in my expectations in regard to it, and therefore shall not be disappointed. I dare say the young gentlemen engaged in the enterprise will be very much disappointed. I never knew the most active and resolute parent succeed entirely to his or her own wishes in regard to their own families, when guided by the best wishes as well as judgment that falls to the lot of humanity, added to that strongest principle in human nature, parental love; and therefore I do not expect this will be exempt from defects. I know of no human institutions that are. I shall think myself singularly happy, if the proposed plan is no more defective than those of a similar kind which have been so long in use.

In regard to my own children, I mean to save myself from the self-reproach of neglecting them. Indeed, I have ever found a most ready alacrity in their service; if I am unsuccessful, it will be from an inability over which I have no control, and the cause of much sorrow. But I will not add the anticipation of misery to the reality.

Don't you

Don't you intend to come and see us? You remember Miss F.; she is a pretty, interesting creature, full of energy and activity. But if doesn't speak quick, he may forever after hold his peace; for she soon will be picked up here. admire the sensible choice Mr. Peabody of Springfield has made? You probably know that he is really going to marry Amelia White. Young Sturgis has just left here; he seems to be a nice young man, but not extraordinary as I expected. There is another young man from his class here, who is a fair match for him, by the name of L. But it would take

THE NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW

169

half-a-dozen such to make up the loss of the good and wise little Bradford, who has recently left us.

You have heard, I dare say, that Mr. Harding left his wife here; she seems to be a good little woman, and everybody likes her. Some people are very anxious for her improvement. I am not particularly, for I think she stands a very good comparison with the majority of her sex; and any thing that would destroy the simplicity of her character would take from her her most interesting possession. And it is too late, and her habits, as well as objects of interest, are too strongly opposed to any new impulse of mind, to make it reasonable to expect any great change in her.

I suppose you are a reader of the "North American Review," and I am habitually, from the avarice of not being willing to pay for a thing without deriving some profit; but the last number is so entirely out of the channel of my apprehension that I could have but little enjoyment in it. I was, however, pleased with Dr. Bradford's notions of materialism. He believes as much in craniology as I do.

I hope has exhausted the seven vials of his wrath against the judges of the Supreme Court. I am astonished that the editors of the "North American" should allow that work to be the vehicle for its diffusion. But what with the political and the theological controversy, which has become very stale and tedious, our periodical works are amazingly tasteless and wearisome; and I cannot but hope they will meet with a change.

With love to all friends, your affectionate friend, ANNE JEAN LYMAN.

CHAPTER X.

It is sounded through the land, from the pulpit and the press, that Unitarianism is an easy religion, that says little about sin, and less about holiness, and lulls its disciple in a dream of carnal security; while from first to last, in its doctrines, and its precepts, and its spirit, it enjoins the acquisition of a holy character as the one thing needful.

This is Unitarian Christianity as I understand it. A faith whose topics are the mercy of God, the love of Christ, the duty and immortality of man; a faith which beholds a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, as in the patriarch's dream, along which the influ ences of the Divine compassion and the prayers of human hearts are continually ascending and descending; a faith which links time to eternity by a chain of moral causes and effects; a faith which utters its woe against impenitence with a heart-thrilling pity, which wins souls to Christ with a melting tenderness; a faith which sanctifies and blesses the relations of daily life, which takes from death its terror and its power, and supports the soul on the arms of its hope, till it is borne into the society of the angels.-EZRA STILES GANNETT.

WHEN my mother first came to Northampton,

she found but one church there; and the whole village united in their interest, or lack of interest, in the spiritual food that was meted out to them from Sunday to Sunday. The whole atmosphere of the place was strictly Calvinistic,- and the Calvinism of that day was different from any that prevails in our time in New England. She had been accustomed from her childhood to a similar style of preaching in the old church at Milton; but

THE RELIGIOUS ATMOSPHERE

171

then her wide culture and reading of liberal books, her occasional Sundays in Boston, where she had listened with enthusiasm to Buckminster and Channing; and, above all, her association with pious and devout persons, to whom "the spirit was more than the letter," together with her constant, devoted, and intelligent study of the Scriptures, had inclined her to a liberal interpretation of those doctrines, which as she now saw them enforced in Northampton were dry as dust to her, hard and repelling; not what her New Testament taught her, and not what she wanted to have taught to her children. When she talked with my father on this subject of vital importance, both before and after her marriage, she found in him a singular agreement of thought and feeling and conviction. But neither of them dreamed of quitting the Church of their forefathers. Moreover, my father explained to her, that in the positions of public trust which he held in the country, and the varied relations to a wide circle in which he stood, it would be most unwise for them to express dissatisfaction with the prevailing belief of their neighborhood; that they must content themselves with getting what good they could from the Sunday ministrations, and where their convictions differed from their neighbors', they could at least be patient and silent.

And besides, every tie of affection and gratitude bound my dear father to the old minister of the town, l'arson Williams, as he was always familiarly called. When my father was a little boy of eight years, he one day climbed to the top of a tall tree

to witness a skirmish that was going on, towards the close of the Revolutionary War. But when he saw blood flowing he became giddy, and fell from his height. He was taken up insensible, and it was found that his skull was fractured. A long and anxious time followed, when he was nursed by his good parents with devoted care, and his vigorous constitution finally triumphed. But he recovered to great delicacy of health, and sensitiveness of brain; and Parson Williams, who had been devoted in his attentions to the family during this period of anxiety, told his parents that it would never do for Joseph to go to the village-school and be mixed with rough boys; and that, if they would send him to his study for a few hours every day, he would teach him all he was strong enough to learn. So the little boy became the daily inmate of the good pastor's study, and his rapid advancement astonished his teacher. One day, Parson Williams astonished the parents also, by appearing before them to say that Joseph, though only eleven years of age, was perfectly fitted to enter Yale College; and they must let him go. The parents demurred, they were poor, and it was an expense they could not meet, they thought. But the faithful friend, feeling sure that the fine boy would not fail to repay them a thousand-fold for all their sacrifices, did not leave them till he had exacted a promise from them that Joseph should be entered at Yale College a few weeks later. And so his mother set herself to work, and spun him the entire suit in which he entered college. But she had not time to knit him stockings, and so he went barefoot.