are leads the path to the burying-ground, where lie, beneath
tall trees, long rows of neatly-kept graves, each covered with a plain
flat stone, the men and the women lying on either side of the broad
central path. Several of the ancient Moravian buildings date from the
middle of the last century. The Widows' House stands, opposite the
Single Sisters' Range, and across the street from the large church is
the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies, established in 1749, and by far
the oldest girls' school in the United States.

It was in 1778 that the Single Sisters gave to Pulaski that banner of
crimson, silk which is commemorated in Longfellow's well-known "Hymn of
the Moravian Nuns at Bethlehem." The poem, however, written in the
author's early youth, and preserved for its rare beauty of language and
fine choice of subject, rather than for its historical accuracy, has
done much to perpetuate a wrong idea of the Moravian spirit and ritual.
Mr. Longfellow writes in his first stanza

When the dying flame of day
Through the chancel shot its ray,
Far the glimmering tapers shed
Faint light on the cowled head,
And the censer burning swung,
When before the altar hung
That proud banner, which, with care,
Had been consecrated there;
And the nuns' sweet hymn was heard the while,
Sung low in the dim, mysterious aisle.

But the Moravians know nothing of chancels, tapers, cowled heads,
censers, altars or nuns. Their faith has always been the simplest
Protestantism, their churches are precisely such as Methodists or
Baptists use, and their ritual is plainer than that of the most
"evangelical" Episcopal parish. Their "single sisters' houses," "widows'
houses" and "single brethren's houses"--the last long disused--are
simply arrangements for social convenience or co-operative housekeeping.
Mr. Longfellow's poetic description applies to the Moravian ceremonial
no more accurately than to a Congregational prayer-meeting or a
Methodist "love-feast."

[Illustration: THE MORAVIAN CEMETERY, BETHLEHEM, PENNSYLVANIA.]

Beside the deep and silent waters of the James River in Virginia,
undisturbed by any sound save the flight of birds and the rustle of
leaves, stands all that is left of the first church building erected by
Englishmen in America. A good part of the tower remains, the arched
doorways being still intact, and it seems a pitiable misfortune that the
honestly-laid bricks of the ve