OBITUARY. Death of DR. NELSON,-Died, in Downpatrick, on the 28th January, the Rev. James Nelson, D. D. in the 70th year of his age, and the 47th of his ministry in the First Presbyterian Congregation of that place. Educated by his father, the late Rev. Dr. Nelson, of Redemon, whose name will be long remembered in the county of Down, as a most efficient teacher, he was, at a very early age, qualified for entering Glasgow University, where he was eminently distinguished for assiduity and talent. Having passed through the usual college course there, and being licensed as a probationer by the Presbytery of Antrim, his father considered him too young to undertake the charge of a parish, and sent him to be head Classical Assistant to Dr. Crombie, in the Belfast Academy; and such was the high estimation in which his abilities and conduct, at that early age, were held, that, on the death of that gentleman, he was entrusted with the entire management of that large establishment, until the appointment of Dr. Bruce. During his continuance there, besides teaching classics, he gave several courses of lectures on Astronomy, and Natural and Experimental Philosophy, of which sciences his knowledge was accurate, extensive, and profound. In the 23d year of his age, he was ordained to the pastoral office in Downpatrick, by the Antrim Presbytery. Among his brethern he was highly distinguished as a divine, and as a scholar of the first order; and his Alma Mater, Glasgow College, conferred upon him the unsolicited honour of D. D., on account of his critical and accurate knowledge of the Holy Scriptures in their original tongues. He was, truly, a man void of guile, and perfectly unsullied by that common and besetting sin, "the love of money," Like many men of real genius, he was almost modest to a fault. To all, he set the christian example of that charity of judgment, and good will to men, which are the evidence of faith unfeigned in the Gospel of God's blessed Son. He died full of years, and hope in the Lord. He rests from his labours, and his works will follow him. Long may his precepts be remembered and his example followed by the many friends he has left behind him. TO CORRESPONDENTS. Various poetical and other communications are received. (From Miss Martineau's Retrospect of Western Travel.) DR. CHANNING is, of all the public characters of the United States, the one in whom the English feel the most interest. After much consideration, I have decided that to omit, because the discussion is difficult to myself, the subject most interesting to my readers, and one on which they have, from Dr. Channing's position, a right to information, would be wrong. Accounts have already been given of him,-one, at least, to his disadvantage. There is no sufficient reason why a friendly one should be withheld, while the account is strictly limited to those circumstances and appearances which might meet the observation of a stranger or a common acquaintance. All revelations made to me through the hospitalities of his family, or by virtue of friendship, will be, of course, carefully suppressed. Dr. Channing spends seven or eight months of the year in Rhode Island, at Oakland, six miles from Newport. There I first saw him, being invited by him and Mrs. Channing to spend a week with them. This was in September, 1835. I afterwards staid a longer time with them in Boston. The last ten miles of the journey to Dr. Channing's house, from Boston, is very pretty in fine weather. The road passes through a watery region, where the whims of sunshine and cloud are as various and as palpable as at sea. The road passes over a long bridge to the island, and affords fine glimpses of small islands in the spread. ing river, and of the distant main with its breakers. The stage set me down at the garden gate at Oakland, whither my host came out to receive me. I knew it could be no other than Dr. Channing; but his appearance surprised me. He looked younger and pleasanter than I had expected. The common engraving of him In is undeniably very like; but it does not altogether do him justice. A bust of him was modelled by Persico, the next winter, which is an admirable likeness,—favourable, but not flattering. Dr. Channing is short, and very slighter made. His countenance varies more than its first aspect would lead the stranger to suppose it could. mirth, it is perfectly changed, and very remarkable. The lower part of other faces is the most expressive of mirth not so with Dr. Channing's, whose muscles keep very composed, while his laughter pours out at his eyes. I have seen him laugh till it seemed doubtful where the matter would end; and I could not but wish that the expression of face could be dashed into the canvas at the moment. His voice is, however, the great charm. I do not mean in the pulpit: of what it is there I am not qualified to speak, for I could not hear a tone of his preaching but in conversation his voice becomes delightful after one is familiarised with it. At first, his tones partake of the unfortunate dryness of his manner; but by use they grow, or seem to grow, more and more genial, till, at last, the ear waits and watches for them. Of the "repulsiveness" of his manners, on a first acquaintance, he is himself aware; though not, I think, of all the evil it causes, in compelling mere strangers to carry away a wrong idea of him, and in deterring even familiar acquaintances from opening their minds, and letting their speech run on as freely to him as he earnestly desires that it should. It might not be difficult to account for this manner; but this is not the place in which we have to do with any but the facts of the case. The natural, but erroneous conclusion of most strangers is, that the dryness proceeds from spiritual pride; and all the more from there being an appearance of this in Dr. Channing's writings, in the shape of rather formal declarations of ways of thinking as his own, and of accounts of his own views and states of mind,-still as his own. Any stranger thus impressed will very shortly be struck speechless, by evidences of humility, of generous truth, and meek charity, at such variance with the manner in which other things have been said as to overthrow all hasty conclusions. It was thus with me; and I know it has been so with others. Those superficial observers of Dr. Channing, who, carrying in their own minds the idea of his being a great man, suppose that the same idea is in his, and even kindly account for his faults of manner on this ground, do him great injustice,-whatever may be his share of the blame of it. No children consulting about their plays were ever further from the idea of speaking like an oracle than Dr. Channing: and the notion of condescending,- of his being in a higher, while others are in a lower spiritual state, would be dismissed from his mind, if it ever got in, with the abhorrence with which the good chase away the shadows of evil from their souls. I say this confidently, the tone of his writings notwithstanding and I say it, not as a friend, but from such being the result of a very few hours study of him. Whenever his conversation is not earnest, and it is not always earnest,-it is for the sake of drawing out the person he is talking with, and getting at his views. This method of conversation is not to be defended,-even on the ground of expediency,for a person's real views are not to be got at in this way, no one liking to be managed: but Dr. Channing's own part in this kind of conversation is not played in the spirit of condecension, but of inquiry. One proof of this is the use he makes of the views of the persons with whom he converses. Nothing is lost upon him. He lays up what he obtains for meditation; and it re-appears sooner or later, amplified, enriched, and made perfectly I believe that he is, to a singular degree, unconscious of both processes, and unaware of his part in them both the drawing out of information, and the subsequent assimilation; but both are very evident to the observation of even strangers. his own. : No one out of the United States, can have an idea of the merit of taking the part which Dr. Channing hat adopted on the American slavery question. Abroad, whatever may be thought of the merits of the productions, the act of producing them does not seem great. It appears a simple affair enough for an influential clergyman to declare his detestation of outrageous injustice and cruelty, and to point out the duty of his fellow-citizens to do it away. But it is not a very easy or simple matter on the spot. Dr. Channing lives surrounded by the aristocracy of Boston, and by the most eminent of the clergy of his own denomination, whose lips are rarely opened on the question except to blame or ridicule the abolitionists. The whole matter was, at that time considered "a low subject," and one not likely therefore to reach his ears. He dislikes associations for moral objects he dislikes bustle and ostentation: he dislikes personal notoriety; and of course, he likes no better than other people to be the object of censure, of popular dislike. He broke through all these temptations to silence, the moment his convictions were settled ;-I mean not his convictions of the guilt and evil of slavery, but of its being his duty to utter his voice against it. From his peaceful and honoured retirement he came out into the storm, which might, and probably would be fatal to his reputation, his influence, his repose,-and perhaps to more blessings than even these. Thus the case appears to the eye of a passing traveller. These bad consequences have only partially followed; but he would not anticipate that. As it has turned out, Dr. Channing's reputation and influence have risen at home and abroad, precisely in proportion to his own progress on the great question,-to the measure of justice which he learned by degrees to deal out to the abolitionists, till, in his latest work, he reaches the highest point of all. His influence is impaired only among those to whom it does not seem to have done good,-among those who were vain of him as a pastor and a fellow-citizen, but who have not strength and light to follow his guidance in a really difficult, and obviously perilous path. He has been wondered at and sighed over in private houses, rebuked and abused in Congress, and foamed at in the south; but his reputation and influence are higher than even before; and by his act of self-devotion, he has been on the whole a great gainer, though not, of course, holding a position so enviable, (though it may look more so) than that of some who moved earlier, and have risked and suffered more in the same cause. Dr. Channing bore admirably the wrath he drew upon himself by breaking silence on the slavery question. Popular hatred and the censure of men whom he respected, were a totally new experience to one who had lived in the midst of something like worship: and though they reached him only from a distance, they must have reade him feel that the new path he had at his years stack into, was a thorny one. He was not careless on censure, though he took it quietly. He read the remarks made in Congress on his book, re-examined the grounds of what he had said that was questioned about |