Vol. iv. pp. 540. 560. my old friend if he could tell me where Longfellow in the Golden Legend picked up the idea put into the mouth of Elfie. He said he could not, but rather fancied he had heard of it in fome Jewish legend. The lines are not unsuited to the chapter, and I transcribe them. "There are two angels that attend unfeen Our good and evil deeds. He who writes down His volume, and ascends with it to God. The other keeps his dreadful day-book open Till funfet, that we may repent; which doing, The record of the action falls away And leaves a line of white across each page. Now, if my act be good, as I believe, It cannot be recalled. It is already Sealed up in heaven, as a good deed accomplished." In the earlier portion of this Chapter I referred to fome words of Bishop Hopkins. I will conclude it with two fentences from the fame author, and one from Donne. "When death comes to fhuffle and huddle the noble and ignoble together in the grave, what becomes of all the distance and difference that was between them? will the duft and ashes of the one make obeyfance then, or pay respect unto the duft and ashes of the other?" "We need no other proof of man's mor tality, but to fearch into the records of the grave: there lie rich and poor, ftrong and weak, wife and foolish, holy and profane: the rubbish of ten thousand generations heaped one upon another, and this truth that all muft die, written indelibly in their duft." "No man is fuperannuated in the grave that he is too old to enter into heaven, where the Mafter of the Houfe is THE ANCIENT OF DAYS. No man is bed-ridden with age in the grave, that he cannot rife. It is not with God as it is with man; we do, but God does not, forget the dead." Henry Stebbing's Serm. Vol. i. 187. Drayton, Milton, Profe Works, Vol. iv. 25. CHAPTER XXIV. Thoughtleffnefs corrected. "Forbear to judge, for we are finners all.- And let us all to meditation." "In the ordinary ftate of the world, we muft lay it down as a rule, that when God calls men to labour, by the station in which his Providence has placed them, there is as much of religion in working, as there is in hearing or praying;-nay, there is no religion in one without the other; for to what end ferves religion, but to lead us to our duty?" "Virtue, but poor, God in this earth doth place, Nor ceafing to purfue but with defpight: And feeming in moft miferable plight, Out of her power new life doth to her take, OW often have we to chaftife ourfelves for opinions formed without fufficient confideration, and for conclufions arrived at without "His ufeful life," faid Milton was wafting away under a fecret affliction of an unconscionable fize to human fufficient data! of fome one, strength." And fo it has often happened, and the man we thought dull, and heavy,unfociable, uncommunicative, perhaps impracticable, was ftruggling with difficulties under which we ourselves fhould have fhrunk, and facing hard duties which we could not have coped with. "And, but he's fomething ftain'd With grief, that's beauty's canker, thou might'ft call him Such was the cafe with Arthur Coleman. Though he lived amongst us, yet he hardly made one of us. Perfectly civil to every one, and quietly alive to courtesy and kindness, he fought no intimacies,—indeed rather avoided them. Strictly honeft and punctual in all his dealings, his household was conducted on fuch a principle of economy that he got the imputation of stinginess,-but none ventured to say he was mean. There was fomething in him. quite above that. about him; It was his way, faid thofe "An effect of humour Which fometime hath his hour with every man ; " and fo, they took him as they found him, and in the end decided that he was a good fort of a man, but very queer, and fomething close, Tempeft, Act i. Sc. ii. Julius Cæfar, Claud. Laud. even when his best friends were with him. All that ever transpired for many years was that he had been in business in a distant county, and had not profpered, but that no reproach attached to his name. About a year before he left the neighbourhood he was vifited by a perfon far, apparently, above his own station. in life, and between the two there was,-what had never been seen in any other case, and was quite inconceivable,-a great friendship. Shortly after he left the Parish,-not without many little acts of kindness towards thofe among whom he had fojourned, and who had not all judged him mercifully, and it then turned out, that by the strictest economy, and by the help of the Gentleman who had vifited him, and who had been established as a locum tenens in the business during his retirement, he was enabled to pay off every debt with intereft. "Nec fama fefellit Juftitiæ videre pium, videre fidelem." : When this was done, his fpirits seemed to revive, and he returned to his old home, to recover which, though apparently unemployed, he had been labouring filently all the while. As chefs-players play at a distance, so his |