to dress for dinner. On each day as he entered I perceived that he was repeating to himself what seemed the same words: at length I was able to catch them, and they proved to be that stanza of Cowper's :

'The calm retreat, the silent shade,

With prayer and praise agree,

And seem by Thy sweet bounty made

For those that follow Thee.""

The Christian was not sacrificed to the politician. The bustle of an election did not distract the placid composure of this believing man.

In his old age Mr. Wilberforce retired from public life with a shattered fortune. But he was content. "I can scarce understand," he said, "why my life is spared so long, except it be to show that a man can be as happy without a fortune as with one." He had no ambition for his sons. His great wish was to see them useful clergymen," though he allowed them their own choice. Alas! that here his pious wishes should have been so sadly frustrated, in the defection of his three sons to Tractarianism and to Popery! Alas! that a father's bright example and careful training should have come to this! Inscrutable providence! though not without its parallels.

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Mr. Wilberforce ever delighted to be spent for the Lord. "I am sometimes quite grieved," he would say, at the idea of my probably not being able to do a little good yet before I quit the stage; and the 71st Psalm is strongly impressed upon me, especially the verse, "Forsake me not when I am old and gray-headed." After all his labours he seemed only to see his omissions. "I hope no man on earth has a stronger sense of sinfulness and unworthiness before God than I." He never regretted anything he had given up. "When a man chooses the rewards of virtue, he should re

member that to resign the pleasures of vice is part of his bargain." After the long turmoil of life he longed for rest, and on the 29th July 1833, in his 74th year, he fell asleep in Jesus. "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may REST from their labours; and their works do follow them."

His death was felt to be a public loss, and when it was made known, highly influential persons in both Houses of Parliament requested that he might be buried in Westminster Abbey, "being satisfied that public honours can never be more fitly bestowed than upon such benefactors of mankind." They laid him among the honoured dead of England, while around his bier stood all the honoured living. And as the royal, the noble, and the good witnessed his burial, the deep feeling pervaded all "that a great man had fallen in Israel." A marble statue now commemorates him in the Abbey-an Asylum for the Blind is his memorial in Yorka column in Hull-while the coloured population of the West Indies went into mourning for his death, and in their freedom remains his most imperishable monument.

"Who knows," said Sir James Mackintosh-"who knows whether the greater part of the benefit that he has conferred on the world (the greatest that any individual has had the means of conferring), may not be the encouraging example that the exertions of virtue may be crowned by such splendid success? We are apt petulantly to express our wonder that so much exertion should be necessary to suppress such flagrant injustice. The more just reflection will be, that a short period of the life of one man is, well and wisely directed, sufficient to remedy the miseries of millions of ages. Benevolence has hitherto been too often disheartened by frequent failures; hundreds and thousands will be animated by Mr. Wilberforce's example-by his success-and (let me use

the word only in the moral sense of preserving his example) by a renown t at can only perish with the world-to attack all the forms of corruption and cruelty that scourge mankind. Oh what twenty years in the life of one man those were which abolished the slave-trade! How precious is time! How valuable and dignified is human life, which, in general, appears so base and miserable! How noble and sacred is human nature, made capable of achieving such truly great exploits !"

Christian reader!

"Behold the awful portrait, and admire;

Nor stop at wonder-imitate and live."

CHAPTER III.

SIR EDWARD PARRY, KNT., THE NAVIGATOR.

"They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep."-Ps. cvii. 23, 24.

"See the magnetic needle lightly rest

Upon its pivot-delicate yet strong:
And (as the reeling vessel sweeps along)

It trembles with the ocean's trembling breast.

A ripple moves it easily depress'd,

But never conquered, though fierce whirlwinds roar;
Again it points to the far distant shore,

Swayed by a spell unseen yet still confined.

And so the Christian on life's troubled sea,

For ever shaken yet for ever true,

Turns to the haven where he fain would be;

His trials many, such his triumphs too!

Feels a mysterious power pervade his thrilling soul,

And with exulting faith obeys its strong control."

ARCTIC discoverers form a noble phalanx in the history of human research. For patient endurance, persevering effort,

and scientific skill, they have not been surpassed by any in other fields of adventure. They have earned a high place among the ever-memorable, and by their interesting narratives have contributed much to increase the common stock of knowledge.

One of the most renowned explorers of the arctic seas was Sir Edward Parry. His discoveries mark an era in navigation. But we are sure that his Christian character, now that it has been published to the world, will not fail to secure for him a more lasting remembrance than all his great adventures.

WILLIAM EDWARD PARRY was born at Bath, December 19th, 1790, and after a suitable education liberally given by his father, a physician in that city, entered the navy in June, 1803. He early evinced a fondness for the sea, and by the ardour of his nautical studies, and the amiability of his character, gained the good opinion of all his superiors. Attached to a happy home and Christian parents, young Parry felt the blessed influence of his early training when exposed to the temptations abounding in the fleet. While yet his religious views were undeveloped and unmarked by personal acceptance of the Saviour, there is a devoutness in his letters which "exhibits a conscientious wish to follow the good for its own sake, and a genuineness of feeling not often found in one so young." There was, too, a remarkable truthfulness about him. A lieutenant's commission is open to all who have served six years as midshipmen, and have attained the age of nineteen. Parry's time was out, but his age was deficient. Companions urged him to do what was very common then,-to say that he was nineteen, and get promotion. He saw others younger than himself do so, and was rallied for his strictness, but so strong was his love of truth, that nothing could induce him to be

false. He was willing. rather to bear abuse than indulge a falsehood.

From 1810, when he became lieutenant, until 1817, he served in different frigates, and visited the Baltic, the North Cape, the West Indies, and America. It was a time of war, but he was seldom actively engaged with the enemy. God was keeping him for other work.

For three hundred years the existence of a north-west passage had been the enigma of navigation. The enterprising maritime powers had, from time to time, attempted to solve it; but arctic ice proved a formidable difficulty. The brave Cortereals from Portugal never returned from their attempt. Frobisher tried it in the days of Queen Elizabeth, but left undiscovered what he called "the only great thing left undone in the world." But interest was awakened, and Davis, Hudson, and Baffin, from England, Behring from Russia, and others from Denmark, added new discoveries to geography, though all failed to penetrate the icy sea, from west to east. In the beginning of the present century new expeditions were planned by Sir John Barrow, secretary to the Admiralty, in one of which Lieutenant Edward Parry sailed with the Alexander under his own command. The other vessel was the Isabella, under Captain Ross, who directed the expedition.

The ships rounded Cape Farewell on the 26th May, 1818, and immediately entered the ice. They passed Davis' Straits and tried Lancaster Sound, when the commander ordered them to retrace their course, under the apprehension that mountains impeded the way. They returned to England in November. Parry was disappointed, but was ready to try again, and received an appointment to the Hecla, with the Griper under Lieutenant Siddon. They sailed on May 1st, 1819, and reached Lancaster Sound by