yellow silks and satins, pleasing to the eye, we mentally wish the style of dress would never change. Carriages emblazoned with coats-of-arms bring the people into the city from the country-seats we visited yesterday: and as the throngs move through the portals of the various churches the streets are deserted, and silence again reigns. There is nothing around or about to disturb the devotional spirit. No steamships arrive on a Sunday morning to send their baggage-wagons clattering through Broadway. Who ever heard of such a machine as a steamship? No railroad trains come in on every possible side of the city, distributing flocks of passengers with grip-sacks to flood the hotels and lodging-houses, and clamor for breakfast just at church-time; no excursion trains are about to start, with fathers and mothers and little children running for their lives to catch them. There are no such wondrous things as trains extant. Neither do the mails pour in from the entire civilized world to disturb tranquil thinking on a Sunday forenoon-and there are no Sunday newspapers.

Let us go to church with the people and study them—the churches and the people at our leisure. Naturally we look first into Trinity, the inside of which is ornamented beyond that of any other in the city. The head of the chancel is adorned with an altar-piece, and opposite, at the other end of the building, is a superb organ made in England. The tops of the pillars which support the galleries are decked with the gilt busts of winged angels. From the ceilings are suspended glass branches of great beauty, and on the walls are the escutcheons of Governor Fletcher and other benefactors of the church. The furniture of the communion table, desk, and pulpit is of the richest and costliest quality. Three full sets of communion plate have been presented successively by William and Mary, Queen Anne, and one of the Georges, each inscribed with the donor's initials and the royal arms. In the pulpit is the Rev. Dr. Samuel Auchmuty, descended from an ancient baronial family of Scotland, and his assistant is the Rev. Charles Inglis, both men of great learning. St. Paul's we visited commencement day; and St. George chapel is too far away for us, this morning, to walk up its aisles flagged with gray stone and comment upon its unique and appropriate decorations. But we learn it is filled with devout worshipers.

Of the three Dutch churches we choose the one in Nassau street, with its pretty portico and painted picket-fence, and step in to hear the Rev. Dr. Laidlie preach republican philosophy under a ponderous soundingboard to a large and intelligent congregation, in the English language (a recent innovation), while the good fathers of the church still persist in offering up their prayers in Dutch. The beautiful North Dutch church

in Fulton street is to have for its pastor Rev. Dr. John Henry Livingston, a graduate of Yale, who has been to Holland to study theology. He is only twenty-six, of singular personal beauty, tall, athletic, and a proficient in manly exercises.

We go to the Wall Street Presbyterian church, which is overcrowded, and are fortunate in finding the Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon in the pulpit, who has been sent across the Atlantic to take charge of Princeton college. He is fresh from the discussions of liberty in matters of religious faith and practice in the Old World, is learned, versatile, and brilliant, and a great friend of Rev. Dr. John Rodgers, the pastor of the church, whom we shall find this morning at the new Brick church. Dr. Rodgers is a decidedly progressive divine, and has abolished the old custom of opening Sabbath services from the clerk's desk. He is fixed in habits of austere industry, never loses a moment of time, and is fond of scholastic theology and of political discussion. We are surprised to find this new church, so recently opened, also crowded, and are told that when the edifice was completed the first of the year, all the pews were taken at the first sale.

The new Scotch Presbyterian church in Cedar street, near Broadway, although just opened, is as well filled as the others. It is an offshoot from the Wall Street Presbyterian through a disagreement concerning a system of church psalmody. Its pastor is the Rev. Dr. John Mason, a young divine of thirty-four, from Scotland, who captivates all who come within sound of his voice. The Baptists are few in number, but they have a little church eight years old in Gold street, near John; their pastor is Rev. John Gano, young and energetic, the grandson of Stephen Gano, the Huguenot who settled in New Rochelle. The Methodists are just coming into notice, and their modest "preaching house" in John street is opened for worship this year, the Rev. Philip Embury preaching the first sermon within its walls. The Moravians have a church in Fulton street, near William, a little frame building about seventeen years of age, and its pastor is the Rev. G. Neiser. The Quakers have a small church structure, built nearly seventy years ago, in Little Green street, just south of Maiden lane, and we observe that their congregation includes some of the rich and well-to-do citizens. But they will call churches "steeple houses," and say they have none-their place of worship is a meeting-house. At the Jewish synagogue in Mill street, the Rabbi in his splendid robes of office, the men in bright silk scarfs, and the whole congregation chanting aloud in Hebrew, with the Holy Light burning before the altar, will produce lasting remembrances. In the Lutheran church, just below Trinity, one half of the services are performed in German and the other half in Low

Dutch. This is owing to there being more Hollanders than Germans belonging to the congregation. Martin Luther's followers have long since found this place of worship too small, and last year (1767) they erected a little church edifice in the swamp, corner of William and Frankfort streets, the land being almost worthless in that locality; and their services are held in the German language exclusively. This sanctuary is called the "Swamp church." There are Germans here who are not Lutherans, but Calvinists, and they also have a church, a new building in Nassau street, near Maiden lane, two years of age, with Rev. Dr. Johan Michael Kern as pastor. The services are conducted in the Dutch language, which, says an Englishman who does not understand it, " sounds lofty, majestic, and emphatical." One of the most unique church edifices in the city is the French Huguenot church in Pine street, sixty-four years old, the lot extending from Pine to Cedar, and about seventy-five feet front. It is of stone, plastered on the outside, and in its quaint steeple is a musical bell which plays all manner of discords with the ancient bell in the belfry of the neighborly Dutch church. Its congregation includes some of the bestknown families in the city, distinguished alike for their social influence and religious fidelity.

Eighteen churches to a population not exceeding eighteen thousand, including the negro element! The exact population cannot be here stated, as there was no census in 1768, but the figures given are the nearest attainable. Has there been any time since then when a more impressive exhibit could be made?

We leave much unseen that would interest us in the little metropolis, but we must return to the prosaic present, irrespective of regrets and without waiting to discover any democratic hammer hidden in mid-air, or clouds that threaten to obscure the light and disturb the peaceful serenity of the "Golden Age of Colonial New York."

Martha & Lamb

SIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE AND HIS WORK

Nowhere, it is said, has the chief work of Sir William Blackstone been more widely read than in America. As the first and only book of the kind in England, and written in a most graceful and attractive style, it was accepted as an authoritative revelation of the law. The first volume of the Commentaries was published in 1765, when its author was forty-two years of age; the other three volumes appeared at intervals during the next four years. Blackstone began his famous treatise with a forcible plea that noblemen, gentlemen, and educated persons generally, should have an intelligent understanding of the laws of the country. The work covers the field of law with singular completeness, and performed much the same service as was rendered to the people of Rome by the publication of their previously unknown laws. Few books of the age on any theme were ever more successful. Eight editions appeared in the author's lifetime (he died in 1780), and the ninth edition was ready for publication. For sixty years after his death editions continued to follow one another almost as quickly, and editors were found in men like Burns, Christian, Coleridge, and Chitty, who felt that they were rendering a service to their profession in annotating Blackstone with minute and almost tender care; and laymen turned to him to find for the first time English law made readable. So great, however, have been the growth and changes of law that to keep the work up to date by means of foot-notes is now an almost hopeless task.

Burke said in 1775: "I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England." It certainly has been edited and abridged in America nearly as often as in England, and has wielded as potent an influence in shaping the course of legal education in one country as in the other. It suggested to Chancellor Kent the idea of writing his Commentaries on American Law.

Blackstone was not without his critics, who remarked upon some disproportion in the parts of his great work, which closes with a chapter on the rise, progress and gradual improvements of the laws of England, suggesting to Reeves the utility of a history of English law, filled up with some minuteness upon the outline thus drawn. Thomas Jefferson questioned the wisdom of Blackstone's plan of smoothing the path of the student of law. He was also opposed to citing English authorities after the declaration of independence, and is reported to have said that to exclude them would be "to uncanonize Blackstone, whose book, although the most eloquent

and best digested of our law catalogues has been perverted more than all others to the degeneracy of legal science; a student finds there a smattering of everything, and his indolence easily persuades him that if he understands that book he is master of the whole body of the law." In 1776 Bentham wrote his famous Fragment on Government, in which he discussed what he considered Blackstone's imperfections, while frankly recognizing his merits. Dr. Priestley long before this had issued a pamphlet criticising passages in the Commentaries relating to dissenters; De Turneaux addressed letters to the author condemning his illiberal spirit in regard to the" Toleration Act," and found fault with the work as an incomplete statement of the law. Austin was even more vigorous in his critical attacks, accusing Blackstone of following slavishly the method of Hale's Analysis of the Law, and of "blindly adopting the mistakes of his rude, and compendious model, missing, invariably, with a nice and surprising infelicity, the pregnant but obscure suggestions which it proffered to his attention and which would have guided a discerning and inventive writer to an arrangement comparatively just." Bentham declared that Blackstone was "the enemy of all reform, and the unscrupulous champion of every form of professional chicanery;" and Austin insisted that he "flattered the overweening conceit of the English in their own institutions," and made his work popular "in a style fitted to tickle the ear, though it never or rarely satisfies a severe and masculine taste." These criticisms attracted public attention, until it grew fashionable to speak lightly of the work. But as time rolled on there came a more just appreciation of its valuc. Coleridge has pointed to the crude and scattered condition of the materials and controversies examined by Blackstone, and it is generally conceded that his conception of the Commentaries was admirable, and so well carried out "that the work contains the best history of English law extant, needing comparatively little correction, and told with clearness and spirit."

Blackstone grew to be a very stout man, disliking all forms of exercise. His portrait by Gainsborough, which forms the frontispiece to this number of the magazine, was painted about 1775. He was very precise and orderly in his habits, and noted through life for scrupulous punctuality; but it is said he was both languid and hot-tempered. He was twice elected to a seat in parliament, yet his political career was without memorable incidents. He was made a justice of the court of common pleas in 1770, where he acquired the reputation of being a painstaking judge.

Roy Singleter