nave an interval of comparative leisure, which I must employ in writing my long neglected letters, and in studying a number of sermons to furnish myself for a preaching expedition, which I expect to make a month or two hence. But this severe season is miserably unfavorable to sedentary mental exercise. I have, too, passed so much time in pleasing society of late, that I am afraid I may not like solitude again as well as I used to do. The principal improvement I have gained here has been in respect of manners, conversation, habits, deportment, &c., &c., for I have had little time for reading or downright study. Nor, though I have frequently taken a walk into London, for the sake of hearing some distinguished preacher, have I seen anything at all of its wonderments, not even Fuseli's pictures from Milton, which cannot now be seen, as the exhibition is shut up a good while since.” Up to the period of leaving Chichester, Foster's intercourse with cultivated persons had been very limited. But on his removal to Battersea, and soon after in the neighborhood of Bristol, he was introduced to several individuals of refined taste and superior intelligence. It is said by those who then knew him, that his manners were vivacious, and his society in a high degree captivating; his conversation was ardent, intellectual, and imaginative, with no faint coloring of the romantic. His outward appearance was not thought by him so unworthy of care as in later life he looked on such matters, in relation to himself especially. At the residence of the late Samuel Favell, Esq., of Camberwell, he first met Miss Maria Snooke, "the friend" to whom his essays were addressed, who some years afterwards became his wife, and in that relation contributed so largely to his happiness by an extraordinary congeniality, which eminently fitted her to be his "domestic associate."

In 1800 he removed to the village of Downend, five miles from Bristol, where he preached regularly at a small chapel erected by Dr. Caleb Evans. Towards the close of the year he paid a visit to Mrs. Mant, at Chichester, to whom, on his return, he thus writes: "I am still in the same house, but shall remove almost immediately, I expect, into a quiet, retired house in the neighborhood, inhabited by a respectable and agreeable widow, who has several daughters. There I mean to devote myself to retirement and reflection. When I left you, I walked, as I intended, to Portsmouth I felt a pensiveness and oppression of heart from quitting you and the Westgate friends, which made

me glad of the solitude, the exercise, and the free air. The Dearlings were kind to me in an extreme degree during the whole of my visit. I sympathized with the feelings caused by their lamented loss. I spent three or four days at Portsmouth, where I met a cordially kind reception among my few friends. I preached on the Sunday. From Portsmouth I travelled, by Southampton, Salisbury, Devizes, Warminster, and Bath, to Bristol. journey was slow, and, for the most, dull and unsocial. At Salisbury, indeed, where I had to remain at an inn from five in the evening till one or two in the morning, I passed this entire interval in the most vigorous exertion of talking, with a number of gentlemen of various characters, some of them sensible, and chiefly inhabitants of the town, on subjects of politics, morals, and literature. I have formed no new acquaintance here. Coleridge is, I am told, returning from the north to reside near London."

...

In the autumn of 1801, Foster visited for the last time his friends and relatives in Yorkshire; he gives the following account of his journey in a letter to Mr. Hughes: “I travelled straightforward to my native place, without stopping, excepting the nights, on the road-a space of three days. Part of the country I passed through was more in the style of Eden than anything I ever saw, from the infinitude of fruits. I found my father, who is past seventy, in a very feeble state, but full as well as I expected. My mother is within a few years of that age, and very much declined since I saw her last. My brother has been married two or three years, and has a pretty little girl, with which I' played, and was extremely delighted. That pleasure so often celebrated in visiting the scenes of nativity, childhood, and youth, I was never destined to feel. From whatever cause, I have had an intense antipathy to the place for many years, and felt no pleasure, with the exception of a wild, solitary vale or two, in retreading the ancient vestiges. Few local circumstances be friended the romantic feelings of my early youth; they did not therefore attach themselves to the place, but were enclosed within myself, and carried away. . . . . I had quite a stranger's experience in respect of the inhabitants; they are so changed since I last saw the place, by the death of most of my old acquaintance, and the manhood of a multitude who then appeared children. Much cordiality was evinced by the generality, and especially by those who had at all cared about me before: this was some

small alleviation of the deep sombre that dyed all my perceptions. I preached several times with considerable éclat for Mr. Fawcett, who is much the same in each respect as ever. I did not go near Leeds, nor therefore see anything of Langdon, nor any others, besides the immediate neighborhood of my father's.

"In returning I stopped three or four pleasant days at Pershore, chiefly with Rowland, who is agreeably settled there. . . . [He] seems a respectable, a very respectable preacher, and is, for an orthodox man, of unparalleled candor. My reception was extremely friendly, both from him and the few others who well remembered me.

"I reached Downend at last, a day or two before Mrs. Cox, who had a little before seen you, and told me that you appeared lively and friendly, and that she had heard you make a transcendent sermon at Broad Street, the same, I believe, that I heard at Thornbury. . . . I was two or three times in Hall's company, and heard him preach once; I am any one's rival in admiring him. In some remarkable manner, everything about him, all he does or says, is instinct with power. Jupiter seems to emanate in his attitude, gesture, look, and tone of voice. Even a common sentence, when he utters one, seems to tell how much more he can do. His intellect is peculiarly potential, and his imagination robes, without obscuring, the colossal form of his mind. He made a grand sermon on the fear of death, though I was told it was not his very best. . . . He was specifically kind to me. I have engaged in the monthly lecture in Bristol for the next year."

LETTERS.

XX. TO HIS PARENTS.

Chichester, March 27, 1797.

HONORED PARENTS,-I hope to attain in time the power which can create for itself interests and varieties which the place will not supply, and can therefore communicate something new while circumstances continue the same. I feel no considerable alteration in mine. I have seen nothing remarkable since I wrote; have heard nothing but those public events which you have likewise heard; have done nothing of great consequence. I have indeed said a number of new, and perhaps important things. I mean to recollect and write as many of them as I can for preservation; but my memory seems growing worse and worse. On this account I frequently now write out the outlines of my discourses, previous to speaking, a practice which I had long disused. I am become a little more acquainted with the people, and find them thus far very pleasing; but I do not need to be informed that the attention and politeness of a first acquaintance do not continue always. I resolve, however, to merit respect wherever I am, and then I shall at least possess my own. I know what are the qualities and conduct which deserve the esteem of society, and promote its happiness; and while each cause of irritation is absent, I can wonder that every mortal is not inclined to study the happiness of those around him, and that I myself have not, in some instances, made greater efforts and sacrifices for this object. Some time since I was most of the week, seven miles from here, at the house of a miller. . . . . I read there with great pleasure the sermons of Fawcett, the presbyterian, of London. My own most successful compositions are considerably similar, but inferior to his. He is not indeed sufficiently evangelical. The two last weeks I passed with another family in the city, in which there are several very agreeable young people. I am conscious of having made an effort, a laborious effort, to render them some service. I read several books to them, and compelled myself to talk. I tried to communicate knowledge, and to excite a wish to attain it. To one of them particularly, a fine young woman, I lectured with all my might on the value of wisdom, the necessity of reflection, and the folly of dress, amusements, and trivial society. In such cases I always feel indignant at myself that I cannot absolutely compel conviction by a resistless force of argument. I never fail, however, to do my best, and to resolve to furnish myself with new and more cogent thoughts against the next occasion. . . . . Since I came, one member of the society, a woman

with a large family, is dead. I was requested to make a funeral discourse, in doing which I was exempted from the task of speaking of the deceased, by being a total stranger. I never even saw her. I thought the sermon the most considerable I ever made. Writing to Mr. Hughes, I transcribed and sent him the introduction by way of return for his outline, which I had used. The text was, "The living know that they shall die." I experience the accustomed diversities of enlargement and con

* There can be little doubt that this introduction forms the first extract in the following communication from Mr. Hughes to the Editor of the (Edinburgh) Missionary Magazine, and inserted in the twenty-ninth number of that periodical, October, 1798.

"To the Editor of the Missionary Magazine.

"SIR,-I have had frequent occasion to remark, that while scepticism, error, indifference, and vagueness of belief, are the luxuriant produce of thoughtless minds, and of gay moments, nothing short of a fixed confidence, derived, if I may so speak, from the very centre of the gospel, can satisfy the man who, in the views of approaching death, sits in solemn judgment upon himself. The idle glare of a pompous philosophy, and the flattery of a deceitful heart, vanish, and some beamings of truth, some profitable regrets, some eager wishes, have been known to fill their place. These reflections are suggested by the following passages, extracted from the letter of an ingenious friend, whose speculations habitually hover over an undefined void, and feed upon a vexatious disappointment, their own creation. The extracts breathe the spirit of some happier hour; and should they be deemed likely to fix the undetermined, or to reclaim the wanderer, should they in any sense comport with the design of your Miscellany, their insertion will much oblige your well-wisher,

"THEOLOGUS.

REFLECTIONS ON DEATH.

"The records of time are emphatically the history of death. A whole review of the world, from this hour to the age of Adam, is but the vision of an infinite multitude of dying men. During the more quiet intervals, we perceive individuals falling into the dust, through all classes and all lands Then come floods and conflagrations, famines, and pestilence, and earthquakes, and battles, which leave the most crowded and social scenes silent The human race resemble the withered foliage of a wide forest; while the air is calm, we perceive single leaves scattering here and there from the branches; but sometimes a tempest, or a whirlwind, precipitates thousands in a moment. It is a moderate computation which supposes a hundred thousand millions to have died since the exit of righteous Abel. Oh! it is true that ruin hath entered the creation of God! that sin has made a breach in that innocence which fenced man round with immortality and even now the great spoiler is ravaging the world. As mankind have still sunk into the dark gulf of the past, history has given buoyancy to the most wonderful of their achievements and characters, and caused them to float down the stream of time to our own age. It is well; but if, sweeping aside the pomp and deception of life, we could draw from the last hours and death-beds of our ancestors all the illuminations, convictions, and uncontrollable emotions with which they have quitted it, what a far more affecting history of man should we possess! Behold all the gloomy apartments of ening, in which the wicked have died; contemplate first the triumph of iniquity, and here behold their close; witness the terrific faith, the too late repentance, the prayers suffocated by despair and the mortal