And yet, for more than thirty years, he was a member of the unreformed parliament, representing there that people, so few and singular, who dare to think, and speak, and act for themselves. He never gave one party vote, was never claimed as an adherent by any of the contending factions of his times, and, of course, neither won nor sought the favor of any. An impartial arbiter, whose suffrage was the honorable reward of superior reason, he sat apart and aloft, in a position which, though it provoked a splenetic sarcasm from Burke, commanded the respect even of those whom it rebuked.

by his reason as the supreme earthly judge. I assailed him, not as the gloomy ministers Whatever might be his topic, or whatever of vengeance, but as the necessary exercise his employment, he never laid aside the of virtues not otherwise to be called into Ermine. activity. They came as the salutary lesscns of a father, not as the penal inflictions of a judge. Nor did the Father, to whom he so meekly bowed, see fit to lay on him those griefs, under the pressure of which the bravest stagger. He never witnessed the irruption of death into his domestic paradise, nor the rending asunder by sin, the parent of death, of the bonds of love and reverence which united to each other the inmates of that happy home-a home happy in his presence from whose lips no morose, or angry, or impatient word ever fell; on whose brow no cloud of anxiety or discontent was ever seen to rest. Surrounded to his latest hours by those whom To the great Whig doctrines of Peace, it had been his chief delight to bless and Reform, Economy, and Toleration, he lent to instruct, he bequeathed to them the reall the authority of his name, and occa- collection of a wise, a good, and a happy sionally the aid of his voice. But he was man; that so, if in future life a wider acan infrequent and unimpressive speaker, quaintance with the world should chill the and sought to influence the measures of his heart with the skepticism so often engenday rather by the use of his pen, than by dered by such knowledge, they might be any participation in its rhetoric. His wri- reassured in the belief that human virtue tings, moral, religious, and political, were is no vain illusion; but that, nurtured by voluminous, though destitute of any such the dews of heaven, it may expand into mutual dependence as to unite them into fertility and beauty, even in those fat places one comprehensive system; or any such of the earth which romance disowns, and graces of execution as to obtain for them on which no poet's eye will condescend to permanent acceptance. But in a domestic rest. liturgy, composed for the use of his own family, and made public after his death, he encountered, with as much success as can attend it, the difficulty of finding thoughts and language meet to be addressed by the ephemeral dwellers on the earth to Him who inhabiteth eternity. It is simple, grave, weighty, and reverential; and forms a clear, though a faint and subdued, echo of the voice in which the Deity has revealed his sovereign will to man. That will he habitually studied, adored, and labored to adopt. Yet his piety was reserved and unobtrusive. Like the life-blood throbbing in every pulse and visiting every fibre, it was the latent though perennial source of his mental health and energy.

A goodly heritage! yet to have transmitted it (if that were all) would, it must be confessed, be an insufficient title to a place amongst memorable men. Nor, except for what he accomplished as the associate of others, could that claim be reasonably preferred on behalf of Henry Thornton. Apart, and sustained only by his own resources, he would neither have undertaken, nor conceived, the more noble of those benevolent designs to which his life was devoted. Affectionate, but passionless-with a fine and indeed a fastidious taste, but destitute of all creative imagination-gifted rather with fortitude to endure calamity, than with courage to exult in the struggle with danger-a lover of mankind, A peace, perfect and unbroken, seemed but not an enthusiast in the cause of our to possess him. His tribute of pain and common humanity-his serene and perspisorrow was paid with a submission so tran- cacious spirit was never haunted by the quil, as sometimes to assume the appear-visions, nor borne away by the resistless ance of a morbid insensibility. But his impulses, of which heroic natures, and they affections, unimpaired by lawless indul- alone, are conscious. Well qualified to gence, and constant to their proper objects, were subject to a control to be acquired by no feebler discipline. Ills from without

impart to the highest energies of others a wise direction and inflexible perseverance, he had to borrow from them the glowing

temperament which hopes against hope, and is wise in despite of prudence. He had not far or long to seek for such an alli

ance.

county of York, now fairly under the can vass of his own bright and joyous fancies. He moved in obedience to some impulse like that which prompts the wheelings of the swallow, or the dodgings of the barbel. But whether he advanced, or paused, or revolved, his steps were still measured by the ever-changeful music of his own rich voice, ranging over all the chords expressive of mirth and tenderness, of curiosity or surprise, of delight or of indignation Eheu, fugaces! . Those elder forms are al now reposing beneath the clods of the valley; those playful boys are venerable dignitaries of the Church; and he who then seemed to read while he listened silently, is now, in the garrulity of declining years, telling old tales, and distorting, perhaps in the attempt to revive them, pictures which have long since been fading from the memory. But for that misgiving, how easy to depict the nearer approach of William Wilberforce, and of the tail by which, like

On the bright evening of a day which had run its course some thirty or forty summers ago, the usual groups had formed themselves in the library already celebrated. Addressing a nearer circle, might be heard above the unbusy hum the voice of the Prelector, investigating the characteristics of Seneca's morality perhaps; or, not improbably, the seizure of the Danish fleet; or, it might be, the various gradations of sanity as exhibited by Robert Hall or Joanna Southcote; when all pastimes were suspended, and all speculations put to flight, to welcome the approach of what seemed a dramatic procession, emerging from the deep foliage by which the further slopes of the now checkered lawn were overhung. In advance of the rest two noisy urchins were putting to no common test the philanthropy of a tall shaggy dog, their play- some Gaelic Chief or Hibernian demafellow, and the parental indulgence of the slight figure which followed them. Limbs scarcely stouter than those of Asmodeus, sustaining a torso as unlike as possible to that of Theseus, carried him along with the agility of an antelope, though under the weight of two coat-pockets, protuberant as the bags by which some learned brother of the coif announces and secures his rank as leader of his circuit. Grasping a pocket volume in one hand, he wielded in the other a spud, caught up in his progress through the garden, but instinct at his touch with more significance than a whole museum of horticultural instruments. At one instant, a staff on which he leant and listened to the projector at his elbow developing his plan for the better coppering of ships' bottoms, at the next it became a wand, pointing out to a portly constituent from the Cloth Hall at Leeds some rich effect of the sunset; then a truncheon, beating time to the poetical reminiscences of a gentleman of the Wesleyan persuasion, looking painfully conscious of his best clothes and of his best behavior; and ere the sacred cadence had reached its close, a cutlass raised in mimic mutiny against the robust form of William Smith, who, as commodore of this ill-assorted squadron, was endeavoring to convoy them to their destined port. But little availed the sonorous word of command, or the heart-stirring laugh of the stout member for Norwich, to shape a straight course for the volatile representative of the

gogue, he was attended! How easy to portray the joyous fusion of the noisy strollers across the lawn, with the quieter but not less happy assemblage which had watched and enjoyed their pantomime-to trace the confluence of the two streams of discourse, imparting grace and rapidity to the one, and depth and volume to the other -to paint the brightening aspect of the grave censor, as his own reveries were flashed back on him in picturesque forms and brilliant colors-or to delineate the subdued countenance of his mercurial associate, as he listened to profound contemplations on the capacities and the duties of man!

Of Mr Wilberforce, we have had occasion to write so recently, and so much at large, that though the Agamemnon of the host we celebrate-the very sun of the Claphamic system-we pause not now to describe him. His fair demesne was conterminous with that of Mr. Thornton; nor lacked there sunny banks, or sheltered shrubberies, where, in each change of season, they revolved the captivity under which man was groaning, and projected schemes for his deliverance. And although such conclaves might scarcely be convened except in the presence of these two, yet were they rarely held without the aid of others, especially of such as could readily find their way thither from the other quarters of the sacred village.

It is not permitted to any Coterie alto

pass for fools, in a world whose boasted wisdom they accounted folly. In their one central and all-pervading idea, they had found an influence hardly less than magical. They had esteemed it impossible to inculcate too emphatically, or too widely, that truth which Paul had proclaimed indif ferently to the idolaters of Ephesus, the revellers of Corinth, the sophists of Athens, and the debauched citizens of sanguinary Rome.

gether to escape the spirit of Coterie.] too confident in the divine reality of their Clapham Common, of course, thought itself cause, to heed much what hostility they the best of all possible commons. Such at might awaken. They had been content to least was the opinion of the less eminent of those who were entitled to house-bote and dinner-bote there. If the common was attacked, the whole homage was in a flame. If it was laughed at, there could be no remaining sense of decency amongst men. The commoners admired in each other the reflection of their own looks, and the echo of their own voices. A critical race, they drew many of their canons of criticism from books and talk of their own parentage; and for those on the outside of the pale, there might be, now and then, some failure of charity. Their festivities were not exhilarating. New faces, new topics, and a less liberal expenditure of wisdom immediately after dinner, would have improved them. Thus, even at Clapham, the discerning might perceive the imperfections of our common nature, and take up the lowly confession of the great Thomas Erskine After all, gentlemen, I am but

a man.'

Their sons adopted the same creed with equal sincerity, and undiminished earnestness, but with a far keener sense of the hinderances opposed to the indiscriminate and rude exhibition of it. Absolute as was the faith of Mr. Wilberforce and his associates, it was not possible that the system called Evangelical,' should be asserted by them in the blunt and uncompromising tone of their immediate predecessors. A more elaborate education, greater familiarity with the world and with human affairs, a deeper insight into science and history, with a far nicer discernment of mere conventional proprieties, had opened to them a range of thought, and had brought them into relations with society, of which their fathers were comparatively destitute. Positiveness, dogmatism, and an ignorant contempt of difficulties, may accompany the firmest convictions, but not the convictions of the firmest minds. The freedom with which the vessel swings at anchor, ascertains the soundness of her anchorage. To be conscious of the force of prejudice in ourselves and others, to feel the strength of the argument we resist, to know how to change places internally with our antagonists, to understand why it is that we provoke this scorn, disgust, or ridicule-and still to be unshaken, and still to adhere with fidelity to the standard we have chosen;-this is a triumph, to be won by those alone on whom is bestowed not merely the faith which overcomes the world, but the pure and peaceable wisdom which is from above.

But if not more than men, they were not less. They had none of the intellectual coxcombry since so prevalent. They did not instil philosophic and political Neology into young ladies and officers of the Guards, through the gentle medium of the fashionable novel. They mourned over the ills inseparable from the progress of society, without shrieks or hysterics. They were not epicures for whose languid palates the sweets of the rich man's banquet must be seasoned with the acid of the poor man's discontent. Their philanthropy did not languish without the stimulant of satire; nor did it degenerate into a mere ballet of tender attitudes and sentimental pirouettes. Their philosophy was something better than an array of hard words. Their religion was something more than a collection of impalpable essences; too fine for analysis, and too delicate for use. It was a hardy, serviceable, fruit-bearing, and patrimonial religion. They were the sons, by natural or spiritual birth, of men who, in the earlier days of Methodism, had shaken off the lethargy in which, till then, the Church of England And such were they whom the second had been entranced-of men, by whose generation of the Evangelical party acagency the great evangelic doctrine of faith, knowledged as their secular chiefs. They emerging in its primeval splendor, had not fell on days much unlike those which we, only overpowered the contrary heresies, their children, have known-days less softbut had perhaps obscured some kindred ened by the charities and courtesies, but truths. This earlier generation of the evan-less enervated by the frivolities of life. gelic school had been too ingenuous, and Since the fall of the Roman republic, there

had not arisen within the bosom, and armed [sist the tyranny with which the earth was with the weapons, of civilization itself, a threatened.

power so full of menace to the civilized Nor was it difficult to distinguish or to world as that which then overshadowed grapple with their antagonists. The slave Europe. In the deep seriousness of that trade was then brooding like a pestilence dark era, they of whom we speak looked over Africa; that monster iniquity which back for analogies to that remote conflict fairly outstripped all abhorrence, and baffled of the nations; and drew evil auguries from all exaggeration-converting one quarter of the event of the wars which, from Sylla to this fair earth into the nearest possible reOctavius, had dyed the earth with the blood semblance of what we conceive of hell, reof its inhabitants, to establish at length a versing every law of Christ, and openly demilitary despotism-ruthless, godless, and fying the vengeance of God. The formation abominable. But they also reverted to the of the holy league, of which we are the advent, even at that age of lust and cruelty, chroniclers, synchronized with that unhapof a power destined to wage successful war,py illness which, half a century ago, withnot with any external or earthly potentate, drew Thomas Clarkson from the strife to but with the secret and internal spring of which he was set apart and consecrated; all this wretchedness and wrong-the pow-leaving his associates to pursue it during the er of love, incarnate though divine-of twelve concluding years, unaided by his love exercised in toils and sufferings, and presence, but not without the aid of his at length yielding up life itself, that from example, his sympathy, and his prayers. that sacrifice might germinate the seeds of They have all long since passed away, a new and enduring life-the vital princi- while he still lives (long may he live!) to ple of man's social existence, of his indi- enjoy honors and benedictions, for which vidual strength, and of his immortal the diadem of Napoleon, even if wreathhopes. ed with the laurels of Goethe, would be a And as, in that first age of Christianity, mean exchange. But, alas! it is not given truth, and with it heavenly consolation, to any one, not even to Thomas Clarkson, had been diffused, not alone or chiefly by to enjoy a glory complete and unalloyed. the lifeless text, but by living messengers Far from us be the attempt to pluck one proclaiming and illustrating the renovating leaf from the crown which rests on that energy of the message intrusted to them; so time-honored head. But with truth there to those who, at the commencement of this may be no compromise, and truth wrings century, were anxiously watching the con- from us the acknowledgment, that Thomas vulsions of their own age, it appeared that Clarkson never lived at Clapham. Not the sorrows of mankind would be best so that comrade in his holy war, whom, assuaged, and the march of evil most effec- of all that served under the same banner, tually stayed, by a humble imitation of that he seems to have loved the best. At the inspired example. They therefore formed distance of a few bow-shots from the house themselves into a confederacy, carefully or- of Henry Thornton, was the happy home ganized and fearlessly avowed, to send in which dwelt Granville Sharpe; at once forth into all lands, but above all into their the abiding guest and the bosom friend of own, the two witnesses of the Church-his more wealthy brothers. A critic, with Scripture and Tradition; -Scripture, to be the soul of a churchwarden, might indeed interpreted by its divine Author to the de- fasten on certain metes and bounds, hostile vout worshippers-tradition, not of doctri- to the parochial claims of the family of nal tenets, but of that unextinguishable Sharpe; but in the wider ken and more zeal, which, first kindled in the apostolic liberal judgment of the historian, the dignitimes, has not wanted either altars to re-ty of a true Claphamite is not to be refusceive, or attendant ministers to feed and ed to one whose evening walk and morning propagate, the flame. Bibles, schools, mis- contemplations led him so easily and so sionaries, the circulation of evangelical books, and the training of evangelical clergymen, the possession of well attended pulpits, war through the press, and war in Parliament, against every form of injustice which either law or custom sanctioned such were the forces by which they hoped to extend the kingdom of light, and to re

often within the hallowed precincts.

Would that the days of Isaac Walton could have been prolonged to the time when Granville Sharpe was to be committed to the care of the biographers! His likeness from the easel of the good old Angler would have been drawn with an outline as correct and firm, and in colors as soft and as

transparent, as the portraits of Hooker or of thought, combined with profound reverence Herbert, of Doune or of Watton. A nar- for hoar authority-a settled conviction of rative, no longer than the liturgy which the wickedness of our race, tempered by an they all so devoutly loved, would then have infantine credulity in the virtue of each superseded the annals which now embalm separate member of it-a burning indignahis memory beneath that nonconforming tion against injustice and wrong, reconprolixity which they all so devoutly hated.

ciled with pity and long-suffering towards the individual oppressor-all the sternness which Adam has bequeathed to his sons, wedded to all the tenderness which Eve has transmitted to her daughters.

The grandson of an Archbishop of York, the son of an Archdeacon of Northumberland, the father of a Prebendary of Durham, Granville Sharpe, descending to the rank from which Isaac Walton rose, was appren- As long as Granville Sharpe survived, it ticed to a linen-draper of the name of Hal- was too soon to proclaim that the age of sey, a Quaker who kept his shop on Tower chivalry was gone. The Ordnance clerk Hill. When the Quaker died, the inden- sat at his desk with a soul as distended as tures were transferred to a Presbyterian of that of a Paladin bestriding his war-horse ; the same craft. When the Presbyterian re- and encountered with his pen such giants, tired, they were made over to an Irish Pa- hydras, and discourteous knights, as infestpist. When the Papist quitted the trade, ed the world in the eighteenth century. they passed to a fourth master, whom the He found the lineal representative of the apprentice reports to have had no religion Willoughbys de Parham in the person of a at all. At one time a Socinian took up his retired tradesman; and buried himself in abode at the draper's, and assaulted the pedigrees, feoffments, and sepulchral infaith of the young apprentice in the mys- scriptions, till he saw his friend enjoying teries of the Trinity and the Atonement. his ancestral privileges among the peers of Then a Jew came to lodge there, and con-Parliament. He combated, on more than tested with him the truth of Christianity it- equal terms, the great Hebraist, Dr. Kenself. But blow from what quarter it might, nicott, in defence of Ezra's catalogue of the storm of controversy did but the more the sacred vessels, chiefs, and families. He endear to him the shelter of his native labored long, and with good success, to denest, built for him by his forefathers, like feat an unjust grant made by the Treasury that of the swallow of the Psalmist, in the to Sir James Lowther, of the Forest of Incourts and by the altar of his God. He glewood, and the manor and castle of Carstudied Greek to wrestle with the Socinian-lisle. He waged a less fortunate war against he acquired Hebrew to refute the Israelite- the theatrical practice of either sex appearhe learned to love the Quaker, to be kind ing in the habiliments of the other. He to the Presbyterian, to pity the Atheist, moved all the powers of his age, political and to endure the Roman Catholic. Charity and intellectual, to abolish the impressment (so he judged) was nurtured in his bosom by of seamen, and wound up a dialogue, with these early polemics, and the affectionate Johnson, on the subject, by opposing the spirit which warmed to the last the current scriptural warning, woe to them that call of his maturer thoughts, grew up, as he be- evil good, and good evil,' to what he delieved, within him, while alternately mea- scribed as the plausible sophistry and imsuring crapes and muslins, and defending portant self-sufficiency' of the Sage. Prethe faith against infidels and heretics. senting himself to the then Secretary of The cares of the mercer's shop engaged State, Lord Dartmouth, he denounced, with no less than seven years of a life destined prophetic solemnity, the guilt of despoiling to be held in grateful remembrance as long and exterminating in the Charib war that as the language or the history of his na- miserable remnant of the aboriginal race tive land shall be cultivated among men. of the Antilles. As a citizen of London, The next eighteen were consumed in the he came to the rescue of Crosby, the Lord equally obscure employment of a clerk in Mayor, in his struggle with the House of the office of Ordnance. Yet it was during Commons. As a citizen of the world, he this period that Granville Sharpe disclosed called on earth and heaven to stay the to others, and probably to himself, the na-plugues of slavery and the slave-trade, and ture, so singular and so lovely, which dis-advocated the independence of America tinguished him—the most inflexible of hu- with such ardor as to sacrifice to it his own. man wills, united to the gentlest of human Orders had reached his office to ship muhearts-an almost audacious freedom of nitions of war to the revolted colonies.

If