Ministers and Elders of the Church to bring the Magazine under the notice of the people? It is vain, and would be useless, to forecast the future; but regarding two great questions the coming year may be expected to be fruitful of results. First, the National Education Scheme for Scotland will be launched. Much hard work will be needed to put the machinery into movement. It were a consummation devoutly to be wished, that the various Churches in Scotland would take some common action in providing for the thorough religious training of the young; and to this desirable object we will not fail to turn the attention of our readers. Further, the Union negotiations, at present held in abeyance, will be placed on some definite footing, by the action of the Free Church Assembly of 1873 towards our Synod. The attitude of our Church has been that of patient waiting, in the consciousness of truth and love, and such attitude is not likely to be altered. Enforced delay may lead to an enlarged and higher blessing. While cultivating patriotic regard for our own branch of Christ's Church, we shall seek to foster love for the whole brotherhood. Trusting to the kindly interest of all classes of readers, we advance hopefully to our work. EDINBURGH, December 2, 1872. THE UNITED PRESBYTERIAN MAGAZINE. JANUARY 1, 187 2. Miscellaneous Communications. AMERICA AND THE AMERICANS: BEING NOTES OF A VISIT PAID TO AMERICA IN THE SUMMER OF 1870. BY THE REV. DR. EDMOND, LONDON. I. THE VOYAGE. A FEW sentences of explanation on several points seem needful for the reader in the outset. First of all, in regard to the lateness of the appearance of what may be regarded as in some sense a report to the Churches of a mission undertaken and accomplished in their name, it may be stated, that for some time the delegates of our denomination had dimly cherished the idea of furnishing a joint account in another form. When at length a series of papers in the Magazine was thought of, Mr. Young's interesting communications on the East were running their course; and it appeared unadvisable to distract or overload the reader's attention with a Western tour as well. The conclusion of the Oriental journey leaving him now free for a fair start in an opposite direction, we propose to ask his company in a voyage across the Atlantic, and in varied travels through parts of the great American continent. Another point on which the writer is desirous of presenting a word of explanation, is connected with the circumstance that the idea of joint-authorship has been abandoned. It is unnecessary to trouble the reader with the reasons for this, as weighing with the delegates themselves. But it may be said that it has fallen to one of the two, rather than to the other, to be induced to attempt the present agreeable task, mainly because he happened to have prepared for his own people some sketches of his American visit immediately after his return home. But for this circumstance, he does not think that he could have been able to call up now, with anything like freshness and order, the incidents and impressions of the happy months spent on the western side of the Atlantic. Allusion to this suggests one other point on which the writer wishes to say a word. He refers to the character and style of the notes. The papers which will be largely used in their preparation, offered originally, as has just been said, to his own people, were constructed on the principle of just carrying the audience along with the speaker, in his daily travels. NO. I. VOL. XVI. NEW SERIES.-JANUARY 1872. A He ventured, therefore, on occasion to be considerably conversational and gossipy; and throughout the whole he kept away from all pretension or attempt to make anything like a book on America. He aimed simply at recounting what had befallen himself and his companions, and something of what he had seen, or said, or felt, or heard, in a new land. A good deal of the character impressed on the original papers by this purpose and aim, will remain in the notes, as they are now to be given. The reader will, we trust, prove indulgent to the form and vein of the narrative. For graver, fuller, weightier accounts of America and its people, there are plenty of volumes, formally compiled, to which he may be referred. These few sentences having, we trust, established a comfortable understanding between us, we may now ask the reader to acccompany us on our tour. We may just, however, premise further, that the occasion of our visit to America was the appointment of a deputation to carry the congratulations of the United Presbyterian Church to the first General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, after the re-union of the Old and New School sections, The deputies were Dr. M'Leod and the writer. A third delegate, one of the honoured laymen of the Church, had been designated, but he was unable to accompany us. On the voyage out we had the pleasure of the society of a similar delegation from the Irish General Assembly, consisting of Professor Watts, and Thomas Sinclair, Esq. of Belfast; while in America we had the further pleasure of meeting and being associated in our work with Professor Blaikie and Mr. Arnot of Edinburgh, who had proceeded some weeks earlier with a commission from the Free Church similar to our own. It was a great enhancement of our privilege, to be connected in a happy embassy and service with brethren so able and estimable. It was on the 29th of April 1870 that my wife and myself (for here I must assume the singular), committing home and its inmates to the care of a gracious Providence and the watchful attentions of many kind friends, set out on our expedition. It is unnecessary to dwell on the commonplace incidents of our journey to Liverpool. Suffice it to say that, having rested for the last time on English ground for a season beneath a kind friend's hospitable roof, and having been joined by Dr. M'Leod, we found ourselves at midday on Saturday afloat on the Mersey, and committed to a voyage across the Atlantic. The ship we sailed in is the only paddle-steamer now of the Cunard line. She is deservedly a favourite with frequent voyagers across the Atlantic. Superb in size, yet finely proportioned, and armed with grand propulsive power, the most timid landsman, as he paces her deck, begins to get assured, and dismisses his dreams of the perils of the deep. Yet tempests may come to toss even this great ship like a feather. Having thus introduced the ship, let me say once for all, that there was, of course, much that interested our uninstructed land-nature in the management of the vessel. The perfect discipline came first-the precision with which the file of stewards placed your meals on the table-the exactness of the observance of rule as to the extinction of lights-the cheerful sound in the evening watch of the All's well,' passing in a succession of intoned salutations from stem to stern-the officer's piping whistle, and the obedience of his myrmidons as, with time-keeping and spirit-cheering 'yo-ho,' they wrought with rope and pulley, spreading, shifting, or furling the sails-the heaving of the log, and the grouping of the passengers on the deck to learn the rate of speed-by and by, the casting of the lead when we were off the bank, as they say, near the Newfoundland fishing-grounds—these and many other things were full of interest to us, that had never seen them before. What a happy thing after all is ignorance, when it first comes to be enlightened! One visit to what on shore would be called the subterranean regions under the engineer's command, was deeply interesting, and one was sufficient. For the clanking of machinery, as you pass down amid a maze of cylinder and piston, and shaft and rod, with the atmosphere suffused with oil, and near the giddy orbit of gigantic motions which, notwithstanding the securities of railing, you almost fear will catch you in their sweep; the heat and glare where four times ten furnaces devour their hundred and fifty tons of fuel per day; and the dark solemnity of the coalhole, where, from within, you see the sooty ribs and skin of iron that alone sever you from the ocean waters without,-all these form together a sight and scene not to be missed, and scarcely to be sought a second time. Yet in that noisy, oily, grimy region the chief engineer was so much at home, that when I said to him in conversation about his possible retirement into rustic life on shore, that I thought it would cost him some pain to part with the Scotia's engines, he assented with obvious sincerity of feeling. I recall, too, his remark, as he conducted us down the stairs, amid the beautiful and polished machinery: This is a sort of St. Paul's in its way.' It was justly spoken, if there was a spice of honest partiality and pride in the saying. On Sabbath morning we found ourselves in Queenstown harbour, and made acquaintance with the process of casting the anchor, as later in the day we saw that of weighing it. Union is power, said the scene at the capstan, where a score or more of hands, working at a circle of horizontal beam-like spokes, made a kind of living wheel that availed by its revolution to heave from the deep a ponderous iron mass that, when stretched on the deck, seemed a thing unmanageable and unmovable. The day was comparatively calm and bright, and the scene in the landlocked bay was very beautiful. Round us were the green slopes of the hills of Erin, studded with the whitewashed houses of two towns that lay in opposite directions, marked, in another, with the lines of enclosures belonging to a convict establishment. Winding before you is the valley up which you may travel or voyage to the city of Cork; and behind is the opening, guarded by twin heights, which leads out into the great sea. Here, at half-past ten, we held our first Sabbath service. It fell to me to preach; the captain of the ship reading the Church morning service of the day. The scene was peaceful and almost domestic; the uniform of the officers, and the prayers for the safety of the ship and her crew and passengers, almost alone reminding us that we were Psalm xxxvi. 5, 6, supplied me with a text that admitted in its illustration allusion to the mountains round about us, and the depths beneath. The little office of that morning brought me on the voyage the very pleasant acquaintance of more than one of our fellow-passengers, who, haply for the associations of that service, will always read with the greater interest these words: at sea. Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens; We made our first acquaintance with the sea-gulls in Queenstown harbour, and noticed the curious instinct which brought them round us just after breakfast, when the remains of the morning meal were heaved out into the water, and again, after total disappearance for hours, taught them to swarm round our poop at lunch-time. They followed us, unless fresh regiments of them sprung from the deep, for days; and it was a frequent pleasure to watch their graceful airy gambols, as they went soaring, diving, floating, curving, sweeping, circling, crossing, falling, rising—the maze they made equally intricate and exquisite. It was a sort of wing-dance, full of the poetry of motion. One wonders what they thought of the big black thing whose progress they attended. Did they mistake her paddles for wings? and suppose her but a monster gull like themselves, too lazy to take flight in air, but a marvellous swimmer? Marvellous at least, if this is fanciful, is the strength of wing that bears the beautiful birds—all birds are beautiful-hundreds of miles to sea, and enables them to keep pace with a steamship making fifteen or sixteen miles an hour. We lost sight of land on Sabbath evening, as the sun went down. In daylight we should have seen the Irish coast for hours longer; but when the light returned to us, it was too distant to be descried. The last glimpse I had of it, in pleasant accordance with the character of the day, presented me with the picture of a lighthouse surmounted by a rainbow. I thought it an apt emblem of the gospel, shedding its light over the dark and often tempestuous waters of time, and preaching peace from heaven. It is curious that on our return the first land I saw was a rocky prominence with prismatic colouring of a fragmentary rainbow, the foot of Iris resting on it. Having in America just learned with astonishment of the breaking out of the Franco-German war, the thunders of which have since affrighted the world, I said to myself, when I saw the rainbow-flag above the cliff-Is it token of peace restored? Alas! it was not, as tens of thousands of lives since lost attest. Nor has the ground-swell of that great tempest of bloody strife yet passed away. Out of sight of land, there came to us the solemn feeling of loneliness and of infinity. You look round, and there is nothing but blue pavement of water, and blue arched roof of sky. Said Childe Harold in similar circumstances 'And now I'm in the world alone, Misanthropy completes the stanza, and I will not quote the rest. But certainly that phrase, simple as it is, 'alone upon the wide, wide sea,'—the 'Ancient Mariner' has the like,-taking the ship and the ship's company for a unity, is touchingly expressive. The Scotia, with her freight, is alone, and the sea is wide. 'Water, water everywhere,' and the same from day to day. So I said sense of infinity, as well as loneliness, came over us. You feel somehow, as, steaming on at a swift rate, you find morning dawn and evening close upon the same waste of waves, that there appears no reason why this should ever come to an end. You think of Columbus and his crew on their adventurous voyage in search of what has proved a new world. You cannot now wonder at the weariness, despondency, almost mutinous rebellion of his sailors, nor fail to admire, with a new intensity of appreciation, the heroic perseverance and brave faith of their great commander. Even with the knowledge-denied to Columbus, save as his genius divined it-that a few days more will end your voyage, you get a new idea of the gathering together of the waters which God called seas. The map, well scanned, does help you to form a conception of the extent of the Atlantic Ocean; with your acquaintance with the hundreds of miles Britain gives you |