the members of this mourning family were all engaged in silent prayer.

Miss Seymour broke the silence; she said, "Let me now read to you a few extracts from the 'Good-night Album' of my beloved father, portions of which I was in the habit, as you know, of reading to him for an hour prior to his going to sleep, during the last five years of his life. I will select some of the most appropriate. One of his favourite pieces was the following:

66 Though unseen by human eye,
My Redeemer's hand is nigh;
He has pour'd salvation's light
Far within the vale of night;
There will God my steps control,
There his presence bless my soul.
Lord, whate'er my sorrows be,
Teach me to look up to thee!"

Another of his oft-repeated prayers was from an imitation of the Persian.

"Lord, who art merciful, as well as just,
Incline thine ear to me, a child of dust;

Not what I would, O Lord, I offer thee,
Alas! but what I can.

Father Almighty, who hast made me man,
And bade me look to heaven, for thou art there,
Accept my sacrifice and humble prayer.

Four things which are not in thy treasury
I lay before thee, Lord, with this petition,
My nothingness, my wants,

My sins, and my contrition.”

As my grandfather listened to these and some other extracts from the "Good-night Album" of the departed rector, he thought, with one who has not less truly said,

"It matters little at what hour o❜ the day

The righteous falls asleep; death cannot come

To him untimely who is fit to die ;

The less of this cold world, the more of heaven;
The briefer life, the earlier immortality.”

The morning light of that sun whose untired course is at once an emblem of God's goodness, and of man's immortality, was the signal for the departure of my grandfather. Still as he prepared to quit the scene of sadness and solitude, his heart felt that it clung to the family whose guest and inmate he had become in the hour of mourning. Miss Seymour took leave of him with emotion, and often did he return during the week of woe to aid her in the preparations for a funeral, at which all attended except some bigoted dissenters of the strict communion Baptist denomination, and who professed "to lament that Mr. Seymour had

not received baptism by immersion, and had not made a public profession of faith."

"At least he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit," said my grandfather, who heard this declaration made, “and his life of faith and love was the best profession he could leave to the Church and his family."

But the funeral of Mr. Seymour, like all other events in this fitful, changeful scene, was soon forgotten, like the years before the flood. For we are the same things that our fathers have been, see the same sights, drink the same stream, feel the same sun, and run the same

course.

They died—aye, they died! and we things that are now,
Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
Who make in their dwellings a transient abode,
Meet the changes they met on their pilgrimage road.

The old parsonage-house was soon "beautified for the new comer;" the relics of former days were packed up in large cases; the books were obliged to be sold (except some few precious volumes kept by Miss Seymour with filial love), for the rector was very far indeed from being rich when he died; and the family of the rector retired to a pretty, but really humble cottage outside the town, accompanied

P

by the faithful Philip and one of the maid-servants, whilst the other married a worthy tradesman, and lived a long life of respectability and virtue. These are the transitions of "The church in the wilderness," whose pious, laborious, and devoted clergy, instead of being honoured and cherished, are held up by modern dissenters as the fattened and rich-stalled theologians of the nineteenth century. After having preached with fidelity and truth, zeal and unction, learning and piety, to a large congregation for many years; and after having not unfrequently expended a moderate private fortune in almsgiving and deeds of charity to a suffering and needy population; the only resource of the clergyman's family is a policy or two at an insurance office on the interest of the principal of which, and the produce of the family library, the surviving members must live the rest of their days. Yet this is the Church which is cruelly and unjustly maligned by modern dissenterism!

But I must now resume the thread of my narrative, broken in upon as it has been by the mournful episode of the honoured and beloved Mr. Seymour.

My readers will easily believe that my grand

father, who was but half a modern Independent, was wholly unable on the day of Mr. Seymour's death to attend to the affair of Mr. Farmer and his arrest, and was therefore compelled to entrust its management to the young dissenting attorney. Mr. Farmer was brought up before the magistrate, accused, 1st, of having entered forcibly into the school-room of the dissenting chapel; 2nd, of having made a riot there; and 3rd, of having struck Job Perkins, the constable, repeated blows whilst discharging his duty. Mr. Farmer was attended by his clerks, and by George Palmer and his coadjutors. Mr. Chapman, Jesse Piper, and the two constables, were witnesses against him, and the Independent lawyer conducted the prosecution. Mr. Farmer, an adept in quibbling, of course made many legal and technical objections; such as, 1st, that the school-room was not the property of Mr. Chapman, but of trustees; 2nd, that the school-room was not a private but a public room, and therefore that he had as much right to go in there as any one else; 3rd, that Mr. Chapman was only the minister; 4th, that he made no riot in the school-room, and should have remained there quietly had he not been first attacked; and