Is not this, again, the supreme city of the world as a Christian city? Is not the religion of the Saviour of men, a religion of incomparable beneficence, extensively preached, believed, and loved? Yet the grand, essential spirit of that religion is to do all generous good, to visit the sick, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked, and to cure the despicable and cruel pride of worldly superiority. And can there be, then, where this sacred cause prevails, many thousands of abodes that are desolate, and hearts that are sad, for want of what Christians, in the same city, could easily impart to them?

I rejoice to believe that there is, in London, a large measure of sincere Christianity; but the whole mass of misery which might be relieved, and is not, shows you what a measure there is not; that is to say, if our Lord's prophetic description of the Last Judgment do really exhibit the great test of Christian character. But if the whole amount of that suffering which the affluent might remove, without reducing their enjoyments below a sober Christian estimate, be so much crime, is not the charge of very awful magnitude, however it may be divided, or wherever it may mainly fall? It appears to me of urgent and solemn importance to each of the rich people who make a particular profession of the religion of Christ, to be able to stand forth and say, "I am not guilty of this charge; on others be this sin, which will meet the strongest condemnation of the last day all that an individual can do, I do." And can they, my dear friend, pronounce this deliberately and firmly, amidst that style of luxury and conformity to the world, in which you have had occasion to see that some of them indulge?

Among your observations on London, it will have occurred to you how much familiarity with misery lessens pity. One cause of this is, what I have mentioned before, the low value set on human beings where they are so immensely numerous. Where the beings themselves are regarded as insignificant things, of course their sufferings in general can excite but little interest. But, besides, perhaps no sentiment of the heart is more reluctant to a frequent or continual exercise than pity, except in regard to the distresses of some object that is singularly dear. The occasions that claim this feeling occur too often even in a place of moderate population, for each one of them to excite the degree of it which it seems to deserve; but, in London, a heart that could not become duly hardened under the repetition of impressions, would be persecuted to death. But the frequency destroys the effect. Fatal accidents, such as fires, persons being drowned in the river, or falling from scaffolds, or being crushed by carriages, are not so unusual as to connect any melancholy association with the place or the cause, or to haunt the spectators with a long mournful remembrance. The instant and continual intervention, too, of things which make an opposite impression, diverts the sad feeling away. The scene where any melancholy catastrophe happens, has not the sedateness and quiet which, by presenting but this one object, enables it to absorb all the thought and feeling in fixed musing. If a man fall down dead in the street, he is taken away, and perhaps in

ten minutes after a showman, with dancing bears and monkeys, comes and excites merriment on the very same spot. Or, if no ludicrous spectacle be presented, yet the constant buzz, and noise, and activity, tend most effectually to obliterate every sad impression. The confused mixture and rapid succession of all kinds of events and sights, inevitable in a great city, where the same day is appointed for weddings and funerals, balls and executions, gives no distinct, protracted space for reflection to rest on any of them. Those, among the rest, that seem adapted to awaken and cherish pity, have their moment, and are gone.

The number of wretched spectacles in human form which everywhere meet the sight, would at first excite, in a cultivated and humane mind, a mixture of pity and horror. The first momentary promptings of benevolence would be to attempt something to relieve them; and when the number instantly proved that to be hopeless to an individual, he would feel a painful, shrinking repugnance to meet them, or pass anywhere near them; he would, from humanity, do that which the Levite did from the want of it," pass by on the other side." But you observe, that after these spectacles have been familiarized by frequency and time, even humane persons can pass them almost without perceiving that they are there; or with a feeling of more disgust than compassion if they do perceive them.

The number of beggars who, in every part of the city, look you in the face, and bespeak your notice with humble attitudes and tones of sorrow, have a destructive effect on the disposition to pity. There is the same reason why you should give to many as to one, and yet you cannot give to them all. You must therefore content yourself as you can, to see several thousands of your race depend, for what you know, this day, for a morsel of bread and for life, on the casual trifle that may be given them, or may not; and learn to look on the features of misery, and hear the language of supplication with perfect indifference. For a person of feeling this is a great achievement; and therefore it is found requisite to fortify the heart against the class of indications naturally adopted to awaken pity, by a recollection of all the instances and stories of the imposition and roguery of this unfortunate class of persons, and to hold a steady persuasion that the greatest number that appear, and consequently each one in the succession, are cheats, who would play on compassion by the false semblance of distress; and this persuasion you must not the less retain, though you see the evident proofs of old age, debility, or withered famine. This complacency of indifference is so completely possessed by the greatest number of those who pass, that you will observe them smile at your simplicity if you take any particular notice of any of these forlorn objects. No one doubts that there are a great number of cheats, but you have only to open your eyes to be convinced that very many are suffering objects; and it cannot be too often repeated, that the habit of thus looking on misery, without pity, is most baneful to the heart. Who can tell how far into the whole system of the benevolent affections the noxious effect may extend?

Compassion for the suffering of the animal tribes is likely to be greatly injured in London, by the constant sight of the condition and treatment of horses, particularly those of the hackney coaches, and of the stage coaches from the villages and towns in the neighborhood of the city.

You have seen these ill-fated creatures, old, blind, ill-fed, wounded by the harness, and panting for life, yet suffering all the execrable barbarity of wretches in the form of men, but with the spirit and language of hell. . . . . This is a bad world for whatever is innocent and useful, if it be defenceless too. This spectacle is continually witnessed, and deemed too trivial for feeling or abhorrence, except in some singularly atrocious instances. Introduce the topic, if you please, in a polished company, and see how many persons will attach the smallest importance to a consideration which appears so interesting to humanity. I have known the whole subject turned into ridicule by persons whom I had not, till then, deemed altogether destitute of feeling. This insensibility to obvious and multiplied animal suffering, must surely be the result of familiarly seeing it. But a city residence ought to make no trifling compensation to the qualities of the heart, in some other way, for such a serious deduction from its capability of feeling compassion. Let it be considered, too, that the same cause early produces the same insensibility in the minds of children: how different a process from the discipline requisite to produce that anxious and sacred tenderness to feeling, that fear of hurting what has life, which a completely thoughtful and humane parent would be solicitous to cultivate in the young mind in precedence to every other moral principle, inasmuch as cruelty is the most hateful of all the possible forms of depravity.

I have taken no notice till now of what appears to me the most melancholy of all the circumstances of a great city—the number of unfortunate females. The greater number of these persons were originally capable of all the kind and dignified social sympathies, of the sweet charities of domestic life; and what is their present condition, sunk in the most degrading forms of vice, and the most unpitied forms of miserythrown off with aversion from the society and affections of their own sex, and the alternate allurement and contempt of the other? What a contamination and destruction of all the sensibilities that can make human beings interesting to one another! . . .

....

. . My dear friend, you will be tired with this extended and incessant invective. If you think it extravagant, you must allow me to plead that I am but a savage, a mere simple savage; I might have quitted but three months since the American wilds, so little can I comprehend the system of an European city, where all human improvements are deemed to have attained the most elevated pitch that the world ever saw. I may in due time obtain the perceptions of wise, civilized men, and cordially adopt the consolatory creed which, if they are at ease themselves, I observe they zealously maintain, in spite of all the miseries around them, viz. that things are just as they should be. That time, however, I am afraid is remote.

CHAPTER IV.

REMOVAL TO FROME-PUBLICATION OF THE ESSAYS-ECLECTIC RE

VIEW-MARRIAGE.

1804-1808.

MR. FOSTER had resided about four years at Downend, when, in consequence chiefly of the high testimony borne to his character and abilities by Mr. Hall, he was invited to become the minister of a congregation meeting in Sheppard's Barton, Frome. He removed thither in February, 1804. "It is a new place," he tells Mrs. Mant, "from which I write to you. And what place is this Frome? you will say, and how came you to be there? My good friend, Frome is a large and surpassing ugly town in Somersetshire, where the greatest number of the people are employed about making woollen cloth;-where there are several meeting-houses, and among the rest one where a Mr. Job David was a long time the preacher. This place he left some time since, after avowing himself a Socinian, which he had for some time been partly thought, but had not avowed himself to be. The congregation was nearly reduced to nothing before he left it. To this situation I was some time since invited, and was induced, from several considerations, to accede to the invitation. I am now considered as settled here. Among these considerations, undoubtedly one was, some advantage in respect of pecuniary means. But the difference in this respect is not such as to have been a strong inducement, if there had not been other considerations concerned. I have experienced the greatest kindness at Downend, and left my friends there with regret; a sentiment which I believe I caused as well as felt." To another friend (Mrs. Gowing of Downend) he says, "I experience much more kindness here than my social, or rather unsocial dispositions deserve; and more than I should experience if those dispositions were fully known. You will not suppose me foolish enough to tell them all. I often make myself quite a social man; and if I do this you know, and perform the social duties, nobody has a right to complain. It is not, however, by going very often into society that I evince my

self a social man, but behaving with decency when I am in it. To do this, is but the very lowest degree of propriety certainly, and especially when some of the persons I am sometimes with, are persons of sense and great worth. I avow to you, I wish I were much less monkish, and much less in danger of sometimes approaching to misanthropy. To the family in whose house I am, I behave, I assure you, with great propriety, and give them but little trouble. I spend with them but extremely little time beyond inevitable occasions; and I dare say they are mistaken enough to suppose me one of the most studious men on earth. I never think of fairly sitting down for a conversation, nor even think of introducing any of those topics that have so often kept us up in your disorderly house till twelve or one o'clock. No, we are sober people here, and having taken our supper, go to bed, at least vanish from one another's sight. They are very worthy people, and good natured; and to me they are even more than sufficiently attentive. They have a fine boy about nine months old, that sometimes amuses me very much. They are young people in Wesley's connection, keep a school, and have some property independently. The house is large; so that I feel no inconvenience at all from the school. I sleep in a small chamber, the very room in which Mrs. Rowe died; and have for my studying (if I ever did or could study) a room that was added to the house not many years since, an exceedingly spacious room, with a rural prospect before it, but not comparable to the horizon seen from your windows. In this I pass the greatest part of my time; for I scarcely ever take any walks, not oftener at any rate than once in several weeks; though there are at the distance of a mile or two some very pretty scenes, in the form of narrow valleys, and sometimes rocks on each side.

"The congregation here is still small, though not quite so small as at first. In the evening, generally, there are as many as would make a pretty good congregation for the meeting at Downend, but the size of the meeting makes these appear but few. I have not yet attained, nor probably ever shall (from the loftiness of the house I suppose it may be), the power of talking away with that rapid facility that I had sometimes at Downend. I am obliged to speak more slowly, and that makes me speak more in one set manner, and deprives me of those variations of manner which accompany a talking style of preaching. I am likewise obliged to take somewhat more previous pains with my sermons,