names. The devastating course of Alexander ter minated in a manner suitable to his character. A burn ing and rapid fever, which cut him off amidst spears and shields, meetly closed his intemperate and fiery career! The sanguinary end of Cæsar, too, was in perfect keeping with his dreadful progress, every step of which was stained with the blood of man! Charles XII. could not have finished, more appropriately than he did, his brief, mad race of reckless courage. All mere men of letters, endowed with true historic and dramatic tastes, feel that Napoleon should have died at Waterloo. For the man who had stilled the most dreadful and alldevouring revolutionary storm of ruin that ever swept the surface of a great nation; who had amalgamated hostile parties of the greatest power and the fiercest spirit; who had rallied and invigorated the hearts of prostrate millions; who had established a government of iron strength, and an empire of gigantic dimensions; who had not only quelled the kings, but subverted the thrones, of Europe; for such a man to end his days in lonely exile and fettered durance on a barren rock of the ocean, like some petty pirate, was humiliation indeed! "The desolater desolate ! The victor overthrown! The arbiter of others' fate, A suppliant for his own! Is this the man of thousand thrones, Who strewed the earth with hostile bones ?" Then there is Cook, Albion's glory, and the world's wonder; was it to be endured that the bones of Cook should moulder in Westminster Abbey? What place so fit for their repose as an island of his own discovery? Was not Owhyhee their proper place of sepulture? His was a death worthy of his matchless maritime glory. The idea of such a man's decease amid the soft obscurities of British retirement, perhaps some half century posterior to the achievement of his matchless triumphs -his widow died but the other day-is not to be tolerated. It would have robbed the record of such triumphs of half its interest, themselves of more than half their worth, and of all their tragic grandeur. You have doubtless often felt with me that the remarkable life of Captain Wilson, of the Duff, had a tame and insipid conclusion. He dropped into comparative insignificance; and his death excited little more notice than that of a pious and worthy Thames waterman. Cook was in his own department, that Williams was in his; the career of the seaman shone resplendent with maritime, the career of the missionary with moral, glory. They were both Englishmen; the sphere of both their labours was Polynesia: the one represented England's power and science, the other her piety and humanity; both had earned the confidence of their country, and the admiration of mankind; both were killed with the club of the savage. Behold the parallel ! Who ought to wish it otherwise, either in respect of the mariner or the missionary? "Ut nec pes, nec caput uni What It deserves calm consideration, that, like Cook, the work of Williams was near a close. The life of Cook would have added but little to the records of maritime discovery. Like Nelson, he fell not till the victory was decided. Little more in Polynesia was left for him to discover; and, although he had lived, it did not follow that he should have been the discoverer of the stray isles which had escaped his notice. He had reaped the harvest; to others he could afford to leave the gleanings. All this finds a strange analogy in the case of Williams. The romance of his career was past and gone. In the nature of things, it was impossible to add much of the marvellous to what he had achieved. It seems to me pretty certain that the issue of a four or five years' cruise in the Camden, would have been a disappointment. Like the Society's deputation, it would have proved a project of more splendour than practical utility. The chief groups have all been more or less invested by the missionaries of the London, Wesleyan, and American Societies; and what remains can be overtaken by the use of ordinary means. That the Camden will be a matter of great convenience and substantial comfort to the agents at the stations of the different groups and isles, there can be little doubt; but it remains to be seen whether that accommodation, highly desirable as it may be, can be permanently enjoyed, unless at an expense which the directors of the Society will hardly feel warranted to incur. Be this as it may, I have a conviction which will not be easily shaken, that, had our friend survived, the result of the expedition would have been-disappointment. All that remained to be done was a very plain, unpoetic, and every-day sort of affair. He could have done but little, because little was to be done, that cannot be as successfully performed by several of his surviving brethren in the South Seas. Much reflection has convinced me, that, for popular effect, for the reputation of Mr. Williams, and for the purposes of history, he died in the proper manner, at the proper place, and at the proper time. Instead of losing ourselves in idle gazing on the awful abyss of futurity, and guessing about what might have happened had he survived, it becomes us to rein in our fancy, and allow our judgment to examine the facts of his marvellous history, and to weigh well what he has done. Calm inquiry on this point will, perhaps, establish the conclusion, that he had performed all that can be wisely permitted to one man, and that more usefulness and more honour would have been as incompatible with his own safety as with the Divine purpose. As in earth, so in heaven, "Vivite felices quibus est fortuna peracta Jam sua!" I know Before me lies the memorandum left by Mr. Williams on the day preceding his death: "This is a most memorable day, a day which will be transmitted to posterity; and the record of events which have this day happened, will exist long after those who have taken an active part in them shall have retired into the shades of oblivion; and the results of this day will benot what to make of this extraordinary passage; I am equally touched and perplexed by it. Hitherto we have heard of nothing done to signalize this 18th of November, 1839, except leaving some teachers at Tanna, an event of so common a character, and so disproporționate to the intensely glowing expressions of the memorandum, that one impatiently asks for something more, something which will warrant and sustain its language; language so unlike the ordinary manner of the calm, cool, and simple Williams. But, my dear Sir, shall we not wait in vain? Was there not in the memo randum something prophetic? Did not our departed friend, like the prophets of old, write words of which he saw not the full import? Was not the prediction of the 18th verified in the catastrophe of the 20th? In this view the expression of the memorandum is not exaggerated: it is barely sufficient to clothe the awful facts. Yes, the prediction will have a full accomplishment. The day of the martyrdom of Williams is indeed "a most memorable day, a day which will be transmitted to posterity." I cannot doubt that the servant of God wrote—though unconsciously-under a supernatural impression, a feeling of high, very high excitement: and it continued; for when, on the next day, the Camden sighted Erromanga, the narrator says, "Mr. Williams was excited with such an intense desire to leave the native teachers there, that he could hardly sleep." Ah! he little thought that he was to leave, not them, but his own body! The readers of the "Missionary Enterprises" will now be taught to connect with the death of Mr. Williams, a circumstance which had occurred full fifteen years before, as detailed in the following passage : "My mind had, for some time before this, been contemplating the extension of our labours to the Navigators' Islands and the New Hebrides; and, as far back as 1824, I wrote to the directors of the Missionary Society upon the subject. As the gospel was now established at the Hervey Islands, I began more seriously to think of taking a voyage to those distant groups; and, prior to my leaving Raiatea, I communicated my wishes to Mrs. Williams; who, on learning that the islands I proposed to visit were from 1800 to 2000 miles distant, and that I should be absent about six months, exclaimed, |