RELIGIOUS or sectarian controversy is foreign to the purpose of the KNICKERBOCKER; yet we could not decline the calm consideration of facts brought forward to correct alleged misstatements. 'If,' says the writer, 'N. S. D.' wishes information on a subject with which he seems to be unacquainted, I should like to refer him to works wherein he may find the original documents.' For our own part, we think, as we have already partly intimated, that 'the less said the better' touching the treatment of the Quakers and 'others of the Non-elect' by the New-England Puritans. WASHINGTON IRVING has driven a long nail home on this theme: 'The zeal of these good people to maintain their rights and privileges unimpaired, betrayed them into errors, which it is easier to pardon than defend. Having served a regular apprenticeship in the school of persecution, it behooved them to show that they had become proficients in the art. They accordingly employed their leisure hours in banishing, scourging, or hanging, divers heretical Papists, Quakers, and Anabaptists, for daring to abuse the 'liberty of conscience,' which they now clearly proved to imply nothing more than that every man should think as he pleased in matters of religion, _provided_ he thought _right_; for otherwise it would be giving a latitude to damnable heresies. Now as they were perfectly convinced that they alone thought right, it consequently followed that whoever thought differently from them, thought wrong; and whoever thought wrong, and obstinately persisted in not being convinced and converted, was a flagrant violator of the inestimable liberty of conscience, and a corrupt and infectious member of the body politic, and deserved to be lopped off and cast into the fire!' * * * WE are indebted to a most kind correspondent for the following excerpt from his note-book. It is an extract made many years ago from some author, whose name and that of his work our friend has alike forgotten. How many just such thoughtless, rattle-brained, _aimless_ talkers have we encountered! We rather like the practice of an old friend of ours in this regard! He makes it a point, he says, never to _inquire_ after any body!