it. And here again, what a miserable philosophy of the human mind you must have adopted, not to be certain that, unless interest or malignity intervene, superior mind is necessarily attached to superior mind all over the world. Genius hails its few brothers with a most fraternal warmth. I have too much talent not to be attracted by yours, and to attract it; you could not shake me off, if you would. We are both elevated so much as to confront each other conspicuously through the clear space above the heads of the crowd, and cannot help a pointed recognition of each other's mental visage. Thus I often converse with you in imagination, and revolt at paper and pens, which tell sentiments so faintly, so formally, so slowly, and so few. Our minds are two rival streams, and whatever invidious tracts dissociate their courses, they must approximate; they are destined to meet again; and to swell and exult in their confluence. Or, do you dissent from this estimate of yourself and of me. Do you assign yourself to a humbler rank? Be content, then; it were ridiculous for a gudgeon to affect the company of a whale. Or do you degrade me from the equality? Abandon, then, such an unfortunate production; it were still more ridiculous for a whale to pursue a gudgeon. It was not any feeling of hurt vanity, was it, that dictated your vindictive sentences? the vanity of a mind which, regarding me as a thermometer, was vexed to perceive its own impotence of heat? It would be enough, you know, in that case, just to say, the instrument is a bad one; thus you have very properly ascribed my silence to "apathy." If I am the victim of apathy, it must be by that fascination which betrays into the very thing most anxiously avoided; for, next to remorse, there is no state of the mind I dread and detest so much. Perhaps you think there can be in the world no stronger test of feeling, or the want of it, than the bundle of snakes you sent me last,-in sooth, a lock of Medusa's hair. It is a very humorous thing, though, to see a philosopher attempting to torment a stone.

But you allow me a few "sensibilities," which you say faithfully attend my dear self. Indeed, you treat them very rudely; you are like boys attempting to catch birds; however soft and gentle the approach, if the coy things fly away to the next bush, the wicked brats then throw stones after them. You frighten my poor sensibilities, you do; and you must forgive them, if, like timid little chickens, they run under my own wing at sight of the great dun-colored hawk, with fierce black eyes, and a shrill note; you must not tempt them to fly along in friendly company with the malicious fowl, as I have seen foolish little birds sometimes do, to be devoured.

You say 66 many have received the same impression." While at Bat

tersea I knew perfectly that all the world was thinking of me; but since I left, I had in my humility supposed it probable that mighty multitude might have forgotten me, as I knew that absent trifles could not occupy its majestic thoughts. Or, if I thought it all the world's duty to be thinking of me, it was of course for me to attribute to it somewhat of my own sad vice of forgetting the absent.

I have been too much flattered, you say. In truth, it is currently said, we are both spoiled by our friends; but, I having heard it said in addition, that your spoiling makes you very ostentatious, you will forgive me, if in my solicitude to avoid this consequence of my spoiling, I have fallen into the opposite fault of reserve. But I am not irrecoverable; a little more of this soft incense might tempt me forth again. Instead of this, you salute me in your Philippics with the smoke of brimstone. You wish the criminal's "heart broken." I should be sorry this operation were performed by your surgical hand, as the ingredients of your letter seem to indicate there are no cordials remaining in your shop.

You must have been taking a month's instructions from the "Xantippe" you have so kindly destined me to "love and cherish;" but as I am to have her in order to learn to write friendly letters, how much better a man I must be than you, who have only learnt to write virulent ones. If you have not been congenial, you could not have profited so fast. Let me know, however, who she is; for I cannot help suspecting your language is not hers; I do think any woman of so much sense would have expressed it in more gracious terms.

I cannot join in your reverence for that amazing, busy activity of the world on which you turn so poetical, to mortify me with the contrast. Is it cynical to ask, "What is effected by it all?" Much of this huge bustle seems to me as important, if it were as innocent, as the rippling course of a rill, or the frisks of a company of summer flies. If I had the power of touching a large part of mankind with a spell, amid all this inane activity, it should be this short sentence, "Be quiet, be quiet.” Particularly, I have often thought that the moral and literary world suffers the greatest mischief from the crowd of authors. Seriously, it appears to me an enormous impediment to popular improvement; so much that is indifferent, or worse, occupies the time and the paper that else might and would be appropriated to the noblest productions of mind.

Fortunately, however, the world has not beheld all that genius can do. There remain two mighty spirits who have not yet disclosed all their terrible potencies on the "foughten field." When the cause of virtue and truth is just sinking in destruction, we two shall rush forth amain like Mounier and Dessaix at Marengo, and change the aspect of the world in a moment!

You suggest the idea of fame. Cold as you pronounce me, I should prefer the deep animated affection of one person whom I could entirely love, to all the tribute fame could levy within the amplest circuit of her flight; which would be of the same value to me, alive or dead, as the cries of penguins about Cape Horn at this hour. A Christian surely should despise this object; and I can suppose a being too elevated and too happy to think of it. Imagine a seraph, laving in the boundless ocean of mind, or flying through the hemisphere with a comet in his hand, he cares nothing about fame.

I wished to have got together a row of nettle sentences like yours; but

verliy, I am either too dull or too kind. I have been walking in the fields, inhaling the mild breath of nature, and meeting her sweetest smile. I felt the charm through all my affections, and forcibly felt, spite of all your accusations, and the appearances that seem to warrant them, that you have a large and unalterable interest there. I have returned quite in the disposition to acknowledge my neglect and my indolence, and to deplore that I have indeed proceeded but a little way on the "path of celestials;" but take me along with you; I am ready to advance as your associate and rival onward to the frontier of the world;-nor stop

there!

My mind needs amelioration; it is a strange one. I am obtaining the analysis of it, piece by piece, at the cost of a great and sometimes painful attention.

I congratulate you on whatever possibilities of happiness you have gained in the addition to your family. Has no one suggested it may be time for you to study the subject of education? Have you really begun your plan of Adversaria? The series of mine has reached some number between five and six hundred. Let me urge you not to neglect this. You luxuriate among happy sentences and images, which ought not to be let vanish, like fairy bowers, to be seen no more. Take one book for pointed, philosophic, or fanciful articles; another exclusively for the striking passages in your unwritten sermons. I would eagerly begin such a plan as this last but for the ominous state of my eyes, which very often concurs with other anticipations, and with the native tone of my heart, to wrap me in the saddest melancholy. I have a thousand times recollected a thought uttered by you in one of our rambles in a gloomy mood: "Say I shall be damned-how foolish, then, to think of these trifling introductory ills; but say, I shall be saved, obtain boundless felicity, in a short time-how weak then, to complain of these momentary pains!"

You do no more than justice to the "circle" where I have spent some of the most delicious months of my life. You know who is the centre of that circle; near enough to her I have constantly felt as if I could pass an age away without ever being tired.*. . . . The ladies to whom

"The course of my life since I left Battersea has included a good deal of the agreeable. The greater part has still been spent among ladies; and I enjoy the society of amiable women beyond any other. I am always happy when the sentimentalism of my character, which otherwise evaporates in vague wishes, and the visions of fancy, finds real objects to interest it up to the tone of complacency,-how much further this deponent saith not. When thus interested, I become animated, profuse of sentiment, passionately fond of conversation, and time flies away with a strange rapidity. A great part of my time I have passed with the younger Mrs. C. and Miss S., luxuriating over a wide diffusion of sentiment and fancy. Sometimes we read; but this seldom succeeds much, for we generally digress to an endless series of remarks and opinions of our own. We have agitated a great number of interesting questions; and have sometimes found and sometimes scattered flowers, over the region of thought. These two ladies are greatly beyond the common order of intellect and taste

I have read this response are astonished at such effrontery in a criminal, as they say I really am, almost to the extent of your charge, before his judge. I assured them that a gallant defence was one of the best methods to propitiate him; he would be most dogged to a coward. . .

XXXVI. TO THE REV. DR. RYLAND.

April, 1801.

DEAR SIR,-I am ashamed to have detained the sermon so long;* as I read it immediately after receiving it from you, and with still more attention since. I have not been in Bristol since I saw you, except one wet night to inquire after a parcel, when I was unfit to call or stop anywhere.

I am not certain to what extent you would wish me to express an opinion, though very certain that to any extent your candor would forgive the freedom. If it were a question as to publishing the sermon or not, I would venture, after acknowledging in very strong terms the ingenuity, the variety, and the forcible description with which it abounds, to suggest a very few general considerations.

As first, placing myself in the situation, I should be very reluctant to appear conspicuously in the class of what have been denominated" dam

While they are employed in working I sit down, sometimes a number of hours together, and pour forth all my imagination or knowledge can supply; and they call me enthusiastic, cynical, proud, or singular, by turns. I take a peculiar pleasure in dissecting the system of fashion, parade, ceremony, and trifles. I have examined, ridiculed, and execrated it in a hundred forms, and with every variety of language and illustration. They substantially agree with me, but accuse me of darting for ever toward the extreme.

I preach here with considerable pleasure; and the family have expressed their wish that I may in some manner settle here. I often see various company here, and in Bristol, sometimes with pleasure; but often, every man who has tried the world knows, company is assembled for the assassination of time;-time destined, alas, to perish by a mightier hand, but men are willing to assist in its destruction. My mind is still familiar with melancholy musings; no place can banish them, and no society. There is that something still which prompts the eternal sigh. Yet I would not be insensible to the pleasures that life does yield; I would not be insensible to the value of those that are past.”—Mr. Foster to Mrs. Benwell, June 11, 1800.

A discourse on Isa. xiv. 10, "Art thou become like unto us?" composed and delivered at Northampton when the author was in his twentythird year (Nov. 26, 1775), and preached again at Bristol in 1776; "it seemed each time of its delivery to be heard with unusual seriousness, and in one instance, at least, had a very deep and salutary effect. (See the biographical account of the Rev. William Kilpin in Dr. Rippon's Baptist Register, vol. i., p. 257). A copy having been shown in a distant part of the kingdom to some very respectable friends who urged its publication,” Dr. R. felt inclined to follow their advice," and prepared it for the press; but relinquished the intention in consequence, most probably, of the suggestions contained in Mr. Foster's letter.

nation writers." With the exception of Baxter and a few more, I am afraid that those who have expatiated most on infernal subjects, have felt them the least. A predilection for such subjects, and a calm, deliberate, minute, exhibition of them, always strikes me as a kind of Christian cruelty, the spirit of an auto da fé. I sincerely doubt the utility of a laborious, expanded display of the horrors of hell as far as I have had the means of observing the actual effect, I have found it far the greatest where one would anxiously wish it might not exist at all-in the minds of the timid, scrupulous, and melancholic. The utmost space I would allot in my writings to this part of the revelations of our religion should not at any rate exceed the proportion which, in the New Testament, this part of truth bears to the whole of the sacred book, the grand predominant spirit of which is love and mercy.

2. Though for a passing illustration it would be striking, I greatly doubt if such an application of the text, so formally and definitively made, be warrantable. Is the passage anything more than a finely poetic account of the simple fact, the death of the tyrant? No part of this sublime ode appears to me to look beyond the grave, the state of being dead, or to bear any reference to the feelings or accostings of departed spirits.

3. Does not extreme particularity on such a subject lose the effect, either by harassing the feelings into a revolting aversion to think of the subject at all, or sometimes by supplying a half-amusing detail to curiosity, like Virgil's Tartarus, rather than making a concentrated mighty impression on the heart.

4. I doubt if revelation has anywhere given ground to suppose, or if reason, without revelation, can be cruel enough to suppose, such a superlative malicious and horrid style of greetings, even in the infernal world. Something very different from this would be indicated in our Lord's description of the solicitude of the rich man, that his wicked connexions might not come into the same place of torment-a feeling surely which would not, if they did come, hail them with such an execrable malignity of pleasure.

5. I feel, in the strain of some parts of the salutations of the wretched spirits, something too familiar, and even approaching too much to the air of spiteful fun, for the dreadful solemnity of the scene, and the supposed profound and infinite intensity of their feelings.

6. In the instantaneous transition, towards the latter end, from hell to heaven, with the use of the same language in heaven as so lately with so much adaptedness in hell, I felt some degree of violence. It looks like an expedient to escape from the persecution of the former society and salutations. It has the appearance of needing to perform a kind of quarantine after coming from the great kingdom of plagues.

Other remarks on particular passages may have occurred, but are scarcely of importance enough to be mentioned.

The few observations I have expressed are entirely submitted, as being the dictates of a taste which may be wrong; and the unceremonious