He desires also to confess another purpose, in preparing and publishing this little work. He has aimed to present, prominently, to his readers, the distinguishing and characteristic merits of English civilization. Innumerable causes are now at work to debase the morals of our own countrymen. With the contemporaries of Washington, that high social refinement which was kept up amid all the evils of our colonial position, has well-nigh passed away. The dignity of personal bearing, the careful civility of intercourse, and the delicate sense of propriety which characterized the times of our grandfathers, have disappeared. The vulgarizing influences of a dissocial sectarianism are beginning to be perceived. The degrading effects of sudden wealth; the corruptions bred of luxury; the evils of a vast and mongrel immigration; and not least, the vices communicated to our youth, by contact with the Mexican and half-Spanish populations contiguous to our southern frontier; all these corrosive elements are operating among us with a frightful and rapid result. The contrast with such tendencies, of the sober and comparatively healthful progress of society in our ancestral land, the writer supposes, cannot but be acceptable at least to those of his countrymen who deprecate this deterioration, and who, for themselves and their families, are anxious to cultivate an acquaintance with those domestic, educational and religious institutions which have given to England her moral power and dignity among the nations of the civilized world. These sketches were originally contributed to the New-York _Church Journal_, but are here given in a revised and complete form. They are a record of the memorable year 1851—a year to which English history will look back as the last, and the full-blown flower of a long peace. The revival of the imperial power in France, at the close of that year, has opened a new era in Europe, the effects of which upon the British Empire can hardly be foreseen. A. C. C. _Baltimore_, 1855. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Holyhead—Incidents of the Voyage—Oxford stage-coach and Stratford guide-post—Easter-bells and Easter solemnities—An Elizabethan Mansion—A Roger-de-Coverley picture in real life—A Fancy Chapel—An old fashioned Vicarage. CHAPTER II. Aspect of a Cathedral-town—Lichfield Cathedral, its injuries and restorations—St. Chad, and Stowe-Church—Lord Brooke, his sacrilege and retribution—Dr. Johnson and his penance—The Three-Crowns Inn—Evening Service at the Cathedral—A Midland-county custom. CHAPTER III. Brummagem Bishops—American oak in King Edward’s School—New-England in Deritend—Oscott—Italian Catholicity—Pugin and the Papists—The Oratory and Mr. Newman—An Oratorian Sermon—Romish Methodism.