Stay at Cincinnati (continued)—The New Roman Catholic Cathedral—The
Rev. C. B. Boynton and Congregationalism—"The Herald of a New
Era"—American Nationality.

A lady, belonging to the Presbyterian Church at which I preached, kindly sent her carriage to take us about to see the city. We visited the new Roman Catholic Cathedral, one of the principal "lions." It was begun in 1841, and, though used for public worship, is not yet finished. The building is a parallelogram of 200 feet long by 80 feet wide, and is 58 feet from the floor to the ceiling. The roof is partly supported by the side walls, and partly by two rows of freestone columns—nine in each row—at a distance of about 11 feet from the wall inside. These columns are of the Corinthian Order, and are 35 feet high, and 3 feet 6 inches in diameter. There is no gallery, except at one end, for the organ, which cost 5,400 dollars, or about 1,100_l._ sterling. The floor of the building is furnished with a centre aisle of 6 feet wide, and two other aisles, each 11 feet wide, along the side walls, for processional purposes. The remainder of the area is formed into 140 pews, 10 feet deep. Each pew will accommodate with comfort only six persons; so that this immense edifice affords sitting room for no more than 840 people! It is a magnificent structure, displaying in all its proportions a remarkable degree of elegance and taste. The tower, when finished, will present an elevation of 200 feet, with a portico of twelve Corinthian columns, six in front and three on either side, on the model of the Tower of the Wind at Athens. The entire building will be Grecian in all its parts. One-fourth of the population of Cincinnati are Roman Catholics. They have lately discontinued the use of public government-schools for their children, and have established some of their own, I am not so much alarmed at the progress of Popery in America as I was before I visited that country. Its proselytes are exceedingly few. Its supporters consist chiefly of the thousands of Europeans, already Roman Catholic, who flock to the New World. The real progress of Popery is greater in Britain than in America.

In the evening I preached for Mr. Boynton in the "Sixth-street Church," Mr. Boynton and his Church, heretofore Presbyterians, have recently become Congregationalists. This has given great umbrage to the Presbyterians. Congregationalism is rapidly gaining ground in the Western World, and seems destined there, as in England since Cromwell's time, to swallow up Presbyterianism. I make no invidious comparison between the two systems: I merely look at facts. And it does appear to me that Congregationalism—so simple, so free, so unsectarian, and so catholic—is nevertheless a powerful absorbent. It has absorbed all that was orthodox in the old Presbyterian Churches of England; and it is absorbing the Calvinistic Methodists and the churches named after the Countess of Huntingdon. It has all along exerted a powerful influence on the Presbyterianism of America. The Congregational element diffused among those churches occasioned the division of the Presbyterian Church into Old School and New School.

Mr. Boynton is what a friend of mine called "intensely American." He has lately published, under the title of "Our Country the Herald of a New Era," a lecture delivered before the "Young Men's Mercantile Library Association." To show the magnificent ideas the Americans entertain of themselves and their country, I will transcribe a few passages.

"This nation is an enigma, whose import no man as yet may fully know. She is a germ of boundless things. The unfolded bud excites the hope of one-half the human race, while it stirs the remainder with both anger and alarm. Who shall now paint the beauty and attraction of the expanded flower? Our Eagle is scarcely fledged; but one wing stretches over Massachusetts Bay, and the other touches the mouth of the Columbia. Who shall say, then, what lands shall be overshadowed by the full-grown pinion? Who shall point to any spot of the northern continent, and say, with certainty, Here the starry banner shall never be hailed as the symbol of dominion? [The annexation of Canada!] * * * It cannot be disguised that the idea is gathering strength among us, that the territorial mission of this nation is to obtain and hold at least all that lies north of Panama. * * * Whether the millions that are to dwell on the great Pacific slope of our continent are to acknowledge our banner, or rally to standards of their own; whether Mexico is to become ours by sudden conquest or gradual absorption; whether the British provinces, when they pass from beneath the sceptre of England, shall be incorporated with us, or retain an independent dominion;—are perhaps questions which a not distant future may decide. However they may be settled, the great fact will remain essentially the same, that the two continents of this Western Hemisphere shall yet bear up a stupendous social, political, and religious structure, wrought by the American mind, moulded and coloured by the hues of American thought, and animated and united by an American soul. It seems equally certain that, whatever the divisions of territory may be, these United States are the living centre, from which already flows the resistless stream which will ultimately absorb in its own channel, and bear on its own current, the whole thought of the two Americas. * * * If, then, I have not over-rated the moral and intellectual vigour of the people of this nation, and of the policy lately avowed to be acted upon—that the further occupation of American soil by the Governments of Europe is not to be suffered,—then the inference is a direct one, that the stronger elements will control and absorb the lesser, so that the same causes which melted the red races away will send the influence of the United States not only over the territory north of Panama, but across the Isthmus, and southward to Magellan."

The "New Era" of which America is the "Herald" is, he tells us, to be marked by three grand characteristics,—

"First. A new theory and practice in government and in social life, such as the world has never seen, of which we only perceive the germ as yet." Already have you indeed presented before the world your "peculiar institution" of slavery in a light new and striking. Already have you a "theory and practice" in the government of slaves such as the world never beheld!

"Second. A literature which shall not only be the proper outgrowth of the American mind, but which shall form a distinctive school, as clearly so as the literature of Greece!" Under this head he says, "Very much would I prefer that our literature should appear even in the guise of the awkward, speculating, guessing, but still original, strong-minded American Yankee, than to see it mincing in the costume of a London dandy. I would rather see it, if need be, showing the wild rough strength, the naturalness and fervour of the extreme West, equally prepared to liquor with a stranger or to fight with him, than to see it clad in the gay but filthy garments of the saloons of Paris. Nay more, much as every right mind abhors and detests such things, I would sooner behold our literature holding in one hand the murderous Bowie knife, and in the other the pistol of the duellist, than to see her laden with the foul secrets of a London hell, or the gaming-houses of Paris. * * * If we must meet with vice in our literature, let it be the growth of our own soil; for I think our own rascality has yet the healthier aspect."

"Third. A new era in the fine arts, from which future ages shall derive their models and their inspirations, as we do from Greece and Italy. * * * So far as scenery is concerned in the moulding of character, we may safely expect that a country where vastness and beauty are so wonderfully blended will stamp upon the national soul its own magestic and glorious image. It must be so. The mind will expand itself to the measure of things about it. Deep in the wide American soul there shall be Lake Superiors, inland oceans of thought; and the streams of her eloquence shall be like the sweep of the Mississippi in his strength. The rugged strength of the New England hills, the luxuriance of the sunny South, the measureless expanse of the prairie, the broad flow of our rivers, the dashing of our cataracts, the huge battlements of the everlasting mountains,—these are American. On the face of the globe there is nothing like to them. When therefore these various influences have been thoroughly wrought into the national soul, there will be such a correspondence between man and the works of God about him, that our music, our poetry, our eloquence, our all, shall be our own, individual and peculiar, like the Amazon and the Andes, the Mississippi and Niagara, alone in their strength and glory."

Now, mark you! amidst all these splendid visions of the future, there is no vision of liberty for 3,000,000 of slaves. That idea was too small to find a place among conceptions so vast. The lecture contains not a syllable of reference to them. On the contrary, the empty boast of freedom is heard in the following words of solemn mockery: "The soul of man here no longer sits bound and blind amid the despotic forms of the past; it walks abroad without a shackle, and with an uncovered eye." It follows then that there is an essential difference between "the soul of man" and the soul of "nigger," or rather that "niggers" have no soul at all. How can men of sense, and especially ministers of the Gospel, sit down to pen such fustian? These extracts show how intensely national the Americans are, and consequently how futile the apology for the existence of slavery so often presented, that one State can no more interfere with the affairs of another State than the people of England can with France and the other countries of the European continent. The Americans are to all intents and purposes one people. In short, the identity of feeling among the States of the Union is more complete than among the counties of Great Britain.

On the morning of the 4th of March, Dr. Stowe called to invite me to address the students at Lane Seminary, on the following Sabbath evening, on the subject of missions and the working of freedom in the West Indies. I readily promised to comply, glad of an opportunity to address so many of the future pastors of the American Churches, who will occupy the field when emancipation is sure to be the great question of the day. In fact, it is so already.