Angel from the Irvingite church at Bristol, and that his "mission" was to induce Mr. Jay to join them and be saved.

"An Angel- eh?" asked Mr. Jay in astonishment, for it is not likely that he thought, like one of old, he should entertain a visitant from the skies.

"Yes," said Mr. Curtis, "an angel, Sir; an angel in deed and in truth."

Mr. Jay did not smile visibly, but gravely requested Mr. Curtis to take off his coat, which the gentleman, after some hesitation, did. Divested of this outer garment, Mr. Curtis felt Mr. Jay's hands busy about his shoulder blades—"Pray, what are you doing, Sir?" he at last asked.

"Feeling for your wings," was the reply; at which the angel grew so wroth, that, hurrying on his coat, he darted down stairs and quitted the house, in order to return and narrate the want of faith in Mr. Jay, to his redulous brethren and sisters at Bristol.

Since writing the above sketch the following "hit" at Dr. Cox met my eye in a New York paper :

cue

" of

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. It is the " some folks to be elaborate and verbose in small matters, and so it is with our Christian brother, the Rev. Dr. Cox, of Brooklyn. Ask him to dinner, and he will answer you with an epic. Solicit his presence on any public occasion, and he will overwhelm you with Latin, Greek, and English with the syntax inverted, mixed up together in inextricable confusion. There is one characteristic of the doctor's style which sticks out in all the efforts of his

pen. We mean his egotism. This characteristic is particularly conspicuous in his published answer to a private card from the directors of the Crystal Palace Association, inviting him to be present at the inaugural ceremonies.

Most people would have replied to the invitation in six lines; but the Reverend Samuel Hanson Cox, D. D., occupies nearly half a column in declining, gracing his missive with five lines from Virgil, or, what the reverend gentleman calls him," the Mantuan bard," and enlivening it with his own amplification of the same, in the vulgar tongue, extending to the length of twenty lines. Having delivered himself of this paraphrase, which does more credit to his piety than his poetic talent, he winds up with the following mixture of compliments and prayers, which is well enough in its way, but sounds odd as a response to a common-place note of invitation :

"Please, sir, appreciate this votive venture; truly neither premeditated, nor transcribed; and expanding as my feelings move the pen that wrote it; and yet, though long, I feel it right to mention that mine is the greatest loss, that, on such an occasion of signal occurrence, I may not enjoy with you, and welcome to this London of our country, our nation's honored chief and head, with his faithful counsellors around him, gracing the scene, and representing our vast republic, in relations so worthy of statesmanship, so dear to patriotism, so excellent in history, so properly consonant with the influence and the sanction of religion! God bless Franklin Pierce, the President of the United States of America-bless his

administration-bless our country-bless the nations of the earth-bless you all, now, henceforth, and forever, for the sake of our Redeemer, and our Lord, Jesus Christ!"

Dr. Cox is, no doubt, a man of enormous mental force, but he wastes his intellectual ammunition on small affairs. He is great, in fact immense, in small things. Set him on a paper of tobacco, a long nine, or a spittoon, and he will fire one of his Paixhan guns of eloquence into it, knocking it on the instant into smithereens.

Probably the doctor is a good man- in fact, we have no doubt of it; but we are quite sure, although we have never manipulated his head, that the self-approbatory organs are protuberant. We should say that his love of approbation is at least 7, by Fowler's scale, and his selfesteem ditto. His organ of reverence may be about the same or it may not. As a preacher, we do not particularly admire either his matter or his manner. He is, however, a man of talent and learning, and, as we have already intimated, "really conscientious."

CHAPTER VIII.

ROWE STREET CHURCH. A CHURCH AMONG THE MOUNTAINS. HYMN BOOKS AND HYMNOLOGY. AN EFFECTIVE CHOIR. DR. BARON STOW. HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE. STYLE OF PREACHING. THE ORATOR AND THE TEACHER.

ON turning from Essex into Rowe street, that quiet and pretty city nook, at whose northern extremity we almost seem to catch a glimpse of the green country amidst the otherwise "endless meal of brick," the wanderer will perceive two prominent objects-a church turret and a church spire. The former is old fashioned, destitute of architectural beauty, and by no means picturesque. The latter soars upward in all its gothic glory from a fitting temple for worship, and is an ornament to that portion of the city in which it is situated. It is to this dark red sandstone structure that I am this morning bound; but as full half an hour must elapse before the summoning bell will swing forth its welcome, I saunter through the adjacent streets arm in arm with an old church-goer, like myself, who, however, possesses a great advantage over me in his long and intimate acquaintance with the Boston pulpit.

I referred, it will be remembered, in my last sketch, to church architecture in general. I am not now going

again into that subject, but I cannot help alluding to the exterior of this Rowe street church, for it is well worthy of a passing remark. The edifice is, despite some architectural anachronisms scarcely worth pointing out, extremely beautiful. High above its roof soars a gracefully proportioned spire, which is terminated by an ornamental carving. This is well. I am no liker of the monstrous and deformed effigies that we see occasionally displaying their golden surfaces in mid air. Now a cross appears to me to be the most appropriate symbol which can surmount a religious edifice; and though some good people object to the use of this emblem, on account of its having been so extensively exhibited by Roman Catholics, I cannot, for my own part, see any reason for its rejection. I fancy there is more prejudice than piety in the objections to its more general adoption.

But, perhaps, the earliest known addition to the summit of a church spire was, after all, the best. Some years since as I was travelling in Wales, after a long and wearisome walk over a bleak and forlorn moor, upon which loomed up here and there Druidical remains of Cairn or Cromlech, gaunt and grey in the twilight, I came suddenly upon one of those little mountain churches, surrounded by its lonely burial ground, which at long intervals give the only indications of man's existence in those remote districts. It was an ancient time and storm-battered building, whose spire now stood out in bold relief; for, on the horizon's verge, stretched far away to the right and left, an opening beneath the curtain of cloud, that, dun and rapidly deepening into