thoughts. He believed, too, like most of his brotherhood, that excitement and agitation were necessary to conversion and of the essence

   of religion; and this, with a proneness to delight in the music and witchery of his own wonderful voice, made Mr. Novus an eccentric preacher, and induced him often to excel at camp-meetings, the very extravagances of his clerical brethren, whom more than once he has ridiculed and condemned at my fireside.

   The camp-meeting was, in fact, too great a temptation for my friend's temperament, and the very theater for the full display of his magnificent voice; and naturally, this afternoon, off he set at a tangent, interrupting the current of his sermon by extemporaneous bursts of warning, entreaty and exhortation. Here is something like his discourse—yet done by me in a

    subdued tone

   —as, I repeat, are most extravaganzas of the ecclesiastical and spiritual sort, not only here, but in all other parts of the work.

   "My text, dear hearers," said he, "on this auspicious, and solemn, and heaven-ordered occasion, is that exhortation of the inspired apostle, 'Walk worthy of your vocation.'

   "And what, my dear brethren, what do you imagine and conjecture our holy penman meant by 'walking?' Think ye he meant a physical walking, and a moving, and a going backward and forward thus? (represented by Mr. N.'s proceeding, or rather marching,

    à la militaire

   , several times from end to end of the staging). No, sirs!—it was not a literal walking and locomotion, a moving and agitating of the natural legs and limbs. No, sirs!—no!—but it was a moral, a spiritual, a religious, ay! yes! a philosophical and metaphorically figurative walking, our holy apostle meant!

   "Philosophic, did I say? Yes: philosophic

    did

   I say. For religion is the most philosophical thing in the universe—ay! throughout the whole expansive infinitude of the divine empire. Tell me, deluded infidels and mistaken

   unbelievers! tell me, ain't philosophy what's according to the consistency of nature's regular laws? and what's more onsentaneous and homogeneous to man's sublimated moral nature, than religion? Yes! tell me! Yes! yes! I am for a philosophical religion, and a philosophical religion is for

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