CHAP. XXXIX.] EXCURSION TO ALBANY. 259 



ity and happiness can only be insured by spreading an elevated 

 standard of popular education throughout the masses. In their 

 enthusiastic pursuit of this great end, they are acknowledged to 

 have no thought of making proselytes to any system of religious 

 doctrines, and are therefore trusted in the management of schools 

 by the parents of children of the most opposite persuasions. In 

 regard to their own faith, some misapprehension has arisen, in 

 consequence of the name they bear, which was not chosen by 

 themselves, but to which, on the contrary, they have objections, 

 such as members of the Anglican Church might feel if some such 

 name as Anti-transubstantiationists, or any term which simply 

 expressed their opposition to some one article of the Romanist 

 creed, had been fixed upon them. When the rigid Calvinism of 

 the old Puritans caused a schism in New England, the seceders 

 wished to free themselves from the fetters of a creed, and to take 

 the Gospel alone as their standard of faith. They were naturally, 

 therefore, averse to accept a name which might be generally 

 supposed to imply that they attached a prominent importance to 

 the negation of any one doctrine professed by other Christians. 

 &quot;I desire,&quot; said Charming, &quot; to wear the livery of no party; 

 but we accept the appellation which others have imposed upon 

 us, because it expresses what we believe to be a truth, and 

 therefore we ought not to shrink from the reproaches cast upon 

 it. But, had the name been more honored, had no popular cry 

 been raised against it, I would gladly have thrown it off.&quot;* 



May 11. Sailed from New York to Albany in a steamer, 

 which carried me at the rate of eighteen miles an hour through 

 the beautiful scenery of the Hudson Hiver. I had been invited 

 by two of the state surveyors of New York to make an excursion 

 with them to the north of Albany, and to discuss in the field 

 some controverted points respecting the geology of the oldest fos- 

 siliferous strata. There was a physician on board, who, having 

 been settled for twenty-six years in Virginia, had now come back, 

 after that long absence, to see his native state. His admiration 

 and wonder at the progress made by New York in a quarter of 

 a century were unbounded. Speaking of his adopted country, 

 * Channing s Works, vol. iii. p. 210. 



