98 AN AMERICAN FARMER IN ENGLAND. 



common schools !) he verily believed, if adopted, would be 

 a national sin that God would arise in his anger to punish. 



Our landlady had lived almost to old age under the shadow 

 of the Church, in which the story of Zaccheus is every year 

 read aloud, and in which a religious celebration of the resto 

 ration of King Charles is by law performed every 29th of 

 May. But a person of sound faculties, native-born, could not 

 probably be found in New-England, whose godless education 

 would not have made impossible such a confusion of religious 

 instruction as had been given her.* 



I am writing now in my bedroom. Though the ceiling is 

 low, it is large and well furnished. There are large pitchers 

 of water, foot-bath, and half-a-dozen towels. The bed is very 

 large, clean, and richly curtained. The landlady has sent me 

 up a glass of her home-brew^ed beer, with a nightcap which I 

 noticed she hung by the fire when I left the kitchen. The 

 chambermaid has drawn down the bed-clothes, and says, 

 &quot; The bed has been well aired, sir.&quot; Good night. 



* There is a service for the 29th of May in the Book of Common Prayer, 

 which, by royal order (commencing &quot; Victoria Regina. It is our Eoyal 

 Will and Pleasure,&quot; &c., and countersigned by Lord John Kussell on the 

 21st of June, 1837), is to be performed in every church, college, and 

 chapel in the United Kingdom every year. It is most blasphemously 

 absurd and false in its historical allusions and slavish moralizings. 



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