purposes of shade and ornament, throw out their branches with a luxuriancy which betokens a generous soil, and certainly contribute their full quota toward the aggregate beauty of the picture.

A road, you perceive, runs lengthwise through the vale, along which many neat habitations are sprinkled; and about midway there arises the steeple of a modest and tasteful house of worship; on its vane at this moment the sun's setting beams are reposing: a more fitting emblem of the mild and cheering character of the doctrines dispensed within that temple, could not well be imagined-doctrines adapted to shed on the spirit's parting hour the light of an immoveable trust in heaven.

But the brightest feature in this lovely landscape is yet unmarked: cast your eye, reader, toward the foot of yonder western barrier; there rolls a river, so exquisitely pure and placid, that it resembles a burnished mirror; it is, however, partially hidden from our view by the elms and sycamores which fringe its margin, and immediately opposite to us its channel is divided by an island. How soft and verdant! The muses, and the graces, yea, and goddesses too, might be well content with grottoes on that green and quiet spot. I fancy that, of a calm evening, we might hear at this distance-perhaps we might-the murmuring of the stream where it is broken by the upper point of the island; and then, in addition to this exhibition of Nature's taste in penciling, we should have a pretty specimen of her skill in music.

That river, reader, is the Susquehannah, and I doubt me much if in all this wide world the lord of day looks down upon a stream which reflects back his glory more clearly than does this beautiful daughter of the Otsego lake. I have threaded its shores in all their windings, from where it issues from the aforesaid lake among the hills, to where it blends its translucent waters with the briny billows of the Chesapeake bay; and nowhere, methinks, within equal limits, has beauty, in its softer forms, consecrated to itself a greater number of dwelling places: its bordering hills present every conceivable variety of aspect; now they incline in grassy or arable slopes; anon they tower in perpendicular or beetling ledges; here they sweep away in graceful curves a mile or more from its verge, leaving space for broad tracts of level and rich alluvion; and there they run for miles along the river's brink, and mirror their huge forms upon its waters, as though Nature were as proud

as other beauties are, of contemplating the reflection of her charms. I have told you, reader, this river's name, but the valley itself you must be content with knowing under the fictitious cognomen of UNIVERSALIA. Now let me point your attention to that school house there are two in the valley, but this to which I allude is toward its southern extremity; it is a wooden structure, surrounded, you perceive, by a grassy plat, and shaded, almost embowered, with beautiful forest trees: it wants but to be white-washed to render it a perfect picture of the rural kind. I must give the settlers a hint of this when I next visit UNIVERSALIA; for pity it were that a scene so nearly perfect, should lack those little attentions which would constitute it completely so. I may add also, by the way, that in my opinion, school premises every where should be rendered as agreeable as possible; for there the members of human society gather most of their earliest associations, and these exert no small influence upon their subsequent lives. Virtue and happiness not only accompany, but they also promote each other. By as much, then, as it is an object worthy of all attention to form a happy and virtuous society, by so much is it important to commence at the fountain head, and to blend with the business of juvenile instruction as much of purity and pleasantness as possible. With this digression I will close my first chapter.

CHAPTER II.

She who teaches the school at present, in the building above described, is a youg lady from Connecticut: her stature is about the middling height, her form slender, the color of her hair and eyes a light hazel; the latter are large and prominent, and, by their expression, say much for the sweetness and innocence of the indwelling soul. I could tell you the true name of this young lady if I chose, but I do not choose; and, therefore, since she must bear some name in our story, we will call her ALICE SHERWOOD. She is not, as I have said, a native of this valley, but is an exotic, of recent transplantation from the "land of steady habits ;" and sooth to say, there blooms not in all the vale a lovelier flower than Alice, which is saying much for her, for many a lovely flower blooms there.

In religion, Alice is a Calvinist of the modern stamp of course her faith is but an educational one, in which her understanding has

extremely little concern; for what concern can the understanding of a young lady of eighteen have with the mysteries of the trinity, which represents Jehovah as being both the father and the son of himself!-native depravity-the demands of the divine law against us to an infinite amount, on the ground of a debt alleged to have been contracted by our progenitors, some thousands of years before we were born!—the satisfaction of this claim by the murder of an innocent victim—the transfer of our guilt, both original and actual, upon the head of the unoffending Son of God—and the imputation of his righteousness to creatures who have no righteousness of their own? These are subtleties for the brain of the metaphysical divine, but are not at all suited to the unsophisticated mind, and guileless heart, of a young lady of eighteen.

are,

It will be understood, then, that in describing our heroine as a Calvinist of the modern school, I mean, simply, that she adheres to that party from educational and family prepossessions. The dogmas of this, as distinguished from those of the old school, that God has provided in the gospel ample means to save those whom from all eternity he unchangeably determined to damn!—that Christ shed his blood for the same class, with the certainty before him, that they could never be availed by it!—that all may be saved if they will, notwithstanding that none can will to be saved but such as God has foreordained to that end, and they can do no otherwise than will it !—and that the chief aggravation of the miseries of the damned, will arise from their having rejected a gospel that was never meant for them, and which it was utterly out of their power to accept! with other matters equally sane and salutary.

Alice, nevertheless, is a good and pious girl-for there are good and pious persons of every religious persuasion-either because their natural dispositions are so good as to defy the corrupting influence of a bad faith, or because they do not entertain that faith with so firm a persuasion of mind as to allow it its full weight of evil influence. However, so stands the fact, be the philosophy of it what it may; and it is certainly better of the two to be theoretically wrong, and practically right, than the contrary: for if the heart be wrong, the head will easily be induced to stray with it; whereas, if the former be right, the latter may easily be redeemed from its errors. And yet it must be confessed that many a young and innocent heart receives its earliest taint from the princi

ples which a false education imposes upon the understanding. Alice had been taken seriously to task by her sincere but mistaken old father, shortly previous to her leaving home, because she had commended the goodness of a certain lady of her acquaintance "You must always bear it in mind, my dear," said old Mr. Sherwood, "that persons who are out of the church are in a state of nature-which is a state of unmixed depravity-however good, therefore, they may seem to be, they are in fact vile and abominable: they cannot think a good thought, nor do a good act-and their deeds which seem to be good are but 'deceitful workings,' and are more detestable in the divine sight, as being the offspring of hypocrisy, than are even those that we would pronounce evil. Beware, then, of looking to the unregenerate for any thing truly virtuous; you will be deceived with specious appearances, but will never find what you seek; 'for who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one ;'-the virtues of the unconverted will be but as millstones around their necks to sink them the deeper under the waves of divine wrath." "But my dear father," enquired Alice, "is it not possible for a person to be pure and upright, and as such, acceptable to our Creator, even though without religion in our sense of the term ?" "In our sense of the term!" somewhat impatiently retorted Mr. Sherwood; "I tell you, Alice, that there is no other true sense of the term, but that which you are pleased to characterize as ours; and if a person be without religion in this sense, then is he without it in any sense-his heart is rank in rebellion against Jehovah, and he would, were it possible, tear him from his throne. Talk not to me, then, of the goodness of unregenerated man; there is no soundness in him,' but from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, he is nothing but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores.'

Such are the dark principles of theology in which our heroine was educated-principles which, had they taken root in her mind, would have driven thence all its native benevolence, and with their sombre shadows must have darkened her vision to all that is fair and beautiful in life: happily for her they found not a congenial soil in her nature; and, consequently, although they perplexed her understanding, they failed of corrupting, in any great degree, that pure fountain whence principally the streams which sadden or gladden existence have their source-the heart.

CHAPTER III.

One of the most beautiful features of christianity-not, alas! as it commonly exists in the practice of its professed disciples, but as taught by its author-is the spirit of kindness and forbearance it enjoins toward those who differ from us in faith and principles. "If ye salute your brethren only," saith Christ, "what do ye more than others? for even the publicans do the same." And the moral of that affecting story of the man who fell among thieves, manifestly is, that all are to be considered as our neighbors who stand in need of our services, that good Samaritan-like we must not stop to enquire whether the claimants upon our sympathies be Jew or Gentile, but must do good to all, without distinction of nation or sect.

Alice Sherwood had not been accustomed to exhibitions of this spirit, although her whole life had been spent in the bosom of religious society; for even the christian charities of the present age are but too much confined within party limits, and are exceedingly selfish and calculating. She had been wont to hear denounced as heretics, all who withheld assent to the dogmas of her faith, however distinguished they might be for uprightness and amiability of character. One of her first impressions, therefore, relative to the people amongst whom she is now sojourning, was, that as they were perfectly tolerant toward persons of all religious opinions, it was not possible that they possessed any religious opinions of their own. But see-she is at this moment engaged in writing to her parents-we can take the liberty of peeping over her shoulders, and of thus satisfying to the full our curiosity as to all these matters. With motives so laudable, it will be no trespass against politeness, I trust.

*

"Having described to you the situation of my school, I proceed, my dear parents, to acquaint you with other circumstances connected with my condition here. And first, I am almost wholly deprived of access to the outward means of grace. There is no church of our persuasion short of a distance of four miles from my residence, and even it is on the other shore of the river, in a delightful village called THE POINT. The expense of ferriage thither and back is incurred each time I attend it, and there is about a mile of the way called THE NARROWS, which is