If the morning drives are extended beyond the city, there is much to delight the eye. The trees are cased in ice; and when the sun shines out suddenly, the whole scene looks like one diffused rainbow, dressed in a brilliancy which can hardly be conceived of in England. On days less bright, the blue harbour spreads in strong contrast with the sheeted snow which extends to its very brink.
The winter evenings begin joyously with the festival of Thanksgiving Day, which is, if I remember rightly, held on the first Thursday of December. The festival is ordered by proclamation of the governor of the state, which proclamation is read in all the churches. The Boston friends with whom we had ascended the Mississippi, and travelled in Tennessee and Kentucky, did not forget that we were strangers in the land; and many weeks before Thanksgiving Day they invited us to join their family gathering on that great annual festival. We went to church in the morning, and listened to the thanksgiving for the mercies of the year, and to an exemplification of the truth that national prosperity is of value only as it is sanctified to individual progression; an important doctrine, well enforced. This is the occasion chosen by the boldest of the clergy to say what they think of the faults of the nation, and particularly to reprobate apathy on the slavery question. There are few who dare do this, though it seems to be understood that this is an occasion on which "particular preaching" may go a greater length than on common Sundays. Yet a circumstance happened in New-York on this very day which shows that the clergy have, at least in some places, a very short tether, even on Thanksgiving Day. An Episcopalian clergyman from England, named Pyne, who had been some years settled in America, preached a thanksgiving sermon, in which he made a brief and moderate, even commonplace allusion to the toleration of slavery among other national sins. For some weeks he heard only the distant mutterings of the storm which was about to burst upon him; but within three months he was not only dismissed from his office, but compelled to leave the country, though he had settled his family from England beside him. He was anxious to obey the wishes of his friends, and print verbatim the sermon which had caused his ruin; but no printer would print, and no publisher would agree to sell his sermon. At length he found a printer who promised to print it on condition of his name being kept secret; and the sermon was dispersed without the aid of a publisher. Mr. Pyne sailed for England on the following 1st of April; as it happened, in the same ship with Mr. Breckinridge, the Presbyterian clergyman who put himself into unsuccessful opposition to Mr. Thompson, at a public discussion at Glasgow last year. The voyage was not a pleasant one, as might be supposed, to either clergyman. Nothing could be more mal-à-propos than that one who came over with a defence in his mouth of the conduct of the American clergy on the slavery question should be shut up for three weeks with a clergyman banished for opening his lips on the subject.