Letters While Professor in the Theological Seminary, Princeton, 1849–1851

Princeton, June 14, 1849.

MY anxious suspense is so far relieved that I have determined to remove hither. The voice of the Assembly seemed to leave me little option, except in points of which they could not be cognizant. The voice of my clerical brethren, in and out of New York, so far as known to me, has been in favour of my translation. Jones informs me that this is the unanimous wish in Philadelphia; and a number of my own people have reluctantly owned that they think it my duty to go. I have been somewhat moved by this singular concurrence; but more by the unexpected Providence which has secured such a result, by the frustration of all preceding plans. As to competency I cannot judge of that. As to the comparative importance of the two posts, I have never had any question, that (to one competent) the teaching-place was equal in importance to any ten of the other.

I have seen clearly that the Duane Street Church could live only by moving up-town, and thither I wished not to move. I have seen as clearly that my powers were tasked to a tension which must soon be fatal; while, in the steadier routine of teaching, I might last a season, with ordinary favour of Providence.

Do not be surprised to see me on Sunday, but do not look for me. My going, if I go, is merely to attend on my father. I have been very much unwell, even in bed for a time. The cause I think was my extreme trouble of mind about removal.

PRINCETON, June 30, 1849.

Again our relation is changed, and you are once more the city, and I the country mouse. President Bonaparte seems to be contradicting all previous beliefs of his imbecility: they say he managed the late emeute admirably. You see Baptist W. Noel has become an anabaptist. I am in the thick of painting, scour ing, mending, whitening, &c., and have not yet got in any of my furniture. I have never read such personality and scurrility in ecclesiastical debate in the United States, as in the two Scotch Assemblies. In the Established Church they debated three hours about the two nominees for Moderator, Bell and Simpson; with very unbecoming opprobrium on both. Nobody seems to know any thing of Bannerman, who succeeds Dr. Chalmers; he may be none the worse for that. Addison (pro more) has moved again, and has chambers in the Seminary, lowest floor, front, next to Dr. Hodge’s.

PRINCETON, July 19, 1849.

Paint, paint! Hammer, Hammer! Still in transitu. When a house has had no regular inhabitant for four or five years, it is wonderful how many things get awry; locks, keys, grates, pot hooks, pins, bolts, panes, drawers, knobs, ceilings, floors, steps, spouts, shingles, gates, hinges, coops, well-buckets, volunteer trees, weeds, &c. We have not got in yet; though I write in my quondam study. I will give you two hundred young papermulberry trees, now growing in my grounds, on condition you take away the parent dittos. An excellent, pious cook, whom we left in New York, has had the cholera; a girl of whom I made a little purchase of mint lozenges the other day, has since died of the same. Mrs. S. (New York) was taken with formidable symptoms, including marble-coldness, sinking, and nausea, on Sunday night. Dr. Beatty of Ohio, who is here, encountered cases everywhere on the canal. In an upland village near him, the Rev. John K. Cunningham, one of our alumni, has lost his

wife, and seven or eight valuable members of his church.

is a good-natured fellow, and I think may be led into ways o’f much more usefulness than he has. When 1 see how he has gained in a year or two, I have hopes he may get over even his desire digito monstrarier. In Princeton College, I am certain, a boy will be better taught, more developed, and made a man of, than in a city college. True, he will be more endangered; but, after all, strength cannot come but by some peril. I have scarcely ever known a studious boy injured in college; never one who added good habits and dutifulness, on entrance. Though I own my parental apprehensions would forbid me to do it, I soberly think our sons would gain most, by going through the entire college-trials, commons and all.

PRINCETON, August 11, 1849.

Tho only critical case among the car-wrecked people,1 is that of Walters. Mr. Schenck, Dr. Maclean, and Dr. Hodge have been daily with the afflicted. Three of them have chiefly fallen under my notice; one of these is a black woman, a seemingly pious Baptist. Another, dreadfully hurt in the legs — wounds a hand’s breadth deep, with iron screw in bottom of one — is a good-looking German tanner, from Magdeburg. He cannot speak a word of English. This morning it occurred to me to quote the beginning of the Hymn, “O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden;” he immediately repeated the whole fourteen stanzas of eight lines each; it was evidently to him an act of devotion. He also repeated two other long hymns, highly evangelical, but new to me*. What an instance of the good of hymns got by heart! Next to him lies a New York Yankee, who perhaps does not know one, though the more intelligent, and possibly the more pious of the two. The Company spare no pains: indeed no pains or price can neutralize the effect of the testimony before the coroner. Our lives have all been at the mercy of a switchtender, who may be miles away. I think it a kindly Providence that the sufferers are where they can receive so much soothing and useful truth. I preached to a fine congregation on Fast Day, at Blawenburg, and to Africans on Sunday. I desire not to be away for more than a night, till I can get through my heavy preparations. After I am a week or two warm in the saddle, I will gladly give you one, two, or three Sundays. Mr. de Sandran, the French master, died this morning from apoplexy. Though somewhat settled, our painters have left us with a number of window-shutters off, front-door barricaded, and stairs uncarpeted. We took in half a hogshead of water, which entered loft, attic, and guest-chamber. Chancellor, Bishop, and Dr. Johns have each a son in College. Accession about 50. Prof. Loomis is recalled to University, New York city. I fear we none of us feel duly our exemption from the plague, (cholera.) What a difference between Trenton and Brunswick! By avoiding all aperient fruits and vegetables, I have, since coming here, enjoyed (what I never had before in July) a perfect regularity of health. Still I look on the cholera very much as I do on a stroke of lightning, and have no notion of charging every one who has it with imprudence. Two deaths of it on Sourland Mountain, in a high, airy, secluded nook. At Bfbckley they tried every variety of approved practice; almost all died. Several very near neighbours of ours in New York have been carried off by it, including two physicians, and three in the family of one of them.

1 An accident on the railway near Princeton.

PRINCETON, August 28, 1849.

I do not know that I ever applied myself more constantly or closely than for two months past. On the 30th our duties begin. The next two Sabbaths I expect to preach in Duane street. For some time past Mr. Gallatin was unable to see me, or even hear my name. Just before his death his exercises were as follows: “He has been at the point of death, and his situation is still very critical. During his extremest illness he had the most blessed assurance of acceptance and salvation through Christ, repeatedly praising and thanking God for his mercies and goodness, in that he should have been made a partaker of this salvation, as he expressed himself continually. The God-Man still a mystery to him, but (no longer doubted) fully believed and received. For one hour heaven was opened unto him, and he appeared on the threshold of Eternity; but it pleased God to bring him again to earth, with shattered frame and intellect, &c.”

I own no copy of Doddridge but the one volume one. By-the-bye, I have got more good from that book than from any commentator. There ought to be a new edition with modernized references; nobody knows the numerous dissenting authors whom he cites in the notes. Addison has saddled himself with a tremendous job in his book on Psalms, but his working-power exceeds any thing I ever dreamt of. I hope you see Copperfield, [Dickens’ Tale;] it is delightful and useful. I wish you had been here to meet the Rev. Theodore Fliedner, of Prussia, who has been at Dr. Hodge’s. For thirteen years, besides being a pastor, he has been training Christian nurses, (soeurs de charite,) or, “Evangelical deaconesses,” of whom he and his wife have trained a hundred and fifty. He has been making a flying visit to the United States, to set up four of his deaconesses at Pittsburg. They are under no vows, but engage to serve five years. I have his reports. Among his subscribers are all the royal and princely names of Prussia, and all the ecclesiastical authorities. He is a most earnest, one-idead man, full of the tenderness gendered by such pursuits. Some of his remarks in conversation abridged: “You Americans far surpass us in some things, especially in practical tact; but O, what a want of tenderness and heart! O, what singing in the churches; not half singing; and some schools where no singing is taught! Your American church is a good father, but it is not a mother; it lacks the mother-love to the poor, and sick, and prisoner. This you leave to Free Masons, Odd Fellows, and Sons of Temperance. Your young ministers are not trained at bedsides, and in gaols; the best training. Are the difficulties greater for you than for Papists? Surely, there are maiden ladies in America who would love to nurse Christ in his sick members.” He publishes a Magazine for the Poor and Sick, and for those who attend them. I have it. They have been especially useful in the Magdalen cause, (as it is calumniously called.) I don’t think I shall ever lose the impression of his gentleness and energy. If I hear of his coming here, in time, I will send for you, and you must come, if only for an hour.

PRINCETON, September 13, 1849.

Since I wrote last, I have passed through a thicket of thoughts and cares, though I have been blessed with unusual health. My new business involves more pressing study than I had thought; and in a new habitation there are daily wants emergent which take time and money. Then the pleasing-painful care of other peoples’ cares has been daily. I am glad you have escaped the model of the Pantheon, as all un-hellenistic people call it, even in verse. See Pope to the contrary. My inauguration is to be on the 20th of November: at which time you will appear at bed and board. Phillips and Plumer induct, by charge and sermon. “O Mother dear Jerusalem,” is a famous Scotch hymn or ballad, by Dickson of the 17th century. I cannot lay my hands on it: it is very long, and is the mother dear of “Jerusalem my Happy Home.” The least of my doubts concerning Fliedner is on the point you mention: I think it clear that there were deaconesses of old. Look at 1 Tim. iii. 11, of which the whole force is lost in our version: ywcuVas does not mean their wives (why should the qualifications of wives of deacons and of no other officers be named1?) but the females, i. e. the deaconesses. Just look at this in the whole connexion. I am afraid you will find the chronology of our Lord’s doctrines second in perplexity only to the precession of the equinoxes. My poor congregation in New York is in a bad way. The two or three old-hunkers, who can’t see that the earth has gone round any since Dr. Romeyn’s day, would never believe (what is undeniable) that the Church cannot be maintained where it is, except as a free church. This I perceived two years ago, and discovered six months ago that five-sixths of the people were ready to move. But the plan was quashed by the conservatives, and I fear they will be left alone, unless they instanter remove. The house is almost embedded in sugar-refiner ies and other stews. Its real supporters live far above it. Drs Spring and McElroy will soon go up, and the sense of being a preacher to a fluent crowd was what chiefly discouraged me, and hindered my labours. I say these things to them freely now, be cause they cannot charge me with any worldly lust of a better locale, which they constructively did while I was with them. I have said to Mr. Auchincloss that two years hence there cannot by possibility be .a Presbyterian church at that corner. They must choose between scattering (already repeated till the identity is gone) and removal. The greater the man they get, the sooner will he translate the Church. Lower New York is in no proper sense other than as a warehouse, compared with a dwelling.

Our Directors being done with, do come on and bring your family. I have beans and spinach, and a bushel of sour grapes; and though beef is rare, we have a great diversity of agnine parts, such as neck, breast, loin, kidneys, &c. My dear old father is a little unwell again. He will preach when asked, and people will ask him. Two sermons and a lecture in three days!

PRINCETON, September 19, pridie jEquinoct., 1849. In the sore loss of my parochial comforts, which were always delightful to me, in the net result, and which are to a sincere man a sort of expansion of his fireside pleasures, I try to comfort myself by looking with new eyes on my pupils. We have matriculated fifty-three, and “still they come.” I am struck with the amount of good healthy flesh and bone. Nothing is so pleasing to me as the Sunday conference. It is a genuine primitive “prophesying.” My dear old father, whose feebleness reaches my heart, is nowhere so felicitous. About half the young men are off at schools and meetings. The subjects are always practical or experimental. When you exchange with me, be sure to arrange for attending this meeting. Of Scots and Hibernians we have about a dozen, several being Glasgow graduates; also a Baptist preacher, and wife, from Charleston. Last year there were five or six Baptists, all most promising men. Dr. Miller is really too weak to go about with safety. John Miller, after the tour of Europe, and after being a prisoner for half a day in Rome, seeing the Pope’s house at Gaeta, and lying ill in Holland,

is on the return, via Edinburgh. is a good preacher, a pious

man, a most affable, unpretending companion, but overladen with extraordinary knowledge of books, beyond proportion to his mental powers. That is a splendid oration of Victor Hugo at

the Peace Congress. You have, through, an opportunity

to get a national thanksgiving on account of the diminution of the pestilence. Poor Blythe is still silenced, by sequelae of dysentery. The Second Church is nearly ready; a snug little place. Washington Irving, in his “Goldsmith,” has illy, and several other illiterate expressions.

1 A meeting for devotion and remarks on topics of experimental religion, held by the professors with the students of the Seminary, every Lord’s-day afternoon.

PRINCETON, October 4, 1849

I have for you a copy of “O Mother Dear,” singularly thrown* in my way, how or whence I know not: I picked it up in the mire of the road. The Mons. Perrin you name is an extraordinary violinist; except the miraculous Oles and Sivoris, he beats any thing I remember. As to stoves, I anticipated your despair. The diversification is ridiculous, like Horace’s

Qui variare cupit rem prodigialitcr unam.

I have stuck an old second-hand franklin in my study-hearth, for wood: it does well enough for moderate weather. I shall miss nothing of New York so much as English coal; for I can’t afford to burn it here.

I should like to lend you Milman’s History of Christianity, volume by volume, for though it is written with an almost infidel coolness, it is the .only English work that gives the distilled essence of the Germanic researches into out-of-the-way antiquities of early mother church. If I live, I must be some years familiar izing myself with the original documents of the former ages.

It would be chimerical to expect the same watch over hundreds of young men as a father has over half-a-dozen; and there must also be a period of transition from home to the world, but this period should be (O how carefully!) guarded. I should like to have the following queries discussed in some journal, concerning any college, or all colleges: How often does the President appear in private chambers? How many times in a year does he avail himself of the prayer-assembly, to make any fatherly remarks? What assurance have you that lads are in their chambers from 11 — 12 P. M.? Suppose twenty are at a groghole all night, what means of assuring yourselves of this? What limit to walking all over the city or village on Sunday? What superintendence at feeding-time, in those houses where ten to twelve fellows take their grub separate from the family?

Great evils arise in the United States from the ease with which new congregations, churches, and even sects are formed. Ex. gr.: suppose a minority in Smithville choose to do wrong. Presbytery animadverts. Minority turns on heel; “who cares!” Presbytery more stringent. Minority turns on heel; new church; two steeples; two miserable handfuls; two starving preachers; perhaps one independent society. There is no disgrace, and little difficulty, in rearing a new sect. Hence an ecclesiastical censure is brutum fulmen; and hence church courts shrink from uttering their thunders. Our practice is a century or more below our book of discipline, in all courts but the highest; and nobody abides by acts of General Assembly,

VOL. II. 5* whether anent sitting in prayer, or reading in preaching. A

vermilion edict.

«

PRINCETON, October 12, 1849.

There is a remarkable amount of indisposition in the Seminary, though nobody very ill, nor prevalence of any one disease. At least ten are on the sick-list. One young man of college, native of Scotland, lies very low with dysentery. I have preached as much as usual ever since I left New York, besides the tough work of getting ready for classes.

On reaching Princeton, I had hard work to get ready for my lecture at 11 o’clock. Just as we were sitting down to dinner we perceived the house of our neighbour, Mrs. Armstrong, to be on fire. Our gardens join, though she fronts on Stockton street. The wind was towards us, and at that moment very high. Providence ordered several* things most happily: the wind was from the house; it was mid-day; Edward Armstrong wras in his mother’s house; and a new fire-engine had just been procured to be handselled on this occasion. Commodore Stockton was soon on the roof, with the face of a coal-man. Armstrong thinks he saved the house. Every thing was removed from it. The chief damage is the kitchen part, which is pretty much unroofed. It came of the country practice of burning a chimney during the heavy rain of the morning.

PRINCETON, October 15, 1849.

I wish I had begun early to mark places in the New Testament, in which the play of the sound is lost in English. I note these in my morning lesson: 2 Cor. iii. 5, 6, “Not that we are IKO.VOL of ourselves, to think any thing .... but the i/cai/oV^s is of God, who also iKavwo-ev us ministers of the New Testament. O that we could English that glorious passage, 2 Cor. iv. 8, seq.! The jingle is lost, and in our version what a bathos, from change of usage in a word, is here: “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed!” Tyndale says, “without shyft.” Try your hand on the whole passage, in translation; it will at least breed a sermon. The iv iravrl. seems to qualify all the series. “In this whole life of ours, we are pressed, but not oppressed,” (pressed to death;) clause out: “aTropov/xo/oi, desponding, but not eavropov/mot, despairing;” Wiclif renders vt/cpwo-iv, “sleying,” and the Rhemists, “mortification,” both actively. I believe this is the only classical sense. I had just been reading with wonder

1 The number of his sermons in 1844 was 97; 1845, 117; 1846, 120; 1847, 107; 1848, 109; 1849, 80. His farewell sermon was preached in Duane Street, June 10, 1849, from 1 Cor. iii. 21-23.

Prof. Guyot’s (Agassiz’s friend) “Earth and Man,” when I this morning fell in with him at Dr. Hodge’s. Guyot and Prof. Henry are busy at the making some thousands of, barometers at New York, for government. He is a tenderly pious man; you would be delighted to hear such childlike French Christianity from such a philosopher; he is brother-in-law of Grandpierre. “The revolution of 1848, unlike that of 1830, declares war against learning and science; these are aristocratical. Down with all aristocracy! — of mind — yes, even of morals” This avowed by a very distinguished leader, of genius, in the Canton de Vaud: “Down with all mentalism, ideology!” “The next generation growing up in this sensualism.” He thinks the secession of F. Monod, Bridel, &c., very wrong. “Result of breaking connexion with state, would be to leave at least half the Protestant churches without service; and this in an unchristian population. Dare we take the responsibility of such a crisis 1” He thinks we have no notion pf the prevalence of atheism among the mass in Germany and Switzerland.

I feel the week’s ideology does not fit me bodily for Sundayism: I came flagged to the “desk:” yesterday two sermons: this morning nervous. I did not leave pastoral life willingly; I foresaw the very evils I begin to feel; but they distress me more than I reckoned for. I miss my old women; and especially my weekly catechumens,1 my sick-rooms, my rapid walks, and my nights of right-down fatigue. Prof. Henry is lecturing a rapid course, to the unspeakable delight of the collegians; his studies were always pleasing to them, though he was such a driller.

PRINCETON, November, 8, 1849.
Bill concerning Old Correspondents.

“Sec. 10. And be it enacted, that in case any citizens shall cause it to appear that they have communicated, conferred, or corresponded, by letter or epistle, for the term of thirty years, the said citizens shall have the franking privilege for the remainder of their natural lives, etc.”

Craven has just got back from South Hampton (one of four Hamptons, of) Long Island. Strange place! Puritan settlement: scarce altered in two hundred years: insulated: antique fashions: 1,700 parishioners: no church but Presbyterian in all the district: wealthy farmers: surface of ground covered with

1 He contributed to the Repertory this year a paper on “The History of Catechizing.” His other articles in the volume of 1849 were on the Baptist Controversy, on the Family of Arnauld, (as connected with Jansenism and Port Royal,) and on the Autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Ashbel Green.

rotting sea-fish, their only manure. Every serious wound leads to tetanus; same in adjacent parishes. Five times as many at church in afternoon as in morning. Farmers do not live on their farms, but in hamlets: thirteen elders, one or more in each

hamlet. In the village of S not one male communicant, but

many in the church. All these have joined in revivals. Among their ministers have been Jonathan Edwards, Dr. Buel, and Dr. Beecher. Imperturbable in old habits. Vacant, but won’t accept one as candidate till he has preached for them three months. All their produce goes to Sag Harbour. These gleanings from my father. Dr. Hare’s sermon, showing that baptized children are church members. Once it was our doctrine, but New England has conquered. Every now and then I hear a new word added to the college lingo: e. g. “Half the Junior class are taking privates, (q. d. private lessons, with a tutor, so as to keep up with Prof. Alexander’s hard mathematics.) Webster’s Dictionary, last edition, has all the English University terms, such as Little-go, Tripos-papers, Wrangler, Optimes, Corpus, &c. If you ever need a French dictionary, buy the last and best “French and English, and English and French Dictionary, &c., &c., by A Spiers.” 1849. PARIS. 8vo, pp. 1331: $4: bound in France. In Boston, Little and Brown. It is under the auspices of Guizot, Villemain, and many savans and litterateurs in England and France. Agreez, Monsieur, &c.

PRINCETON, November 14, 1849.

My mind does not easily leave the death-bed scene of our dear young friend Candor,1 with whom I have spent many hours of the last few days. I went from his speechless countenance to

marry, and hurried back to find him just gone. He was

ill six weeks, and never seemed to me to suffer much more in mind or body than you or I probably this moment. It was a most natural death-bed, if I may say so of what was so gracious. Perhaps a dozen hymns were sung around him yesterday up to the very cessation of his utterance: there was no loquacity or tendency to talk of his exercises, but an uncontrollable thirst for prayers, hymns, and Scriptures. I preached from 1 Thess. iv. 14, on “sleep in Jesus.” His friends admitted with surprise that his fellow-students nursed him with a skill, devotion, and gentleness, that scarcely a father’s house could have afforded, for so long an illness. He was one of the first minds of our house, as formerly of the college. This morning Dr. Miller sent for me, and for the first time in his life did not rise

1 John Montgomery Candor, of Pennsylvania, a student in the Seminary.

when I entered. He then formally made over to me the charge of the instruction, and said, inter alia: “No, sir, my time is come. I must go to the grave; no skill of man can do me any good.” He no longer drives out. Every expression connects itself with his departure. In all my life I never saw a gentler decline, or a more serene, collected, looking into eternity. Our numerous cases of illness in the Seminary have kept me in parochial service, and our pot has been constantly over the fire with beef-tea, broth, &c. One case remains. God grant that our chastening may mend us, and be removed. There is far more to reach the feelings in my Seminary connexion, than I knew of. A woman who works for us informs my wife (but for which I should not know it) that a highly respectable student of ours, a fine, cheerful fellow, boards himself at a widow’s house, and that he has had one piece of meat in three weeks. This of course I will not suffer; but many a private Christian might relieve such a case, by intermitting pies and puddings for a month. Two young men have had to go off to schools.

I am giving you a very grave letter. Sometimes one reads that men may be known by their letters, and biographies go up on this postulate. Certainly it fails sometimes as to habitual moods. E. g. In my private hours, nine out of ten, I am grave even to a fault. In my letters I am apt to seek recreation; they are a sort of conversation. I never saw it alluded to, except by Boz, (frequently by him,) but the funniest things that ever come to my tongue’s end, are in seasons of deep affliction, so that repression is needed, to save appearances. While moralizing, let me add, there is a great distinction between grief and misery; how often are we profoundly sorrowful, without being unhappy. Our adorable Lord was a “man of sorrows,” and (beautiful!) •»Vn 5!iT»3, “a (familiar) brother of grief ‘;” but how remote from being miserable! I am half afraid I am under some hallucination, or morbid judgment, but for several years I have sickened at the common way of outcry against specific amusements; sermons and tracts anent them, &c.: in one view all the meetings of our unconverted hearers are frivolous; but are they worst when they are merriest 1 This is dangerous ground, and I suspect myself; but my error is corrigible, and it surely does not grow out of any disposition to practise on the light fantastic toe. 1 believe, however, that sourness, moroseness, censoriousness, malice, lust, envy, and two or three other things, may eat as doth a canker in people who never danced. The hours of Inauguration Day are these, as per minutes: “Sermon be preached in the church at half-past 2 o’clock, and that the inauguration services take place in the church in the evening.” 1. Sermon by

Dr. Plumer. 2. Charge by Dr. Phillips. 3. Inaugural Discourse.

PRINCETON, December, 1849.

I found a warfare waging between Elders A and B,

as to whether of the twain should entertain you, [in New York.] Mr. A will, however, take no denial, and Mr. B reluctantly yields. You cannot go to a more hospitable roof than that of 40 Barclay street. Prepare to hear of perfections in your humble servant, which your lack of acquaintance has kept

Sm from knowing. Try to see the Panorama of the Nile, rop into Garrigue’s, under Astor House, and see German Annuals, &c. If you name me to G or to Evans, (Put nam’s salesman, son of an East India Baptist Missionary, and born in Sumatra,) they will probably do me the favour of being extra polite, as metropolites to a cosmopolite Tridentopolite. Look (at G.’s) at Retszch, Reinecke Fuchs, and Outlines of Thorwaldsen’s Statues. G. is a Dane, but speaks every thing. Dr. Raphael is making a noise among the numerous Christians who think everybody who is circumcised authorized to expound

the Old Testament. M is still bedridden; quere: bedriding? The Scotch say bed ;/«$£.

Kinney [of Newark] lectured here last evening; a most or nate, eloquent, and patriotic discourse. I never heard a better of the kind. I received from a nameless person in Duane street $200 for sick students, with a promise to sustain two poor students.

Dr. Miller has declined very gradually even till now. His greeting to my brother Samuel was, “Almost home.” Take it altogether I never knew such a euthanasy. All the decorum of his long life kept up “duntaxat ad imum.” Never one intrusion of doubt. Heaven has seemed just as much a-jar, as his next-door bedroom. Still in his study, among his life-long things, and still in a sort of chair, not bed. It is not four days since he ceased going to the table. He forbids prayer for recovery; longs to depart: has not seemed to have any anxiety but about the church, for a long time. Often has wept, more than of old, on spiritual matters. Greatly revived at hearing of conversions, &c. Our year’s text is, Looking unto Jesus.

PRINCETON, January 8, 1850. When I heard last night, Dr. Miller was almost gone; like a

1 The inauguration of Dr. Alexander took place according to this programme November 20, 1849. The three discourses were published together by the Board of Directors. The subject of the Professor’s inaugural was, “The value of Church History to the Theologian of our Day.”

184:9 — 1851. Ill

sleeping child, but knew my father. One of the boys came in as I had penned this, to say that Dr. Miller died last night about 11, a few hours after my father saw him; without any struggle, oppression, or seeming pain. The funeral is to be from the church, on Thursday, (January 10,) at 2 o’clock. It has been a great comfort to the Doctor to have his medical son with him so many weeks. The Doctor was in his 81st year. Of all the deaths I ever knew, this is the most surrounded by all the things one could desire.

[Rev. David] Trumbull gives me a volume of information about Chili: he has a wonderful eye for observation and power of making you know what he means: accost him. I am glad Valparaiso has a man of so much shrewdness. Some day get David King of our first class to preach for you. He is our Asaph, and is singularly discreet and grave.

PRINCETON, February 20, 1850.

I have your full letter from Washington. You must have had a delightful time in the “Federal City,” as my father, more veterum, still calls it. I can’t help thinking the responsibility of the Union lies just now on the North. Garrison, &c., of course must feel bound in conscience to change the Constitution, and abolish slavery; but other northern parties seem to me to have some place for concession, as they are the people who cry out so against disunion. The impending evil all seems to result from the provision of the Californians, a provision which I can’t help thinking was unnecessary. Nobody questions the right of a State to abolish slavery. Why throw such an apple of gold into the race of Atalanta?

All the United States Missionaries in India break down, but not the Britons. The Allahabad College teaches as high branches as ours. Bishop Wilson says our men there are the most learned body in India.

Schaff says a number of spicy things in his January number, [Mercersburg Review.] Among others, of “the sad and humbling experiences” of the Episcopalians “with some of their highest functionaries,” in New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, and Constantinople.” All these disturbing

1 Mr. King was a native of Scotland, and remarkable for the melody of his voice in speaking. In another letter he is called “the sweet singer of our Israel David King.” He declined a call from the Duane Street congregation in the spring of 1850, and accepted one from Jersey City, where he was installed. His health ?oon failed, and he was about to take charge of a smaller congregation at Stillwater, in the Presbytery of Troy; but before his installation he was removed by death, May 16, 1853.

phenomena, besides their personal aspect, have a general significancy; they are not only symptoms of a diseased church, which is pulled asunder two opposite ways, never having been able to find as a basis that wholesome mean between Rome and Geneva, which once she vaunted, but they are also a judgment concerning all overhasty and impatient attempts to buttress up Protestantism from without in a mechanical way. It is true, Protestantism is making uneasy efforts beyond itself, and struggling also in other sections, and other ways, besides that of Puseyism, towards a churchly remodelling; but its rent garment will not allow patching with a few rags from the old-clothes-room of antiquity. New wine must not be put into old bottles, else the bottles are rent, and the wine lost.”

PRINCETON, March 5, 1S50.

I don’t know on whose side the shuttlecock has fallen, but I have had my hands very full of writing, having worked along to the Reformation-period, as good Mr. Pollock might say. Renewed studies of Luther have made me admire and love him more than ever. You will have heard that Mr. Schenck is having daily meetings. I fail to perceive a very deep stirring of the people’s mind, or special tenderness under the Word; but thirty to forty have been to talk with the pastor, and a number are reported to be in a state of hope. It is certainly some thing to get large numbers willing to be approached, and anxious to hear truth; and I believe this is so. My brother William is about to set up “the Princeton Magazine;” pp. 48, monthly. Of course we shall all help. It will not exclude scientific, classical, erudite, sportive, or Jersey articles. Probably a number out three weeks hence. “Princeton in 1801,” will open it, a reminiscence of my father. The oldest graduate, S. Baldwin of Newark, is dead; class of 1770. Alexander Hamilton was his

1 Twelve numbers of this magazine appeared in 1850, after which it -was discontinued. The brothers James and Addison made it the repository of many of their desultory effusions. The hand of the former is seen in such subjects as “Education among Merchants,” “The Prospects of the Mechanic,” “The Working Man’s Aim,” “Wordsworth,” “Le Pays Latin,” “Books and Business,” “Esthetics,” “Minor Works of Dr. Johnson,” “Machinery and Labour,” “The Physiognomy of Houses,” “Letters on the Early Latin Writers,” “Koadside Architecture.” The sportive and ironical wit of the other brother is detected in most of the humorous pieces with which the magazine abounds. Among these is the satirical poem which soon attracted extensive notice — “The Keconstruction of Society.” In a letter to the editor of these Letters, from the late Mr. Walsh, (Paris, Nov. 12, 1850,) that eminent scholar wrote — “The promise of the youth of the brothers Alexander seems to have been fulfilled. The Magazine abounds with matter which I read with keen relish.”

scholar. He was here when Witherspoon came. I have fallen into a hymn-book-correspondence with Dr. Demme.

I have only within a few weeks authentically traced up my mother’s mother to my g. g. g. g. grandfather Benjamin Harrison, born in Surry, in 1645; ob. 1713. A copy of his will is extant. It delights me to find that I have been erroneously claiming descent from Butcher Harrison, one of King Charles’s judges.

PRINCETON, March 19, 1850.

I went to bed the night after 1 saw you, and have not been out of doors since. Dieting has reduced me very much. Mean while I have lost all but the report of the awakening here; which is very remarkable in the college. Forsy th says: “There is not a student in the whole 200-f? who does not invite or expect religious conversation.” The best scholars, and the very ringleaders in vice, have been prostrated. Two of the managers of the Commencement Ball, (for next June,) Virginia bloods, have proposed to do away the ball; a nuisance which the Trustees have feared to abate, and which for twenty years has drawn in even several of our less spiritual professing Christians, or their children. The whole college may be said to be temporarily seeking God. Many of these young men are the only known members of large connexions, who care about religion. In this view, when I admit some mistakes and some excitement, a great point is gained; a great amount of truth is thrown into minds of ductile youth; vice is silenced; truth is owned; discipline is re-established; even if all who seem to be converted are not so. But of all these things I have seen nothing. Thirty-nine joined the Communion; thirty reported converts are yet behind, in the village. Schenck [the pastor of the First Church] says most of the awakened say their impressions have been on them for months; this is usual. In 1844, Dr. Rice admitted thirty-eight at one time. These show as well, so far as I know, as other professors. Two Romish republican priests, a Neapolitan and a Genoese, are coming here to study, &c. I hope they will do better than previous refugees. Duncan Kennedy has a unanimous call to Duane. Coming doubtful. He is by birth a Scot. I am slowly and feebly working on a tract, long on hand, for incoming German emigrants. I desire to have it published in German, say by the American Tract Society. I have tried in vain to get something of the kind. It contemplates temporals as well as spirituals. The Eclectic Review has fallen into infidel hands; Dr. Price having yielded the redaction in favour of a young colleague of W. J. Fox, M. P., the Socinian or Straussian preacher of London.

PRINCETON, March 22, 1850.

Monod’s extracts (in the Presbyterian) from De Wette’s preface is very instructive; I had seen the preface before. It touches your question about Antichrist. Though in difficulty about the Man of Sin, I can’t feel satisfied with any thing that reaches through so many ages. “Pantheistic Infidelity” comes near it. Scherer, of Geneva, gives up inspiration. We have an original exposee from him to Merle. He is just a Quaker, as to these things. He calls our old doctrine of inspiration a gastromythic cabbalistique; rejects 2 Peter, Jude, Revelation, (which is full of lies;) and makes, of course, nothing of the Old Testament. About sixteen out of twenty students (Geneva) go with Scherer. The “numbering of the people” gives following results:

Blacks converted (it began with them; say) 15

Presbyterian Congregations ... 60

College 40

Methodists report ..... 80 There is no abatement of the stir. About thirty-seven additional in college are serious. I observe that our butchers, bakers, and id genus, flock to meetings, and talk of little else.

A black girl (set 13, but smart) came to me under deep and intelligent conviction; caused by [Episcopal] Rector Paterson’s sermon last Sunday; she sits in his gallery. About 15 — 20 of the impressed in college are his hearers. Some of the most resisting and opposing persons in college, are sons of good men, and ministers. Snodgrass has admitted 100 at his new Goshen. The whole east end of Long Island is in a blaze, especially East Hampton, where there is no pastor. It was there that Dr. Buel and Dr. Beecher were settled. Every thing in that isolated region remains as 200 years ago.

PRINCETON, May 6, 1850.

My father’s Reminiscences of Patrick Henry, in the May [Princeton] Magazine, will be worth copying in newspapers. Enter Mr. M. from Baden. “Sare! You speak ze Fransh or ze German 1” Mr. M. desires to study theology; has been a

1 The question of his correspondent was — “Is not the ‘Man of Sin ’ a bigger man than the Pope? Is he not the a7ro<7Tarm of all heresy, crime, backsliding in the Church from Paul’s day downwards, and appearing to the Apostle in the revelation to him of the future history of the Church, like the one great image of Nebuchadnezzar, foreshadowing many eras and heterogeneous powers? There were ‘many Anti-Christs ’ in John’s day.”

functionary in the treasury of the grand-duke of Baden. Our two Italians differ. B. has a plebeian and patrickian look; speaks beastly Latin, and no English; says he was Captain in the Revolution, and (I fear me) is some day to be a burden and plague to his patrons. T. (whatever he is in heart) is eminently a scholar and a gentleman; in either capacity fit to be presented anywhere. His chagrin under the other’s contiguity, is admirable. They never met till here. The ordination occurs on the very day our Examen begins; I can do no more than run down to the evening diet.” Dr. Wayland is proposing a radical reform in Colleges; just what Jefferson set on foot in his University: abolition of four-year course, mock diplomas, honorary degrees, &c. I agree in every point; and did before I left the college. A letter of Dr. W. Shippen, penes me, speaks of President Edwards as a “pretty gentleman,” and of President Finley as “our stiff, stammering Dr. Finley.”

Yesterday, five churches here had Communion. I was with the second (Presbyterian) where fifteen were added on examination. At the first, thirty-four on examination. All disappointed, misanthropic fellows seem of necessity to doubt about church efforts, seminaries, and whatever has grown up within thirty years.

The Anniversaries in New York have got to be scarcely an attraction. It is remarkable how great the proportion of New Englanders is in the crowd. They doubtless tend to keep up very strongly a certain type of religious activity. The only one in which I ever felt any religious advantage, was the A. B. C. F. Missions, which is always managed with wisdom; speakers not snatched up by accident.

PRINCETON, May 21, 1850.

On Saturday I went to New York as an escort to my honoured parents, and returned in the evening to New Brunswick. Coming homeward from New York, I fell in with M., who talked abundance of smart things, and some very good, against Agassiz and the many-race hypothesis. I tabernacled with P., where, as before, I was both humbled and edified at his extraordinary ways of making the Sabbath a delight, and teaching good things to his children. I have never been in a family in which so

1 This was fulfilled. B. succeeded in obtaining a Presbyterial license as probationer, but it was afterwards revoked. T. afterwards set up an Italian paper, II Esule Italiano, in New York.

* The ordination of Messrs. Horatio W. Shaw and Lawrence G. Hay, missionaries to India, which took place at Trenton, May 8th, at which ser vice Dr. J. W. Alexander preached.

much is made of the Bible, with so little fuss. One of his boys, about fourteen, repeated a large part of a chapter in the Gospel of John, in Greek, evidently understanding it well. A boarder-boy, on Saturday evening, repeated the whole of the third chapter of Colossians.

PRINCETON, June 3, 1850.

You are too severe in your stricture on seminary teaching. I never heard the methods complained of as failing to make ministerial practice the daily end. Whole portions of the course have no other ingredient; as Dr. Miller’s lectures on Sermons and Discipline, and the long series of teachings in pastoral theology. Other portions daily include the same, at proper places. The separate teaching of experimental religion, would be finely illustrated by our Presbyterial examinations thereanent.

West Point is as near perfect (for its ends) as any thing I ever saw. What an incomparable locality! esplanade, water, mountains, verdure, ruins, decorations! I had a pleasant day there. The music delightful; the appearance of the cadets, and the separate drill of the regulars, were up to all my imagination of that sort of beauty. The new railway along the Hudson is a convenience; forty miles an hour, sometimes.

Qtk. — Backwardness in Repertory copy, has driven me from epistolary to journalistic elaboration; (there’s a fine modern sentence for you.)1 From Duane St. people I have received, since I left them, (and all but $100 unsolicited,) $1,500 for Seminary wants. The panorama of Italy is the next thing to travel there. Barnum is delivering temperance lectures; will he not one day compete

with for presidentship 1 A seemingly crazed minister

called this morning, in forma pauperis. B. is on the text “I go a-fishing.” He is to settle in a new church in Brooklyn. Lanneau [Missionary to Palestine] tells me he preached eight years in Arabic. C. is going or gone to California with Spieker, the inventor.2 Dr. T. declares the method new and infallible; but this does not ensure the profit of it. No other preparation, known to chemists, will solve the gold without solving the other things. A pound of black sand was given to the usual operators in New York, and a pound of the same’to T. Cost of extracting by formers 2.+; cost by latter less than one cent. Much of the secret is in the incredible diluteness of the liquid, which pre-

1 His papers in the Repertory for 1850 were on Dr. Foote’s History of Virginia, German Church History, The Reformation in Spain, Close Communion, and German Hymnology.

2 Of a process for disengaging gold from the quartz, &c., which came to nothing.

vents its taking up any thing but the gold. You see diamonds are at length made in Paris.

PRINCETON, June 24, 1850.

While R. J. Walker was Secretary of Treasury, the New York collector informed him of an entry of magnificently illustrated books from France, value $3 — 5,000; but obscene. W. ordered them to be instantly burnt. Importers threatened vengeance in a suit. Walker defied them. Of course they never

prosecuted. is here: “Give, give!” A certain kind of

eloquence he undoubtedly has, but his stock is small. Sundry whole paragraphs repeated bodily. N. B. You will be more likely to be observed, if you do this with the purpureus pannus; e. g. “We have run up our flag, and we mean to nail it ... want more nails;” (three times.) Pay son’s dying words (twice.) “On the borders of the man of sin ... crevasse into Mexico” (three times.) “My Master never tells lies” (once... too many.) After all, I think he probably makes impression on some, even here. *

I have just sent seventy-seven vols., big and little, to the embryo college of Austin, Texas. Dr. Torrey has been delivering a course of lectures on the structure, &c., of plants, all which I have attended with great delight. He used drawings, borrowed from Agassiz. You may judge of size by this: pollen-grains were in some cases represented (highly coloured) as big as large musk-melons. T. is an admirable lecturer. Neanmoins, our young collegians treated it (being non-compulsory) with contempt, the number of undergraduates towards the last being 7 ... 15.

The article on Hymnology is clever, but absurd. Some young Oxonian, fresh from his metres. So little is he at home in his own field, that he speaks of the Reformers as having made one version from the old church-hymns; Veni Creator Spiritus. I have counted of Luther’s alone, from this source, twelve; and in a hasty review of reformation-hymns, in German alone, from old Latin, 134. This is exclusive of Psalms. Of course, my gleaning is but a handful. Few people know how little originality the world possesses. Twenty-four hymns in the Methodist Hymn-book (Wesleyan) are from the German. Of some single Latin hymns, I think I can produce twenty Protestant versions.

Warn Tom [on entering College] against early acquaintance ship. I have seen it make study impossible, by the everlasting run on one’s room; and there is no possible preventive, but waiting long, and choosing one’s own friends, not being chosen by them. 1 never saw a perfectly punctual scholar go astray. Get him to go always to the Thursday evening lecture. Encourage him to write you a weekly account of the studies, how ever repetitious. I think there will prove to be more in this than appears. I hope he will not neglect the French; almost all do. Wistar Hodge is talked of for Greek Tutor; he is the best Grecian I ever saw of his age. Henry has learnt more in a few months with him, than I could have thought possible. Dr. Duff is making a great impression in Edinburgh. I’ll try to send you one of his speeches. Though I nauseate a little at their mutual be-praising, how much better it is, in its spirit, than our American sullenness, as to one another’s good deeds, in our public bodies! How surprising, if A should laud B, or C descant on D’s eloquence, or E glorify F, or G magnify H! Even if sham, this overt pulling-together gives strength to the esprit de corps, and explains the $10,000,000 which the Free Church has raised. American preachers are getting to stand towards one another as do the doctors. Ross, the Cherokee, says they are trying for a Cherokee college. Foreman, once of the Seminary, (a native,) is very useful, preaching in both tongues, publishing Almanacs, &C.

PRINCETON, July 2, 1850.

Some people say the temple of Janus is shut. Connecticut Association affirm unanimously (Bushnell and all) resolutions made in terms of catechism, imputation included. Our village is empty. You now have the new experience of the doctorate, and can agree that the half has not been told you. Indeed, the sentiments engendered by this addition to one’s title are such as beggar description.2 Finney is on a high horse in London. Dr. Campbell, of the Banner, puts him as high as the greatest preachers ever heard in the Tabernacle. Inquiry-meetings number 700. Lectures edited anew by J. A. James. Do not you find the grandeur of things English, as such, decreasing in your apprehension 1 In theology and religion, I really think we get hardly any thing from them as good as our own; while they republish all our books. What can they show alongside of Stuart, Barnes, Robinson, Nordheimer, et al.? I had a protracted meeting with V., in respect to the expected Advent; learn from

him that has demolished the Repertory, and proved N. an

Atheist; that each of us ought to teach his children a manual trade; that all but Millenarians make little of Bible; that

1 Rev. Stephen Foreman, now at Tahlequah, Arkansas.

a Another correspondent on this occasion communicated the following admonitory anecdote: “When Mr. C., a good Irish minister, late of the Reformed Presbytery, received his degree, and was admonished by one of his good members not to be exalted above measure, he replied, ’ dear madam, I feel that I need a great deal of grace.’”

other books are pretty much superfluous; that Melchizedek is Christ, (so I understood;) and that D. had settled the Advent question when he was in the Seminary. P.’s last, anent H.’s fury against old school: “A man said, ‘My wife is mighty zealous, but she haint got no religion.’” Richard Rush graduated here in ’97. He tells me he saw Witherspoon’s corpse. I am in heart a Quaker as to mourning; 1 see no harm in a simple badge, but abominate modern “mourning,” above all that of females — crape, (the smell is charnelly.)

You will read Duff’s speeches3 with wonder at the chilliness of our Assembly. How few people get the floor in the Scotch Assembly! How little work for the chair! How few points of order! How great the power of Cunningham and Candlish! How warm and good the Moderator’s closing speech!

PRINCETON, July 18, 1850.

Anna J., a Sunday School child and catechumen of mine, [in New York,] was put into the Rutgers Institute on a scholarship among four hundred. She has just graduated, and I see comes out prima; gold medal for best composition; ditto last year for French; high in Mathematics. I see by Knox’s history, that he provided liturgic forms for ordination, &c., with prayers, in full, which are extant.3

I was struck with Brougham’s saying, that one may buy a newspaper on Sunday, but not a Bible. How hard to legislate about points of conscience, and impossible to enforce! Our dead-letter laws anent Sunday-travel, profaneness, &c., ought to be overhauled, before we add to their number.

The progress of Christianity among the Nestorians is wonderful. The imagination is struck with a missionary at Nineveh, [Mosul.] Gurley’s speech gives me new impressions about Liberia. Some day Australia and New Zealand will brea£ on the world with a surprise like that which the United States is causing to Europe. A German writer, long resident in Russia, says: u The Russian life, moving rapidly eastward, will it not one day join with the Anglo-American life, moving westward, on a stage for the last act of the world’s drama 1 When the old-world vitality shall be worn out; when Oregon and California shall play the part that England and France do now; when the American nation, in which the best blood of Western

1 The Hon. Kichard Rush died at Philadelphia in 1859.

a In the Free Church General Assembly of Scotland.

1 In 1857 Mr. Scribner published “A Book of Public Prayer, compiled from the authorized formularies of worship of the Presbyterian Churches, as prepared by the Reformers Calvin, Knox, Bucer, and others.”

Europeans mingled, shall have asserted the power of science and art over physical nature; when sail and steam-vessels sweep through the isthmian canal, and railways connect the oceans; and when the people of America by fleets and commerce touch the ancient inhabiters of Asia; then the circle of the globe will be complete, and the last leaf of history turned; and then, perhaps, will the battle be joined between the political and religious despotism of Russia and the principles of freedom and equality. When the command ’ be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth ’ is fulfilled, then the creation is at an end. When the command ‘Go ye into all the world,’ &c., is accomplished, then the work of redemption is perfect, and the Lord comes to judgment.”

The negotiations between Lancaster and Mercersburg will be realized, if the German Reformers can raise $15,000 to buy out the Lutheran share in Franklin College, and the people of Lancaster raise $25,000 for buildings. There seems to me to be great wisdom in the German way of having no University buildings, except for libraries. The reasons for it, in a fluctuating or new. country, are greater still. True, this would fix colleges pretty much in large towns. I have often thought we could not do a better thing, than to sell out our pinched seven acres in Princeton, and buy a hundred for the same money. The whole method of college “rooming” and “commons,” dissatisfies me. In a village, however, it is unavoidable. Demme declines his Gettysburg chair, and they will send a committee to Germany for a man. Three Germans are to decide, viz., Tholuck. Hoffman, (the Hebraistic successor of Gesenius,) and Harless of Dresden, an old-Lutheran of the invariata school, and a pious, eloquent man. It is an attempt to win back the alienated German-Lutherans to the American-Lutheran School at Gettysburg.

Assure “each and every” (law forms and prayers in church are my authority) of my, &c., &c.

PRINCETON, July 26, 1850.

a It would be odd, indeed, if any court should set aside as invalid an ordination ratified by our General Assembly, sitting not only as our highest judicature, but as our highest legis-

1 The Rev. Dr. Schaffer, of Pennsylvania, was elected to the German Theological Professorship at Gettysburg. Lancaster remained the seat of the College Department.

2 In the General Assembly of 1850 an attempt was made to obtain the disapprobation of that Court of an act of a Presbytery, in ordaining a licentiate, when but two ministers were present — the third (requisite for a quorum) having approved of all the preliminary proceedings, but being

1S49 — 1851. 121

lature, and competent even in the latter capacity to solve any informalities in declarative acts. As to the ordination by commission, it is a question simply of fact. Nobody holds such ordinations allowable under our constitution. But as to what has been done by Presbyterians, in all the Reformed Churches, the fact of ordination by committee is as undeniable as the fact that any one was ever ordained. The Westminster Directory says: “The Presbytery shall come to the place, or at least three or four ministers of the word shall be sent thither from the Presbytery” &c., &c. The Repertory has not recommended nor endorsed this well known Presbyterian precedent. The laying on of hands is only a part of ordination. The other and greater parts took place in an acknowledged quorum. If the moderator had, in pursuance of direction, laid on his hands, it would have been, to all intents and purposes, the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery. Or may not some one take exceptions, if (as often) one of a Presbytery of twenty-five is crowded out from the circle, and fails to impose his hands? You refer to Webster, and so will I. In his last speech on the compromise, he says admirably, that Congress has, by its sanction, covered and supplied all informalities in the admission of Texas. So in this case. Quod non debet fieri, valet factum. The Assembly censures the irregularity, and constructively forbids it. What more can any large-minded Presbyterian ask 1 Reordination? This would produce endless misapprehension.

Imposition of hands is so tar from being the main thing to secure valid orders, that Presbyterians have from the very Reformation, separated from papists and prelatists, on this very point. Surely we need not be stiffer than John Knox. See the “Buke of Discipline,” confirmed by General Assembly and by Parliament, 1560: “Other ceremonie than the publict approbatioun of the peple, and declaration of the chiefe minister, that the persone thair presented is appoyntit to serve that Kirk, we can nott approve; for albeitt the Apostillis used the impositioun of handis, yet seeing the mirakle is ceasit, the using of the ceremonie we juge is nott necessarie.” This, indeed, proves nothing as to our municipal provisions; which, when censurably neglected, may, by the supreme judicatory, be declared valid, though irabsent at the act of ordination. The Assembly refused to disturb the ordination in this case, on account of a formal irregularity, when there could be no doubt of the validity. The remarks of the letter were called forth by some questions as to the admissibility of the decision in a court of common law, and as to lawfulness of ordaining by commission. The reference to the Repertory is to a review of the proceedings of the Assembly in the number for July, 1850.

VOL. ii. — G regular; but it is very significant as to what the Presbyterian spirit is respecting this declarative formality; which formality is, after all, present in the act as now presented.

The minister was ordained by the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery, though some of the Presbytery were away, and though some present did not lay on both “hands.” The men ordained in Knox’s days were not presbyterially ordained at all, according to the narrower construction of Presbyterianism.

It is remarkable that the objections to the Assembly’s decision have not proceeded in any case known to me from the older and more rigid ministers, who seem all satisfied. And it should not be forgotten that the Assembly utters no declaration, but simply admits the given acts of Synod and Presbytery, without censure. I hold the Eepertory’s reasons to be unanswerable.

If the preceding parts of the ordination had been by less than a quorum, the question would have been raised, which was touched in the debate, as to whether three or a mere plurality is necessary to valid ordination. Of this I might have opinions of my own, but it was not properly before the body. Strict construction can make no whit more out of Form Gov. Cap. xv. § 14. Every Lutheran or Episcopalian minister, who comes to us, is presumed to have a valid, though an irregular ordination; here the distinction taken by Repertory is fundamental. I think there are sound reasons why acts performed but once, such as marriage, ordination, baptism, &c., should admit of being ratified, in spite of informality, even though some other acts, such as erecting a Presbytery, &c., should be annulled, with orders to repeat them in due form. This is clearly accordant with the views of the canonists, even as to Baptism.

*
PRINCETON, August 2, 1850.

Torrey shows me some mirabilia of infusorial shells, invisible without high microscopes; their beauty, in form and colour, is inexpressibly sui generis. Yet they have passed through the intestines of Pacific fowl, being abstracted from washings of the guano. A man named Spencer, in an out of the way place in New York, has beat all the world in microscopes. The English ones cannot, like his, resolve lines 56,000 in an inch. I am sorry for the loss of the Compromise, [repeal of the Missouri act.] I hoped Clay and Webster would have carried it over the freesoilers and nullifiers. It seems as if One “higher than the highest” would keep the awful slavery-question among matters for his own hand.

As to the question of legal ordination, I will only observe, that “ordained minister” has been held by some of our ablest lawyers (Ch. J. Ewing especially) to import in the acceptation of the law any accredited minister, particularly (in the case when he was consulted) a probationer. I know a case in Virginia, in which the same was held; and though hundreds of marriages have been solemnized by licentiates, none of them have ever been questioned in law, though often forbidden by church-courts. I have never talked with my father about the late case, but I know his testimony as to the facts above stated. Princeton census = — 2,000. I am slowly writing “Sermons to Boys.”

PRINCETON, August 26, 1850.

I have the letters of twenty years, exceptis excipiendis, filed and labelled: I cannot remember to have ever looked at them ten times. In no one instance has any thing of importance depended on the search. My father and Addison burn their letters. I was at the sea for a week, with less enjoyment than common. I preached in Fifth Avenue. Mr. Donaldson drove me out to Greenwood; my first visit. The locality is unsurpassed, but yW °f the tombs are burlesques or blunders. Cemeteries do not arride me. The last London Yearly Meeting agreed to have plain memorial slabs, like those of the Moravians. Somewhat suddenly I have entered Henry of the Freshman class. They say the Sophomore class is a fine one. The signs of thorough drilling by the tutors are very pleasing to me; short lessons and long inquisition on them.

I am told the Boston and Andover folks regard P. with a sort of adoration. His last great discourse gives them a recipe for holding any doctrine, however repulsive. You have only to declare its strong expressions “the language of emotion.” Since capital punishment is so nearly extinct in Philadelphia, it is a wonder they have so many murders. A very promising Sunday School and preaching have been started in the very focus of the Five Points. Children from 8 — 10 years old come to school drunk. Drunken people appear at the meetings. Mr. Hall, a worthy Methodist, owner of the Commercial Advertiser, is one of the leaders in the enterprise.

PRINCETON, September 6, 1850.

We had large numbers of the Black Sons of Temperance here to-day, from Trenton and elsewhere, with bands and paraphernalia; also what seemed to be the Daughters and Grand sons, in considerable force. Thus far, our accession to the Seminary is about 46. They are still coming in. I was unable to go to Dr. Cuyler’s burial,3 as my first exercise with the new

1 First Church, New York, August 18.

3 The Rev. Dr. C. C. Cuyler died at Philadelphia, August 31, 1850.

class, and my only one for the week, occurred at the hour. Our situation in this respect is more confining than that of pastors, unless where we have good long notice. We hear of the death of a valuable student, Culbertson, brother of the missionary. He left us, somewhat ailing, for a tour to the Rocky Mountains, and came back perfectly restored, as it seemed, but died of a dysentery, at his father’s house in Chambersburg. He was very assiduous by the bedside of Candor, [p. 108.] We have, as usual, [in the Seminary,] several Baptists, and expect a Methodist and an Episcopalian. One of our students has been a year under Cunningham, at Edinburgh. They pretend that Castle Garden will hold 8,000 hearers of [Jenny] Lind. What an organ hers must be! The furore in New York is quite ridiculous; crowds besieging the hotel, and gaping at the windows. The boys tell me there is much excitement about North and South in college. The Whigs have elected Venable as their J une orator. We have a student who will not sing any human compositions; Rouse’s being perhaps inhuman. I am gratified to hear of a case of marked seriousness in college; I fear, how ever, this is far from being indicative of the general tone. The London papers give flaming accounts of Finney’s sermons and audiences. There is no allusion to his later doctrines of perfectionism. I wonder if a day will not come, when the immense increase of printed matter will cause a reaction in favour of old-time methods, oral learning, discoursing sub dio, like that of the Athenians and the New Testament. Even in Plato’s day, he was led to fear the ill consequences to human powers from overmuch reading. News is a very different affair, in daily papers and in word of mouth. We at length have a priest here; I believe they have mass in their unfinished house. The extract you give, respecting our fathers, so many years ago, is very interesting. My good old father has not been less than 60 years a preacher; but I have never heard him preach any autobiography, self-statistics, or census of successes. If fruit was unwholesome, our collegians would all be on their backs, but they seem blessed with uncommon health. The prevalence of dysentery in some parts does not seem to have had the slightest connexion with diet.

Lisco, on the Parables, is a remarkably sensible book to have come from Germany, and very full of sermonizing suggestions, the more valuable because it avoids all straining of the parables. What a delightful negligence in Hume’s style; it is the least wearying I ever read; but what nefarious perversion, and what meagerness of research!

1 It has since been printed in Dr. Sprague’s “Annals of the Pulpit,” vol. iii., p. 610.

PRINCETON, October 7, 1850.

Your note was a, little delayed, as the letter lay unopened till my return from New York, which capital I found much in the same state as you left it. I preached once for Dr. Potts, in compliance with a Parthian request of his. He was last heard of at St. Petersburg. Some expect him to-day in the Atlantic. He has a noble congregation. Erskine Mason is still very ill. A Norwegian Methodist missionary, Brother Willerup, called on me on his way to Wisconsin. I heard Dr. Tyng in New York, with much pleasure. The chanting was excellent. Sermon of the most extempore sort.

I have flattering offers to write for the North British Review. I have no present thought of compliance, though I should like the £10 a sheet. Thompson, of the Tabernacle, is preaching against the Fugitive Slave Bill, (when did Bill run away 1) This, and the play of Hamlet, excite much attention among the people. Old Mr. Johnstone, of Jersey City, has gone to Britain, (as the Scotch love to call it.) Five Baptist preachers attended at the baptism of my daughter. Spencer has published a volume of pastoral anecdotes and conversations.2

Washington Irving’s Mahomet is a whitewashing of his hero; “jejune and elegant.” Variety in sermons might be helped by an occasional history, with free bursts of remark, whenever suggested; it is remarkable how much of the Bible is history. I think Elijah and Elisha a good topic. The argument of the book of Job would make a good sermon. In general, the argument of a Sunday School book might be occasionally preached with advantage. I have been acquainting myself with Luther’s sermons. Nothing can be more natural, simple, earnest, downright, practical, pungent, or affectionate. They are models of the plainest, liveliest sort; the very opposite of modern German sermons, which are as constrained in their elegant partition as a sonnet or an acrostic. I have had to look into some of these professionally; and I declare I am unable to find one, which is worthy of reperusal, except some of Tholuck’s, which are beautiful warm rhapsodies. The oldest person found in our three townships by the censor, is a pauper drunkard in East Windsor, a graduate of Princeton College, set. 96. The number of coloured people in Princeton is about 500; perhaps as large a proportion of free blacks as anywhere, being one-fourth. How little noise is made by the death of the greatest monarch of our day! [Louis Philippe.]

The Repertory’s review of Park has led me to look at

1 Dr. Mason died May 14, 1851.

9 “A Pastor’s Sketches,” by Rev. Dr. Spencer, of Brooklyn.

Morell. His doctrine is much the same as SchSrer’s, and is very formidably presented. I have nowhere seen so artful an assault on the common doctrine of Inspiration. It involves the denial not merely of Inspiration but of truth, in many parts of Scripture, and leaves us to sever the errors from the truth by some kind of divination or intuition. Such a belief would make me long for the popish assurances. My poor Duane Street folks make no progress. I look confidently for the stronger portion of them to go up-town, at whatever loss of property in the present building.

Addison’s present duties keep him reading the text of the Bible, with versions, &c., from morning till night. The applications for ministers, from Texas alone, would absorb all the young men we are about to send out. The openings in Wisconsin are also surprisingly great.

PRINCETON, November 11, 1850.

I was sorry to cross you on Saturday, but I was on my way to New York, where I had not preached for a long time. I found my late charge much dwindled, though communions are seasons in which they try to make a rally. They have authorized their trustees to sell, but I know not who will buy. When old Grant Thorburn (Laurie Todd) came over to this country, it was in a vessel in which was a poor Scotch woman with a child. Grant helped to nurse the baby; who now, after sixty years, as Collector of the Port of New York, gives him a place in the Bonded Warehouse. Hereupon Grant quotes, “Cast thy bread, &c.” I did not hear Miss Lind, though she sang on Saturday night. Kirkwood, the mathematician, whose newly-discovered law respecting the planetary distances, makes so much noise among the astronomers, as ranking with Kepler’s and Newton’s, is an humble, pious, Presbyterian elder. Stephen Alexander supposes himself to have demonstrated mathematically that all the comets, whose periods are known, were once one comet.

PRINCETON, December 13, 1850.

I did not mean to steal a march on you, but I was really so overwhelmed with odds and ends of business, before getting off for Virginia, that I went away almost imperceptibly, and colloobiorlo? Now that I have returned, safe and sound, I ought to

1 “Philosophy of Religion.”

3 The purpose of this journey was to fulfil an appointment to preach one of the series of lectures on the Evidences of Christianity, in the University feel thankful for exemption from all delays and all accidents. I left home on the 2d, and returned on the 12th. I never made so abrupt a plunge into Old Virginia, and the contrasts struck me mightily. Albemarle is justly reputed the best specimen of rural Virginianism. The University is flourishing; nearly four hundred students. The professors (each) have houses, but $3,000 is the maximum of their emolument. Staying as I did within the precincts, I was pleased to observe that there was not the least rowdyism or unmannerly noise; and I was told perfect quiet prevails in their lecture-rooms. The audiences at the lectures on the Evidences are large. A voluntary meeting for prayers, by morning candle-light, is attended by about fifty. As you might suppose, much was said in Virginia about the slavery business. With one remarkable exception, I found, among a great number with whom I conversed, no man desiring disunion. All they ask is the carrying out of the Constitution, by enforcing the late law. Such is unquestionably the temper of the masses. Yet there are some terrible “fire-eaters” at Richmond, and these are making great use of the Vermont nulli fication. Combinations to use no northern goods, &c., are more rife than I had thought. From numbers, however, I heard the remark, that slavery could not abide safely in Virginia as a frontier State — that its doom was fixed, &c. I fell in with South

Carolina people, and (at Richmond) with B, on return from

South Carolina. There the state of things is very different, for they not merely look on secession as a possible evil, but pray for it as a real good. Northern mechanics, agents, and operatives are rapidly leaving the State. The fear in Virginia among sober people, is, that South Carolina will do some rash act which will draw forth a large number of Southern States to sustain or shield her. I am convinced, from numerous conversations with leading men, that the repeal of the Territorial Law would throw Eastern Virginia into the arms of the South, and furthermore divide the State. After all I had read in the papers I was unprepared for the solemn views* taken by good men of the crisis. All seem to regard bloodshed as the inevitable result. I stopped, going and coming, at Richmond, where I found Judge Cabell on his death-bed, as I fear; he is an old friend of my father, and one year his junior. At this season the flow of old Virginia good-fellowship was peculiarly delightful to me. I was almost surfeited with good things, and almost choked with end of Virginia, during the session of 1850-51. Dr. Alexander’s Discourse was delivered December 8. Its subject was “The Character of Christ,” and is printed in the volume embracing the whole course, published by Carters, New York, 1852.

less parlance. There is soon to be a railway from Alexandria to Gordons ville, by which I should be able to reach Charlottesville in two days. Other roads are in construction. The travelling on those I used is greatly better than formerly. From Fredericksburg to Richmond decidedly more comfortable than between Baltimore and Philadelphia. The scuffles for luggage are lessened, and the ease of sitting increased.

I find all as well as usual. I am struck all of a heap by the news from New York. What Providence means I am at a loss to say. Surely I have done nothing I know of, to invite a re-call to Duane Street. What moves me somewhat is, (1,) I do not feel a special quality for teaching: (2,) I greatly miss pulpit and pastoral work. Yet when I think of tearing up again — it seems next to impossible. I am much concerned, and in real trouble of mind, and shall profit by any unprejudiced thoughts you have.

PRINCETON, December 25, 1850.

I wish you as many Christmases and as happy, for you and yours, as the Divine Disposer shall give in token of love; for as I grow older, I trust I sometimes look forward to something better than the years of this world. The number of persons sub scribing for the new church is rather favourable. The place talked of is Fifth Avenue and Nineteenth street. I am puzzled and darkened by conflicting opinions. There are some who wrill charge me with great fickleness, if I leave Princeton so soon. The Philadelphia men will generally think it a wild and wrong move. My father and family think I had better go, on the score of health; and it is especially my father’s opinion, that the measure of talent 1 have is for preaching. It would not be exactly like a new experiment. The people calling know me, and are known by me. The recent move reveals an amount of influence on the New York mind, which (however unmerited) deserves to be considered. I was very happy in my work, and (if I may presume to say so) was improving in it, more than I feel myself to be doing in my teaching-function. These are things I cannot say abroad, but they affect my mind not a little. Per contra, I have the New York hum and interruption; New York summers; leaving a delightful home and rural quietude, and academic regularity, and above all my dear old father and mother, whose decline I should covet to wait upon. These, however, are, for the

1 A proposal from the Duane Street congregation to build a new church on a better site, provided Dr. Alexander would accept a call to be the pastor. Subscriptions to the amount of $38,000 were already made, and $32,000 offered for the Duane Street premises.

most part, worldly considerations: while I am impressed by the thought, that many of the reasons for return arc spiritual in their nature. People say, “You can preach every Sunday in Princeton.” So I can — but what a different thing it is! I feel lifeless in comparison. I make no new sermons. Indeed, I hardly can take my present preaching into the account. The true comparison must be between teaching here, and preaching there. Looking as modestly and honestly at it as I can, I feel (comparatively) some aptitude for preaching; at least, I have a most undeserved acceptance — and that particularly in New York: I feel no special aptitude for teaching. In the city I drew young men around me: here, all my efforts have failed with the students, privately arid socially: the difference I can not express to you; nor is it a matter I can discuss with people generally. I know the matter of health is very uncertain, and the causes of health and disease are obscure: but I think the four to five years in New York were of as much health, certainly they were of as much working-strength, as any similar portion of my life. As you might suppose, the matter is constantly in my thoughts, and I earnestly seek Divine leading; for I know that my decision must be reviewed in the Judgment, and that if I determine on worldly and selfish grounds, I must expect a blight if not a curse. I wish to settle this question before many days. My brother Samuel has accepted the call to Freehold. What a happy knack at speech-making Sir H. Bulwer has! Young Mr. Beers sent me some water from the Dead Sea, and some olive-wood from Jerusalem; I previously had some olive-leaves from Gethsemane, and some salts from Marah. This is almost enough to fill a reliquarium.

PRINCETON, January 6, 1851.

We are mercifully preserved; yet I am scarcely ever without cough this winter. Exposed as I was during my journey, [to Virginia in December,] I had a respite then. They talk of sending me to Europe.2 From my imo pectore, I say, I have no wish to go. Perhaps it might be good for my health. The impulse to write sermons has come over me very strong, and I have two half done. There is no employment I ever found so uniformly agreeable. It looks as if we never should have a cisalpine Assembly again.3 How different from the days when we used

1 In 1849 he preached 80 times; in 1850, 49 times.

3 He had signified his -willingness to accede to the New York call, and resigned his professorship in the following February, but continued to act until April 30. It was also determined that he should take a voyage before entering upon his new duties.

8 The Assembly of 1851 met in St. Louis, that of 1852 in Charleston. VOL. II. 6* to see the leaders of the church in the long pulpit of old “Market Street.” 1 If they set up a cheap paper, they will doubtless centre it somewhere in the West. Dr. Lindsly is about removing to New Albany. I have peculiar pleasure in A. A. Hodge’s unanimous call to Kirkwood, [Maryland.] [Rev. William H.] Riiffner preached yesterday at Penn Square.3 Gough is less talked of than formerly; I should like to hear him again; it is a great treat. I should have had no scruple about hearing [Jenny] Lind, though I suffer no regrets, and my appetency was not strong; I was in New York one night that she sang, also at Jones’s Hotel, Philadelphia, with her, and again in Baltimore. I believe all our cloth went in New York. A happy New Year to you all from us all.

PRINCETON, January 23, 1851.

I hardly know how to speak of ’s death. It came on us

like a thunderbolt. The agonizing thought, when such an event occurs, is, Perhaps I might have saved a soul from death I What plainness, labour, and earnestness it ought to give us in preaching!

PRINCETON, March 7, 1851. I think if I am favoured with a safe arrival at Paris, I shall

prefer Walsh to, with or without the fasces.3 My present

hope is to go by steamer, about May 15. You have fair notice to have your trunk packed, your supply engaged, your French overhauled, &c. The architects begin to visit me, and I feel my utter impotency, in judging of plans and styles. I wish a lot could be used to settle it. You express just my views of biography. How much of the Bible is history; and how much of the history is biography. No other reading so much shows me to myself, or so much stimulates me. As we grow older, do we not find a pleasure in the lesser lines of character seeing differences which formerly did not strike us; just as we learn to detect handwritings, which to children are all alike, and to idiota are unmeaning. If a botanist loves to collate flowers, how much more, (fee., &c. I will borrow for you the Life of good old Bengel, which will much please you. N. B. To introduce into our sermons more biography; I mean detailed pictures of characters; not for ornament, but for searching — to hold the mirror up to nature. Models in Bible, Prov. xxxi. The Hireling. Several sketchy

1 The First Church of Philadelphia.

9 The Seventh Church, Philadelphia, of which he was afterwards the pastor.

8 Mr. Walsh had been superseded in the American Consulate.

portraits in the Psalter. Some nice volumes might be made for our Board, by collecting a number of Christian biographies. Proudfit is on a History of the Huguenots; also is about to edit some specimens of St. Basil in Greek. Some of our students take down all the lectures in short-hand. I tried a man to-day, by reading aloud from a book to him; he succeeded well. What an ignoble business this stopping of the House of Refuge is, which is attempted in our [New Jersey] Assembly. Dr. H. brings excellent accounts of Ripley’s doings in Burlington. The Quaker body there seems to be breaking to pieces. Burt is doing admirably well in Springfield, Ohio; he has a Bible-class of sixty-five. At Williams College the President preaches one evening each week, and Prof. Hopkins another. The whole Senior class learns the Shorter Catechism, which Dr. Hopkins expounds; and it is a regular part of examination for degrees. I wish I could see a school in which the Bible should be taught every day.

Apropos: since Watts’s Catechisms went out, we have had no syllabus of Bible history to give children and young people. My father made some attempts, but the way is still open. Such a book, going over the whole narrative, without much remark, would sell by thousands. The demand for such a book would continue. If this snow comes, which I feel in the air, perhaps we may have some sleighing yet.

PRINCETON, March 28, 1851.

If you hear any thing about Walsh, let me know. I am trying to brush up my French, on which I shall have to rely, upon the Continent. [Rev. John] Lord begins a lecturing here on Monday. [Mr. David] Lord proposes $1,000 in three prizes, to be raffled for, by essays, pro and con, upon the great apocalyptic question. He makes the rider of the white horse to be the early preachers; and of the red to be prelacy. He is very severe on Brown’s late anti-millenarian book. Bethune’s new church [Brooklyn] is to have no windows in the sides. The “Union Committee” of New York is doing a harm to the public conscience, by circulating sermons and addresses, denying all right of private judgment, on matters adjudicated by Csesar. Dr. L. maintains that in matters properly civil we have nothing for it but to submit passively. Illinois is about making all contracts with negroes void, besides forbidding them the State. Gov. Young told me, last week, that they are migrating in vast numbers to Canada, for fear of the late law. It is a wonder more are not urged to Liberia. I will try to send you “London Poor and London Labour,” [by Mayhew.] It is rich.

The modern German writers agree that the James of Jerusalem was not the surviving apostle, but a third of the name. Look at the places; you will find it an interesting question. Schaff thinks he was the son of Mary, one of Christ’s “brethren,” who did not believe; who continued unbelieving till Christ’s resurrection; so explaining what is certainly a strange specification, 1 Cor. xv. 7, “after that he was seen of James” He gets over Gal. i. 19, by a grammatical turn, analogous to John xvii. 12, “but the son of perdition.” Nevin seems to incline to the opinion, that God would have been incarnate, independently of the entrance of sin. I have seen circulars, &c., showing that the project of bringing the Great Exhibition, palace and all, to Governor’s Island, in 1852, is in actual preparation. Some hotel-men in New York have subscribed $5,000 each; and the railroad companies are invoked. The palace and its freight will cost $300,000.

PRINCETON, April 15, 1851.

A telegraphic despatch carried me, on ten minutes’ warning, to New York on Saturday, to see a sick and bereaved lady. I heard a Methodist sermon on Sunday morning. I was also at Trinity Church. Dr. Pledges, on the organ, and their choir of boys, I found transcendent. The Benedicite was chanted so as to meet every demand of my feelings. The service was read by a drone. It seems to be their plan to make it as hum-drum as possible. After having submitted a number of plans to me, my subscribers have chosen one (Draper’s) which I have never seen. It is said to be handsome. Dr. George Maclean is to be my steamercompanion. He goes abroad for health, and to see his Scotch cousins. Schaff has given me a round-robin to about twenty of the German great ones. I am like to have plenty more letters than I can deliver. Ruskin’s new book upon “Sheepfolds” is really an attack upon Puseyism. It is well worth reading. Schaff has published the first volume of his Church History in German. It is an enormous book, and will make ten volumes, 8vo, at the rate he has begun. It is learned and moderate.

PRINCETON, April 30, 1851.

I this day heard my last recitation. There is something sad in these “Last Things.” The African items in the last Missionary Herald are very exciting. The head of the Nile seems to be in sight. A number of young blacks here are thinking of Liberia. A hint towards sermons: make a sermon, one for each, on the different states and stages of mind and character among people not converted, yet not altogether hardened. E. g. 1. The occasionally awakened. 2. Those who are already somewhat thoughtful. 3. Those who have gone back. 4. Those who are deeply concerned. 5. Those who are so for the first time. 6. Those who see obstacles to coming to Christ. 7. Those who occasionally hope. 8. Those who are overwhelmed with a sense of sin, &c., &c. I see by Samuel Davies’s Journal that his return voyage from England took him three months. Get hold of a paper, and read Sir Henry Bulwer’s speech at the St. George’s dinner in New York. It is full of sparkle. Hamilton is said to be the writer of the article on Doddridge in the North British Review. I wish this new invention about spinning flax by steam could come true; it would be a death-blow to cotton-slavery. Our anomalous political state, as to this question, seems to offer no light in the future. I pity the poor free negroes from my heart; and wish we had taken a more generous course in regard to their church accommodation.

PRINCETON, May 16, 1851.

The time is fast approaching, when I must again cease to begin my letters with the formula at the top of this page. For some days I shall be a good deal occupied, and not much in writing-humour. With a blessing on my ways, I will write as often as I can from the other side. Yesterday I went on board, and surveyed my quarters. The affair is colossal. I do not mean the state-room, which, nevertheless, is more roomy than I had imagined. I shall probably leave this place on Friday morning. Dr. George Maclean, my chum, has arrived. Dr. Potts (who is a judge) says he never knew the power and richness of the human voice, till he heard the Greek priests chant at Moscow. I am recalling my “twenty pence is one and eightpence,” and trying to compare pounds and guineas, &c. After lucubrating awhile over my French, I resolved to. go on the “crescit eundo” plan. When speaking on the Paris platform, I must endeavour not, like a great preacher, to eulogize eau de vie instead of Veau de la vie. Fearful prognostications have I of sea-sickness, which I almost had, by way of rehearsal, on descending into “the sides of the ship,” and sniffing the school-house smell of the snuggeries. It seems a sardonic mockery to have such spacious, sumptuous saloons, all plush, gold, panel, paintings, mirror, damask, &c. Let your thoughts be sometimes on me and mine, and mine will on you and yours. I get more and more repugnant to my voyage as the time approaches. We are likely to have 300 passengers.