His views of the great social relations were sustained by the natural strength of his character, and nourished by meditation in a life of comparative seclusion. Had he engaged in practical politics, he might have felt the necessity of curbing the impatience of his ardent mind while watching the slow progress of improvement, and have found some amends for a less rapid advance, amidst the complications of modern society, in the greater security with which the requisite changes are brought about.

LETTERS.

CXLIII. TO J. B. WILLIAMS, ESQ.*

April 20, 1827

DEAR SIR,-I am, or ought to be, ashamed to think how long it is since our friend Mr. H. offered me whatever should be the first opportunity in his communications with your part of the country, for the conveyance of a line to you, in acknowledgment of your highly acceptable and valuable present of a copy of your life of P. Henry-a book which, in addition to its intrinsic value, and to the kindness of the presenter, has the grace of so very elegant an exterior. I beg you to believe, that this illlooking lateness of acknowledgment, from one who is procrastination all over, in all things and times, has in real truth nothing to do with the sincerity of the thanks which I request you to accept.

Your many curious and interesting additions to the work have rendered it far more valuable than it was before, especially in connecting its subject, by so many remarkable points, with those times as to make it greatly more illustrative of them. While, as intimately present with the immediate family, the reader is made to see much more of what was doing or suffering by that illustrious fraternity to which, by the character of their piety and zeal, they belonged.-Very curious too are the various notices which may be considered as simply antiquarian. And the very copious index puts every part of the contents at the reader's use.

I am willing to believe that the labor has been a pleasure to you; else I should feel something very like a commiserating sympathy; for the industry must have been very great and protracted. Unthinking readers are little aware what it has cost an author or editor to arrange and elu cidate a multitude of particulars involved in the obscurity, perplexity, and scattered variety of authorities, of the history of a distant age. As to some departments of history and biography, I never can bring myself to

*Now Sir J. B. Williams, Knight, the Hall, Wem.

feel that it is worth while to undergo all this labor; but with respect to that noble race of saints, of which the world will never see the like again (for in the millennium good men will not be formed and sublimed amidst persecution), it is difficult to say what degree of minute investigation is too much, especially in an age in which it is the fashion to misrepresent and decry them.

The portraits, besides being what may be believed individual likenesses, form a very characteristic addition to the work, as being so strikingly puritanical, not only in attire, but in the very cast and character of their looks. That is to say, one cannot help feeling that they look somehow different from what the very same countenances would have done if Mr. and Mrs. Henry had not been puritans,—more unworldly, more honest, more calmly firm, more absolutely good.

I trust that both the editor and the readers will be better for the more intimate acquaintance with them obtained through these researches and illustrations. I do not know what may be argued as to the extent of circulation; but if we may believe that the reprints of religious books of the former age obtain a fair proportion of readers, there ought to be a favorable probability for a book of the same class when brought out in so greatly improved a state.

Wishing you health, and every good of the still higher order,
I am, dear Sir, Yours, very respectfully,

J. FOSTER.

CXLIV. TO JOHN EASTHOPE, ESQ., M.P.

Stapleton, May 23, 1827.

How does the new elevation seem to agree with you? Does the lofty character of a legislator, a senator of Great Britain, a member of that assembly where all the wisdom and virtue of a great nation is presumed to be concentrated-does it sit on you easily and gracefully?

I own I am sorry you are there, from an apprehension of more evil befalling yourself than can be countervailed by the good which as an individual you can render to the nation. . . . . But on which side of the house have you taken that seat? If on the right side, how very queer you must feel your situation,-having gone into the house in the expectation of being in endless battle array against that fortress of power, and any gang that was likely ever to garrison it. You must feel a sad quenching of that fine ferocity with which you were prepared to stand to your gun on the assailants' battery. Can you be perfectly free from all suspicion that there is some shrewd turn of the black art in the case, when you, the whole tribe of you, patriots, reformers, democrats, and what not, find yourselves suddenly transported through the air, from your warlike position in front of Canning, to a station of alliance and fighting co-operation beside him and behind him, while he has not made so much as a hypocritical profession of any change of principles or measures?

The riddance of a good quantity of the most rotten aristocracy from the administration is plainly enough a good thing so far. But we folks who are at a great distance from the grand central monopoly of wisdom, and therefore of slow and obtuse intellects, cannot well comprehend this zealous coalition of the avowed enemies of all corruption with a minister who has been through all times and seasons its friend and defender, -and more than so, fairly tells them, as if in easy scorn of their gullibillity, that he will continue in his old course, explicitly scouting beforehand their parliamentary reform, their attempts in behalf of the dissenters, and all that. To us it would really seem as if this odd sort of league is made at the sole expense of what had been thought the wiser and better-meaning party; and that the reformers, the economists, &c., are consenting to forego all their best projects and even principles for the honor of being denominated . . . . “his honorable friends." The nation truly is to be a mighty gainer by this famous compact.

....

But "catholic emancipation! catholic emancipation!" why yes, very well so far, if that, even so much as that, were in any likelihood to be effected; but this worthy minister has consented to abandon even that to its feeble and remote chance. For, as left to its own shifts, what chance has it in "the Lords ?"

But even supposing this most virtuous and patriotic minister, backed by his scores of converts and new friends, could, would, and did carry this measure; what then? Will he alleviate the oppressive burdens of the country? Will he cut down the profligate and enormous expendi ture of the government? Will he bring any of the detestable public delinquents to justice? Will he blow up a single rotten borough? Will he rout out that infernal court of chancery? Will he do anything toward creating an effective police through the country, every part of which, is every night, in complete exposure to attacks of plunderers and ruffians? Or (to glance abroad) will he do anything for Greece, or any thing to real, effectual purpose for what is named the Peninsula ? Nay, will he do anything at last for even amendment of the West Indies, which he has palavered so much about? No, nothing of all this. So that the good of having got this same admirable prime minister consists in—the good he will not do !

To revert to catholic emancipation (I hate that " catholic,”—“ popery,” and" popish,” were the more proper words with our worthy ancestors) but catholic emancipation. Well, if I were on your bench or any bench in the House, I should most zealously vote for that measure; but with a very different cast of feeling from what seems to prevail among its advo cates in that House. They will have it that popery, that infernal pest, is now become (if it ever was otherwise) a very tolerably good and harmless thing—no intolerance or malignity about it now-liberalized by the illuminated age—the popish priests the worthiest, most amiable, most useful of men. Nay, popery is just as good as any other religion, except some small preference for our "national establishment." Nothing so

impertinent, nothing so much to be deprecated and condemned, as the idle and mischievous fanaticism of attempting to convert papists to proestantism. To hear some of your wise men talk in that house, one would think that the reformation, some centuries back, had been almost a needless thing. "Don't be so silly and methodistical as to cant about the restoration of the Christian religion to its simplicity and purity. The popish church are just as good Christians as any of yourselves can be; and as to their claim to an entire equality of civil privileges, it has not the slightest speck of reasonable doubt upon it."

Now, my dear Sir, is not all this most infamous? Does any sensible man honestly doubt whether popery be intrinsically of the very same spirit that it ever was ? Does any mortal doubt, whether if it were ever to regain an ascendency of power, an uncontrolled dominion in this country, it would reveal the fiend, and again revel in persecution? When did ever the Romish church disavow, in the face of the world, any of its former principles, revoke any of its odious decrees, or even censure any of the execrable abominations, the burnings, the tortures, the massacres, the impostures, perpetrated under its authority? And look at its zealots even in Ireland; what is the spirit of its partizans? What is the language of its Doyle and Co. ?

If I had to preface a vote in the house with a sentence or two, it would be to this effect :-"I would urge this measure most earnestly; not that I can profess to feel this demand strongly grounded on a strict claim of right; for I believe there is essentially and inseparably in popery something of deadly tendency to the welfare of a state. That point, however, I deem not worth debating in the present case, where the measure comes with such an overpowering claim of policy, of expediency, of utility. Without adopting this measure, you absolutely can never tranquillize the people of Ireland. And to have Ireland continuing in the condition in which it will otherwise continue, is an evil and a danger so tremendous, that any possible evil to be apprehended from the emancipation is reduced to an utter trifle in the comparison. But what evil, what danger can there be to apprehend from the emancipation? Are you so dreaming, or so lunatic, as to fancy it possible that popery, whatever civil privileges were given it, can ever acquire an ascendency or even any material power in the British state? What! popery attain to an overawing power, in spite of the rapidly augmenting knowledge and intelligence of the people-the almost miraculous diffusion of the Bible-the spirit of license, and fearless discussion of all subjects—the extension of religion, and of dissent from all hierarchies-with the settled deep, and general prejudice against popery into the bargain—and the wealth, power, rank, and influence, nine-tenth part of them, on the side of protestantism? How can you keep your countenances, how can you help laughing outright, while you are pretending to entertain any such apprehensions ?"

But what presumption it is, for a sitter in an obscure country garret,

to be writing opinions about state matters to a sitter in the “imperial parliament!"

CXLV. TO THE REV. JOSIAH HILL.

Stapleton, June 22, 1827.

I went to pass a week or two with an old friend and relation, a physician, in order to take his advice about anything remedial or palliative for the habitual weakness and frequent painful sensations of my eyes, which are failing sadly. It often occurs to my thoughts how my John and your James are quit of all these mortal infirmities, grievances, and apprehensions; no longer involved in the frailty of our animated, endangered, and perishing clay; no longer dependant for their knowledge, their activity, their enjoyments, on these organs of matter; no longer having their "foundation in the dust." But we shall not long stay behind; we too are fast advancing toward a separation from all these elements; let us hope and sedulously prepare to meet again, in a nobler economy, those who have already arrived there, and have carried our affections with them.

... I have just declined, from conscious necessity and duty, on several accounts, a journey of three weeks through North Wales, with a little party of friends at Worcester, who kindly solicited me to take a seat in a young lady's elegant one-horse vehicle, herself the driver. Snowdon! the grand chain bridge! romantic valleys, cataracts, castles, and all the rest! It would truly have been a vast luxury. But under the veto of ever so many causes combined, I am to see none of those things; some of which I did see about fifteen years since, in company with the person who is to be the leader in this new expedition, and who tells me he has never had the opportunity of inviting me under such favorable circumstances to renew the adventure, and thinks very improbable he ever may again. He is an admirable guide, and I am enthusiastic with respect to that enchanted region; but old conscience said "No," in consideration of good wife's unfortunate health and imprisonment at home in this dingy place—of studious works sadly neglected, though promised to be done long since-of the expense of such luxury; and all this corroborated by a rheumatic affection of my back, which, were it to continue or become worse, would disable me for the climbing of mountains for the purpose of seeing the panorama.

I have the most unwelcome task before me of preaching in substitution for Hall on Sunday evening; he having consented, very reluctantly, to go to London to preach two sermons for the benefit of our Bristol Academy.

CXLVI. TO JOHN PURSER, SEN., ESQ.

Stapleton, 1827.

IY DEAR OLD FRIEND,-Unless Mr. Evans, who kindly offers to con