expense, had he been younger or in better health. But for some years (he observes) his constitution, which was never strong, had been greatly shattered; his nights being oppressive and disturbed, his days wearisome and languid, and his general ailments "only not laying him under a physical necessity of declining to officiate." His deafness in particular, to his great perplexity, was such as as to prevent his hearing the responses of the clerk and the congregation.* Having like. wise, after the exertions of a long and active ministry, † succeeded to a small paternal estate, he hoped he might not unreasonably, under a view of his heavy and increasing infirmities, assert his claim to the privileges of a Miles Emeritus; more especially, since in 1804 he had to his bitter sorrow lost Mrs. Zouch, who for above thirty years had conducted all his concerns. In such forlorn and desolate circumstances to migrate, at the age of sixty-seven, to a new place of residence, remote from medical assistance and from his few surviving relatives, and where he would have displaced a deserving tenant with a numerous family and a lease of the tithes, and have engaged in all the discomfort of building a competent mansion, secanda marmora locans sub ipsum funus, must have been a melancholy anticipation. When therefore to all this he could subjoin, that his Curate was a worthy and vigilant clergyman, and eminently attentive to the catechising of the children of the two schools, in which a certain number of poor boys and girls were educated at the Rector's expense, it will scarcely be thought, even by the most.

*He once, it is said, began his sermon in St. Mary's, Cambridge, before the organ had ceased to play!

He was ordained Deacon in 1761.

rigid enforcers of ecclesiastical duties, that he asked too much in craving permission to linger out the poor remainder of his years in his native village.

In 1808 Dr. Zouch, in conjunction with his old schoolfellow Dr. Swire, Rector of Melsonby, with whom he had walked hand in hand through life, published at York, in 8vo, a tract drawn up by Mr. Sampson George,* solicitor, of Middleton Tyas, and entitled Reflexions of a Layman on the Divinity of Christ, the Unity of the Deity, and the Doctrine of the Trinity.' It was prefaced by the following brief advertisement:

6

The Editors of this short tract, written by a Layman, flatter themselves that, by presenting it to the public, they essentially promote the interests of religion. They reflect with peculiar pleasure that the embarrassments of secular engagements, and the intricacy of legal disquisitions, have not precluded the respectable author from contemplating the great truths of Revelation with that aweful attention, which their vast importance requires.'

* Mr. George, who has been dead for some years, published in 1784 (as I am informed by Dr. Zouch's friend, Mr. Headlam, the present Rector of Wycliffe) a Scheme for Reducing and finally Redeeming the National Debt, and for gaining Half a Million of Revenue by extinguishing a Tax!' This double difficulty, the solution of which has not been facilitated by the intervening years of expensive warfare, was to be conquered by the Sale of the Land-Tax, a measure subsequently adopted by Mr. Pitt. Mr. George's pamphlet went through a second edition in the same year. Like other and greater names, who have affected to prophesy of the ne plus ultra beyond which all accumulation of debt must overpower and break down the vital spring of the Constitution, he was fortunately disappointed in his anticipations. The debt of 1784 has been more than tripled, and we yet survive the burthen. But as to redeeming it, that (it may be feared) is a project to be classed with the chimeras of science the squaring of the circle; or the discovery of the longitude, the perpetual motion, and the philosopher's stone.

This is mentioned, rather as proving his indefatigable attention to whatever concerned the general welfare of the Church, whether in doctrine or in discipline, than as in other respects of much consequence. The same motive will excuse my introducing, in this place, a favourite passage of his from Isaac Walton's 'Love and Truth,' which (as above stated) he republished in 1795.

"I shall next endeavour to satisfie your desire, or rather your challenge, why I go so constantly to the church-service; and my answer shall be all in love, and in sincerity.

"I go to adore and worship my God, who hath made me of nothing, and preserved me from being worse than nothing. And this worship and adoration I do pay him inwardly in my soul, and testifie it outwardly by my behaviour as namely, by my adoration, in my forbearing to cover my head in that place dedicated to God, and only to his service; and also, by standing up at profession of the Creed, which contains the several articles that I and all true Christians profess and believe; and also by my standing up at giving glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and confessing them to be three persons and but one God.

de

"And (secondly) I go to church to praise my God for my creation and redemption, and for his many liverances of me from the many dangers of my body, and more especially of my soul in sending me redemption by the death of his Son my Saviour, and for the constant assistance of his Holy Spirit; a part of which praise I perform frequently in the Psalms, which are daily read in the publick congregation.

"And (thirdly) I go to church publickly to confess and bewail my sins, and to beg pardon for them for his merits who died to reconcile me and all mankind unte

God, who is both his and my Father; and as for the words in which I beg this mercy, they be the Letany and Collects of the Church, composed by those learned and devout men, whom you and I have trusted to tell us which is and which is not the written word of God, and trusted also to translate those Scriptures into English. And in these Collects you may note, that I pray absolutely for pardon of sin, and for grace to believe and serve God: but I pray for health, and peace, and plenty conditionally, even so far as may tend to his glory and the good of my soul, and not farther. And this confessing my sins, and begging mercy and pardon for them, I do in my adoring my God, and by the humble posture of kneeling on my knees before him. And in this manner, and by reverend sitting to hear some chosen parts of God's word read in the publick assembly, I spend one hour of the Lord's Day every forenoon; and half so much time every evening. And since this uniform and devout custom, of joyning together in publick confession, and praise, and adoration of God, and in one manner, hath been neglected, the power of Christianity and humble piety is so much decayed, that it ought not to be thought on but with sorrow and lamentation; and, I think, especially by the Non-conformists."

We come now to the last of that series of well-earned rewards and honours, which accompanied the progress of this venerable divine through the course of his protracted and studious life. The See of Carlisle, which had become vacant in 1807 by the translation of the Hon. Dr. Edward Venables Vernon to the Arch

* To this Prelate, during his possession of the see in question, Dr. Paley was indebted not only for a benefice in that diocese (the first which his Lordship had it in his power to bestow) but also indirectly even for his more valuable

pre

bishopric of York, was offered by the Duke of Portland to Dr. Zouch, and refused. Delicacy alone prevents the Compiler of this Memoir from stating at large how arduous, even under the most favourable circumstances, it must have appeared to succeed a Prelate, who had united in the highest degree the reverence and the affection of every respectable Clergyman in his diocese. Before he finally resolved, however, to decline the mitre, he suffered (as he himself states in a Letter to a friend, dated College, Durham, December 7, 1807') "much agitation and disquietude of mind." The expanded sphere of utility which such an exaltation implies, as well in the weightier influence of example upon those whose examples are to influence the rest of the community, and the more authoritative inculcation of Christian doctrines and precepts, as in the enviable privilege of patronising unfriended genius and virtue, presents a combination of such praise-worthy objects to sway the choice; that the wisest and the best, in the full possession of their faculties, will not shrink from accepting it, however aweful a responsibility it may impose. But Dr. Zouch, who had truly pleaded great bodily infirmities in 1805, as a reason for being indulged in the non-performance of humbler duties, was too virtuous a man to sacrifice upon the altar of ambition his consistency and his truth. During the lapse of nearly three years those infirmities, he felt, had considerably increased: the importance and the anxieties of the episcopal office, the entire change of his professional situation, an abode in London

preferments, the rectory of Bishop-Wearmouth and the Sub-deanery of Lincoln. And the judgement and generosity, exerted thus honourably for both parties in appreciating and rewarding the Divine, to whom English Theology is under such deep obligation, have not overlooked or neglected his descendents.