they call _ar c'houskesik_, whose office it is to make the
congregation drowsy; and though I have never had reason to think that he
was specially busy among my flock, yet have I seen enough to make me
sometimes regret the hinged seats of the ancient meeting-house, whose
lively clatter, not unwillingly intensified by boys beyond eyeshot of
the tithing-man, served at intervals as a wholesome _reveil_. It is
true, I have numbered among my parishioners some whose gift of
somnolence rivalled that of the Cretan Rip van Winkle, Epimenides, and
who, nevertheless, complained not so much of the substance as of the
length of my (by them unheard) discourses. Happy Saint Anthony of Padua,
whose finny acolytes, however they might profit, could never murmur!
_Quare fremuerunt gentes?_ Who is he that can twice a week be
inspired, or has eloquence (_ut ita dicam_) always on tap? A good
man, and, next to David, a sacred poet, (himself, haply, not inexpert of
evil in this particular,) has said,--

"The worst speak something good: if all want sense,
God takes a text and preacheth patience."

There are one or two other points in Mr. Sawin's letter which I would
also briefly animadvert upon. And first concerning the claim he sets up
to a certain superiority of blood and lineage in the people of our
Southern States, now unhappily in rebellion against lawful authority and
their own better interests. There is a sort of opinions, anachronisms
and anachorisms, foreign both to the age and the country, that maintain
a feeble and buzzing existence, scarce to be called life, like winter
flies, which in mild weather crawl out from obscure nooks and crannies
to expatiate in the sun, and sometimes acquire vigour enough to disturb
with their enforced familiarity the studious hours of the scholar. One
of the most stupid and pertinacious of these is the theory that the
Southern States were settled by a class of emigrants from the Old World
socially superiour to those who founded the institutions of New England.
The Virginians especially lay claim to this generosity of lineage, which
were of no possible account, were it not for the fact that such
superstitions are sometimes not without their effect on the course of
human affairs. The early adventurers to Massachusetts at least paid
their passages; no felons were ever shipped thither; and though it be
true that many deboshed younger brothers of what are called good
families may have sought refuge in V