all the rest from the awful and alarming ones-the appeals to fear. And this is all but universally the manner of the Divine process of conversion. A number (not large, but of great piety and intelligence) of ministers within my acquaintance, several now dead, have been disbelievers of the doctrine in question; at the same time not feeling themselves imperatively called upon to make a public disavowal; content with employing in their ministrations strong general terms in denouncing the doom of impenitent sinners. For one thing, a consideration of the unreasonable imputations, and unmeasured suspicions apt to be cast on any publicly declared partial defection from rigid orthodoxy, has made them think they should better consult their usefulness by not giving a prominence to this dissentient point; while yet they make no concealment of it in private communications, and in answer to serious inquiries. When, besides, they have considered how strangely defective and feeble is the efficacy, to alarm and deter careless, irreligious minds, of the terrible doctrine itself notionally admitted by them, they have thought themselves the less required to propound one that so greatly qualifies the blackness of the prospect. They could not be unaware of the grievous truth of what is so strongly insisted on as an argument by the defenders of the tenet, -that thoughtless and wicked men would be sure to seize on the mitigated doctrine to encourage themselves in their impenitence. But this is only the same perverse and fatal use that they make of the doctrine of grace and mercy through Jesus Christ. If they will so abuse the truth we cannot help it. But methinks even this fact tells against the doctrine in question. If the very nature of man, as created, every individual, by the Sovereign Power, be in such desperate disorder that there is no possibility of conversion and salvation except in the instances where that Power interposes with a special and redeeming efficacy, how can we conceive that the main proportion of the race thus morally impotent (that is really and absolutely impotent) will be eternally punished for the inevitable result of this moral impotence? But this I have said before.* "I wish that my friend Mr. Foster could have adjourned some of the difficulties which exercised him to the day when all:hings shall be made CCXX. TO J. COTTLE, ESQ. Stapleton, Tuesday, January, 1842. I am not pleased with myself for not having, long since, sent a line of grateful acknowledgment to you and Mrs. Hare, for one kind favour following another. I am afraid an extra lazy habit will have been superinduced by several weeks of lying nearly all the time in bed. If I had had any urgent business or vocation I should not have been allowed to delay till within a few days back the practice of rising soon after breakfast. In making any trial of myself, in any way of exertion, I suppose the proof of my not having risen yet to the accustomed level would be a failure of strength. Otherwise I feel nearly what we denominate well. All about me have been most assiduously kind; and a friend's daughter, who has been with us all the while, and can read on interminably without physical injury or uneasiness (which my girls cannot) has read through I know not how many volumes to me. In returning toward the accustomed mode of life, the question will be how soon to leave the confinement to one warm room for the other parts of the house,—and the open air without the house. The winter is an untoward season for such experiment-the latter experiment. But while I am writing "winter," a warm splendid sunshine is falling over my table and room, giving a pleasing intimation of spring not very far off. How many returning springs you and I have seen, how few more, at the very utmost, shall we stay to see! There is a land where, in a much higher sense, "everlasting spring abides, and never-withering flowers." May almighty grace work and refine our souls to a fitness for that happy region of our Father and our Redeemer's kingdom. This time of confinement has been to me one of very serious exercise of mind. A deep sense of guilt has manifest. I greatly wish that he could have restrained his speculation on the duration of future punishment, and acquiesced in the obvious language, or at least the obvious practical lesson and purpose of scripture upon this question-which was to cut off every pretext of postponing the care of their eternity from this world, and to press home on every unsophisticated reader of his bible the dread alternative of—now or never."—DR. CHALMERS, Sabbath Scripture Readings, vol. i. p. 416. - attended the review of life, a life so very, very imperfectly devoted to our Great Master's service. So much lukewarmness, so little zealous service, so much indolent selfindulgence. I have profoundly felt how sad and hopeless a condition but for that blessed and all-sufficient resource, the atonement accomplished by Him who offered himself without spot to God.-I cannot comprehend the fortitude with which, under a rejection of this our only hope, a conscious sinner can dare to look forward to hereafter. I have been highly gratified to hear favourable accounts of your health, as being in some respects, especially your eyes, better than in past years. How little, at some seasons, did you anticipate staying so long in this world. Wise is the Sovereign appointment, for those who stay, and-for those who go. My thoughts are often pensively turning on the enumeration of those I may call my coevals, and many of them of long acquaintance, who have been called away within a very few years. An old and much valued friend at Worcester, from whose funeral I returned little more than in time to attend that of our estimable Mr. Hare. Since then, your excellent sister, Mr. Coles of Bourton, known and esteemed almost forty years, Mr. Addington, lately, in Scotland, the worthy Mr. Dove, and now last of all, and so unexpectedly, Mr. Roberts. . . . . CCXXI. TO THE REV. T. GRINFIELD, M.A. Stapleton, February 19, 1842. I have cause to be highly gratified by the friendly manœuvre devised to put me in possession of the view of Snowdon. It is less faded than your description had led me to surmise. There appears to be no obliteration of even the finest lines, not even those slight ones, denominated interlines, traced between the stronger cuts of the graver..... I add this print with great pleasure, both for its own and the friendly giver's sake, to my accumulation of Woollett's, numbering to about fifty, and including very nearly all his engravings. I need not say that this has been the consequence of mousing for them during a good many years,-watching and catching the occurrence of any of them, within my very narrow local sphere of such opportunities. The superlative excellence of Woollett's workmanship seemed to warrant this sort of avarice. But for this, and the other large accumulations, how many times I have called myself a fool!--money expended, to an excess beyond all sober prudence in a person of my very limited means-liability to damage, from careless handling, mildew, &c., &c. . . . . Thank you for this well-engraved portrait of Wilson. I have not seen it before. I have a good portrait of Woollett, to place it beside. Never were two artists more fortunate in each other. . . CCXXII. TO JOHN PURSER, ESQ. Stapleton, Feb. 22, 1842. When it is considered that the object (in theory) of government is the prevention and castigation of iniquity, it is striking and melancholy to see how much of that very iniquity may go into the manner of constituting and administering that same government. For example, the recent Dublin election. There cannot be one right-thinking virtuous man in England whose blood has not almost boiled at the account of the complicated villainies of that business. But that we have a Parliament, for a very large part of it, got together very much by the same sort of means, one should be confident that so vile a job will be flung over..... .... In my retired life here I see extremely few persons who are under the full excitement of the present great national interests, because I see very few persons of any sort; but intelligence of the wide and deep agitation pours in through every channel; would it might become such an earthquake as to overturn and prostrate the hateful domination with which the nation is cursed. The aristocratic ascendency care nothing for the destitution and misery under which so vast a number of human beings are sinking to the dust, literally to the grave; their own selfish advantages held fast while they see the national resources fast draining away; and the last power of effrontery asserting that their monopoly is not at all, or only in a trifling degree, the cause of that ruin of commerce which is depriving hundreds of thousands of the means of exercising their industry in order to live, and millions of the means of living otherwise than in the most abject penury. We are not now, like the ancient Jews, living under a dispensation of special providences, manifested often in speedy vindictive visitation on oppressors of the poor; but one can hardly help thinking that some strong mark of the Divine judgment will yet fall, in this life, on at least the chiefs in this iniquity. And in such an event, very slowly will compassion be drawn toward any calamity that may be inflicted on them. "They shall have judgment without mercy who have showed no mercy." The case with them is, not only that they are rolling and rioting in wealth and luxury while a vast multitude are sinking to the lowest depth of penury and misery, but that they obstinately and scornfully maintain, as a chief expedient for that wealth and luxury, the very thing which is a chief cause of that deep and wide, and still widening misery. Ireland has heretofore been the first in our thoughts and references as a scene of popular wretchedness; but now the most immediate and engrossing spectacle glares upon us in England. Yet I have not forgotten M. De Beaumont's description of Ireland, and estimate of its odious and incorrigible aristocracy. What a contrast to the moral aspect of Ireland, is its natural scenery, so abundant and various in all that is beautiful and grand. We have been reading with great pleasure (as to this latter view of the country) the successive numbers of Mr. and Mrs. Hall's traverse of your island, a pleasure, suffering, as in all such cases, the drawback of considering the difference between reading and actually seeing. A few, very few of the remarkable places, indeed, I have the remembrance of having seen-as, the Hill of Howth, the Dargle, the Glen of the Downs, the Devil's Glen; and the general appearance of the Wicklow mountains. You may perhaps hardly recollect to have heard that once your excellent father, H. Strahan, and myself, made an excursion on foot to some of those romantic places, with an |