"Take an example, to our purpose quite :
A man of rank and of capacious soul,
Who riches had, and fame beyond desire;
An heir of flattery, to titles born,
And reputation, and luxurious life.
Yet, not content with ancestorial name,
Or to be known because his fathers were,
He on his height hereditary stood,

And gazing higher, purposed in his heart
To take another step. Above him seemed,
Alone, the mount of song, the lofty seat
Of canonized bard; and thither ward,
By nature taught, and inward melody,
In prime of youth, he bent his eagle eye.

No cost was spared. What books he wished, he read;
What sage to hear, he heard; what scenes to see,
He saw. And first in rambling school-boy days,
Britannia's mountain-walks, and heath-girt lakes,
And story-telling glens, and founts, and brooks,
And maids, as dewdrops pure and fair, his soul
With grandeur filled, and melody, and love.
Then travel came, and took him where he wished.
He cities saw, and courts, and princely pomp;
And mused alone on ancient mountain brows;
And mused on battle-fields, where valour fought
In other days; and mused on ruins grey

With years; and drank from old and fabulous wells;
And plucked the vine that first-born prophets plucked ;
And mused on famous tombs, and on the wave

Of ocean mused, and on the desert waste.
The heaven and earth of every country saw,
Where'er the old inspiring genii dwelt,

Aught that could rouse, expand, refine the soul.
Thither he went and meditated there.

He touched his harp, and nations heard, entranced.
As some vast river of unfailing source,

Rapid, exhaustless, deep, his numbers flowed,
And opened new fountains in the human heart.
Where fancy halted, weary in her flight,

In other men, his, fresh as morning, rose,

And soared untrodden heights, and seemed at home,
Where angels bashful looked. Others, though great,
Beneath their argument seemed struggling whiles;
He from above descending, stooped to touch
The loftiest thought; and proudly stooped, as though
It scarce deserved his verse. With Nature's self
He seemed an old acquaintance, free to jest

At will with all her glorious majesty.
He laid his hand upon "the Ocean's mane,"
And played familiar with his hoary locks.
Stood on the Alp, stood on the Appenines,
And with the thunder talked, as friend to friend;
And wove his garland of the lightning's wing,
In sportive twist, the lightning's fiery wing,
Which, as the footsteps of the dreadful God,
Marching upon the storm in vengeance, seemed;
Then turned, and with the grasshopper, who sung
His evening song beneath his feet, conversed.
Sun, moon, stars, and clouds his sisters were;

Rocks, mountains, meteors, seas, and winds, and storms,
His brothers, younger brothers, whom he scarce
As equals deemed. All passions of all men,
The wild and tame, the gentle and severe;
All thoughts, all maxims, sacred and profane;
All creeds, all seasons, time, eternity;
All that was hated, and all that was dear;
All that was hoped, all that was feared, by man,
He tossed about, as tempest-withered leaves,
Then, smiling, looked upon the wreck he made.
With terror now he froze the cowering blood,
And now dissolved the heart in tenderness;
Yet would not tremble, would not weep himself;
But back into his soul retired, alone,
Dark, sullen, proud, gazing contemptuously
On hearts and passions prostrate at his feet.
So ocean from the plains his waves had late
To desolation swept, retired in pride,
Exulting in the glory of his might,

And seemed to mock the ruin he had wrought.
"As some fierce comet of tremendous size,
To which the stars did reverence, as it passed,
So he through learning and through fancy took
IIis flight sublime, and on the loftiest top

Of Fame's dread mountain sat; not soiled and worn,

As if he from the earth had laboured up;

But as some bird of heavenly plumage fair,

He looked, which down from higher regions came,

And perched it there to see what lay beneath.

"The nations gazed, and wondered much, and praised.

Critics before him fell in humble plight,

Confounded fell, and made debasing signs

To catch his eye; and stretched and swelled themselves To bursting nigh, to utter bulky words

Of admiration vast; and many, too,

Many that aimed to imitate his flight,

With weaker wing, unearthly fluttering made,
And gave abundant sport to after days.

"Great man! the nations gazed and wondered much,

And praised; and many called his evil good.

Wits wrote in favour of his wickedness;
And kings to do him honour took delight.
Thus, full of titles, flattery, honour, fame,
Beyond desire, beyond ambition, full,

He died. He died of what? of wretchedness!
Drank every cup of joy, heard every trump

Of fame, drank early, deeply drank, drank draughts

That common millions might have quenched; then died
Of thirst, because there was no more to drink!
His goddess, Nature, wooed, embraced, enjoyed,
Fell from his arms, abhorred; his passions died;
Died all but dreary, solitary pride;

And all his sympathies in being died.
As some ill-guided bark, well built and tall,
Which angry tides cast out on desert shore,
And then retiring, left it there to rot

And moulder in the winds and rains of heaven;
So he, cut from the sympathies of life,

And cast ashore from Pleasure's boisterous surge,
A wand'ring, weary, worn, and wretched thing,
Scorched, and desolate, and blasted soul,

A gloomy wilderness of dying thought,—
Repined, and groaned, and withered from the earth!
His groanings filled the land, his numbers filled;
And yet he seemed ashamed to groan.
Poor man!
Ashamed to ask, and yet he needed help;
Proof this, beyond all lingering of doubt,
That not in natural or mental wealth,

Was human happiness or grandeur found.”*

Here we have an amplified delineation of great intellectual power, without a particle of moral worth. Behold the picture! How revolting! How fearful! How fiend-like! Is there a youth in the empire who would have such a capacity at the price of such a character? Ought not this dire display of mental wretched

*Course of Time, book iv.

ness to nullify the rage of mere intellectual ambition? Whither shall we turn to find relief from the pain and horror of this dreadful delineation! Let us fix our minds on the late Missionary Williams. Compared with him, how poor a thing was the noble bard of England! How hateful in himself and how hated by mankind!

He knew, he felt, that no man loved him! In the following lines he has correctly drawn his own dark portrait, and faithfully described his own dismal condition. He thus apostrophises and reviles his species :

"O man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power,

Who knows thee well, must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!

By nature vile, ennobled but by name,

Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame!
Ye! who perchance behold this simple urn,

Pass on-it honours none ye wish to mourn :

To mark a friend's remains these stones arise-
I never knew but one, and here he lies!"

Such were the lines written by the poet peer on the monument of his dog-the only "friend" he ever knew! How marked and melancholy a contrast to the condition of the martyred Williams, who counted friends wherever he counted men ! How was this? Whence the marvellous difference? Both were great. Yes; but their greatness was not the same. The missionary was as much distinguished by moral, as the profligate bard by intellectual, greatness. Williams was great in goodness; Byron, in evil. The one was the friend, the other the enemy, of his race. No man is good, but as he does good-his actions are the test of his principles. He that does good, labours in the sun, and his deeds are visible. Mankind soon know their benefactors. Desert does not long go unrewarded. is in the mouth of millions. brity is widening every hour.

The praise of Williams The circle of his cele

I question whether

already he has not as many readers as Byron, and these readers of a character-oh! how different! The moral results, too, of the respective processes of perusal, how unlike to each other!

As the sons of When

The cause of missions is a growing one; and its progress will be limited only by the surface of our globe. The name of Williams will assuredly spread through all lands, and live through all time. righteous and the virtuous increase among the men, his glory will rise, his fame will extend! "the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall have been given to the people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him," John Williams will be venerated as one of the most illustrious Fathers of the New Era, as one of the royal line of Stephen and Antipas, and other martyrs of our God, who have lived and suffered since apostolic times; and his missionary writings, not for their literary but for their moral qualities, will rank as one of the choicest portions of the Classics of a renovated world! Will the fondest admirer of the splendours of unsanctified genius dare to predict thus much for the impious, polluted, and corrupting pages of the author of Childe Harold?

I have shown, in delineating the character of Mr. Williams, and I repeat it, in order to impression—that intellectual and moral greatness have no necessary connexion, they may either exist apart or in harmonious conjunction. Moral greatness is chiefly an affair of the heart; intellectual greatness, of the understanding. Intellectual greatness mainly depends upon the original cast and magnitude of the mind: culture may do much to develope it, but native strength can result only from the stamina imparted at creation. The plough, notwithstanding its importance in working a fine soil, supplies no remedy for the defects of original sterility.

Y