From the Beacon we went down hill by a path and a narrow lane, past a farmhouse and its appendages, and then turning to the left, came by an Institution for Orphan Girls. We were told that the children were not all orphans, literally, but some of them the children of parents who did not take care of them. Whether this was attributable to crime, to culpable neglect, or to misfortune, we were not informed. An inscription in front of the building states that it is supported by voluntary contributions. Descending still lower, we soon came to the middle of the town, where are several chapels, a municipal building, and in course of erection, upon a bank, a handsome Board School, with a tower, and place for a public clock. Opposite this, on the level ground, is the Wesleyan Chapel ; a large structure built upon the site of an original one of inferior size and style. Two memorial stones bear inscriptions, one purporting that the stone was laid by "The Local Preachers," and the other "By the Ladies" of the Circuit. By the side of the chapel a steep flight of steps, called Jacob's Ladder, ascends to a terrace above, cutting off a wide circuit of road. We mounted the ladder, and I counted over a hundred steps. Going on to the south end of the town, we came to another place of worship, in the Gothic style, which, on inquiry, we learnt was also Wesleyan Chapel. It is in an elevated position, looking towards the channel entrance to the harbour, and is, no doubt, attended by the elite of the Wesleyan people. Will those be the most godly of them? Descending thence, we came to the Castle Drive, a beautiful carriageway and wide causeway running along the left hand side of it, next the hill on which the castle stands, and having a lovely bay on the right; and, fronting the bay, on the cliff, at a little distance from its edge, a large and splendid hotel, built not long ago, having pretty pleasuregrounds and garden around, and overlooking the sea. The extreme south-western point of the bay is called Manacle Point. It looks rugged and romantic. On the bay are a long row of white tenements and a tall chimney; they belonged to arsenic works, which have been abandoned, because they became unprofitable, sharing the fate of the tin mines of the county. At the seaward boundary of the castle we found an exercise house for training seamen in the use of arms. The castle is inhabited by soldiers. It stands at the harbour entrance on the western side, and there is another castle on the eastern side. Returning to our hotel, we lunched upon cold roast beef and bread, settled our bill, and took our departure by the train leaving Falmouth for Truro at 4.45. From Truro we travelled on the main line as far as the Bodmin Road Station, whence an omnibus carried us to Bodmin, the county town of Cornwall. We found comfortable accommodation at the hotel to which the 'bus runs, the "Royal," at which we arrived at a quarter past seven o'clock. (To be continued.) Biography. MEMOIR OF MR. THOMAS ARAM, WESLEYAN LOCAL PREACHER, OF LENTON, NEAR NOTTINGHAM. OUR late brother Aram was born at Chilwell, a hamlet situate at the distance of about four miles west of Nottingham, and a mile north of the village of Beeston, on the first day of January, 1805. His parents were worthy members of the Baptist Church at Beeston, and were to him an example of Christian consistency. In his 19th year he removed to Lenton, being then under religious conviction, and anxious about the salvation of his soul. He lodged in a house next to a room in which the Wesleyans met for public worship. He could hear their singing, and he went in to worship with them. Shortly afterwards they built a chapel in the village. It was opened by Benjamin Thorold, Esq.,* on the 7th of February, 1826; but it was alienated in the troublous times of 1849-51. Mr. Aram took an interest in the chapel, and helped to obtain contributions in aid of the Trust-funds. He attended the service of the Watch Night held at the end of the year, and the next day, being Sunday and the 22nd anniversary of his birth, he knelt down to pray for mercy; and there and then found peace with God. The spot where he knelt was ever afterwards sacred to him, and he was accustomed to commemorate the great event by kneeling there every New Year's day, to render thanks to God for His mercy and grace vouchsafed to him, and to implore the grace he still felt he needed. Desiring to occupy himself in some active service for Christ, he became a teacher in the Sunday school held in the chapel, and afterwards superintendent of the school, an office that he held for twenty-two years, until chapel and school changed hands. He was accustomed to give an address to the scholars; and when, as sometimes happened, a preacher failed to fulfil his appointment there, he would address the congregation. This induced an old Local Preacher to speak of him at a Quarterly Meeting of the Local Preachers; and that led to his coming upon the plan of the circuit, first on trial, and then as a regular Local Preacher. A circuit plan of February-April, 1834, has his initial "A." No. 60; and upon another plan of May-July, 1836, he stands in full, No. 51, with several other names below his. He was no doubt fully accredited in 1834 or early in 1835. The intervening plans are not in the writer's possession. He must have sustained the office for a period of about forty-six * Mr. Thorold was a Lincolnshire gentleman, a gifted Local Preacher, living at Harmston Hall in that county. years, up to the time of his death. He had been a member of society fifty-three years. When the Nottingham Branch of the Local Preachers' Mutual-Aid Association was formed, at the beginning of October, 1851, he became a member, and continued to take an interest in its proceedings until the decay of trade and the villany of one with whom he had business transactions, reduced him to comparative poverty. A gentleman at the head of the highest firm in the lace trade, to whom he had been long accustomed to sell the produce of his machines, proffered to lend him money for the purchase of new machines, to take their produce, and allow him to repay the money by instalments. The fluctuations to which the trade was liable, deterred him from accepting the generous offer, and he concluded to accept a situation in the service of another firm, as a means of obtaining a moderate income without the risk of embarrassment, of which he had the greatest dread. Under these circumstances his payments to the Association sunk into arrears, and his membership eventually lapsed. He applied to the local committee two or three years ago to be re-admitted; but the terms, after so many years' interval, at his advanced age, exceeded his disposable means, and the purpose was abandoned. The health of brother Aram, for many years, was usually good; but for two years immediately preceding his death he suffered considerably. He had to go little short of three miles to his daily duties; and that he found to be very trying. Sometimes he took the train, and sometimes a cab, part of the way; but even then he had to walk more than his strength could well bear, as neither station nor cabstand was near his residence, nor convenient for his place of business. At last he had to give up going, and remain at home, and then take to his bed. His sufferings were distressing for awhile; but his departure was somewhat sudden. His soul, however, was in perfect peace; and the closing scene was like that of an infant falling asleep in the arms of its mother. Without either groan or sigh he fell asleep in Jesus, on January 8th, 1881, seven days after having attained the 76th year of his age. His religious experience was more even than is that of most persons. His sharp trials touched him acutely; but nothing moved him from the solid rock on which his faith and hope rested. If "in heaviness through manifold temptations," his refuge was Christ, to whom he committed himself with full confidence, and rested in the belief that "all things work together for good to them that love God." I had business trans actions with him between thirty and forty years ago, and always regarded him as an upright and a straightforward man. He "walked with God" in this world; and being now "absent from the body," we believe him to be "present with the LORD." When the severity of the weather and his own debility prevented his going to the house of God on a Sunday evening, he occupied himself in prayer, reading the Scriptures and a hymn or two and a sermon. On the return of his family he took pleasure in hearing some particulars about the sermon that had been delivered, and other matters connected with the service. The last Sunday evening of his being able to write, he penned some notes on the Life of Moses, and said that would be the subject for his next sermon should he be able again to take up his preaching work. The testimony of his widow, with whom he lived in happy wedlock twenty-seven years, is that she never heard a word from him, nor saw an act done by him, which was inconsistent with the Christian chaHe was racter; and that what he was in public, that he was at home. uniformly the same; one of the most even-tempered and exact of Christians. - A venerable lady of the Church of England, who is now in her 85th year, and at the higher level of the social scale in the parish, having known the widow from her girlhood, and the departed husband for the greater part of his life, wrote under date of January 13, as follows "My dear Mrs. Aram,-I was truly sorry you had been called to part with your dear husband. I think there is not one that our dear Lord feels more compassion for than the widow. He knows the depth of her sorrows and her desolation as no one else can know it; and if He has tenderly said, 'In all their afflictions He is afflicted,' surely He now feels with you and for you. O look to Him, and believe Him, and trust Him. He is the God of all comfort, who comforteth them who are cast down. I hope you can see with a believing eye, your dear husband in the midst of that happy, happy holy throng, Rev. vii. 9, 10, 13-17. Then will you not try to join your song with his ? Seeking to walk humbly, patiently, and watchfully, till you are called to meet him there. I commend you to the grace of God for all you need for yourself and children. "Your sincere friend,-C. W." By desire of the widow and the Wesleyan friends at New Lenton, a funeral sermon on our brother Aram's decease was preached by the senior Local Preacher upon the plan, who has been 57 years in the work, on Sunday morning, February 20th, 1881. Temperance. WINE GLASSES TURNED UPSIDE DOWN. Extract from a Lecture by JOSEPH COOK, SIXTY or seventy years ago Dr. referred, found whisky and rum and all strong liquors on the sideboards used at the ordination of ministers. His soul burned within him. He prepared the celebrated sermons to which you have made eloquent reference. That was only two generations since. To-day reform has progressed so far that in the educated classes, among presidents of colleges and professors in the universities, we count rather the men who are not total abstainers than those who are. I am speaking of the Northern States, not of the South and South-west, where slavery poisoned the land. We have hotels in Boston that sell liquor enough. We have fashionable establishments there for the entertainment of travellers, and which think they could not succeed financially if they did not depend on whisky; but at one of the most fashionable of them there came together one hundred graduates of a New English college-Amherst, in the heart of Massachusetts-and wineglasses were put at the sides of the plates, and every wineglass was turned upside down. Not a drop was used. Look at Yale College, which, with Harvard, may be called what Oxford and Cambridge are in Great Britain, Harvard is as old as one or two of your colleges at Cambridge. There were one hundred and fifteen Yale graduates brought together this very last winter at a fashionable hotel in Boston, and I was told that with the exception of five or six Southern men, and one or two from the extreme West, not a man used his wineglass. You say that is fanaticism. I am not asking you to become Americans. You have not the political reasons for educating your people in sobriety that we have; but you may have in time. You ought to meditate on these things. (Applause.) One of the foremost merchants in Boston said to me, "I am a man of moderate opinions on the subject of temperance. I do not know but that I shall be obliged to accede to the opinion of younger men than myself. I do not offer wine at my social entertainments. I expected a storm of reproach when I took this new departure, but at the end of the evening several guests took me into my library, six of them, one after another, and whispered in my ear that they were glad I was setting such an example." That man has ships in all the zones. It did not surprise me that he had resolved to set that example, although his opinions were those of an older time. He said among the hundreds of members of the Lower House of the Legislature that sits in Boston, only a very few were accustomed to have strong drinks at social entertainments. The governor follows the example, and nearly all his cabinet does the same. And it is quite possible to state that in Boston it is not considered an eccentricity to omit wine in social entertainments. There are clubs that dabble in wine. I know how clublife may be glorified, and may be the centre of literary enthusiasm, and how it may become a political power; I do not underrate its excellent traits; but I know how club life may rot. (Hear, hear.) There are in Boston some clubs made up of fashionable men, which furnish wine and stronger liquors to their members; but when a new club was formed lately and announced its purpose to do so, a storm of indignation arose. I believe every prominent temperance society in that city came out with a public manifesto against the club. Wendell Phillips penned a column of his keenest invective, blaming the moderate clergy for not taking the position on this theme that the state of the times demanded. During the last ten years I have travelled much in America. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of ministers at whose tables I have been offered wine. In fifteen years I have not seen more than five times the temptation of wine under a minister's roof. We count there the ministers who are not total abstainers. But rise higher. Here is a man who commanded more men in the battlefield than any one general has ever done in history. They were raw levies, many of them; but they had hard work to do, and some of them were not raw when they were disbanded. The man was put into power, but in his youth he had been intemperate. When the war broke out his habits were very uncertain, at least so his best friends said; and enormous anxiety prevailed lest his old ways should master him. had come up out of the Mexican war. He was known not to be entirely safe as to the bottle. He went through the American civil war. He was eight years President of the Republic. He has made the tour of He |