King's Chapel, as it originally was called, dating back to days when the colony of Massachusetts still acknowledged a king, was dedicated at first to the Episcopal service of the Church of England, and I believe the English Liturgy in some form was the only ritual used in it. But when I first went to America, Boston and the adjacent College, Cambridge, were professedly Unitarian, and the service in King's Chapel was such a modification of the English Liturgy as was compatible with that profession: a circumstance which enabled its frequenters to unite the advantage of Dr. Channing's eloquent preaching with the use of that book of prayer and praise unsurpassed and unsurpassable in its simple sublimity and fervid depth of devotion. I retain a charmingly comical remembrance of the last visit I paid Dr. Channing, at Newport; when, wishing to take me into his garden, and unwilling to keep me waiting while he muffled himself up, according to his necessary usual precautions, he caught up Mrs. Channing's bonnet and shawl, and sheltering his eyes from the glare of the sun by pulling the bonnet well down over his nose, and folding the comfortable female-wrap (it was a genuine woman's-shawl, and not an ambiguous plaid of either or no sex) well over his breast, he walked round and round his garden, in full view of the high-road, discoursing with the peculiar gentle solemnity and deliberate eloquence habitual to him, on subjects the gravity of which was in laughable contrast with his costume, the absurdity of which only made me smile when it recurred to my memory, after I had taken leave of him and ceased hearing his wise words.] MY DEAREST HARRIET, ... There is one interest and occupation of an essentially practical nature, such as would give full scope to the most active energies and intellect, in which I am becoming passionately interested,--I mean the cause of the Southern negroes. We live by their labor; and though the estate is not yet ours (elder members of the family having a life interest in it), it will be our property one day, and a large portion of our income is now derived from it. I was told the other day, that the cotton lands in Georgia, where our plantation is situated, were exhausted; but that in Alabama there now exist wild lands along the Mississippi, where any one possessing the negroes necessary to cultivate them, might, in the course of a few years, realize an enormous fortune; and asked, jestingly, if I should be willing to go thither. I replied, in most solemn earnest, that I would go with delight, if we might take that opportunity of at once placing our slaves upon a more humane and Christian footing. Oh, H----! I can not tell you with what joy it would fill me, if we could only have the energy and courage, the humanity and justice, to do this: and I believe it might be done.