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'How can you suppose that I can give my consent to such a strange proposition? You will be eighteen hundred miles away, six months absent, and among the most savage people we are acquainted with; and if you should lose your life in the attempt, I shall be left a widow, with my fatherless children, twenty thousand miles from my friends and my home.' Finding her so decidedly opposed to the undertaking, I did not mention it again, although my mind was still fixed upon the object. ."* Yes, his apostolic "mind was still fixed upon the object;" and, so soon as he was able, to the New Hebrides he went, and at the New Hebrides he fell!

At a subsequent period he was still bent upon visiting the New Hebrides, prior to his arrival in England, but was deterred by "the painfully distressing accounts he received" at Tongatabu.† Throughout all his course he was in constant danger,-" in perils by water, and in perils by land." For the sixth time, "he was rescued from a watery grave on the shores of Atiu. He had also narrowly escaped death from shooting and from stabbing. Till the arrival of the predestined hour, however, he was immortal; but then, in a moment, when full of security, he was cut off, in the midst of his strength and usefulness.

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Ultima semper

Expectanda dies homini est, dicique beatus

Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera debet."

Dear departed friend! in what region of the universe is thine abode? What are the bounds and laws of thy

* Williams, p. 37.

+ Ibid. p. 79.

Ibid. p. 70.

sphere of action, knowledge, and vision? Does it comprehend our world? Art thou a ministering angel to thy weeping widow and scattered orphans? Hast thou access to the field of thy former toils? Hast thou been allowed to visit Raiatea, Rarotonga, and Upolu, and to brood, with forgiving solicitude, over the shores of Erromanga? Hast thou returned to England, and revisited the temple in which thou wast born of God? Hast thou penetrated the studious retirement of thy "father in Christ?" Wast thou present when we lately met, and largely conversed of thee? Have thy sublimed faculties witnessed my affectionate and reverential meditations during the composition of these letters? Is it permitted thee to hover above my page, and note its record? Is thy gentle spirit now before me? Oh that thou wouldst speak! Oh for one day of free converse! But the wish is vain :

"Ille discessit: ego somno solutus sum.'

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LETTER X.

TO THE REV. THOMAS GILLESPIE, D.D., PROFESSOR OF LATIN IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS.

INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL GREATNESS COMPARED AND ILLUSTRATED FROM HUME, BYRON, THE ANCIENT CLASSICS, AND THE LATE JOHN WILLIAMS.

MY DEAR SIR,-Your high and sympathetic genius, combined with your generosity and humanity, have induced me to address you in the present letter. Independently of this, however, there are other weighty considerations which might have prompted me to do so. My personal obligations to that ancient and famous seat of learning, the University of St. Andrews, in which you hold so important and influential a station ;-to its Literary and Philosophical Society, with which also you are associated;-to that first of European scholars, your illustrious relative and predecessor, the late Dr. Hunter;-and last, not least, to yourself;-these are circumstances, any one of which would have dictated the propriety and duty of such a dedication. In this volume, however, personal considerations have, in all cases, been excluded; and the individuals to whom the Letters are inscribed have been chosen solely on

the ground of congruity between their characters and the subjects on which they have been respectively addressed. Your love of literature, of liberty, of peace, and of mankind, insure an abundant sympathy with the sentiments about to be avowed. With CICERO, in his preface to Atticus, prefixed to his CATO MAJOR, I can say, "Novi enim moderationem animi tui et æquitatem: teque non cognomen solùm Athenis deportâsse, sed humanitatem et prudentiam intelligo. Et tamen te suspicor iisdem rebus, quibus meipsum interdum graviùs commoveri quarum consolatio et major est, et in aliud tempus differenda. Nunc autem mihi visum est de senectute aliquid ad te conscribere. Hoc enim onere, quod mihi commune tecum est, aut jam urgentis, aut certè adventantis senectutis, et te et meipsum levari volo. Etsi te quidem id modicè ac sapienter, sicut omnia, et ferre, et laturum esse certè scio. Sed mihi, cum de senectute aliquid vellem scribere, tu occurrebas dignus eo munere, quo uterque nostrum communiter uteretur." With the modification necessarily implied, and easily understood, these words of the great Roman express my sentiments and object. I now proceed to lay before you my views of one of the greatest subjects that can occupy the mind of man-a subject the more interesting to you, perhaps, from its extreme importance in relation to your literary functions.

You know full well, Sir, that Intellect is the great Idol, and its culture the chief business, of the juvenile myriads who resort to our universities. Moral greatness is by them but slightly heeded: it is, indeed, seldom mentioned, little desired, and less pursued. I now look back, with views much altered, to the course of study pursued both at St. Andrews and at Glasgow, during

the period of my attendance at those seats of learning. I can now perceive that immense improvements might be introduced into all the classes, but especially into those of Latin, Greek, Logic, and Ethics.

The manner in which these classes used to be conducted, rendered them fearfully perilous to the piety of spiritually-minded young men. Their tendency was, and that most decidedly, anti-Christian. The man who prosecuted his studies in the light of eternity, and contemplated the bearing of all his academic pursuits upon the service of Christ, the glory of God, and the good of mankind, as the true end of life, had much to grieve and discourage him. The air of academic groves was not, to such a man, the air of heaven. The genius which there presided was the genius of heathenism. The whole system required a thorough reformation. There was nothing done to infuse right views either of study or of life,— nothing to purify and regulate the fires of literary and philosophic ambition, which burned and blazed so fiercely, and with such a lurid flame, in a multitude of bosoms. The consequence was often lamentable. I speak from close observation, as well as from bitter experience. In the four classes which I have mentioned, frequent and most seasonable opportunities occur for passing remarks from the Professor's chair, which would have more weight with the confiding and admiring auditors than a hundred languid homilies from the pulpits of the college chapels. It will be a happy day for these nations when all professors of colleges shall awake to the ineffable importance of the question of true greatPublic opinion must be corrected; and the work should begin at the fountains of light. Let the ministers of the Word, professors of law and medicine, men

ness.

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