1859.] SHAKERS. 229 



up my accumulations, not daring to let them have the knocking 

 about between here and Liverpool without better packing than 

 I could give them in my travels. It is a good thing I did so ; 

 else my thousands of Unios would have been all mixed up, so 

 that it would have been an endless job pairing them. I often 

 wondered why the Unios were never sent us with the ligatures 

 whole; on opening them, I found them all dried to such a 

 tinder, that the strong cartilage, which when fresh I could 

 hardly cut with nail-scissors, snapped at a touch ; the epidermis, 

 of course, cracking in like manner." The arrangement of his 

 gift-collection, owing to the difficulty of finding suitable ac- 

 commodation, took him about a month. During his stay at 

 Albany, he gave a lecture on Shells to an appreciating audience, 

 the Chancellor of the University in the chair; and had the 

 opportunity of examining several valuable collections, among 

 them that of Professor Hall. He was greatly interested with 

 the microscopical investigations of Judge Edmonds. 



One Saturday evening he found his way to a Shaker settle- 

 ment : not that which is best known, at N. Lebanon, but the 

 one at " Watersliet, the first place where Anna Lee, their female 

 Christ, settled." After a long, dark, muddy walk, he was very 

 kindly received by the " Church family," to whom he intro- 

 duced himself, and was much interested in what he saw and 

 heard of the community. He attended their peculiar worship, 

 next morning : "I had as soon dance to the glory of God, as 

 sing or pray ; but then it would be either out of gladness of 

 heart, or to minister to the enjoyment of others. This appeared 

 to me nothing more than a serious drill. ... In the Catholic 

 idea of the monastic life, there is at any rate a high state of 

 devotional feeling, to supply the want of the human affections ; 

 but in the Shaker system, they seem to turn out human relation- 

 ships and the devotional element alike : nothing but pure good- 

 ness and self-denial. But* in this wicked lustful world, it was a 

 refreshment even to come among virgin purity and patriarchal 

 simplicity. ... I got back in time for dinner and the vesper 

 service at the Cathedral, with its good Bishop and religious 

 organist, the only spot where my sympathies cling in the Empire 



