Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/55

Rh element of true African worship. Give only intelligence, order, system to this outbreak of the warm emotions, longings, and presentiments of life, and then that which now appears hideous will become beautiful, that which is discordant will become harmonious. The children of Africa may yet give us a form of divine worship in which invocation, supplication, and songs of praise may respond to the inner life of the fervent soul!

How many there are, even in our cold North, who in their youthful years have felt an Africa of religious life, and who might have produced glorious flowers and fruits, if it only could have existed; if it had not been smothered by the snow and the grey-coldness of conventionality—had not been imprisoned in the stone church of custom.

I have visited some other churches in New Orleans, a Unitarian, an Episcopalian, and a Catholic church, the last with the name dear to me, that of St. Theresa. But the heavenly spirit of St. Theresa was not there. An Irishman jabbered an unintelligible jargon, and in not one of these houses of God could I observe or obtain that which I sought for—edification. There was, at all events, life and ardour in the church of the negro assembly.

What more have I to tell you about New Orleans? That it is a large city of one hundred thousand inhabitants, and the commercial capital of the southern portion of the Mississippi Valley, you can learn from books. The crescent-formed site of the city on the Mississippi is beautiful, and it has some handsome streets and markets, and splendid houses surrounded with trees and shrubs, like other American cities. The French and older portions of the city have a more bald and business-like character; but New Orleans is beyond everything else a business and trading city, and it is far behind the other large cities of the United States as regards institutions for a higher intellectual and moral culture. It does not possess any means of artistic enjoyment excepting at the theatres, and