door in carriages, and the presence of such persons is desired, and,
in many instances, systematically sought. Nevertheless, the poor are
repelled. They know they cannot pay their proportion of the expense of
maintaining such establishments, and they do not wish to enjoy what
others pay for. Everything in and around the church seems to proclaim
it a kind of exclusive ecclesiastical club, designed for the
accommodation of persons of ten thousand dollars a year, and upward.
Or it is as though the carriages on the Road to Heaven were divided
into first-class, second-class, and third-class, and a man either
takes the one that accords with his means, or denies himself the
advantage of travelling that road, or prefers to trudge along on foot,
an independent wayfarer.

It is Sunday morning, and the doors of this beautiful drawing-room are
thrown open. Ladies dressed with subdued magnificence glide in, along
with some who have not been able to leave at home the showier articles
of their wardrobe. Black silk, black velvet, black lace, relieved by
intimations of brighter colors, and by gleams from half-hidden
jewelry, are the materials most employed. Gentlemen in uniform of
black cloth and white linen announce their coming by the creaking of
their boots, quenched in the padded carpeting. It cannot be said of
these churches, as Mr. Carlyle remarked of certain London ones, that a
pistol could be fired into a window across the church without much
danger of hitting a Christian. The attendance is not generally very
large; but as the audience is evenly distributed over the whole
surface, it looks larger than it is. In a commercial city everything
is apt to be measured by the commercial standard, and accordingly a
church numerically weak, but financially strong, ranks, in the
estimation of the town, not according to its number of souls, but its
number of dollars. We heard a fine young fellow, last summer, full of
zeal for everything high and good, conclude a glowing account of a
sermon by saying that it was the direct means of adding to the church
a capital of one hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. He meant
nothing low or mercenary; he honestly exulted in the fact that the
power and influence attached to the possession of one hundred and
seventy-five thousand dollars were thenceforward to be exerted on
behalf of objects which he esteemed the highest. If therefore the
church before our view cannot boast of a numerous attendance