Part 5

As I delayed for a minute under the portico of the church, after the services were over, watching, with a stranger's eye, the members of the congregation as they issued from the church and filed off through the several streets to their residences, I felt that I had not, since leaving New-England, beheld a scene which reminded me so forcibly and pleasantly of home. I have, in a former letter, alluded to the prevalence of the Presbyterian church government in Mississippi, to the preclusion of Congregationalists. There is not a resident minister of the latter denomination in this state or in Louisiana. There are only about twenty-four Presbyterian churches in the state, comprising between eight and nine hundred communicants in all; a less number than now composes the late Dr. Payson's church in Portland. The church in Natchez includes about one hundred members, which is the largest number in any one church in the whole state, with two exceptions; one of which is, a Scotch community, about fifty miles in the country east from this city; most of whom, or their fathers before them, emigrating from the land of primitive manners, still retain their national characteristics of simplicity and piety; and that stern, unyielding spirit and Christian devotedness which distinguished the Scottish Presbyterians of "olden time," of whom, though planted in the bosom of an American forest, they are worthy and original representatives. They are a plain, moderately independent, farming community, and sincerely and rigidly devoted to the duties of Christian worship. They have an aged pastor over them, to whom they are devotedly attached; and who is to them, who regard him with the affection of children, indeed a "shepherd and father in Israel." They live like a little band of exiled Waldenses, unsophisticated in their manners, pure and severe in their religion. The Gaelic is spoken among them, and also by many of the other settlers in that portion of the state, who reside in the vicinity of Pearl river; by them also the old popular Gaelic songs are sung, in their original purity and spirit. In the vicinity of this settlement the Presbyterians annually hold a camp meeting. A Presbyterian camp meeting is at least a novelty at the north.

The majority of the ministers of this state are graduates of Princeton college. They form, as do the educated clergy every where, a class of well-informed, intelligent men; though too few in number, and generally placed over congregations too much scattered throughout a large and thinly inhabited extent of country, to command or exercise that peculiar influence upon society which, in more densely populated countries, is so universally possessed by them; and whose elevating, purifying, and moral effect is so readily acknowledged by all classes. So long as this state of society, now peculiar to the south, continues, ministerial influence, in its unadulterated and evangelical power, can hold but limited sway over the heart of the community. Divines are too often looked upon, not as representatives of the Saviour, but merely as intelligent, clever gentlemen, popular and esteemed as they make themselves more or less agreeable and social. A distinguished clergyman in England--where, as you know, the surplice is too often assumed, without any other qualification for the sacred office than the talisman "interest," was termed "a clever, noble fellow," by the neighbouring gentry, for his skill in hunting, and the other lordly sports of English country gentlemen. The manners, customs, amusements, and way of life, of the native born, wealthy, educated planters, have struck me as very similar to those of English gentlemen of wealth and leisure: and it is certain that, generally, many of them would be very apt, like them, to appreciate a clergyman as much for his social qualifications, as for those naturally associated with, and with which he is invested by, his clerical honours.

Here, the Presbyterian clergy, unlike those in the northern states, are generally wealthy. With but a few exceptions, they have, after a short residence in this country, become planters, some of whom have noble annual incomes. After retiring to their plantations they do not--and I mention it with pleasure--altogether resign their ministerial duties. Some of them preach in destitute churches, from time to time; while others regularly officiate to congregations of their own slaves. One of these clerical planters has erected a neat church upon his plantation, in which he officiates to an assembly of his slaves three Sabbaths in every month; where the worship is conducted with the same regularity, decorum, and dignity, as in other congregations. Some leave the entire management of their estates to overseers, and regularly perform their official duties. But it is difficult for a clergyman to own a rich plantation, without becoming a thorough-going cotton planter. The occupation, with all its ramifications, if not incompatible with his holy office, must necessarily be more or less injurious to the individual, and present a broad target for the shafts of the confessed worshipper of Mammon.

The bugbear reputation of this country for mortality, has long deterred young ministers from filling the places occasionally deserted by their former occupants; many of whom, if they do not resign their office, pass the long summers at the north.--But as no country can well be healthier than this has been, for the last six or seven years, this "health plea" can no longer be offered as an excuse. Indeed, so singularly healthy is this portion of the south-west, that were I required to give it a name, with reference to some one striking characteristic, I should at once call it "Buenos Ayres."[2] Such, briefly, is the state and condition of the Presbyterian church in this state; which, aside from its form of government, in its formula of faith, and in the rank in society of its members, is equivalent to the Congregational churches in the north.

The peculiar structure of southern society is neither prepared for, nor will it admit of, the exercise of that ecclesiastical influence to which I have above alluded. It is composed, primarily, of wealthy individuals, living aloof from each other on their respective plantations, isolated like feudal chieftains, who, of old, with the spirit of ascetics, frowned defiance at each other, from their castellated rocks: though, do not understand me that planters partake of their belligerent spirit. On the contrary, the reverse is most true of them--for "hospitality" and "southern planter" are synonymous terms. Though there are not more hospitable men in the world than southern gentlemen--though no men can render their houses more agreeable to the stranger--though none are more fascinating in their manners, or more generous in heart--yet they are deficient in that social, domestic feeling, which is the life, excellence, and charm of New-England society, which renders it so dear to every wanderer's heart, and casts around the affections a spell that no power but death can injure or destroy.

The Episcopalian church comprises an infinitely smaller body of members: the few who are of this church, however, are generally opulent planters, merchants, and professional men, with their families. There is but one church of this denomination in the state, which is in this city. I attended worship here the last Sabbath. The house was fashionably but thinly filled. The interior of the house is plain, though relieved, near the termination of the southern aisle, by a black marble slab, fixed in the wall, to the memory of the Rev. Dr. Porter, late pastor of the church. The pulpit, which is a miniature forum, is chaste and elegant, and its drapery rich and tastefully arranged. The choir was full and powerful, whose effect was increased by a fine-toned organ, the only one in the state; but whose rich and striking melody must be a powerful pleader, to the ears of amateurs of good church music, for their more general introduction. The eloquence of the speaker was engaging, mild, and gentlemanly. The latter term is very expressive of his manner, and conciliating pulpit address.--Though not striking as an orator, his thoughts were just and pertinent. He

"Mysterious secrets of a high concern And weighty truths-- Explained by unaffected eloquence."

Contrary to the prevalent opinion at the north, Roman Catholic influence in this state is entirely unknown. Formerly there was a Romish church in this city, ill endowed and seldom supplied with an officiating priest. This was accidentally destroyed by fire a year or two since; and there is now no church of that denomination in the state, and hardly a sufficient number of Catholics to organize one, did they possess either the spirit or inclination. Such is the peculiar turn of mind of Mississippians, that they never can be catholicised. The contiguity of this state to Louisiana, with its French-Roman population, has probably given rise to the opinion above stated, which is as erroneous and unfounded in fact, as is one also very current among northerners, and originating from the same local relation. Obtaining their knowledge of this, among other countries, from Morse's or Cumming's Geography, or other imperfect sources, they have the impression that the French and Spanish languages are much spoken here; whereas they are probably less used here, in mere colloquial intercourse, than in many of the Atlantic states. Maine adjoins Canada; yet who gives Major Downing's fellow-countrymen the credit of speaking French in their daily transactions? It is true that many planters and citizens of Mississippi send their sons to the Catholic seminary at St. Louis, or Bardstown, in Kentucky, and their daughters to the French convents in Louisiana; but this cannot be advanced as any proof of the prevalence of the religion of Rome here, as the same thing is done in New-England, where stand the very pillars of the orthodox faith; and it is done much less frequently now than in former years. The prevailing Christian denomination, as I have before remarked, is that of the Methodists. The excess of their numbers over that of the two other denominations, Presbyterians and Episcopalians, is very great; but having no table of ecclesiastical statistics by me, to which I can refer for greater accuracy, I cannot state correctly the proportions which they bear to each other.--This denomination embraces all ranks of society, including many of the affluent and a majority of the merely independent planters, throughout the state.--Some of the assemblages here, in the Methodist churches, would remind the stranger rather of a fashionable New-York audience, than a congregation of plain people, soberly arrayed, such as he is accustomed to behold in a Methodist church in New-England. Indeed, the Methodists here are generally a widely different class of people from those which compose a northern congregation of the same denomination.

I will conclude my remarks upon the Sabbath, as observed in this city, which was the subject of my last letter, and from which I have so long digressed, by an allusion to a precautionary and wise municipal regulation for freeing the city, before sunset on the Sabbath, of its army of holiday negroes. At the hour of four the Court-house bell rings out an alarum, long and loud, warning all strange slaves to leave the city. Then commences a ludicrous scene of hurrying and scampering, from the four corners of the town; for wo be to the unlucky straggler, who is found after a limited period within the forbidden bounds! The penalty of forty stripes, save one, is speedily inflicted, by way of a lesson in the science of discretion. For a lesson, thus administered, few have little relish; and the subjects thereof, with their heads--the negro's _omnibus_--loaded with their little articles--a pound of this and a pound of that--are, all and singular, soon seen following their noses, with all commendable speed, along the diverging highways, keeping quick time to the tune of "over the hills and far away," to their respective plantations.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] See a meteorological table and medical report in the appendix--Note C.

XXXI.

Catholic burying-ground--Evening in a grave-yard--Sounds of a busy city--Night--Disturbers of the dead--Dishumation of human remains--Mourning cards--A funeral--Various modes of riding--Yankee horsemanship--Mississippian horsemen--Pacers --A plantation road--Residence--The grave--Slaves weeping for their master!--New cemetery.

In a former letter I have alluded to the old cemetery in the centre of this city, strewed with dismantled tombs, monuments and fragments of grave-stones, fenceless and shadeless; a play-ground for the young academicians, from the adjacent seminary, and a common for the epicurean cow, it stands covering the sides and summit of a pleasantly rounded hill, a monument and a testimony of the characteristic negligence and indifference of Americans for the repositories of their dead.

A few evenings since, as the sun was sinking beneath the level horizon, which was delineated by a line of green foliage, accurately traced along the impurpled western sky, I ascended the slight eminence, upon whose verdant bosom reposes this "city of the dead." Every step through this repository of human ashes, over sunken graves and shattered marble, once reared by the hand of affection or ostentation, forcibly recalled the littleness and vanity of man. The dead slumbered beneath my feet in a marble sleep--cold, silent, and forgotten! From the streets of the city, which on every side closed in this future resting place of its living, the clear laugh, and ringing shout of troops of merry children at their sports, the playful prattle of a group of loitering school girls, the rattling of whirling carriages, from whose windows glanced bright and happy faces, the clattering of horses, the loud conversation of their riders, the tramp of pedestrians along the brick _trottoirs_, the monotonous song of the carman, the prolonged call of the teamster, and the sharp reiterated ringing of his long whip, all mingled confusedly, struck harshly in the clear evening air upon the ear, breaking the silence that should repose over such a scene, and dissipating at once those reflections, which a ramble among the lonely dwellings of the dead is calculated to engender. As I lingered upon the hill, the gradually deepening shadows of evening fell over the town, and subsiding with the day, these sounds, by no means a "concord of enchanting ones," ceased one after the other, and the subdued hum of a reposing city floated over the spot, a strange requiem for its sepultured and unconscious inhabitants. The full moon now rose above the tops of the majestic forest trees, which tower along the eastern suburbs of the city, and poured a flood of mellow light from a southern sky, upon the mouldering ruins encircling the brow of the solitary hill, and glanced brightly upon the roof and towers of the now nearly silent city, which reflected her soft radiance with the mild lustre of polished silver. As I stood contemplating the scene, and yielding to its associations, my attention was drawn to a couple of men ascending the hill from the street. As they approached the crest of the hill, I observed that one of them was equipped with a spade and mattock, and that the other--whose black face glistened in the moonlight like japan, betraying him as a son of Afric--had his head surmounted by a small box. "Resurrectionists," thought I. They stopped not far from me, and the black setting down his box, immediately commenced digging. After observing them for a few minutes I advanced to the spot, and on an inquiry learned that they were disinterring the remains of a gentleman, and those of several members of his family, who had lain buried there for more than thirty years, for the purpose of removing them for re-interment in the new burying-ground north of the town. This cemetery is now wholly disused, and a great number of the dead have been taken up and removed to the new one, but the greater portion still rest, where they were first laid, fresh from among the living; for in all probability the majority who lie there, have neither existing name or friends to preserve their bones from desecration. I was gratified to see that there existed, after so long a period, some remaining affection for the dead displayed in the scene before me. But it is an isolated instance, and does not palliate the neglect which is manifested toward the "unknown, unhonoured, and forgotten," whose bones still moulder there, to be "levelled over," when the increase of the city shall compel the living to construct their habitations over those of the dead. As I watched the progress of exhumation, as the grave was emptied by the brawny arms of the muscular slave, of load after load of the dark loam, my eye was attracted by a white object glistening upon the thrown-up heap by the side of the grave. I raised it from the damp soil--it was a finger-bone! The next shovel full glittered with the slender, brittle fragments of what once was _man_! Not a trace of the coffin remained, or of the snow-white, scolloped shroud. The black now threw aside his spade, and stooping down into the grave, lifted to his companion a round, glaring, white shell, which was once the temple of the immortal intellect--the tenement of mind! A few corroded bones and the half-decayed skull--all that remained of the "human form divine"--were hastily heaped into the box, the grave was refilled, and the desecrators of the repose of the dead departed, as they came, soon to forget the solemn lesson, which their transient occupation may have taught them. As I turned away from the humiliating scene I had just beheld, with a melancholy heart, and a gloom of sorrow drawn over my feelings, I could not but forcibly recall the words of the preacher--"that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that man hath no preeminence above the beast; for all is _vanity_. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again."

The Spanish and Roman Catholic custom of sending printed mourning cards to the relatives and friends of the deceased, is adopted in this country. On the death of an individual these tickets are immediately issued and sent throughout the city and neighbourhood--left indiscriminately, by the carriers, with friends and strangers, at private houses or in hotels and bar-rooms. While standing yesterday at the door of the hotel, one of these cards was placed in my hands by a mulatto slave, who, with his hands full of them, was distributing them about the town. It was a beautifully watered sheet, surrounded with a deep mourning body; in the centre of which were two or three lines of invitation, "to assist, (_aider_, as the French say) in the funeral ceremony;" and worded like those often seen inserted in the daily papers of a large city. The use of these cards is an established custom, and seldom if ever deviated from. It is at least a feeling one, and not unworthy of general imitation.

In company with some gentlemen from the hotel, I attended this funeral, actuated wholly by a stranger's curiosity; for, as well as others of the party, I was a total stranger to the family of the deceased, who resided a few miles in the country. Our cavalcade (for we were all mounted upon those long-tailed, ambling ponies, to which southerners are so partial) consisted of six--two Yankees, three southerners, and an Englishman. The first rode, as most Yankees do, awkwardly; for Yankees, at home, are gig-drivers, not horsemen. Giving too much heed to the poising of their very erect bodies, they left their legs to take care of themselves; but when their attention was drawn, for a moment, to these members, they would rock upon their saddles, the very images of "tottering equilibriums," as Capt. Hall would term them; and fortunate were they in recovering their nearly forfeited seats again.--These horses, which advance by first lifting two legs on one side and then changing to the other, do not suit brother Jonathan's notions of a riding horse. So he applies whip and spur, and breaks away into a long gallop. Then indeed he is in his element. An Arabian, on being asked what was the best seat in the world, replied, "The back of a fleet courser." If the querist had applied to Jonathan, he would have said, "A galloping nag." Whenever you see a stranger galloping at the south, you will seldom err in guessing him to be a Yankee. Our English friend rode cockney fashion; that is, not much unlike a clothes-pin, or a pair of compasses, astride a line. Stiff and erect as a Hungarian hussar, he curvetted along the smooth roads, till he had worked his slight-framed, spirited animal into a fever of excitement, which flung the foam over his rider, as he tossed his head, swelled his curved neck, and champed his bit in rage, in vain efforts to spring away, free from his thraldom; but the rider fingered the slight bridle-rein with the ease and skill of a master. The southerners of the party rode like all southerners, admirably, inimitably. They appeared as much at home and at ease in their saddles, as in a well-stuffed arm-chair after dining generously. The Mississippian sits his horse gracefully, yet not, as the riding-master would say, scientifically. He never seems to think of himself, or the position of his limbs. They yield, as does his whole body, pliantly and naturally to the motions of the animal beneath him, with which his own harmonize so perfectly and with such flexibility, that there seems to be but one principle actuating both. He glides easily along upon his pacer, with the bridle thrown upon its neck, or over the high pummel of his handsome Spanish saddle; talking as unconcernedly with his companions, as though lounging, arm in arm with them, along the streets. He seldom goes out of a pace. If he is in haste, he only paces the faster. Of every variety of gaited animals which I have seen, the Mississippian pacer is the most desirable. I shall, however, have occasion to allude hereafter to southern equestrianism more particularly, and will return from my digression to the funeral.

We arrived at the entrance gate of the plantation after a delightful ride of half an hour, along a fine though dusty road, (for with this impalpable soil it is either paste or powder) bordered with noble forests of oak, black gum, the hoary-coated sycamore, and the rich-leaved, evergreen magnolia, among and around which the grape vine entwined and hung in graceful festoons. Through natural vistas in the wood occasional glimpses could be obtained of white villas, not unfrequently large and elegant, half hidden in the centre of plantations, or among the thick woods which crowned the swelling hills on every side. The road was, like most of the roads here, a succession of gentle ascents and descents, being laid out so as to intersect transversely parallel ridges, themselves composed of isolated hills, gently blending and linking into each other. The country was luxuriant, undulating, and picturesque. The general character of the scenery struck me as remarkably English. The resemblance would be still more striking, did not the taste or convenience of the planters lead them to select the site of their dwellings in the centre of their plantations, or in the depths of their forests, without any reference to the public road, (from which they are most universally concealed) which is always the northern farmer's guide in such a case, thereby giving a solitary character to the road scenery, and detracting much from the general beauty of the country.