I have said that religion in the States is rowdy.  By that I mean to imply that it seems to me to be divested of that reverential order and strictness of rule which, according to our ideas, should be attached to matters of religion.  One hardly knows where the affairs of this world end, or where those of the next begin.  When the holy men were had in at the lecture, were they doing stage-work or church-work?  On hearing sermons, one is often driven to ask one’s self whether the discourse from the pulpit be in its nature political or religious.  I heard an Episcopalian Protestant clergyman talk of the scoffing nations of Europe, because at that moment he was angry with England and France about Slidell and Mason.  I have heard a chapter of the Bible read in Congress at the desire of a member, and very badly read.  After which the chapter itself and the reading of it became a subject of debate, partly jocose and partly acrimonious.  It is a common thing for a clergyman to change his profession and follow any other pursuit.  I know two or three gentlemen who were once in that line of life, but have since gone into other trades.  There is, I think, an unexpressed determination on the part of the people to abandon all reverence, and to regard religion from an altogether worldly point of view.  They are willing to have religion, as they are willing to have laws; but they choose to make it for themselves.  They do not object to pay for it, but they like to have the handling of the article for which they pay.  As the descendants of Puritans and other godly Protestants, they will submit to religious teaching, but as republicans they will have no priestcraft.  The French at their revolution had the latter feeling without the former, and were therefore consistent with themselves in abolishing all worship.  The Americans desire to do the same thing politically, but infidelity has had no charms for them.  They say their prayers, and then seem to apologize for doing so, as though it were hardly the act of a free and enlightened citizen, justified in ruling himself as he pleases.  All this to me is rowdy.  I know no other word by which I can so well describe it.

Nevertheless the nation is religious in its tendencies, and prone to acknowledge the goodness of God in all things.  A man there is expected to belong to some church, and is not, I think, well looked on if he profess that he belongs to none.  He may be a Swedenborgian, a Quaker, a Muggletonian,—­anything will do, But it is expected of him that he shall place himself under some flag, and do his share in supporting the flag to which he belongs.  This duty is, I think, generally fulfilled.

CHAPTER XX.

FROM BOSTON TO WASHINGTON.