manifested itself in his parliamentary career, and to exhibit the various testimonies given to its heavenly virtue by the men with whom he worked, were to detail his actings from his twenty-sixth year. One instance serves for a thousand.

We have all heard of the impeachment of Melville. Of his perfect innocence, or partial delinquency, it is not the place to speak. However it was, the case was one of profound interest in Parliament, and ministers were extremely anxious to screen him. Wilberforce was doubly drawn to come to a conclusion favorable to him. His heart was naturally of a delicately tender and kindly order, and his old friend Pitt had set his heart on clearing Melville. He examined the matter; but could not suppress the consciousness of grave doubts. He listened eagerly to the explanations offered by the ministers, when the discussion came on in Parliament; looking into them with the piercing flash of English shrewdness, quickened by godly earnestness, he saw, or thought he saw, them burned up as grass by lightning: he hesitated not a moment, but rose to his feet. The eye of Pitt was on him, with the pleading of affection, and the authority of possessed esteem; he felt the fascination of its gaze. But he faltered not: he spoke the bold, unmeasured words of Christian honor; he went against ministers, and condemned Melville. His words fell on an attentive house; the number of votes he influenced was named at forty; ministers were defeated. It was felt that in a question of simple integrity, where casuistry had to be eluded, and plausibility swept aside, Wilberforce was the last authority. In the British senate in the nineteenth century, when a point of morality had to be settled, it was not to the man of poor duelling "honor," it was not to the philosophic moralist, it was not to the upright merchant, men looked for a decision: it was to the Christian senator, whose code was his Bible, and who walked in

childlike simplicity, by the old conversion light. Consider the number of opinions represented in that assembly, and then estimate the weight and worth of this testimony.

Thus did Wilberforce, in his station in public affairs, conspicuously manifest to man the fresh and prevailing power of living Christianity, and testify its superiority to every other light. The book which he published was just the same testimony expressed in words. To criticise, however briefly, the “View of Practical Christianity," were now perfectly out of date. It was marked by no peculiar traits of genius, by no originality of thought or style. But it was clear, explicit, warm, and animated; over it all breathed the fervor of love and the earnestness of faith; it was an attempt to urge the pure Gospel on the fashionable and worldly, and hold it, to use Milton's superb language, in their faces like a mirror of diamond, that it might dazzle and pierce their misty eyeballs. And mankind did consent to listen to its pleading; it went round the world: very few books have been so widely popular.. It was published in 1797.

Respecting the domestic life of Wilberforce, we require to say very little. Biography treats of the influences which mold character, of the influences which character exerts; if, in the circle of private life, there is any important element of influence, it must be noted; but, if biography were to regard a man not as before the world but as in his family, it would at once descend from the office of instructress to every noble faculty," and accept the miserable function of pampering a small and unmanly curiosity. The domestic life of Wilberforce was of that happy sort which defies long description. It can be but in rare cases that the description of the course of a river, if given mile by mile, is interesting; even Wordsworth can not persuade us to trace with him, more than once, the course of

that Dudden, at whose every winding he has erected a milestone in form of a sonnet. The river rose among green craggy mountains; in its joyful youth, it was the playmate of sunbeams, the dimpling, wavering, sparkling child, that dallied with the zephyrs, or leaped over the precipice, wreathing its snowy neck in rainbows; as if in the strength of youth and manhood it flowed long through a bounteous and lordly champaign, of cornfield and woodland, resting calmly in the noonday sun, listening to the reaper's song; it widened into a peaceful estuary, its force becoming ever less, and in a silent balmy evening, lost itself in a placid ocean. This is all we wish to know about the river. Much the same is it in such a

case as that before us. Wilberforce's boyhood, manhood, and old age, are aptly figured by such a sketch as this, and we desire to know little more about them.

At the age of thirty-eight, he married; of the particular circumstances and nature of his affection we are unable to speak; but we know that his was a happy family, and that a congeniality in the highest tastes bound him in sympathizing affection to his wife. In the arm-chair, or at the festal board, he was seen to the greatest advantage. By reading what he has left us, we can evidently form no idea of what he was either in Parliament or in his home. He expressly tells us that he did not succeed with his pen; that the quickening excitement of society, the genial impulse of speech, caused his ideas to start forth in more vivid colors, in quicker and more natural sequence: and we know that the particular power of both the orator and the wit, partakes so much of the nature of a flavor of an undefined and incommunicable essence, that a fame in that sort must always depend well-nigh entirely on testimony. A witticism without the glance that lent it fire, is often the dew-pearl without its gleam, a mere drop of water. But we

can not doubt for a moment that the social powers of Wilberforce were of an extraordinary order. The two qualities whose combination gives probably the most engaging manner possible, are tenderness and quick sympathy; the instantaneous apprehension of what is said, and its reception into the arms of a tender, sympathizing interest. Wilberforce had both. His heart was very tender. To go from the country to the town, would affect him to tears. When John Wesley stood up and gave him his blessing, he wept. We have seen how he gave his testimony against Melville: hear now how they afterward met; we quote Wilberforce's own words: "We did not meet for a long time, and all his connections most violently abused me. About a year before he died, we met in the stone passage which leads from the Horse Guards to the Treasury. We came suddenly upon each other, just in the open air, where the light struck upon our faces. We saw one another, and at first I thought he was passing on, but he stopped and called out, 'Ah, Wilberforce, how do you do?' and gave me a hearty shake by the hand. I would have given a thousand pounds for that shake." A generous and tender nature, capable of rich enjoyment. But he was also of keen apprehension, and for every thing in nature or man he had a glance of sympathy; provided always it lay in the sunlight, provided it had no guilt or baseness in it. Can we wonder that he was engaging?

It is easy to present Wilberforce to the eye of imagination seated in his arm-chair, the center of a pleased and mirthful throng. Diminutive in size, with features spare and sharp, with vivid, sparkling eye, he does not rest, but has a tendency to jerk and fidget; his face is piquant, mobile, varying in its lights and shades, like a lake in a sunny breezy April day. An idea is suggested by some one of the company; a slight

twinkle, an instantaneous change of light in his eye, shows he has caught it, and embraced it, and looked round and round it; he tosses it about, as if from hands full of gold-dust, till in a few moments it is wrapped in new light and gilding—or he playfully transfixes it on the unpoisoned dart of a light, genial banter, shrewd and arch, which finds a way straight to the heart-or his face grows solemn, and he utters, unostentatiously but earnestly, a few devout words regarding it. Now his face is one free, indefinite, joyful smile-now he mimicks some parliamentary orator-now he is giving some little, graphic, faintly caustic sketch of character, with a sharp catching smile about his lips and now he listens quietly, a tear in his eye. Sir James Stephen, who doubtless was intimately acquainted with Wilberforce, compares his vivacity to Voltaire's, and sets his tenderness above that of Rousseau; Madame de Stäel pronounced him.the wittiest man in England. But we are convinced that the most entirely satisfactory and expressive idea of his whole manner to be possibly reached, is to be found in these words of Mackintosh, who visited him when advanced in life: "Do you remember Madame de Maintenon's exclamation, 'Oh, the misery of having to amuse an old king, qui n'est pas amusable! Now if I were called to describe Wilberforce in one word, I should say he was the most 'amusable' man I ever met with in my life. Instead of having to think what subjects will interest him, it is perfectly impossible to hit on one that does not. I never saw any one who touched life at so many points; and this is the more remarkable in a man who is supposed to live absorbed in the contemplation of a future state. When he was in the House of Commons, he seemed to have the freshest mind of any man there. There was all the charm of youth about him. And he is quite as remarkable in this bright evening of his days, as when I saw him in his glory many years ago."