rowdy, and frequently a useful member of society in some capacity which requires hard work and constant exposure. "As the steamer was leaving the levée, about forty black deck-hands or roustabouts gathered at the bow, and sang a rude Western sailor's song." (On the Plains. Putnam's Magazine, September, 1868.) But the most curious of all Western terms for men, is probably the name of the city of Boston, which by some strange freak of language has become the generic name of all whites among the natives of Oregon. "With this force we marched out into the Indian country, trusting that although the savages were at war with the Bostons, the devil was dead, and we should elude the traces of his lineal descendants on this march." (Trail-Making in Oregon. Overland Monthly, March, 1870, p. 204.) THE CHURCH. MUCH has been said, half-admiringly, half-sneeringly, of the simple, homespun manner of American religion. There are here no lofty cathedrals with costly carvings and glowing colors in window and vault; no stately deans with their canons; even the bishops have but quite recently adopted the silk apron and the gilt crozier, which they had found so attractive at the Lambeth Conference. The Catholic Church alone maintains a sober splendor, but the stern Presbyterian, with his Puritan abhorrence of all outward form and ceremony, the hard Baptist, eschewing alike refinement and culture, and the zealous Methodist, who has neither time nor inclination to think of anything but his holy errand, seem strangely devoid of all that makes religion attractive to Europeans. Perhaps piety is only the more earnest in its homespun garb, and the quaintness and simplicity of religious language is but a reflex, perhaps an heirloom, of the days when the older English divines also spoke plainly, even bluntly, and men generally faced the facts of spiritual experience more boldly than is done now, because they were more closely inwoven in their every-day life. All the rationalism and skepticism of the New World has not been able to work out the Puritan leaven of the men in the Mayflower, and if religion is less formal, perhaps even less orthodox here, it is neither less sincere nor less fervid than in the Old World. The most striking feature in our religious life is, no doubt, the perfect freedom allotted to every one, old and young, high and low, to choose his own mode of worship. No law prescribes churchmembership, as it is commonly called; no inquiry is made by high authorities after the religious standing of candidates for office; no control exercised over their attendance on church ordinances, as is done on the Continent of Europe. As the Constitution of the United States purposely abstains from the mere mention even of God and of divine things, the citizen also is held accountable to his conscience alone for his religious convictions. Society is perhaps less tolerant, and while petitions have in vain been sent to Congress year after year for an open avowal of the Christian faith in public acts, social standing is only exceptionally granted to men professing openly to be without religion. Besides, every shade and variety of faith and church organization finds itself protected here, and Mr. Jefferson prided himself as much upon being the author of the Statute of Religious Liberty as upon having written the Declaration of Independence. Hence names of new sects and new meanings of familiar terms follow each other in such rapid succession here, that even the initiated is often at a loss to account for their origin and precise signification. The language even has suffered from this reckless spirit of innovation, although far more yet from the peculiar independence of all American churches. While in England the ministers of the Established Church and the better-trained preachers among the Dissenters are the jealous guardians and principal disseminators of pure English throughout the country, in America no such influence is exercised by the clergy. The very zeal of the majority, unhampered by English phlegm and Oxford traditions, leads to a freer use of the language, and the frequency of extempore preaching prevents, as a matter of course, very careful composition. Methodist and Baptist preachers were, until lately, kept, partly from necessity and partly from choice, from obtaining a high grade of education, and being generally called upon to address utterly uneducated hearers, their language was naturally adapted to their own imperfect training and the ignorance of their congregations. Even the best-educated clergymen were apt to seek new forms for their new views, or ready to employ popular terms in times of public excitement, as when the disastrous fashion of political sermons was still in vogue. Thus they soon went far beyond their brethren in England, who have often been accused of allowing much slang and disagreeable vulgarism to creep into the pulpits, which should give forth pure speech as well as pure doctrine. Thus the very word religion itself came early to be abused and |