest interests can never be a subject of mutual discussion, and by which children are either brought up without any fixed religious ideas at all, or else a compromise is entered into, and the girls are educated in one church and the boys in another.  In short, I believe the Romanists in America marry but rarely out of the pale of their own church.  I cannot say what the law of divorce is, but it appears to offer far greater facilities than would be approved of in England.  A gentleman mentioned two cases to me, in one of which the divorce was obtained by the wife without the husband being aware of it, although living in the same State; in the other, the wife returned to the State from which her husband had taken her, and there obtained a divorce without his knowledge.—­To return from this digression.  In the Visitation of the Sick they have removed that individual absolution of the minister, the wording of which is so objectionable that, if I am rightly informed, it is rarely used by ministers in England.  In the Burial of the Dead, they have changed the two concluding prayers in those sentences which refer to the deceased.  The Commination they have entirely expunged.  They have added a full service for Visitation of Prisoners, and a Harvest Thanksgiving; and they have provided a form of morning and evening prayer for families.

The foregoing constitute the leading points of difference.  Of course there are many minor ones which are merely verbal, such, for instance, as their expunging the scriptural quotation of “King of kings, Lord of lords,” from the prayer for the President, probably out of deference to the prejudices of the Republicans, for which omission they have partially atoned by the substitution of the grander expression of “only Ruler of the Universe,” in lieu of the more limited term “only Ruler of Princes.”  To enter into all these verbal changes would be alike tedious and useless.  Enough, I trust, has been written to convey a general idea of the most striking and interesting points of difference.

Other churches transplanted to this hemisphere seem to differ from the parent stock most essentially.  Thus I find in the almanack for 1853, “Methodist Episcopal Church (North) 3984 ministers, and 662,315 communicants,” and below them “Methodist Episcopal Church (South)” without any return of statistics.  I regret not being able to give the reader any history of this occidental hierarchy.  I do not even know the Episcopacizing process they go through, whether it is entirely lay or entirely