Page:Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow monochrome.djvu/195

 room and the press, he traveled among the churches, attending Conferences and visiting the Saints in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. This explains the reason why communications were subsequently addressed to him from Italy and Switzerland.

, 1851.

Dear President Hyde:

After a residence of seven months in Italy, I am about to bid it farewell for a season. If the attractions of physical nature could command all of my attention, I might long linger to gaze upon these realms of loveliness. One might travel far over the earth before he finds a fairer clime. Here man dwells beneath an almost cloudless sky. The sun rarely hides his face in summer or winter; and when, at eventide, his golden glories fade behind the western hills, the silver stars shed a serene lustre over the blue vault of immensity. But the remembrance of the moral scenery amid which I have been moving will be more imperishably engraven on my spirit than all the brightness of the firmament, or the verdure of prairies enameled with ten thousand flowers. Amid the loveliness of nature, I found the soul of man like a wilderness. From the palace of the king to the lone cottage on the mountains, all was shrouded in spiritual darkness. Protestant and Papist looked upon each other as outcasts from the hopes of eternity, but regarded themselves as the favorites of heaven. And thus they had done from time immemorial. The changing, ephemeral sectarianism of England and America, is in many respects unlike the sturdy superstition of this country. Here, Protestantism is not the offspring of boasted modern reformation; but may fairly dispute with Rome as to which is the oldest in apostasy. Every man holds a creed which has been transmitted from sire to son for a thousand years, whether he be Protestant or Catholic; and often he will lay his hand on his heart, and swear by the faith