Through this beautiful little wood, a broad well gravelled terrace is led by every point which can exhibit the scenery to advantage; narrower and wilder paths diverge at intervals, some into the deeper shadow of the wood, and some shelving gradually to the pretty coves below.
The price of entrance to this little Eden, is the six cents you pay at the ferry.

We went there on a bright Sunday afternoon, expressly to see the humours of the place.

Many thousand persons were scattered through the grounds; of these we ascertained, by repeatedly counting, that nineteen-twentieths were men.

The ladies were at church.

Often as the subject has pressed upon my mind, I think I never so strongly felt the conviction that the Sabbath-day, the holy day, the day on which alone the great majority of the Christian world can spend their hours as they please, is ill passed (if passed entirely) within brick walls, listening to an earth-born preacher, charm he never so wisely.
"Oh! how can they renounce the boundless store Of charms, which Nature to her vot'ries yields! The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields, All that the genial ray of morning gilds, And all that echoes to the song of even, All that the mountain's sheltering bosom yields, And all the dread magnificence of heaven; Oh! how can they renounce, and hope to be forgiven!" How is it that the men of America, who are reckoned good husbands and good fathers, while they themselves enjoy sufficient freedom of spirit to permit their walking forth into the temple of the living God, can leave those they love best on earth, bound in the iron chains of a most tyrannical fanaticism?
How can they breathe the balmy air, and not think of the tainted atmosphere so heavily weighing upon breasts still dearer than their own?
How can they gaze upon the blossoms of the spring, and not remember the fairer cheeks of their young daughters, waxing pale, as they sit for long sultry hours, immured with hundreds of fellow victims, listening to the roaring vanities of a preacher canonized by a college of old women?
They cannot think it needful to salvation,or they would not withdraw themselves.
Wherefore is it?
Do they fear these self-elected, self-ordained priests, and offer up their wives and daughters to propitiate them?
Or do they deem their hebdomadal freedom more complete, because their wives and daughters are shut up four or five times in the day at church or chapel?
It is true, that at Hoboken, as every where else, there are _reposoires_, which, as you pass them, blast the sense for a moment, by reeking forth the fumes of whiskey and tobacco, and it may be that these cannot be entered with a wife or daughter.