worship, at least, that is connected with appearances. There you would have seen no seats, but sinners bowing down in a mass, on the cold stones, and all thoughts of cushioned pews and drawing-room conveniences unknown. We protestants have improved on our Catholic forefathers in this respect; and the innovation of which you now speak, in my eyes is an rreverent, almost a sinful, invasion of the proprieties of the temple."

"Ah, Miss Eve, this comes from substituting forms for the substance of things," exclaimed the editor. "For my part, I can say I was truly shocked with the extravagancies I witnessed, in the way of worship, in most of the countries I visited. Would you think it, Mr. Bragg, rational beings, real bonâ fide living men and women, kneeling on the stone pavement, like so many camels in the desert," Mr. Dodge loved to draw his images from the different parts of the world he had seen, "ready to receive the burdens of their mastors; not a pew, not a cushion, not a single comfort that is suitable to a free and intelligent being, but everything conducted in the most abject manner, as if accountable human souls were no better than so many mutes in a Turkish palace."

"You ought to mention this in the Active Inquirer," said Aristabulus. "All in good time sir; I have many things in reserve, among which I propose to give a few remarks, I dare say they will be very worthless ones, on the impropriety of a rational being ever kneeling. To my notion, gentlemen and ladies, God never intended an American to

kneel."

The respectable mechanics who stood around the table did not absolutely assent to this proposition, for one of them actually remarked that "he saw no great harm in a man's kneeling to the Deity;" but they evidently inclined to the opinion that the new school of pews was far better than the old.

"It always appears to me, Miss Effingham," said one, "that I hear and understand the sermon better in one of the low pews than in one of the old high-backed things, that look so much like pounds."

"But can you withdraw into yourself better, sir? Can you more truly devote all your thoughts, with a suitable singleness of heart, to the worship of God?"

"You mean in the prayers, now, I rather conclude?"

"Certainly, sir, I mean in the prayers and the thanksgivings.

"Why, we leave them 'pretty much to the parson; though I will own it is not quite as easy leaning on the edge of one of the newschool pews as on one of the old. They are better for sitting, but not so good for standing. But then the sitting posture at prayers is quite coming into favour among our people, Miss Effingham, as well as among yours. The sermon is the main chance, after all."

"Yes," observed Mr. Gouge, "give me good, strong preaching, any day, in preference to good praying. A man may get along with secondrate prayers, but he stands in need of first-rate preaching."

"These gentlemen consider religion a little like a cordial on a cold day," observed John Effingham, "which is to be taken in sufficient doses to make the blood circulate. They are not the men to be pounded in pews, like lost sheep, not they !"

"Mr. John will always have his say," one remarked; and then Mr. Effingham dismissed the party, by telling them he would think of the matter.

When the mechanics were gone, the subject was discussed at some length between those that remained, all the Effinghams agreeing that they would oppose the innovation, as irreverent in appearance, unsuited to the retirement and self-abasement that best comported with prayer, and opposed to the delicacy of their own habits; while Messrs. Bragg and Dodge contended to the last that such changes were loudly called for by the popular sentiment—that it was unsuited to the dignity of a man to be 'pounded,' even in a church—and virtually, that a good, 'stirring' sermon, as they called it, was of far more account, in public worship, than all the prayers and praises that could issue from the heart or throat.

CHAPTER XIV.

"We'll follow Cade-we'll follow Cade."

Мов.

"THE views of this Mr. Bragg, and of our old fellow-traveller, Mr. Dodge, appear to be peculiar on the subject of religious forms," observed Sir George Templemore, as he descended the little lawn before the Wigwam, in company with the three ladies, Paul Powis, and John Effingham, on their way to the lake. "I should think it would be difficult to find another Christian who objects to kneeling at prayer."

“Therein you are mistaken, Templemore," answered Paul; "for this country, to say nothing of one sect which holds it in utter abomination, is filled with them. Our pious ancestors, like neophytes, ran into extremes, on the subject of forms, as well as in other matters. When you go to Philadephia, Miss Effingham, you will see an instance of a most ludicrous nature-ludicrous, if there were not something painfully revolting mingled with it—of the manner in which men can strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; and which, I am sorry to say, is immediately connected with our own church."

It was music to Eve's ears to hear Paul Powis speak of his pious ancestors as being American, and to find him so thoroughly identifying himself with her own native land; for while condemning so many of its practices, and so much alive to its absurdities and contradictions, our heroine had seen too much of other countries not to take an honest pride in the real excellencies of her own. There was also a soothing pleasure in hearing him openly own that he belonged to the same church as herself.

"And what is there ridiculous in Philadelphia, in particular, and in connection with our own church?" she asked. "I am not so easily disposed to find fault where the venerable church is concerned."

"You know that the Protestants, in their horror of idolatry, discontinued, in a great degree, the use of the cross as an outward religious symbol; and that there was probably a time when there was not a single cross to be seen in the whole of a country that was settled by those who made a profession of love for Christ and a dependence on his expiation the great business of their lives?"

"Certainly. We all know our predecessors were a little over-rigid and scrupulous on all the points connected with outward appearances." "They certainly contrived to render the religious rites as little pleasing to the senses as possible, by aiming at a sublimation that peculiarly favours spiritual pride and a pious conceit. I do not know whether travelling has had the same effect on you as it has produced on me, but I find all my inherited antipathies to the mere visible representation of the cross superseded by a sort of solemn affection for it, as a symbol, when it is plain and unaccompanied by any of those bloody and minute accessories that are so often seen around it in Catholic countries. The German Protestants, who usually ornament the altar with a cross, first cured me of the disrelish I imbibed on this subject in childhood."

"We, also, I think, cousin John, were agreeably struck with the same usage in Germany. From feeling a species of nervousness at the sight of a cross, I came to love to see it; and I think you must have undergone a similar change, for I have discovered no less than three among the ornaments of the great window of the entrance tower at the Wigwam." "You might have discovered one, also, in every door of the building, whether great or small, young lady. Our pious ancestors, as Powis calls them, much of whose piety, by the way, was any thing but meliorated with spiritual humility or Christian charity, were such ignoramuses as to set up crosses in every door they built, even while they veiled their eyes in holy horror whenever the sacred symbol was seen in a church."

"Every door!" exclaimed the Protestants of the party.

"Yes; literally every door, I might almost say; certainly every panelled door that was constructed twenty years since. I first discovered the secret of our blunder when visiting a castle in France that dated back from the time of the crusade. It was a château of the Montmorencies, that had passed into the hands of the Condé family by marriage; and the courtly old domestic who showed me the curiosities pointed out to me the stone croix in the windows, which has caused the latter to be called croisées, as a pious usage of the crusaders. Turning to a door, I saw the same crosses in the wooden stiles; and if you cast an eye on the first humble door that you may pass in this village you will detect the same symbol staring you boldly in the face, in the very heart of a population that would almost expire at the thoughts of placing such a sign of the beast on their very thresholds."

The whole party expressed their surprise; but the first door they passed corroborated this account, and proved the accuray of John Effingham's statements. Catholic zeal and ingenuity could not have wrought more accurate symbols of this peculiar sign of the sect; and yet, here they stood staring every passenger in the face, as if mocking the ignorant and exaggerated pretension which would lay undue stress

on the minor points of a religion, the essence of which was faith and humility.

"And the Philadelphia church?" said Eve, quickly, so soon as her curiosity was satisfied on the subject of the door; "I am now more impatient than ever to learn what silly blunder we have also committed there."

'Impious would almost be a better term," Paul answered. "The only church spire that existed for half a century in that town was surmounted by a mitre, while the cross was studiously rejected!"

A silence followed; for there is often more true argument in simply presenting the facts of a case than in all the rhetoric and logic that could be urged by way of auxiliaries. Every one saw the egregious folly, not to "ay presumption, of the mistake; and at the moment every one wondered how a common-sense community could have committed so indecent a blunder. We are mistaken. There was an exception to the general feeling in the person of Sir George Templemore. To his church-and-state notions, and anti-catholic prejudices, which were quite as much political as religious, there was every thing that was proper, and nothing that was wrong, in rejecting a cross for a mitre.

"The church no doubt was episcopal, Powis," he remarked, "and it was not Roman. What better symbol than the mitre could be chosen?" "Now I reflect, it is not so very strange," said Grace eagerly, "for you will remember, Mr. Effingham, that Protestants attach the idea of idolatry to the cross, as it is used by Catholics."

"And of bishops, peers in parliament, church and state, to a mitre." "Yes, but the church in question I have seen; and it was erected before the war of the revolution. It was an English rather than an American church."

"It was indeed an English church rather than an American; and Templemore is very right to defend it, mitre and all."

"I dare say a bishop officiated at its altar?"

"I dare say—nay, I know he did; and, I will add, he would rather that the mitre were two hundred feet in the air, than down on his own simple, white-haired, apostolical-looking head. But enough of divinity for the morning; yonder is Tom with the boat, let us to our oars.'

The party were now on the little wharf that served as a villagelanding, and the boatman mentioned lay off in waiting for the arrival of his fare. Instead of using him, however, the man was dismissed; the gentlemen preferring to handle the oars themselves. Aquatic excursions were of constant occurrence in the warm months, on that beautifully limpid sheet of water, and it was the practice to dispense with the regular boatmen whenever good oarsmen were to be found among the company.

As soon as the light, buoyant skiff was brought to the side of the wharf, the whole party embarked; and Paul and the baronet taking the oars, they soon urged the boat from the shore.

"The world i getting to be too confined for the adventurous spirit of the age," said Sir George, as he and his companion pulled leisurely along, taking the direction of the eastern shore, beneath the forest-clad cliffs of which the ladies had expressed a wish to be rowed; "here are Powis and myself actually rowing together on a mountain lake of

America, after having boated as companions on the coast of Africa, and on the margin of the Great Desert. Polynesia and Terra Australis may yet see us in company as hardy cruisers."

"The spirit of the age is indeed working wonders in the way you mean," said John Effingham. "Countries of which our fathers merely read are getting to be as familiar as our own homes to their sons; and with you one can hardly foresee to what a pass of adventure the generation or two that will follow us may not reach."

Vraiment, c'est fort extraordinaire de se trouver sur un lac Americain," exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville.

"More extraordinary than to find one's self on a Swiss lake, think you, my dear Mademoiselle Viefville?"

"Non, non, mais tout aussi extraordinaire pour une Parisienne."

"I am now about to introduce you, Mr. John Effingham and Miss Van Cortlandt excepted," Eve continued, "to the wonders and curiosities of this lake and region. There, near the small house that is erected over a spring of delicious water, stood the hut of Natty Bumppo, once known throughout all these mountains as a renowned hunter; a man who had the simplicity of a woodsman, the heroism of a savage, the faith of a Christian, and the feelings of a poet. A better than he, after his fashion, seldom lived."

"We have all heard of him," said the baronet, looking round curiously; "and must all feel an interest in what concerns so brave and just a man. I would I could see his counterpart."

"Alas!" said John Effingham, "the days of the 'Leather-stockings' have passed away. He preceded me in life, and I see few remains of his character in a region where speculation is more rife than moralizing, and emigrants are plentier than hunters. Natty probably chose that spot for his hut on account of the vicinity of the spring; is it not so, Miss Effingham ?"

"He did; and yonder little fountain that you see gushing from the thicket, and which comes glancing like diamonds into the lake, is called the 'Fairy Spring,' by some flight of poetry that, like so many of our feelings, must have been imported; for I see no connection between the name and the character of the country, fairies having never been known, even by tradition, in Otsego."

The boat now came under a shore where the trees fringed the very water, frequently overhanging the element that mirrored their fantastic forms. At this point, a light skiff was moving leisurely along in their own direction, but a short distance in advance. On a hint from John Effingham, a few vigorous strokes of the oars brought the two boats near each other.

"This is the flag-ship," half whispered John Effingham, as they came near the other skiff, "containing no less a man than the 'commodore.' Formerly, the chief of the lake was an admiral, but that was in times when, living nearer to the monarchy, we retained some of the European terms; now, no man rises higher than a commodore in America, whether it be on the ocean or on the Otsego, whatever may be his merits or his services. A charming day, commodore; I rejoice to see you still afloat in your glory."

ommodore, a tall, thin, athletic man of seventy, with a white