been so sensible, that, if my good wife were not the most indulgent woman, about, in England, I should have heard lectures, many and long, and pronounced in no middle-voice emphasis. Besides all which, it has a thousand times occurred to me, with no gentle reproach of conscience, how much good, absolute and certain, and of the best kinds, might have been done by the expenditure in charity of but a minor part of what a rigid domestic economy has left it just possible to divert to the useless operation of amassing never-to-be-read books. My dear sir, I have gone into this mortifying self-exposure with an honest wish to warn you against such folly. We have often made smart pleasantry of the subject, but really and truly I am this time quite serious and in earnest to warn you of the danger, and against the guilt; for that I feel to be the right word in my own case. A man of very narrow means, as mine have always been (contrary to what I have heard is sometimes reputed), has no moral right to indulge so expensive a taste. Taste, I have said; for with me

it has never been in the smallest degree vanity or ostentation, nor any passion or fancy for making a library, but merely the attraction, indvidually and in detail, of one fine or valuable book, and then another.

About the Glasgow job I have not heard or seen one word since I sent, some month or six weeks since, the concluding pages of MS. . . . Whenever it comes to my hands, I shall be afraid to look into it, from the strong impression I have in its disfavor; it having been all written invita Minerva (as was once the phrase), and the sight of the proof-sheets not having at all brightened my previous estimate. It was a doleful sojourn in an indefinite region of common-place.

CXXXIII. TO B. STOKES, ESQ.

Stapleton, Jan. 3, 1826.

Another thing has occurred to me, before I could write two lines, namely, that since I was with you, you will have had very different concerns on your hands from any little matters of manuscripts and books, that is, the frightful disorder and crash in the commercial and financial system. It is quite dreadful to hear of the extent and depth of the disaster from every side. And it is too much to hope that you will not, in spite of the general caution and safety of your management, have incurred some portion of a mischief so widely spread, and affecting every place. All I can venture to hope is, that your share may be comparatively small, even among those Welsh, whose banks (a number of them) will have been swept down by the torrent. It is truly a wretched state of things, to have been suddenly fallen into by a nation which was beginning to exult in its returning prosperity, which was boasted of by its governors as surpassing almost all former example. But that such a catastrophe could take place, proves the prodigious rot

...

tenness of the system, and that some such event was really quite necessary to happen, to prevent the concealed mischief from becoming wider and more pernicious still. As to the country banks especially, it has long struck the apprehensions of every man of sense, that their endless multiplication, without check or known limits to their issue, was a most flagrant mischief to the community; not only as putting property everywhere in hazard, but as continually affecting and falsifying the very standard of value throughout the nation. At a heavy cost, a great ultimate benefit will have been gained by the breaking up of this vile system, and by the discredit and intimidation which will, for a long time, prevent the possibility of its renewal, to anything approaching to the same iniquitous extent.

CXXXIV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL.

Stapleton, March 22, 1826.

MY DEAR SIR,-It is most distressing to hear what James has suffered, and to think what it is too probable he is suffering still. And I can in a measure, but truly in a very imperfect one, conceive what Mrs. Hill and you must have suffered in apprehension, and in the most painful sympathy. How little (it has often occurred to my thoughts) was so melancholy a dispensation anticipated in the lively and delightful days and weeks which I spent with your family at Little Haven, with James, as one of the most animated and animating spirits in the society! while every hope, of both his affectionate relatives and his admiring friend, calculated on him as rising up with the finest endowments, to be an enlightened and estimable man, and to act a valuable and honorable part in this mortal life; and most unwilling am I to admit the feeling, that the saying this is an implication that such hope is to be surrendered. I still remember there is One with whom "all things are possible ;" and, at the same time you, my dear sir, and my dear and most excellent friend, Mrs. Hill, have the most firm and assured belief, that this almighty and infinitely beneficent Power will do all things right. If it should be the heavenly Father's good pleasure, that you are thus prematurely to lose the object of so much affection and fond anticipation, you know he has such reasons for it, that if they could be fully and intelligibly revealed to you, you would say, with cordial acquiescence," It is well; thy will be done!" You know that this is so. Think what an inestimable blessing it is, in affliction, to know this for an absolute truth,-to know, that if you could have God's own wisdom to judge of the entire case, you would will exactly what he, in the issue of his present dispensation, will

It is consolatory to hear that, under his long and severe sufferings, he has displayed a submission and patience worthy of one who knows he is in the hands of a wise and merciful Disposer. I hope he will receive every consolatory aid, to sustain him through whatever that sovereign

Disposer has appointed yet to await him: and I pray, and confidently trust in the divine mercy, that this most painful discipline may be made most salutary, infinitely so, to the immortal spirit, whether the Lord of life and death has determined to restore him to health or to call him to his presence. I would be most affectionately remembered to him, with every expression of the kindest sympathy, and every wish for his welfare. How little, alas! can all such expressions do to alleviate affliction like his ! but I pray that he may enjoy the favor of Him who can alleviate all suffering and sorrow, and turn them into a cause of joy here and hereafter. I can only wish you and Mrs. Hill the support and blessing of the same almighty Friend, a resource of which you know by experience the value. I would be most kindly remembered to my friend Catherine, and to our friend John, when you write to him. My good wife's wishes are to express her most friendly sympathy and kindest regard. Our boy is still in a delicate, precarious state, but rather a little, we hope, mending. I cannot urge you to write to me in the midst of so much care, and with all your diversified public business also pressing on your time; you know what a welcome thing it will be to hear from you, whenever you can divert a little time and composure to such an occupation. Yours, with the greatest regard,

J. FOSTER.

CXXXV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL.

Stapleton, May, 1826.

My dear Sir,—I will presume there is no need of professions to the effect that, "this long silence has in no degree partaken of forgetfulness, indifference," &c.: no; it has been owing to a paralytic affection of my right hand,- -an affection, however, which I never feel, but when I should take, or attempt to take, a pen. In such a case, there is some mysterious arrest on its power; but lay down or let alone the pen, and I should not be sensible that anything at all ails the limb. There are, nevertheless, rare and unaccountable intervals of this peculiar disorder; and I seize one of them to make an essay at this sheet.

The information respecting friend James has been, on the whole, more favorable than previous accounts had led me to fear the sequel was to prove. And I am indulging an assurance that the advancing fine season is every week bringing some small, but valuable and promising addition to his recovery toward health. Nothing, at the same time, but such a fatality as I have been lamenting would have prevented me from long since writing for information, and in acknowledgment of your last friendly, brief communication, as well as the preceding one. The envelope of the newspaper was legible but in part. I could make out that you still felt great anxiety respecting James; and it so happened that some lines on the topic of laudations conferred on a certain “Essay,” were as clearly visible as ever was Ballantyne's typography, just as if

an evil spirit had taken the trouble to preserve conspicuously the sentence adapted to cherish in me the evil principle of vanity. To be praised by "heads of houses," by college tutors, and by poets! do you not think it was worth while to take some pains in finishing the composition,—that care of elaboration on which you have sometimes condescended to confer your rather scornful compassion? As a set-off, however, to such fume of Arabia, there has not been, as far as I am aware (with the single exception of old friend the Eclectic), one word of notice in any of the hundred printed vehicles of contemporary criticism. You will believe me, I hope, that I have no manner of quarrel with any of them on this account. I am about beginning to try whether I can do another small piece of work for the same employers. They fancy that I have been at it for a considerable time; and I have been too much ashamed of my dilatoriness to undeceive them. . .

I should like vastly to know the whole in and out of your Liverpool station; I mean as to how it accommodates itself to the dispositions, habits, tastes, and likings of Mr. and Mrs. Hill. I have noticed how very taciturn you are on this whole subject. And my faith or presumption in the matter is inclined to coincide with that of some of your Bristol friends; that is to say, that Mr. and Mrs. H. do not like Liverpool at all. They (the Bristol friends) are beginning (or they pretend so) to be looking forward toward the time when the solemn and inviolable laws of the "Celestial Empire" (for the Methodists are the Chinese of the Christian tribes), will permit our old friends to take the other turn in the Bristol station. It is unfortunate, that you cannot come just at this juncture to preserve the perfect integrity of this province of that empire,―to prevent some threatened desertions across its sacred confine, perpetrated under the influence of the attraction of Broadmead. Mr. I am told, is renegade. . . . Mrs. told me lately, that much as she is sorry and reluctant to act in contravention to her worthy husband's will, she shall often be a defaulter in ecclesiastical allegiance. . . . Hall appears to be highly satisfied, and even gratified, with his transfer. By degrees one has come to understand the combination of motives which determined him; no one of them being singly very strong, but the whole together rationally competent to account for and justify the measure. Excepting two or three Sundays occupied in preaching, I have heard him each Sunday evening, the evening being, I understand, generally the superior part of the day. And certainly, whatever it be in point of religious profit, it is a high intellectual luxury; though under a material deduction on account of the difficulty of hearing him. Besides the lowness and thickness of his voice, he does, I am sure, and many say the same, articulate more indistinctly than formerly. . . . . The place is kept full (often not violently crowded), by a very miscellaneous, and partly occasional influx from the Church, Methodists, Quakers, Independents, and no-kind; a few Socinians to complete the compost. Several clergymen regularly; lately an archbishop; members of parliament over from the spiritual sojourn at

Bath; and so forth. As to the archbishop, I should affix the epithet Irish, or you will not believe me. Hall takes possession this week of his house; one of a great number of newly built ones on the road, half a mile on this side Bristol: which house is, during the morning part of the day, to be defended against assault by (if found necessary), culverins, carronades, chevaux de frise, bull-dogs, and what not. But I predict, that there will not be found wanting British valor enough, not unfiequently to dare and overcome all these means and modes of fortification and menace. . . . . Anderson (on easy terms with Hall for many years) will be far more of an intimate with him than any other man. He is a vastly acute and doggedly intellectual fellow, that Anderson, and is intrepid enough not to have the slightest fear of the great man. I stand greatly in awe of him, but shall sometimes venture within reach of his talons, which are certainly of the royal tiger kind. . . . He seems on the whole (for he has not escaped feelings of approaching infirmity, in addition to his old and invincible complaint), in a state of health to promise many years; years it may be hoped of great and peculiar usefulness— peculiar, inasmuch as he will draw under his influence a large portion of the most intelligent part of the people about the place, especially of the class of young, inquisitive, educated folk, many of them apt to be proud or vain of their attainments, and liable to temptation on the side of Socinianism or scepticism.

CXXXVI. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL.

August 2, 1826.

MY DEAR SIR,-At last I put an end to this procrastination, for which it is of no use to say, that I am sorry and ashamed. Nor would I pretend the smallest excuse from the circumstance of having been for a month past, and more, severely tasked with compulsory labor, for a temporary purpose, since a few sentences would have expressed my deep and sympathizing interest in your sorrows. But in truth I have wanted resolution. I have felt how impotent must be all testimonies of friendly concern in so mournful a juncture. I know that the divine Friend alone can be an effectual consoler, and his consolations I rejoiced in the certainty that you enjoyed, and would still further enjoy.

About, I think, a month since, Mrs. F kindly sent me a letter she had received from Mrs. Hill, which contained a most friendly reference to me. It was affecting to contemplate that bright and interesting youth in the state of debility, prostration, and suffering which she described. But how much I rejoiced, and with feelings of congratulation to his affectionate and sorrowing parents, at another part of [the letter] in which his piety, his patience, his entire resignation were so delightfully displayed. What inestimable consolation to his affectionate friends! The letter showed his exhaustion to be so extreme, that I anticipated his almost immediate dismission from the scene of suffering, and felt some