The ministers of the gospel have won their way to my highest regard. John Wickliff, the morning star of the Reformation; and the uncompromising Martin Luther, who, when dissuaded from attending the Diet of Worms, replied, that if he knew there were as many devils there as tiles on the houses, he would face them all. Bradford, Cranmer, Latimer, Hooper, Knox, and Jewell, with Hall, Leighton, Hopkins, Watts, Doddridge, Whitefield, Wesley, and a hundred more; these were not men of parts only, but men of piety; not merely the friends of mankind, but also, in the midst of their infirmities, good, and true, and faithful servants of the Lord.

Though it is now time to close my remarks, this must not be done without one word being spoken to the memories of missionaries who have finished their course, and found the end to be eternal life. I cannot think of such men as Eliot, and Swartz, and Brainerd, and Henry Martyn, without honouring them for their labours. Their memory is dear to me. I read the record of their earthly existence with intensity of interest and unfeigned admiration, and I love to contemplate them as among the shining ones, now gathered around the throne of the Eternal.

Were I altogether to omit Wilberforce in my rapid glance at the friends of humanity, I should

do an equal injustice to his memory and my own affections. As one of the brightest examples of Christian philanthropy, he is one of those whom I delight to honour.

One word would I utter aloud amid the avalanches of Switzerland and Savoy. Ye monks of St. Bernard, I never visited your hospitable mountainhome; ye have never warmed me with your welcome amid your eternal snows, nor spread your homely board in ministering to my necessities; but when I hear of your opening your doors freely to the frozen stranger, and sending out your very dogs on errands of mercy, my heart yearns towards you with more than admiration. I stop not to scrutinize the orthodoxy of your faith, I make no inquiry about the soundness of your creed, but regarding you as a mercy-loving brotherhood, I pour on you a warm-hearted blessing, and take upon myself, in the fulness of my affections, to thank you on behalf of those you have benefited by your kindness.

Who ever hears the name of Howard without offering him the homage of the heart for a life devoted to benevolence and humanity? For myself, my affections have been fully drawn out in the contemplation of his benevolent career. Not only in spirit have I attended him through the prisons of England and France, the gloomy jails

of Germany and Holland, and the damp, dismal, and infected dungeons of Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey, but at Cherson also, with clasped hands and bended knees, hanging over the good Samaritan in his dying hour. Nor doubt I that this devoted Christian, this mitigator of so much sorrow on earth, has had an abundant entrance into the joys of heaven.

You have now had enough of my admiration, and perhaps more than enough of my anger: try to turn the one and the other to account, and then, whether I have acted wisely or not in noting down these observations, you will be sure to act wisely in making them useful.

OLD HUMPHREY TURNED

FISHERMAN.

If, on reading the above title, your fancy should portray me going out at peep of day, at noon, or at dewy eve, as a real brother of the angle and the ingle, with the several parts of a fishing-rod nicely packed together, a tin box well supplied with several kinds of baits, and a basket gracefully suspended from a belt slung across my right shoulder; if you should suppose me, like another Isaac Walton, wending my way to the quiet nooks of the running brook, my mind occupied with peaceful thoughts and gentle musings, wishing ill to none, and good to all, purposing to give away all the fish I catch, and disposed, as fishermen have in very doubtful sentimentality expressed themselves, to use "the very worm with humanity, handling him tenderly, and treating him as a friend ;”—if such a picture as this should present itself to your minds, dismiss it at once, for I am not in quest of the finny tribe. They are human

beings that I mean to catch, and it shall go hard with me but you shall be among the number.

More than forty winters have cast their snows on the earth, and as many summer suns have set forth the power and goodness of God by gilding the heavens and the earth with glory, since I last baited a hook or cast a line upon the waters. I have no accusation against the scaly inhabitants of the wave, and they can advance no reasonable complaint against me, unless it be that of having, now and then, temperately partaken of a turbot or a salmon at another's table, or of a sole, an eel, or a haddock at my own.

But to my occupation. I said that I meant to catch human beings. Girding my loins, then, with the strength of an upright intention, and looking above for a blessing, I will at once enter on my calling as a fisherman. I mean to catch all my readers.

It will hardly answer my purpose to fish with a line and bait, hooking only one of you at a time. This will be too tedious an affair. I must use a drag-net, and thereby secure a heavy haul. Come, let me suppose that I have acquitted myself creditably, and that I have succeeded in entrapping any of you who are anywise afflicted in mind. What a heavy draught! One word with you before I resume my occupation.