_Steamboat, Tuesday Evening, June 27th._ It was about three o'clock to-day, that we started on our way from Louisville, down the Ohio. It was excessively hot, and I experienced a languor and sense of exhaustion, which I do not recollect ever before to have felt. When the sun began to decline, and we again found ourselves gliding as by enchantment over the surface, and sweeping through the midst of the beautiful scenery of the Ohio, I felt that I had passed into a new world. As I traversed the deck of the boat, and saw reflected from the smooth and mirror-like bosom of the river, the luxuriant foliage, rich and dark by its own deep verdure--the smooth green bank that sloped down to the water's edge, as though to kiss the smiling surface that slept so quietly below--the abrupt precipitous bluff, starting up like a mound of earth, or a wall of solid masonry--and the head-land sweeping off into sloping woods that towered in majesty above the stream, I could not but feel, and could scarcely refrain from exclaiming aloud, how beautiful and surpassingly lovely are the works of God! What must the heart of that man be made of, who can pass through the midst of such displays of divine beauty, and pollute the very atmosphere as he passes with profanity! This is what hundreds are daily doing. Almost all the hands on board of the steamboats, down even to the little boys, utter an oath almost every other word. _Profane swearing_ is one of the crying sins of this western world. Oaths the most horrid are awfully common among all sorts of people. Amid these scenes of varied beauty where creation appears so lovely we may truly say, "* * * Every prospect pleases And only man is vile. In vain with lavish kindness The gifts of God are strown." Men pass here in thousands, and mindless of all these tokens of a wonder-working Deity, continue to live as though there were no God in the Universe, or as if He existed only to afford a theme for more aggravated profanity. And yet looking at the matter, aside from the native depravity of the human heart, one would think that the spontaneous effusion of every intelligent mind whose attention was directed to this scene, would be, as he looked around, "Surely this is the teaching of the mighty God! May lessons be impressed upon my heart by the outspread volumes before me, which no mutations of time, no excitement of passion, no fascinations of the world, no devices of the Evil one will ever efface. Eternal Creator, here among this green, boundless, majestic temple of thy works I renew the consecration of myself to thee, soul, body, and spirit. While these rivers roll their waters towards the sea--while a spear of grass grows in these fields--while a tree on these wooded banks is clothed with foliage in the vernal month--yea, while the solid earth lasts, and the cycles of eternity move on, with thy grace will I live only to serve and glorify Thee."