of Mr. Smithson, its founder, and in part by the Government, contains a very large museum, mainly illustrative of natural history and ethnology.

Congress has recently appropriated $250,000 for the erection of additional buildings for the magnificent collections of this museum.

In institutions for instruction in art this country is not as highly favoured. In this respect it is yet in its infancy. There are, however, schools for instruction in art in Boston, Massachusetts, New York, New Haven, Connecticut, in connection with Yale College, in Philadelphia, and several other places. The growth of this branch of education is very rapid at present.

The following description of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, one of the youngest of American colleges, is given as illustrating the best type of American institutions of learning.

Among the founders of chairs are represented Quakers, Methodists, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and Freethinkers of all grades and degrees, while even the Israelites have contributed £4100 to establish a professorship of Hebrew and Oriental History and Literature, showing that this institution is not affected by any sectarian prejudices.

According to the plans of Mr. Cornell and the other founders, the students are required to provide for their own support and instruction by manual labour, at least so far as they may be unable otherwise to do so out of their private resources. The students thus working simultaneously with head and hand receive an allotment of 300 acres, the produce of which goes to supply the academical refectory. Here corn, vegetables, and fruits of all sorts are grown; while the live-stock yield flesh, milk, butter, and cheese. In a factory furnished with a steam engine of 25 horse-power, the students learn to

make their own tools, and structures are now in course of erection where they will be able to learn the building trade, while, at the same time, getting an opportunity of laying out and keeping in good order highways and gardens. For their labour, which is directed by skilled trainers and professors, they are paid according to the current rate of wages.

The great aim of rendering work as attractive, instructive, and invigorating as possible, is never for a moment lost sight of. The capital invested by Mr. Cornell is amply sufficient, besides this bodily training, to procure for the students every means of the highest intellectual development.

The founder's object has been that any one earnestly desirous of securing a thorough education shall find it easy to gratify his wish in Cornell University.

5. Sectarian Spirit of the Private Scholastic Foundations.

The sectarian spirit of all churches, in dealing with their educational institutions, necessarily tends to crush free inquiry and scientific culture. Orthodox geology must be taught, or none at all. According to the census of 1870, as many as 360 so-called universities and colleges. are still under the control of these sects, many of which hold in leading-strings and enervate the most effective teaching of even really learned masters. Hence, few of these institutions take a really high place among scholastic establishments, most of them breathing a narrow sectarian spirit.

CHAPTER XVI.

RELIGION.

1. The Christian Religion.

ENTIRE freedom in all questions of religious faith is established by the laws of the United States, although the origin and subsequent history of the nation proclaim its essentially Christian character.

While it is true that no mention of a Supreme Being, nor of the Christian religion, occurs in the Constitution, it must be inferred that its framers regarded these as established facts, as the General Government and the Governments of the several States distinctly recognise in their official acts Christianity in its various forms as the religion of the country.

The laws for the observance of the Sabbath, the appointment of chaplains in various departments of the Government, and the oath in courts of law, may be cited as evidences of this.

The religious bodies are divided into numerous sects, known as evangelical and unevangelical. Among the Evangelical Protestants the distinctions are unimportant, the principle "in essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty," obtaining by universal consent. Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists, rank as evangelical; while Unitarians, Universalists, and Swedenborgians may be classed as unevangelical. The latter are found especially in New England, where Congregationalism is also a large and influential element.

Owing to the large influx of foreign population within the past fifty years, especially from Ireland, Romanism has increased rapidly, and is making itself prominent as a political force, although its converts are principally among the uneducated classes. The ratio of increase during the last decade has been about 35 per cent, and at present, in a population of 40,000,000, the Romish Church includes within her pale 4,500,000 people and 23,000 priests. Her strength lies principally in the large cities of the north, whither the tide of emigration flows. In the Southern States, the Baptists and Methodists are most largely represented, especially the latter; and the lower Middle States still retain the character given them by their settlers, who were adherents of the English Church, or, in some few localities, of the Roman Church.

In the newly-settled portions of the "great West," all possible shades of religious opinion are represented, attended by the crudeness always characteristic of society. in its formative state. Owing to the freedom of the religious atmosphere, and the great activity of mind prevailing in a new country, there is an abundant opportunity for any who wish to establish new theories, or for enthusiasts or religious quacks who wish to obtain a following. Hence the communities known as Mormons, Spiritualists, etc., the ranks of the former being recruited principally from the dregs and offscourings of European society. The churches of the East, however, have not been slow in following the tide of emigration to the West, and for the past fifty years missionary agencies have been actively at work, and churches have been planted in all portions of the West.

To speak comprehensively, the United States ranks among the Protestant Christian nations of the world, and is the country of all others where religious liberty finds its fullest and most perfect development. As a result of

this, the public mind is ever in an attitude of inquiry; and any truth, whether scientific, moral, or religious, must bear the test of close and severe scrutiny, and must be weighed and sifted in the scales of public opinion, before it can find acceptance to any great extent.

2. Eccentric Forms of Religious Development.

Amongst the sects that Protestantism has given birth to, some call for more special consideration, as characteristic of the social and religious life in the Transatlantic States. Mediæval history has preserved a record of some peculiar moral epidemics. The "black death" that raged in the fourteenth century gave rise to the sect of the "Flagellants." All Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, Silesia, and Flanders, contributed their quota to this mania, At the end of the same century there broke out a dancing rage, the rapid spread of which gave rise to serious apprehensions.

The Jumpers, Shakers, and Spiritualists of the present day are the direct descendants of those mediæval dancers.

3. The Shakers: Their History and Constitution.

The sect of the Shakers, founded by the Englishwomen Jane Wardlaw and Ann Lee, has thriven for nearly a century on American soil. "Mother Ann," the daughter of a poor Manchester blacksmith, could neither read nor write, but while still a child was favoured by "heavenly visions," or, as her mother thought, was a prey to hysteria and convulsions from her birth. In the hope of effecting a cure, her mother married her at a very early age to Abraham Stanley, a young blacksmith, by whom she had four children, who died young. With Stanley she lived so unhappily that he gladly gave her permission to join