is scarcely a panelled door, twenty years old, in all
America, that does not bear this evidence of the zeal, and, if you will,
the superstition of those distant ages! The form of the door is made by
the exterior stile; a cross is then built within it, and the open spaces
are filled with panels, as, in the case of the window, it is filled with
the sash. The exactitude of the form, the antiquity of the practice, its
obvious connexion with the common feeling, and the inability to account
for the usage in any other way, leave no doubt, in my mind, of its
origin, though I do not remember to have ever met with such an account
of it, in any author. If this conjecture be true, we Protestants, while
fastidiously, not to say foolishly, abstaining from the use of a symbol
that prejudice has led us to think peculiarly unsuited to our faith,
have been unconsciously living with it constantly before our eyes. But
the days of puritan folly and puritan vice (there is nothing more
vicious than self-righteousness, and the want of charity it engenders)
are numbered, and men are beginning to distinguish between the
exaggerations of fanaticism and the meek toleration of pure
Christianity. I can safely say that the lowest, the most degraded, and
the most vulgar wickedness, both as to tone and deed, and the most
disordered imaginations, that it has ever been my evil fortune to
witness, or to associate with, was met with at school, among the sons of
those pious forefathers, who fancied they were not only saints
themselves, but that they also were to be the progenitors of long lines
of saints. It is a melancholy truth, that a gentleman-like training does
more for the suppression of those abominations than all the dogmas that
the pilgrims have imported into the country.

We reached Senlis in time for dinner, and while the repast was getting
ready, we strolled through the place, in order to revive the sensations
with which we had visited it five years before. But, alas! these are
joys, which, like those of youth are not renewable at pleasure. I could
hardly persuade myself it was the same town. The walls, that I had then
fancied lined with the men-at-arms of the Charleses of France, and the
English Henries and Edwards, had now lost all their peculiarities,
appearing mean and common-place; and as to the gate, from which we had
almost heard the trumpets of the heralds, and the haughty answer to a
bold summons of surrender, we absolutely had difficult