their guard. Nothing is so easy as to talk well of religion, nothing so difficult as the practice. 'Knowledge puffeth up; charity buildeth up.' To correct a habit, to control an inclination, to calm the temper, to guard the secret thoughts, to take up a cross of self-denial, to make sacrifices of our will to duty; these, O Christ, are the trophies of Thy renown, these the labours Thou delightest to reward!... Far be from us the notion that the religious principles instilled by a mother's care are prejudices that must be got rid of before we can assert the character of independent-minded and liberal men! Let us remember that these principles have been held by men of the most gigantic intellects and of the most profound research, that Newton, Bacon, Milton, Locke, Pascal, Bentley, Bossuet, Grotius, and many others, have all shown, as well by their writings as by their lives, that there is no disagreement between a sound philosophy and a humble Christianity; for truly it seems that that intellectual wisdom which is joined with the folly of the heart never ascends higher than an imposing mediocrity, while the nobler knowledge which is derived from God Himself is, for the most part, the same which in science takes the widest range over all His works in the material creation, and makes the nearest approach possible for man to His wisdom.

I am prepared to hear, and resolved to reject, all representations which deprive the Deity of His personality, and describe Him as but the universally diffused principle of life, the soul of nature. When the thunder of heaven, which simple-minded people and children consider, as it peals through the sky, to be the voice of Almighty God, is proved to proceed from a law of nature, let it not be presumed that in this discovery we have arrived at the First Cause, and can touch the limit of the Infinite. We have

6

but ascended one insignificant step nearer to it, for nature in all her works is still and for ever but another name for an effect of which the cause is God.' Oh! beware lest any man spoil you by oppositions of science, falsely so called, and draw you away from the simplicity that is in Christ.

66

"JOHN GREY."

Up to the year of the final defeat of Napoleon, England was troubled with the fear of invasion; and false alarms lighting the beacon-fires on Ross Castle would kindle the beacons on every hill-top for hundreds of miles. The Northumberland men formed themselves into a volunteer regiment, distinguished for the strength of its horses, and the breadth of shoulder and dash of its riders. John mounted and rode with the rest, when a rumour came that our enemy had landed. Great emotion and packing of haversacks fell to our lot at home, while he rode off with helmet and sword. The regiment was called to Newcastle and inspected, when, alas! some of the young men had run to an excess of riot. I heard afterwards from several that they had watched John Grey, and never could find a hole in his coat – - a clumsy but most satisfactory phrase to me."

So far Mrs. Duncan's recollections.

In the winter of 1814 my father alighted at a country inn in the course of a long ride through the snow. Into the same room there came a fair-haired girl dressed in a riding-habit, she also having alighted from her horse to rest. This was our mother, Hannah Annett, daughter of Mr. Annett, of The Fence, near Alnwick. It was their first meeting. He seemed to be absorbed in his newspaper, but her eye was quick enough to discern that he often looked over its edge to the part of the room where she was. She had heard of

him, of his handsome appearance, good horsemanship, and high qualities of mind and heart, and had resolved, in her maidenly pride, not to allow herself, should they ever meet, to share the enthusiasm about him which she observed in many young girls of her acquaintance. This resolution did not hold out long. They met again. On one occasion when she was mounting her horse to ride away, she placed her little foot in the offered hand of my father's cousin, John Vardy, and, with her hand on his shoulder, sprang into the saddle, rewarding his help with a smile and kind words. At that moment my father felt a sudden pang of jealousy, which told him for the first time that that large heart of his was no longer his own. He placed himself in front of her horse, held its rein with a firm hand, and, fixing his eyes on her, said some words which my mother either could not recollect or chose never to tell us, but the import of which sent her on her way in such a frame of mind that her horse sometimes took the wrong turn in the road without her noticing it. The words spoken, or her silence, or the smile bestowed on another seemed, however, to them both imperatively to call for another interview and explanations. My father lately wrote, in reference to the hard winter of 1860

"I think we have not had such a frost since 1814, a year I well remember; for in that winter I first knew Mrs. Grey, who was on a visit at Fenton; and on going to visit there I crossed the Till on horseback, on ice and snow so deep as hardly to know where was the course of the river. My thoughts of those times are all mixed with sadness now."

My mother's parents were good people, descended from the poor but honest families of silk-weavers, driven out of France by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. They were in the habit of opening their hospitable doors to every

one in the form of a religious teacher, of whatever sect, who happened to pass that way. One of my mother's earliest memories was of being lifted upon the knee of the venerable John Wesley, a man with white silvery hair and a benevolent countenance, who placed his two hands upon the head of the golden-haired little girl, and pronounced over her a tender and solemn benediction. She passed some very happy years of school life among the Moravians of Fulneck, for whom she preserved to the end of her life a great affection. She often described to us the settlement of that fraternity, their simplicity of manners, their love for music, flowers, and white dresses. She was, while there, one of the favourite pupils of Christian Ignatius Latrobe, under whose teaching she became a thoroughly scientific musician.

He

He

When my father went to travel abroad in the spring of 1814, it was with the portrait of his lady-love in his breast, and the hope of returning to make her his wife. travelled in Holland, Belgium, Germany, and France. kept a journal, which shows that he made good use of his opportunities in the observation of character and countries, at a crisis when there was abundant subject of thought about the past, and speculation about the future of Europe. On his return home he wrote to her :-"How long, my Hannah, are these dreary moors to separate us?" But the dreary moors did not separate them long, for they were married in the winter of the same year; the bride riding to church dressed in a beautiful pale blue riding-habit, richly embroidered.

His mother went to live at Humbledon, his sister Mary married, and his brother George some years later took a farm near London; and the first family group was scattered, to give place to a large circle of young children, who gradually filled the old family home.

Mrs. Duncan writes:

"Many of the newspapers have spoken of my brother's early speeches of a political cast; but I remember his first public speech, and the emotion it excited in my mother and me. It was a Bible Society speech in Wooler church. He was clear, calm, and self-possessed. It was cheering to see the young man come forward so boldly, and was a great contrast to the book hidden under his pillow a few years before."

My father wrote thus of his first public speech :

"My heart beat hard at first getting up and looking at the crowd of gazers I was going to address, but before finishing one sentence, finding that my voice would easily fill the church, its tone became firm and my spirits composed, and I went on to the end without difficulty."

The Bible Society, founded in 1804, was one of the first practical evidences of the awakening of the nation from the torpor of preceding generations to a sense of the spiritual wants of the people. My father's high hopes for his country, and his bright ideal of her future mission, may have been in after years somewhat clouded. Speaking for laymen, he

said on this occasion

"When I observe that the advocates of this great cause are exclusively confined to the clergy, I own I feel anxious to rescue ourselves from the possibility of an imputation that they are the only persons interested in its progress. We live in an age of great events-events so signal and so important, and that have succeeded each other with such a rapidity as to throw into the shade the history of former times. We seem to be a people peculiarly distinguished in the plan of Providence, preserved, perhaps, from the devastations that have so awfully visited the other