It is the custom in the American Church for the clergyman of the parish to spend a great part of every morning in a room annexed to his church. I always found this room fitted up as his library and study, with a fire in winter blazing on the hearth, and the minister himself seated at the table at work. This arrangement has great advantages both for the clergyman and for his parishioners. He can study, and prepare for his pulpit, without any interruptions from his children, or from the ever-recurring little incidents of domestic affairs, to which, had he been in his own house, he would have been expected to give some attention; and his parishioners are more likely to call upon him in this room, knowing that he is there for the very purpose of seeing them, and that they shall not be disturbing anyone by their visit. Having been requested to call on a clergyman of the place, I found him in such a room as I have just been describing, in company with another clergyman of the neighbourhood. Of course the conversation turned on church affairs. They told me that there were five Episcopal churches in the city; that the Episcopal church was not so active in the States of Mississippi and Louisiana as elsewhere in the Union. That the church of Rome was, in that part of the country, looking very far ahead, and buying large tracts of land, and founding educational establishments; that the Germans and Irish did not leave its communion. That church partisanship was a strong feeling in America; to take for instance our own church, there were everywhere men who were not members, that is communicants, but yet considered themselves as belonging to the Episcopal church, who would fight for every stitch in the surplice, and every letter in the Prayer-book. And that it was so in all the other churches. Much interest, they said, was taken in the ritualistic question, because it was becoming generally felt that our service is deficient in appeals to the senses; and that it wants variety and animation. That in the American church, though there is no canon forbidding _ex tempore_ preaching, there is one which imposes on the clergyman the necessity of writing every sermon he preaches. The object of this canon is to enable the bishop to judge of the orthodoxy of any statements in the sermon with which the congregation may have been dissatisfied. This was thought necessary in consequence of the sensitiveness of some congregations, and the tendency in all American churches to lapse into some ‘ism’ or ‘ology.’ They told me that in some of the nascent States, as for instance in Idaho, the church was stronger than any other religious body. In this territory (I believe it is still in that embryonic condition), there is not a town or village without an Episcopal church. This has been brought about by sending out missionary bishops to plant the church in these new territories. The missionary bishop of Idaho, Dr. Clarkson, is one of the most active and