In the summer of 1841 Mr. Foster spent several weeks with Mr. (now Sir John) Easthope and his family; part of the time was passed in the Isle of Wight.

In a letter dated July 17, he says, referring to his journey from Southampton, "A gentleman on the railway mentioned some remarkable antiquities dug up in cutting the road, and gave directions for them to be shown to me, and where I should find them. They are various pieces of ancient British pottery, some of them of forms not exactly, that I remember, described by Sir R. Hoare. They are chiefly basins and urns, large and small: a large urn containing human bones and a skull. The shape of some of them may be called elegant. They were found not very deep in the earth, and where there was no sign (tumulus or the like) on the surface. I am always interested by these primitive, or call them primeval antiquities."

This was the last time that he visited London. He was there for many weeks in the spring and summer of 1836, at the house of the same friend; and after his return often spoke in grateful terms of the kindness which he met with from every member of the family. On both occasions he devoted much of his time to the various exhibitions and works of art in the British Museum and elsewhere. "There is one unpleasant, almost mischievous effect," he remarks, "of seeing so many imposing or captivating ideal forms of humanity,—that it creates, or rather augments, a repulsion to human beings such as they are actually seen. Today, for example, in seeing the numberless multitude, as they were passing backward and forward, or standing in ranks, one glanced at their countenances with a sort of recoil from each and almost all; not from the mere effect of their material cast, but also and very strongly from the apparent expression of character, -even of those who were evidently not of what we mean by the vulgar.

"In seeing such vast multitudes, one is often struck with the thought how each one is all-important to individual self, and, in most instances, considerably so to some other individuals; and yet how totally insignificant to all besides,-whether, or how, they live or die. What a consideration it is, that since I came hither, as many at least as three thousand have died in this city -all unknown and indifferent to me."

a

Near the end of December he was attacked with bronchitis, visitation " which, he remarked, "came as a very strange

*

one to a man who had not for fifty years been confined to bed a single day." He kept his room somewhere about two months. He manifested, throughout, the greatest patience; and his letters, written when he became convalescent, disclose how anxiously he sought to derive spiritual improvement from the affliction: "I hope," he says, "this season of imprisonment has not been without a real advantage in respect to the highest concern. It has brought with it many grave, earnest, and painful reflections. The review of life has been solemnly condemnatory-such a sad deficiency of the vitality of religion, the devotional spirit, the love, the zeal, the fidelity of conscience. I have been really amazed to think how I could-I do not say, have been content with such a low and almost equivocal piety, for I never have been at all content-but, how I could have endured it, without my whole soul rising up against it, and calling vehemently on the almighty Helper to come to my rescue, and never ceasing till the blessed experience was attained. And then the sad burden of accumulated guilt! and the solemn future! and life so near the end! Oh what dark despair but for that blessed light that shines from the Prince of Life, the only and the all-sufficient Deliverer from the second death. I have prayed earnestly for a genuine penitential, living faith on Him. Do you pray for me. Thus I hope this temporary experience of suspended health will have a salu. tary effect on the soul's health. I do not mean that these exercises of mind are a new thing, brought on by this visitation. They have grown upon me in this late declining stage of life. But for everything that enforces and augments them I have cause to be thankful. There is much work yet to be done in this most unworthy soul; my sole reliance is on divine assistance; and I do hope and earnestly trust (trust in that assistance itself) that every day I may yet have to stay on earth, will be employed as part of a period of persevering, and I almost say passionate, petitions for the divine mercy in Christ, and so continue to the last day and hour of life, if consciousness be then granted. Often I am making humbling comparisons between my lot, and that of the many ten thousand who are suffering at this time all the miseries of hopeless destitution. Why am I so favored, and millions so wretched ?". . .

Mr. Foster went to Bourton, for the last time, in the middle of September, 1842. He stayed about six weeks, and returned, * To the Rev. Josiah Hill, February, 1842.

looking rather stouter and apparently somewhat invigorated. He seemed to have enjoyed his visit very much,—to have been gratified by the cordial hospitality and kindness of his relations and old acquaintance, and to have felt much interest in wandering about his old haunts. In writing, while there, to one of his nephews, he thus adverts to the state of public affairs: "I suppose, ‚”* he says, “you have the pestilent Chartists in your part of the country. They are a very stupid and pernicious set; some of their leaders great rogues; the whole tribe a sad nuisance. They have done what they could to frustrate the exertions for obtaining the only public benefit which there is the smallest chance of getting at present, or for a long time to come; that is, an alteration or abrogation of the Corn laws, a thing which would immediately be a most important relief to that commercial interest on which so many tens of thousands are depending. And while they are doing this mischief, they are brawling about universal suffrage, a thing as much out of reach for a very long time to come, as anything they could dream of. And yet, unless they can get this, they say they will accept no other change for the amendment of their condition. What fools! And to judge of their recent proceedings, they are themselves wholly unfit for such a suffrage. What a fine and valuable thing the suffrage would be to men whose chosen business it has been to go and disturb, and break up with noise and violence, and abuse, the important meetings for discussing the best expedients for alleviating the public distress!— No, no; they have yet a great deal to learn before they will be fit for a considerate and judicious voting for members of the legisFature. I wish the people had the Universal Suffrage, provided they were better educated, more intelligent, more sober, more moral; but not in their present state of ignorance and rudeness. Their being so, is, as to some of them, their own fault. But the main weight of the reproach falls on the government and the church, which have left the people in this deplorable condition from generation to generation. There ought to have been, long since, a general national education, which would have made sure of all being educated, in some decent measure,- -as is the case in Prussia and some parts of Germany. But high statesmen and high churchmen have never, till a little lately, given themselves any concern about the matter.

"A sojourn in this village brings back many remembrances.

* To Mr. John Foster, September 22, 1842.

What a cnang of the inhabitants! All the then old people vanished, and those who were in the vigor of middle life now wither ing into age,—and myself as much so as any of them. If I observe some of them stooping as they walk, my attention instantly turns on myself, and I perceive that I do so too, especially since the long and weakening disorder, which last winter confined me many weeks to my chamber, and several weeks to my bed. Within and without are the admonitions that life is hastening to a close. I endeavor to feel and live in conformity to this admonition; greatly dissatisfied with myself and my past life, and having and seeking no ground of hope for hereafter, but solely the all-sufficient merits and atonement of our Lord and Saviour. If that great cause of faith and hope were taken away, I should have nothing left."

In another letter, of rather later date, he refers again to the same topics. "It must have been a most harassing time for you all," he says,* "when you had those late tumults about you. The tumults and outrages will subside, from the conviction and experience that no good can come of them, but much evil, aggravating the evil there was already. But though the violence will be put down, the spirit, the resentment, and the sense of oppression and injustice, in the state of the people, must remain, and increase, till some great change shall come at length, but not soon. One is astonished at the stockish stupidity of those Chartists, if they really did and do dream of obtaining what they demand in their charter. It is impossible but some of the bad men who have been exciting them, and making their own base advantage of them, must know better. Till the times, the nation, and themselves shall have vastly changed, they might as well think of going to the moon. They have greatly damaged the whole cause of reform, by setting the middle as well as the higher ranks more against them than they were before. Nothing could be more mad and mischievous than their proceedings respecting the great question of the corn laws. Besides the extravagance of some of their demands, their irreligious and profligate character has made them detested, and would make them feared if they had any real power. As to their power, do they not see how impotent they would be, whatever were their numbers, against a large disciplined military force, of which fifty thousand would soon be brought into action if there were any occasion for it? There is no chance for the

VOL. II.

*To Mr. John Foster, October 1, 1842.

16

'popular rights,' till the people become better educated and more morally respectable. And I fear their chance for better education s but small, since the aristocracy and the church have very little aisposition to promote that important object."

About Christmas, Mr. Foster had one or two attacks of spitting of blood, and again about the middle of January, 1843. These attacks did not confine him at all to his bed or to his room, but obliged him to be very careful, and to remain in the house for many weeks. As the milder weather came on, he ventured out again, and did not seem in a very perceptibly different state from what he had been in during the previous summer. He was somewhat thinner and more languid-less disposed and less able to move about. His cough also was often very troublesome.

He continued to manifest a deep interest in public affairs, especially the great question of national education; so intense was his anxiety that some measure should be taken to raise the mass of the people, that he would have acquiesced in a measure that would have substantially effected this object, even though accompanied with restrictions inconsistent with what he deemed a just and enlightened policy. "As to the education project," he says,* "the probability seems to be that it will wholly fall to the ground, so that our rising race of savages and pagans will continue to grow up in the hideous condition which has been so frightfully brought to view. For the almost universal remonstrance of the Nonconformists must have a great effect to deter the ministry from persisting in the bill as it stands; and there is small chance that the church arrogance will permit any conciliatory modification. Horrid bad either way; on the one hand, indefinitely prolonged and increasing barbarism, and on the other, the hateful and intolerable domination of the established church. The Methodist folk are going too far, in declaring against the bill absolutely and altogether, whereas the case is so alarmingly urgent, that if such modifications as those proposed by Lord J. Russell, or even the most material part of them, were admitted, one would, however reluctantly, and with a feeling of submitting to some injustice, make considerable concessions, in order that the wretched populace might have a certainty of getting some good in the way of cultivation, rather than be consigned, downright and hopelessly, to the great pestilent swamp of ignorance and barbarism. What a tale is told of our opulent and powerful church and state by the

* To the Rev. Josiah Hill, April 21, 1843.