tea, and whiskey, and she could ’get enough any day by sending a batch of butter and chicken to market.’  They used no wheat, nor sold any of their corn, which, though it appeared a very large quantity, was not more than they required to make their bread and cakes of various kinds, and to feed all their live stock during the winter.  She did not look in health, and said they had all had ague in ‘the fall’ but she seemed contented, and proud of her independence; though it was in somewhat a mournful accent that she said, ’’Tis strange to us to see company:  I expect the sun may rise and set a hundred times before I shall see another human that does not belong to the family.’

“These people were indeed, independent—­Robinson Crusoe was hardly more so, and they eat and drink abundantly; but yet it seemed to me that there was something awful and almost unnatural in their loneliness.  No village bell ever summoned them to prayer, where they might meet the friendly greeting of their fellow-men.  When they die, no spot sacred by ancient reverence will receive their bones—­Religion will not breathe her sweet and solemn farewell upon their grave; the husband or the father will dig the pit that is to hold them, beneath the nearest tree; he will himself deposit them within it, and the wind that whispers through the boughs will be their only requiem.  But then they pay neither taxes nor tithes, are never expected to pull off a hat or to make a curtsey, and will live and die without hearing or uttering the dreadful words, ‘God save the king.’”

A Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati.

“It was in the middle of summer, but the service we were recommended to attend did not begin till it was dark.  The church was well lighted, and crowded almost to suffocation.  On entering, we found three priests standing side by side, in a sort of tribune, placed where the altar usually is, handsomely fitted up with crimson curtains, and elevated about as high as our pulpits.  We took our places in a pew close to the rail which surrounded it.

“The priest who stood in the middle was praying; the prayer was extravagantly vehement, and offensively familiar in expression; when this ended a hymn was sung, and then another priest took the centre place and preached.  The sermon had considerable eloquence, but of a frightful kind.  The preacher described, with ghastly minuteness, the last feeble fainting moments of human life, and then the gradual progress of decay after death, which he followed through every process up to the loathsome stage of decomposition.  Suddenly changing his tone, which had been that of sober, accurate description, into the shrill voice of horror, he bent forward his head, as if to gaze on some object beneath the pulpit, and made known to us what he saw in the pit that seemed to open before him.  The device was certainly a happy one for giving effect to his description of hell.  No image that fire, flame, brimstone, molten lead, or