and often remarked how much less any given space of time was worth in dreary, inclement weather. He used to say that it depressed all his faculties, independently of the low temperature.

He did not possess any scientific acquaintance with music, for which he had no ear; yet was passionately fond of some kinds of it, especially of the mournful and solemn. He used to wonder that it should be thought impossible for a person who, technically speaking, had no ear, to feel an interest in music, and strongly asserted the power it could. exercise over himself to inspire almost every description of sentiment. He was never tired of hearing anything that pleased him, but would ask for it again and again. He felt more interested in instrumental than in vocal music, and his favourite instrument was the organ.

In connexion with his taste for graphical works,* may be noticed the costly binding he bestowed upon them. His directions to the binder were given with a minute exactness which showed a familiarity with the processes of the art, and great taste in the ornamental adjustments; this was only one mode of gratifying his perception of the beautiful, and arose in no degree from a fondness for display. Indeed, he preferred that elegant works should be kept out of sight, till wanted for particular inspection. One day, noticing that several volumes had been placed on a table so as to show their exterior to the greatest advantage, he playfully said, "I'd put those books somewhere else; I've a proud modesty that disdains show."

He had a great dislike to fancy-work as a sad misappropriation of time. Once when shown a piece of worsted work with a great deal of red in it, he said "it was red with the blood of murdered time." In household furniture, though from motives of economy he would have studied the

VOL. II.

* Vide Letters civ. clvii. clxxviii. ccxxi.

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utmost plainness, yet he also thought that taste was wasted when carried to any great extent on such things.*

His humanity to animals was great;t and it might as justly be affirmed of him as of another venerable person, that "his sensibility produced a quick and powerful sympathy with the whole circle of animated nature."‡ Of this the following is an instance. He once found a small bat in the garden whose wing had been injured sufficiently to prevent its flying, and yet not so much, but that he thought it might recover in a little time. He therefore brought it within doors, fitted up a box for it, and put it in his study that it might be out of the way of molestation, intending "Astonished at the measure of attention and talk devoted to the little ware of life. What tiresome length of disquisition about furniture, dress, ornaments of the wall or chimney! Life is a journey; and to pass it thus is as if a traveller consumed all his attention on his mode of stepping, and on all the pebbles and prints of feet along the way."-Journal, No. 683.

....

"Compassion for the suffering of the animal tribes is likely to be greatly injured in London, by the constant sight of the condition and treatment of horses, particularly those of the hackney-coaches, and of the stage-coaches from the villages and towns in the neighbourhood of the city. You have seen these ill-fated creatures, old, blind, ill-fed, wounded by the harness, and panting for life, yet suffering all the execrable barbarity of wretches in the form of men, but with the spirit and language of hell. . . . . This is a bad world for whatever is innocent and useful, if it be defenceless too. This spectacle is continually witnessed, and deemed too trivial for feeling or abhorrence, except in some singularly atrocious instances. Introduce the topic if you please, in a polished company, and see how many persons will attach the smallest importance to a consideration which appears to me so interesting to humanity. I have known the whole subject turned to ridicule by persons, whom I had not, till then, deemed altogether destitute of feeling. This insensibility to obvious and multiplied animal suffering must surely be the result of familiarly seeing it. But a city residence ought to make no trifling compensation to the qualities of the heart, in some other way, for such a serious deduction from its capability of feeling compassion. Let it be considered too that the same cause early produces the same insensibility in the minds of children; how different a process from the discipline requisite to produce that anxious and sacred tenderness to feeling, that fear of hurting what has life, which a completely thoughtful and humane parent would be solicitous to cultivate in the young mind in precedence to every other moral principle, inasmuch as cruelty is the most hateful of all the possible forms of depravity."— Mr. Foster to Miss M. Snooke, April 2, 1803.

HALL'S Funeral Sermon for DR. RYLAND.-Works, i. 395.

to keep it there till it should be able to fly again. However, he soon found that there was no chance of its recovery, and thought it more humane to destroy it.

He was remarkable for civility and kindness to small tradesmen and work-people; he used to complain that women were generally underpaid, and would often give them more than they asked. He abhorred driving a bargain with poor persons. When sometimes shown small wares brought to the door for sale, on being told the price, he would say, "Oh, give them a few pence more;-see-there's a great deal of work here; it must have taken some time to make." And he would turn the article whatever it might be, in every direction, and find out all the little ingenuities or ornaments about it. With regard to persons serving in shops he was very considerate, and would insist on the impropriety of occasioning needless trouble to them in showing their goods, or in sending small purchases to a distance. He has been known to go back to a shop, and pay something more for what he thought had been sold to him too cheaply. "It isn't often we meet with persons that do that, Sir," was the remark of a young woman on his turning back, and paying a shilling more for a lithograph which he had just bought.

He always spoke with great charity of the minor offences -particularly petty thefts committed by persons decent and honest in the main, when under the hard pressure of poverty. If anything of the sort were mentioned to him in a tone of condemnation, he would generally say, "one has great compassion for persons in such a miserable condition,"-" one deeply deplores that decent people should be driven to such straits," or something to that effect.

If he had been told of persons in peculiar distress, though he had scarcely any personal acquaintance with them, or even knew them only by name, he seemed constantly to

keep them in remembrance, would often inquire after them, and make evident allusions to them in his family prayers. His delicate regard to the feelings of others was most exemplary, in rendering acts of kindness and benevolence, especially of a pecuniary kind. He endeavoured in some ingenious manner to make it appear that he was the favoured person, so sedulous was he not to excite a painful sense of obligation. From an over-anxiety on this point he sought to prevent if possible, the expressions of gratitude from reaching him. During his residence at Frome, in visiting the poor members of his congregation, he commonly took a small parcel of tea, with him, requesting them to make him a good cup; and on leaving, would adroitly slide half-a-crown under his saucer. On one occasion when he had transmitted, quite spontaneously and unexpectedly, a handsome donation to a person in a respectable station, but with limited means, he added a "most peremptory injunction that he might never be mortified, by one syllable or hint, in any way or time, of acknowledgment for so mere a trifle.”

He was extremely quick in appreciating every little proof of recollection and regard which was shown him by his friends. Small presents, snuff-boxes and the like, he used to set a great value on. He generally had two or three in use at the same time, and now and then would put one back in the drawer where they were kept, and bring out another, so that all might come into use. All kind letters and messages seemed to have a more than ordinary value in his estimation.

On being first introduced to him, a stranger would be struck with the unostentatious and perfectly simple address -the familiar idiomatic phrases-the deep and almost muffled tone of voice, and the occasional searching glance cast over the spectacles from eyes "charged with thought" -the whole manner and posture indicating habitual medi

tativeness. In large mixed companies he was not very ready to converse. It was mostly in the presence of two or three friends that the energy, originality, and varied opulence of his mind, were disclosed. Those who listened to him obtained not the mere knowledge of facts or arguments, but were trained to view men and things in their higher and more spiritual relations. On topics which lie within the province of the understanding rather than of sentiment or feeling, nothing crude or vague satisfied his mind; and thus while intent on obtaining clear views himself, he unconsciously disciplined those who conversed with him to aim at a similar precision of thought.

Though he was not remarkable for a mere verbal memory, he had at command an ample assemblage of facts supplied by his extensive reading. On one occasion he had been silent in a circle where there had been a long and unsatisfactory debate on mummies. At length he came out with a few quiet interrogations, and the disputants soon found they had been exposing their shallowness to one who, as a person present remarked, seemed as if he had made this. topic the study of his life; in fact, his information respecting it was very extensive, and it would be hardly possible to express too strongly the degree of interest which he took in this class of antiquities. "Ancient Egypt," he remarks in one of his reviews, "surpasses every tract of the world (we know not that Palestine is an exception), in the power of fascinating a contemplative spirit." This was eminently the case with himself.

At another time a missionary from the South Sea Islands called upon him, who had been previously complaining of the scanty acquaintance with the history and geography of these regions, evinced by some who were esteemed highly literary men and accomplished scholars. But in Mr. Foster's company he had such questions put and information