. By the evidence
of things these Indians had learned more of the manners of the Whites
than had ever been taught them by speech.--Which of us would not learn
more of the manners of the Pompeians by a morning's walk among the
relics of their abodes and public halls than by many a nightly
conference with certain of their ghosts?

The usual scholastic division of Morals is into personal, domestic, and
social or political morals. The three kinds are, however, so apt to run
into one another,--so practically inseparable,--that the traveller will
find the distinction less useful to him than some others which he can
either originate or adopt.

It appears to me that the Morals and Manners of a nation may be included
in the following departments of inquiry--the Religion of the people;
their prevalent Moral Notions; their Domestic State; their Idea of
Liberty; and their Progress, actual or in prospect.

CHAPTER I.

RELIGION.

"Dieu nous a dit, Peuples, je vous attends."
DE BERANGER.

Of religion, in its widest sense, (the sense in which the traveller must
recognize it,) there are three kinds; not in all cases minutely
distinguishable, but bearing different general impress; viz. the
Licentious, the Ascetic, and the Moderate. These kinds are not divided
from each other by the boundaries of sects. We cannot say that pagan
religions come under one head, and Mahomedanism under another, and
Christianity under a third. The difference lies not in creeds, but in
spirit. Many pagans have been as moderate as any Christians; many
Christians as licentious as any pagans; many Mahomedans as licentious,
and many as ascetic, as any pagans or Christians. The truer distinction
seems to be that the licentious religions of the world worship
unspiritualized nature,--material objects and their movements, and the
primitive passions of man: that the ascetic despises nature, and
worships its artificial restraints: and that the moderate worships
spiritualized nature,--God in his works, both in the material universe
and in the disciplined human mind, with its regulated affections.

The Licentious religion is always a ritual one. Its gods are natural
phenomena and human passions personified; and, when once the power of
doing good or harm is attributed to them, the idea of propitiation
enters, and a ritual worship begins. Earthquakes, inundations, the
chase, love, revenge,--all these agents