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of shoe-blacking. We think that at least twelve hundred people were present and heard this impertinent speech of the tricky and gabbling huckster. How many boxes of blacking his profession of piety enabled him to sell we are not prepared to state, but there is not a shadow of doubt that the rascal had expressly contrived the impudent trick for the occasion. We have also seen a man bustling about from tent so tent, thrusting into the faces of the occupants a printed notice promising speedy and gratuitous relief from the headache. Of course this was only a sharp device to advertise his nostrum, and to drive a brisk trade with the saints and the sinners whose aching noddles should invite the experiment.

The erection of family tents is likewise becoming an established practice. At the encampment to which we refer there were, during the meeting of 1858, over two hundred of these structures. Their styles of convenience and of finish were varied, and sometimes highly attractive. They were commonly divided, by a partition, into a front and a rear apartment; the former being designed for a sitting, or reception room, and the latter for a dormitory. A carpeted floor frequently supplanted the plebeian covering of straw; faultless couches with snowy counterpanes took the place of hard and uninviting pallets; comfortable chairs relieved the trunks, bags, and bundles of their inappropriate burdens; spring sofas laughed at the rough benches of the more primitive establishments; convenient chests of drawers snugly inclosed the requisite changes of apparel; ample mirrors challenged unlimited self-admiration; while tasteful draperies and other ornamental appliances invested with new beauties these fairy habitations of the mimic city. Indeed, we hardly know if aught was lacking that could minister to the personal ease and comfort of the tenants. Whatever the heart could reasonably wish was supplied, and thus the lodging-place of a single week in the forest often smiled with a tasteful elegance that ambitiously rivaled many a more pretentious and permanent structure.

Now, so far as the question of mere convenience is regarded we have nothing to say. Upon this ground very few, we imagine, would object to the utmost amplitude of gratification. Yet these innovations impart to the encampment a businesslike and worldly aspect, quite inconsistent with the solemn

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quietude of an impressive and spiritual occasion. atmosphere is secularized. The sacred spell is broken. The attention of the multitude is distracted, and whatever effort is employed to concentrate it upon the overshadowing object of the convocation is measurably baffled. The public services are, for the same reason, largely neglected. The family tents are almost invariably occupied during worship by idle talkers and loungers, to whom an easy seat and an hour of gossip are more attractive than the sacred ministrations of religion. By careful investigation, more than five hundred persons have thus, at the same time, been found in small companies distributed throughout the encampment. And this aggregate is largely swollen by an army of promenaders whom, in coolest contempt of the solemnities in progress, we have, every day in the week, seen traversing the grounds in all directions.

It is very true that such proceedings are strictly forbidden by the rules of the meeting, as they are certainly a glaring outrage upon the obvious proprieties of the occasion. Yet how shall these rules be enforced? The family tents are private property, and to all intents and purposes under the exclusive control of their respective owners. So long as these ill-timed and impertinent social gatherings are tolerated or invited by the proprietors and their families they will continue to recur, and a constant passing and repassing through every part of the encampment will be the inevitable result. Prohibitory regulations are wholly inoperative, though a hundred policemen should attempt their enforcement. This the managers thoroughly understand, and hence the reckless impunity with which a hallowed and effective religious institution is degraded to the vulgar level of a mammoth picnic.

Granted, also, that to the trades and the traffic already mentioned restrictive rules similarly apply, and that during the hours of worship every form of secular employment is sternly prohibited. Suppose the scraping of the razor and the click of the tonsorial shears to be hushed; that aching molars no longer acknowledge the unfascinating persuasion of the forceps; that the vender of gazettes, the polisher of boots, and the assuager of headaches, temporarily suspend their philan thropic labors. What of it? Can the mischief already occasioned be corrected by the locking of a chest, or the dropping

of a curtain? The pernicious influence of these anomalous proceedings was permanently inaugurated the moment that a lax and time-serving policy permitted their shameless intrusion, and any other remedy than a rigorous expulsion of the detestable nuisance will prove the merest child's play. It is letting the dragon into the house, and then attempting to keep him quiet. The presence of the evil cause will affect the temper of the best meeting and preoccupy the minds of the worshipers. Every one will painfully realize that the traditional sanctity of the place has been invaded and desecrated by impertinent traffickers; that its spiritual atmosphere has been tainted by the corrupt breath of sordid and selfish enterprise; that the glorious prestige of past achievement is dispelled by the ignominy of present failure.

Such management is certainly a burning disgrace to its abettors, and would in half a decade cover with permanent contempt the institution it so pitifully caricatures. But we are slow to believe the camp-meeting destined to so wretched an end. Its past character, as portrayed in the inspiring history of its triumphs, is too sacred for a blot so unseemly. And we are unwilling to admit any general or extensive prevalence of the evil we have exposed. We believe it to be confined to a very few localities, and, to insure its speedy extinction, it needs the same rigor of treatment as the pleuro-pneumonia, or any other contagious and fatal malady. Every secular enterprise should be as peremptorily banished from a place solemnly consecrated to the worship of God as the "buyers and sellers" were driven from the Jewish temple. No representative of any trade or pursuit (if we except the medical profession) should be allowed within hailing distance. The trafficker, of any description, who shows his head upon the ground for the purpose of selling or hawking his wares, should be promptly arrested, and punished with the utmost severity of the law. Whatever supplies are required for the tents, as of straw, fuel, provisions, and the like, should be furnished by contract, at the lowest living profit, and always under the supervision of a competent executive committee. The erection of family tents, except for the sole purpose of more extended sleeping accommodations, should be sternly prohibited. No one should be permitted, during divine service, to pass from one part of the encamp

ment to another. All companies, assembled in any place or with any design whatsoever, should, within the hours of public worship, be dispersed, and no dallying on the part of those to whom is intrusted the maintenance of order should ever stimulate a single recusant to a second act of disobedience.

One of the largest and most successful camp-meetings in New England is conducted precisely according to the plan we have indicated, and more unexceptionable decorum we never saw, in an assemblage of a hundred people, than uniformly characterizes its proceedings. We have there seen more than six thousand people so attentively listening to the same discourse that every word was distinctly heard by the remotest auditor. To attempt to walk the space within the circle of tents was to encounter a policeman within ten seconds, and an immediate halt and a respectful silence alone saved the arrest of the ambulant party. It is not strange that the able and effective ministrations there employed, assisted by the admirable regulations we have described, should be divinely acknowledged by many immediate conversions, and by the frequent inauguration of powerful and sweeping revivals.

And the same policy ought to control every encampment, and might if every friend of the institution would promptly come to the rescue. If every minister would, once a year, make a timely appeal in its behalf to his congregation, urging its importance, exposing the errors and abuses that impede its progress, and suggesting whatever improvements may seem best adapted to modern requirements, the most beneficent results would speedily follow. Let the religious press take up the theme, and, disregarding the fearful contingency of losing a half-dozen subscribers, vigorously rebuke the evils in question, and the lapse of two years would not precede their general suppression. Thank God! the camp-meeting has nobly weathered the hostility of its enemies; we trust it may as triumphantly survive the mismanagement and folly of its friends.

ART. IV.-DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.

On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection; or, the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. By CHARLES DARWIN, M.A., Fellow of the Royal, Geological, Linnæan, etc., Societies, author of "Journal of Researches during H.M.S. Beagle's Voyage round the World." London: John Murray. 1859. New York: Appleton & Co. 1860.

THE author of this ingenious book is a grandson of Dr. Darwin, the celebrated author of "The Botanical Garden," "The Loves of the Plants," "Zoonomia," and other poetical and scientific works, full of fanciful theories and rather suspicious theology. Whatever, therefore, may be his speculative eccentricities, we may fairly presume that he has come honestly by them. He has, however, for years occupied a very respectable position as a naturalist, and is favorably known to the scientific world by his narrative of the voyage of the Beagle, which he accompanied as naturalist, as well as by a number of valuable contributions to the publications of the Ray Society on various departments of natural history. His attention, he tells us, was first directed to this "mystery of mysteries" in zoology, the Origin of Species, during the voyage of the Beagle. On its return, in 1837, he devoted himself to "patiently accumulating and reflecting upon all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it," and he has been steadily pursuing the same object ever since. (Page 9.) This work is the result of these years of laborious investigation. It is, however, as he informs us, but an abstract of what he has done, to be followed soon by a much fuller work containing "in detail all the facts, with references," on which his conclusions have been founded. Though it has been but little over a year since its first publication, this book has had quite an exciting, and, if we are to judge by the rapidity of its sale, we may say a successful career. Perhaps no scientific work has ever been at once so extensively read, not only by the scientific few, but by the reading masses generally; and certainly no one has ever produced such a commotion. It has set savans and learned societies by the ears, and has been the theme of ani

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