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No. III.

BIRDOFREDUM SAWIN, ESQ., TO MR. HOSEA BIGLOW.

With the following Letter from the REVEREND HOMER WILBUR, A. M.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

JAALAM, 7th Feb., 1862.

RESPECTED FRIENDS, If I know my

self, and surely a man can hardly be supposed to have overpassed the limit of fourscore years without attaining to some proficiency in that most useful branch of learning, (e cœlo descendit, says the pagan poet,) I have no great smack of that weakness which would press upon the public attention any matter pertaining to my private affairs. But since the following letter of Mr. Sawin contains not only a direct allusion to myself, but that in connection with a topic of interest to all those engaged in the public ministrations of the sanctuary, I may be pardoned for touching briefly

thereupon. Mr. Sawin was never a stated attendant upon my preaching, never, as I believe, even an occasional one, since the erection of the new house (where we now worship) in 1845. He did, indeed, for a time, supply a not unacceptable bass in the choir; but, whether on some umbrage (omnibus hoc vitium est cantoribus) taken against the bass-viol, then, and till his decease in 1850, (æt. 77,) under the charge of Mr. Asaph Perley, or, as was reported by others, on account of an imminent subscription for a new bell, he thenceforth absented himself from all outward and visible communion. Yet he seems to have preserved, (alta mente repostum,) as it were, in the pickle of a mind soured by prejudice, a lasting scunner, as he would call it, against our staid and decent form of worship; for I would rather in that wise interpret his fling, than suppose that any chance tares sown by my pulpit discourses should survive so long, while good seed too often fails to root itself. I humbly trust that I have no personal feeling in the matter; though I know that, if we sound any man deep enough, our lead shall bring up the mud of human nature at last. The Bretons believe in an evil spirit

which they call ar c'houskezik, whose office it is to make the congregation drowsy; and though I have never had reason to think that he was specially busy among my flock, yet have I seen enough to make me sometimes regret the hinged seats of the ancient meeting-house, whose lively clatter, not unwillingly intensified by boys beyond eyeshot of the tithing-man, served at intervals as a wholesome réveil. It is true, I have numbered among my parishioners some who are proof against the prophylactic fennel, nay, whose gift of somnolence rivalled that of the Cretan Rip Van Winkle, Epimenides, and who, nevertheless, complained not so much of the substance as of the length of my (by them unheard) discourses. Some ingenious persons of a philosophic turn have assured us that our pulpits were set too high, and that the soporific tendency increased with the ratio of the angle in which the hearer's eye was constrained to seek the preacher. This were a curious topic for investigation. There can be no doubt that some sermons are pitched too high, and I remember many struggles with the drowsy fiend in my youth. Happy Saint Anthony of Padua, whose finny acolytes, however they

might profit, could never murmur! Quare fremuerunt gentes? Who is he that can twice a week be inspired, or has eloquence (ut ita dicam) always on tap? A good man, and, next to David, a sacred poet, (himself, haply, not inexpert of evil in this particular,) has said,

"The worst speak something good if all want sense, God takes a text and preacheth patience."

There are one or two other points in Mr. Sawin's letter which I would also briefly animadvert upon. And first, concerning the claim he sets up to a certain superiority of blood and lineage in the people of our Southern States, now unhappily in rebellion against lawful authority and their own better interests. There is a sort of opinions, anachronisms at once and anachorisms, foreign both to the age and the country, that maintain a feeble and buzzing existence, scarce to be called life, like winter flies, which in mild weather crawl out from obscure nooks and crannies to expatiate in the sun, and sometimes acquire vigor enough to disturb with their enforced familiarity the studious hours of the scholar. One of the most stupid and pertinacious of these is the theory that the Southern States were settled by a class of

emigrants from the Old World socially superior to those who founded the institutions of New England. The Virginians especially lay claim to this generosity of lineage, which were of no possible account, were it not for the fact that such superstitions are sometimes not without their effect on the course of human affairs. The early adventurers to Massachusetts at least paid their passages; no felons were ever shipped thither; and though it be true that many deboshed younger brothers of what are called good families may have sought refuge in Virginia, it is equally certain that a great part of the early deportations thither were the sweepings of the London streets and the leavings of the London stews. It was this my Lord Bacon had in mind when he wrote: "It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of people and wicked condemned men to be the people with whom you plant." That certain names are found there is nothing to the purpose, for, even had an alias been beyond the invention of the knaves of that generation, it is known that servants were often called by their masters' names as slaves are now. On what the heralds call the spindle side, some, at least, of the oldest Virginian fami