present advantages; preclude the necessity of my entering into particulars, as your former letter seemed to intimate a desire of my doing. But if, aware of that plainness of speech which I am accustomed to use on such infinitely important topics, though, I trust, connected with tender sympathy and affection, you should still desire me to write to you on the subject, and point out any special questions on which you wish for my opinion; notwithstanding my infirmities and engagements, I will endeavour to answer you and if any book of mine, which you have not, would be acceptable to you or your father, send me word and I will order it.

"But I believe the whole in your case may nearly be summed up in the exhortation, to listen patiently and attentively to your own conscience; to reverence it; and to remember that, by acting contrary to it in any degree or instance, or endeavouring to suppress its dictates, you quench the Spirit of God, and provoke him to leave you. I cannot but think, you know enough of the great outlines of evangelical religion, and are so far convinced of the truth of it, that, in following the dictates of your conscience, you would be led to separate from the vanities of a vain world; to repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance; to come to Christ, sit at his feet with Mary, hear his word with obedient faith, and make his commandments the rule, and his example the pattern, of your future conduct. This alone is the way of peace and happiness: this alone can prepare you for an earlier death, or prove the way for comfort in declining years, (should you live to that time,) under the infirmities of age, and the

near prospect of death. All else, however it may glitter in youthful and worldly eyes, is mere tinsel; it is vanity and vexation of spirit.

"I have informed our friends as you desired. The first time for above a twelvemonth, I have left home, and ridden over to Stone, where your cousin King lives, about five miles from Aston.... We all unite in condolence, and kind remembrance to your father and the rest of the family; and in prayer for you all. I remain your affectionate uncle,

THOMAS SCOTT."

This correspondence with his niece continued, and produced some letters which may hereafter be introduced. He says to her, Dec. 13, 1814, "It is very true that I can spare little time for letter-writing, in the ordinary sense of the word: but, if I could, by any thing which I might write, be an instrument in the hand of God in leading you into the paths of peace and salvation, it would fall in with the object of all my occupation-the ministry of reconciliation beseeching sinners to be reconciled to God."

In January following occurred a death which might justly be accounted a public, as well as private loss-that of my father's highly esteemed friend and benefactor, Mr. Henry Thornton. About a year before that event, after a considerable interruption of their intercourse, he had received a letter from Mr. T., just in the midst of his disquietude at the discovery he had made of the state of his pecuniary affairs, which was highly cheering to his mind. It breathed united kindness and piety. "I have heard lately," said the writer," one or two very unfavourable accounts of your health, and I cannot resist my

inclination to assure you, though from this desk of worldly business, how much I sympathize with you in those temporal sorrows, which I doubt not are working out for you, as you have been used so often to say to others, a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.-Having in more early life been an attendant on your ministry, I cannot at this later period be forgetful of my obligations to you; and, though I may have assisted you in some degree in what may partly be called your carnal things, I mean in what concerned the printing of your Commentary on the Bible, I still feel myself on the whole your debtor; since my advantages, like those, I trust, of many others, are not capable of being estimated at any pecuniary price."-My father had just been preaching from the passage of scripture alluded to by Mr. T., (2 Cor. iv. 16—18,) when on his return home he found this letter, and in it a real cordial, such as he wanted. He considered it as confirming the intimation he had formerly received from Mr. T.'s father, that his ministry had been blessed as the means of first giving a decidedly religious turn to Mr. H. T.'s mind. Independently, therefore, of the kindness which it breathed, and the " dawn of light" which it cast upon the "gloom" that had surrounded him, it could not but afford him the highest gratification to think of having contributed, in any degree, to the formation of such a character as HENRY THORNTON; and much more to have been made instrumental (as he hoped,) in infusing that principle, which was the firm basis of all his sterling virtues.Proportioned, accordingly, to the regard which he bore to Mr. H. T., was my father's regret for his

loss, when he was removed from the world by a death, so premature to all but himself. His notice of it in a letter, written a few days after, is brief, but touching; and at the same time worthy of the writer. "I cannot express," he says, "how much the death of Mr. H. Thornton affects me; even as the death of some near relation. I feel low and grieved whenever I think of it: but the Lord is wise and faithful. The Lord reward upon his fatherless children all his kindness to me and mine!-As far as either your concerns or mine are implicated, it is a fresh lesson on the admonition, Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils. When the rushlight in my chamber goes out, it is dark; but that darkness leads me to expect the dawn and the sun. All things will be right at last, if we be right. Nothing is of much consequence but eternity."

This prayer for Mr. H. T.'s" fatherless children," (who so soon after became motherless also,) he never ceased to repeat as long as he lived; almost daily alluding to them, though without a name, yet in a manner that was understood, in his family worship.

In the same letter which thus notices the death of Mr. Thornton, he says with reference to a certain periodical publication, since defunct, "I have not seen the new magazine, and probably shall not: but, as far as I can learn, your attempts to check misinterpretations of scripture, in that quarter, will be like the surgeon's attempt to cure the beggar's sore leg, by which he got his living.

The next publication, which proceeded from my father's pen, was occasioned by the death of another

highly honoured and dear friend, whom he always considered as one of the most eminent Christians that

he had ever known or read of. This was the Right Hon. Lady Mary Fitzgerald. That excellent person lost her life, at nearly ninety years of age, by fire! and my father preached and published, in April, 1815, a sermon on the occasion, in which he gives a very interesting sketch of her character, and the outline of her history. He observes in the preface, that she "was constantly, when in town, and when health would permit, an attendant on his ministry for above seventeen years.' "I was also honoured," he says, "with what might almost be considered as an intimacy with her.... She was very useful in strengthening my hands in my ministry, when concurring circumstances tended greatly to weaken and discourage me and she has always been ready to aid and concur with me in every plan for attempting usefulness, not only while I was in town, but since I came to this place." In the body of the discourse, speaking with reference to the same subject, he says:

Many a time, when cares and disquietudes seemed to disqualify my mind, for either receiving or imparting spiritual good, and I called on her, rather from a sense of duty, and to testify respect and gratitude, than from higher motives and expectations; free communication, in discourse with her, has produced such a change, and I have been so sensibly calmed, refreshed, and animated for every work and labour of love, that I could hardly believe myself the same anxious, heartless being, which I had been only just before. Indeed I may say, I scarcely ever experienced such