more time for recollection, he will find that consolation in his own family, which is not the lot of every father to be blessed with. It seldom happens that married persons live together so long, or so happily : but this which one feels oneself ready to suggest as matter of alleviation, is the very circumstance that aggravates his distress; therefore he misses her the more, and feels that he can but ill spare her. It is however a necessary tax, which all who live long must pay for their longevity, to lose many whom they would be glad to detain, (perhaps those in whom all their happiness is centered) and to see them step into the grave before them. In one respect at least, this is a merciful appointment: When life has lost that to which it owed its principal relish, we may ourselves the more chearfully resign it. I beg you would present him with my most affectionate remembrance, and tell him, if you think fit, how much I wish that the evening of his long day may be serene and happy.

W. C.

LETTER XXIV,

To the Revd. JOHN NEWTON.

May 31, 1783.

We rather rejoice than mourn

with you on the occasion of Mrs. C's death. In the case of believers, death has lost his sting, not only with respect to those he takes away, but with respect to survivors also. Nature indeed, will always suggest some causes of sorrow, when an amiable and Christian friend departs, but the scripture, so many more, and so much more important reasons to rejoice, that on such occasions, perhaps more remarkably than on any other, sorrow is turned into joy. The law of our land is affronted if we say the king dies, and insists on it that he only demises. This, which is a fiction, where a monarch only is in question, in the case of a Christian, is reality and truth. He only lays aside a body, which it is his privilege to be incumbered with no longer; and instead of dying, in that moment he begins to live. But this the world does not understand, therefore the kings of it must go on demising to the end of the chapter.

W. C.

LETTER XXV.

To the Revd. WILLIAM UNWIN,

MY DEAR WILLIAM,

June 8, 1783.

Our severest winter, com

monly called the spring, is now over, and I find myself seated in my favourite recess, the green-house. In such a situation, so silent, so shady, where no human foot is heard, and where only my myrtles presume to peep in at the window, you may suppose I have no interruption to complain of, and that my thoughts are perfectly at my command. But the beauties of the spot are themselves an interruption, my attention being called upon by those very myrtles, by a double row of grass pinks just beginning to blossom, and by a bed of beans already in bloom; and you are to consider it, if you please, as no small proof of my regard, that though you have so many powerful rivals, I disengage myself from them all, and devote this hour entirely to you.

You are not acquainted with the Revd. Mr. Bull of Newport, perhaps it is as well for you that you are not. You would regret still more than you do, that

there are so many miles interposed between us. He spends part of the day with us to-morrow. A dissenter, but a liberal one; a man of letters, and of genius; master of a fine imagination, or rather not master of it; an imagination, which, when he finds himself in the company he loves, and can confide in, runs away with him into such fields of speculation, as amuse and enliven every other imagination that has the happiness to be of the party! at other times he has a tender and delicate sort of melancholy in his disposition, not less agreeable in its way. No men are better qualified for companions in such a world as this, than men of such a temperament. Every scene of life has two sides, a dark and a bright one, and the mind that has an equal mixture of melancholy and vivacity, is best of all qualified for the contemplation of either. He can be lively without levity, and pensive without dejection. Such a man is Mr. Bull. But-he smokes tobacco-nothing is perfect

Nihil est ab omni

Parte beatum.

On the other side I send you a something, a

song if you please, composed last Thursday-the

incident happened the day before.*

I thank

you for your Dutch communications. The suffrage of such respectable men must have given you much pleasure, a pleasure only to be exceeded by the consciousness you had before of having published truth, and of having served a good master by doing so.

I have always regretted that your ecclesiastical history went no further: I never saw a work that I thought more likely to serve the cause of truth, nor history applied to so good a purpose. The facts incontestible, the grand observations upon them all ir

* Here followed his song of the Rose.