14 MAY 1864, Page 23

America. By J. W. Massie, D.D., LL.D. (John Snow.)—At the

Bicen- tenary of St. Bartholomew, 1862, a letter of sympathy was received from the Rev. J. P. Thompson, Minister of Broadway Tabernacle, New York, on behalf of an assembly of Congregational ministers of the States. In reply, 4,000 Congregational ministers, urged thereto by 750 French pastors, wrote to sympathize with Christian ministers in the States in their efforts to abolish slavery, and the Emancipation Societies of London and Manchester sent Dr. Massie out with the letter. As to his mission, the Doctor has nothing to tell us except that he was hospitably received, and delivered manysermons and speeches of sympathy through- out the North, for he does not choose to insist much on the American sensitvieness which would receive sympathy only on condition that the mode of abolition was not touched on by the Britisher. Regarding the book merely as a book of travel, it is bald and uninteresting in the extreme, while the style would lead one to suspect that the author is by birth himself a Yankee. The New York clergy are called "Minis- terial Gentlemen." The Baltimore Roman Catholic Cathedral is a large, bare, and unattractive edifice inside, "though outside it is surrounded by ornamental pretensions." Of Mr. Greeley Dr. Massie boldly states that "some fear him as a dictator, and others hate him as a radical, but he [Dr. Massie] believes he is one of the present elements of American society." In the same penetrating spirit the Doctor remarks of two "secession prisoners" that "they had not the air of either patriots or of martyrs in their manners."