MrSi Wright's Travels in the United Stales '. 62 y 
lien veil by laying hold of ray coat; but 
I’ll take care to hold up the skirts.” 
American religion, of whatever sect, 
(and it includes all the sects under 
heaven,) is of a quiet and unassuming 
character ; no way disputatious, even 
when more doctrinal than the majority 
may think ivise. I do not include the 
strolling methodists and shaking qua- 
kers, and sects with unutterable names 
and deranged imaginations, who are 
found in some odd corners of this wide 
world, beating time to the hymns of 
Mother Ann, and working out the mil- 
lennium by abstaining from mar riage. 
The Shakers, as they are called, emi¬ 
grated to America some forty years 
ago. Ann Lee, or Mother Ann, their 
spiritual leader, was a niece of the cele¬ 
brated General Lee, who took so active 
a part in the war of the revolution. 
She became deranged, as it is said, from 
family misfortunes ; fancied herself a 
second Virgin Mary, and found fol¬ 
lowers, as Joanna Southcote and Jemi¬ 
ma Wilkinson did after her. 
There is a curious spirit of opposition 
in the human mind. I see your papers 
full of anathemas against blasphemous 
pamphlets. We have no such things 
here; and why ? Because every man is 
free to write them ; and because every 
man enjoys his own opinion, without 
any arguing about the matter. Where 
religion never arms the hand of power, 
she is never obnoxious ; where she is 
seated modestly at the domestic hearth, 
whispering peace and immortal hope to 
infancy and age, she is always respect¬ 
ed, even by those who may not them¬ 
selves feel the force of her arguments. 
CLIMATE IN NEW JERSEY. 
This is a climate of extremes ; you 
are here always in heat or frost. The 
former you know I never object to, 
and as I equally dislike the latter, I 
should perhaps be an unfair reporter of 
both. The summer is glorious; the 
resplendent sun 4< shining on, shining 
on,” for days and weeks successively ; 
an air so pure, so light, and to me so 
genial, that I wake as it were to a new 
existence. I have seen those around 
me, however, often drooping beneath 
fervors which have given me life. By 
the month of August, the pale cheeks 
and slow movements of the American 
women, and even occasionally of the 
men, seem to demand the invigorating 
breezes of the Siberian winter to brace 
the nerves and quicken the current of 
the blood. The severe cold which suc¬ 
ceeds to this extreme of heat, appears 
to have this effect, and seldom to pro¬ 
duce, excepting upon such as may be 
affected with constitutional weakness 
of the lungs, any effect that is not de¬ 
cidedly beneficial. Most people will 
pronounce the autumn to be the pride 
of the American year. It, is indeed 
fraught with beauty to all the senses ; 
the brilliant hues then assumed by na¬ 
ture, from the dwarf sumac with his 
berries and leaves of vivid crimson, up 
to the towering trees of the forest, 
twisting their branches in extreme and 
whimsical contrasts of gold, red, green 
orange, russet, through all their varie¬ 
ties of shade; the orchards, too, then 
laden with treasures, and the fields 
heavy with the ripened maize; the skies 
bright with all the summer’s splendour, 
yet tempered with refreshing breezes; 
the sun sinking to rest in crimsons, 
whose depth and warmth of hue the 
painter would not dare to imitate. 
The winter those whom it likes, 
may like it. The season has its beauty 
and its pleasures. Sparkling skies 
shining down upon sparkling snows, 
over which the light sleighs , peopled 
with the young and the gay, bound 
along to the chime of bells which the 
horses seem to bear well pleased. In 
country and city, this is the time ol 
amusement; the young people will run 
twenty miles, through the biting air, 
to the house of a friend; where all in a 
moment is set astir; carpets up, music 
playing, and youths and maidens, laugh¬ 
ing and mingling in the mazy dance, the 
happiest creatures beneath the moon. 
Is it the bright climate, or the liberty 
that reigns every where; or is it the ab¬ 
sence of poverty, and the equal absence 
of 'extreme wealth ; or is it all these 
things together that make this people 
so cheerful and gay-hearted? 
The spring:—there is properly no 
spring; there is a short struggle be¬ 
tween winter and summer ; who some¬ 
times fight for the mastery with a good 
deal of obstinacy. We have lately seen 
a fierce combat between these two great 
sovereigns of the year. In the latter 
days of March, summer suddenly 
alighted on the snows in the full Hush 
of July heat; every window and door 
were flung open to welcome the stran¬ 
ger, and the trees were just bursting 
into leaf, when angry winter returned 
to the field, and poured down one ot 
the most singular showers ot sleet I 
ever witnessed. The water, freezing 
as it fell, cased every branch and twig 
in crystal of an inch thick, so trans¬ 
parent 
