Virginia has had, for these same causes, no religious development whatever.  The people spend four-and-a-half fifths of their time arguing about politics and religion,—­questions of the latter being chiefly as to the best method of being baptized, or whether sudden conversions are the safest,—­but they never take a step forward in either.  Archbishop Purcell, of Cincinnati, stated to us, that, once being in Richmond, he resolved to give a little religious exploration to the surrounding country.  About seven miles out from the city he saw a man lying down,—­the Virginian’s natural posture,—­and approaching, he made various inquiries, and received lazy Yes and No replies.  Presently he inquired to what churches the people in that vicinity usually went.

“Well, not much to any.”

“What are their religious views?”

“Well, not much of any.”

“Well, my friend, may I inquire what are your opinions on religious subjects?”

“The man, yet reclining,” said the Archbishop, “looked at me sleepily a moment, and replied,—­

“‘My opinion is that them as made me will take care of me.’”

The Archbishop came off discouraged; but we assured him that the man was far ahead of many specimens we had met.  We never see an opossum in Virginia—­a fossil animal in most other places—­but it seems the sign of the moral stratification around.  There are many varieties of opossum in Virginia,—­political and religious:  Saturn, who devours his offspring, has not come to Virginia yet.

Old formulas have, doubtless, to a great extent, lost their power there also, but there is not vitality enough to create a higher form.  For no new church can ever be anywhere inaugurated in this world until the period has come when its chief corner-stone can be Humanity.  Till then the old creeds in Virginia must wander like ghosts, haunting the old ruins which their once exquisite churches have become.  Nothing can be more picturesque, nothing more sad, than these old churches,—­every brick in them imported from Old England, every prayer from the past world and its past need:  the high and wide pews where the rich sat lifted some feet above the seats of the poor represent still the faith in a God who subjects the weak to the strong.  These old churches, rarely rebuilt, are ready now to become rocks imbedding fossil creeds.  In these old aisles one walks, and the snake glides away on the pavement, and the bat flutters in the high pulpit, whilst moss and ivy tenderly enshroud the lonely walls; and over all is written the word DESOLATION.  Symbol it is of the desolation which caused it, even the trampled fanes and altars of the human soul,—­the temple of God, whose profanation the church has suffered to go on unrebuked, till now both must crumble into the same grave.

* * * * *

AMERICAN CIVILIZATION.