in connection with religion, will long continue faithfully in that connection.

....

CCIX. TO THE REV. DR. PRICE.

February, 1838.

Professor Elton of Rhode Island, has sent me a very curious book of the date indeed of three or four years back, written by an "Honorable Mr. Durfee, Supreme Judge" in that island. It is a poem nearly or quite as long as Paradise Lost, under the grotesque title of "What-Cheer," which was an exclamation of a party of friendly savages on a particular occasion, very long since. The time is some two centuries since; the starting-point-fact is a case of persecution by the rigorous good Puritan bigots of New England, against an assertor of religious freedom, a man memorable and venerable in the American ecclesiastical history. This persecution drives him out into the wilderness, in the horrid snowy desolation of mid-winter, still heroically trusting in Providence. He goes among the savages, and his adventures with them, and the strange wild characteristic scenes and transactions in their society, form the eventful narrative. I hardly know what, exactly, to say of the poetry; but it is at least strikingly graphical, perspicuous in detail and narrative, and in a plain, unaffected language, a little of the antiquish, and perfectly suitable to the subject. It is foundea, in part, on the actual recorded history of the hero; and, as to the general character of the exhibition, seems a faithful picture of the then manners, customs, and notions of the Aborigines. I dare say there can have been no notice of such a production in the Eclectic, or probably any other of our Reviews. And I think a moderate article of considerable interest and curiosity might be made of it. With your leave I will try. . . . .

CCX. TO THE REV. THOMAS COLES.

August 3, 1838.

It gives me very special pleasure to hear of the very favorable state and prospects of your situation; not the less so, of course, that I have always wished that you might find good reason to decide against transferring your public services from where they had been patiently prosecuted so long. It is highly gratifying, that in what may be called the autumn of your life and ministry, a kind of spring season should return in the congregation, in the growing up of a youthful race in a disposition of mind, as to many of them, so pleasing and hopeful. I will hope, that in this you will find, in no small degree, a reward of your patient perseverance through years of less pleasing experience, through various discouragements and vexations.

You are reported in a high state of health, promising, I hope, a long postponement of the infirmities of declining age. How long would you wish to live, if the term were supposed to be placed at your choice? If the Power, who has the disposal, might be supposed to put before you a succession of figures, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90—and say "Choose, and it shall be so," unconditionally as to what should be the attendant circumstances of each term, that being left in total uncertainty as to your knowledge—would you be greatly perplexed? would it take you a long time and hesitation to decide on which of the numbers you should place your finger, that act, that single touch being an absolute, irrevocable decision? One is often reproachfully reminded, that with our confident belief of the grand superiority of another life and scene, if we had the full, deliberate consciousness of a due preparation for it, there would require an effort, a repressive effort of submission to the divine disposal, to prevent an everrising impatience of the soul to escape from this dark and sinful world, and go out on the sublime adventure.

You now stand, as it were, between two equal divisions of your family, three of them remaining on earth, and three, you feel assured, in the enjoyment of a happier existence elsewhere. You have thus a social and family relationship, in equal proportions, with two different provinces of the great kingdom.

CCXI. TO DR. STENSON.

1838.

WE must acknowledge, my dear sir, that it is well there should be a sanguine spirit in the enterprises for reforming the world. Enthusiasm is as necessary as any other element. A cool, strict, cautious calculation, would never give impulse enough. How many things have been effected, which anything short of this enthusiasm would have deemed it folly to attempt. Think of Luther! I have lately read, with much interest, part of a recent French work, "Memoirs of Luther, written by himself."* The title is verified by the plan, which is that of selecting and putting in orderly series, the great numbers of passages in Luther's books, letters, &c., which relate personally to himself, with only sometimes a few sentences by the editor to link them together. The effect of the work is that while the great reformer stands forth, in all his energy and intrepidity, there is manifested a sensibility, a softness and tenderness of feeling, which one would not have expected in so lion-like a piece of humanity. Who would have imagined him looking, with a gentle emotion, at a little bird in a tree? The good and noble fellow was sometimes, even after he was become so publicly conspicuous, so

* Mémoires de Luther, écrits par lui-même; traduits et mis en ordre par M. Michelet, professeur à l'école normale, chef de la section historique aux archives du royaume.

poor that he could not afford himself a new coat, and tells how he was forced to pawn a silver goblet, which he happened to possess by inherit ance, as his only article of value. When far on in his life and victoricus success, his spirit sometimes drooped quite into melancholy at sight of the perversities, the refractoriness, the jars, the counteractions, and selfinterested competitions, which arose among even the reformers.

CHAPTER IX.

LAST REVIEW-LETTER TO MR. GREAVES-VISIT TO BOURTON IN 1840-DEATH OF MR. COLES-VISIT TO LONDON

IN 1841ILLNESS-LAST VISIT ΤΟ BOURTON IN 1842-THE CHARTISTS

AND THE ANTI-CORN-LAW

LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH.

LEAGUE-NATIONAL

1839-1843.

EDUCATION-

MR. FOSTER closed his literary labors by an article on Polack's New Zealand, which appeared in the Eclectic Review for July, 1839.

In a letter to Mr. Greaves* (April 25, 1840), to whom during his residence at Brearley he had stood in the twofold relation of friend and pupil, he reviews the circumstances of their early acquaintance and course in after-life. "What a width of time it is to look back over!—approaching to half a century. How far those youthful interests, those social scenes, those amicable colloquies, those little adventures, have receded away! How many with whom we were habitually or occasionally associated, have vanished from the world! How changed are we ourselves from what we were then! And then the reflection, not the less striking for being too self-evident almost to be put in words, that all these can return no more!

"It would be interesting to me to have a long, quiet comparison and intercommunication with you, of our respective and mutual remembrances, seated alone by the nightly fire-side. Some of these recollections would be simply those of fact; some would

* William Greaves, Esq., who subsequently removed to Clapham, where he died in the same week with Mr. Foster, was in early life classical tutor at Brearley, an office for which he was admirably fitted, both by his attainments as a scholar, and by all the higher moral qualifications required in an instructor of youth. "He was a singularly amiable man, full of benevolence and kind consideration for the wants and feelings of others. His heart was formed for friendship, and he had an acute discernment of what was proper in human conduct and the various relations of life. His taste was formed on the best models, and though not an author himself, he was ever ready to undertake all kinds of useful offices for his literary friends"

be invested with grave and pensive sentiment. And they would have the interest of being exclusive to ourselves, as the solitary occupants, so to speak, of a departed and far back tract of time; belonging to a period which none around us belonged to; the survivors of those who shared its interests with us, but share them no more. We should be something like two men left on a solitary shore by a wreck in which their companions had perished. We should feel to belong to the race who were then our co-evals, whatever subsequent interests and relations we have been involved in. You can in mere memory go back to those times and scenes, but can you recall the order of ideas and feelings in such manner as to reanimate them, as it were, for a transitory moment, so as to have a lively sense of what they were? For myself, I have very long lost any such power. A great difference will have been made in your case from mine, as to the continuity and prolongation of interest in the scene of our early life and its inhabitants, by your practice of rather frequently revisiting it. It is not, as to me, like an insulated territory, with a wide waste of sea between. Your disconnection from the social economy there (I mean our early associates) has been gradual, by the successive decease of one and another. And perhaps, in some certain degree they were replaced to you by those not of the primeval age. Whereas I have been nearly forty years (!) withdrawn totally from personal communication. I cannot exactly tell how it came to be so. My parents survived a considerable number of years

after the time that I saw them last. But besides the immediate circumstances of my remote local situations, I felt a strong recoil at the thought of going to see them for absolutely a last time. I knew they were surrounded by kind friends, and sent them a little pecuniary assistance. I confess also that I feared lest I should witness a painfully sensible decline of mental faculties. I heard of the decease of one and another of the plain worthy persons (the Greenwoods, for instance, whom you will remember) to whom I had been partial. For our co-eval friend Fawcett, I felt invariably a most genuine esteem and regard. But progressive years were still bringing additional circumstances to diminish the inducements to a revisit of the place of my nativity. And always the thought that such a visit would be made with the conscious ness it was to be the last. I may add, a great aversion to long tedious travelling; and also, that during a very considerable portion of the long period, I could ill spare the expense.