siderate of him in this matter. Mrs. Wilberforce, in making some alterations in her garden at Blackheath, told Mr. Bull she had fitted up an arbour for him, where he might quietly enjoy his pipe. I have visited,' says Mr. Thornton, the lady at the Hill, and penetrated as far as your bower; but as there were no refreshing quaffs, my visit was short. So Mr. Whitbread, in a poetical epistle inviting Mr. Bull to his seat at Southhill, says—

"I'll fetch you here, if you will come ;

Pipe and tobacco-box are welcome.

Your friends must always bless the art

That mends your health and cheers your heart.'

From the correspondence between Mr. Bull and Cowper, we learn that the former was happily successful in preserving some of the finest productions of the poet, who tells him, "I have the singular knack of being out of humour with every thing, or almost every thing, I write, when it is about nine days old." In this way we are indebted to Mr. Bull, among other poems, for that exquisite piece

"The rose had been wash'd, just wash'd in a shower," &c.

To the influence of the same thoughtful adviser we owe the Translations from Madame Guyon. The following reveals the dark side of Cowper's soul, showing how hopeless was the task of those who attempted to minister to that diseased mind, whether in the genial lightsomeness of Mr. Bull, or in the colder counsellings of Newton.

"Both your advice and your manner of giving it are gentle and friendly, and like yourself. I thank you for them, and do not refuse your counsel because it is not good, or because I dislike it, but because it is not for me. There is not a man upon earth that might not be the better for it, myself only excepted. Prove to me that I have a right to pray, and I will pray without ceasing; yes, and praise too, even in the belly of this hell, compared with which Jonah's was a palace, a temple of the living God. But, let me add, there is no encouragement in the Scriptures so comprehensive as to include my case, nor any consolation so effectual as to reach it. I do not relate it to you, because you could not believe it; you would agree with me if you could. And yet, the sin by which I am excluded from the privileges I once enjoyed you would account no sin; you would even tell me it was a duty. This is strange. You will think me mad; but I am not mad, most noble Festus-I am only in despair; and those powers of mind which I possess are only permitted to me for my amusement at some times, and to acuminate and enhance my misery at others. have not even asked a blessing on my food these ten years, * nor do I expect that I shall ask it again. Yet I love you, and such as you, and determine to enjoy your friendship while I can. It will not be long. We must soon part for ever. Madame Guyon is finished, but not quite transcribed. Mrs. Unwin, who has been lately much indisposed, unites her love to you with mine; and we both wish to be affectionately remembered to Mrs. Bull and the young gentleman.— Yours, my friend, WM. COWPER.

"October 27, 1782."

I

* On such occasions he would sit down and take his knife and fork in his hand, to signify that he had no part in the exercise. My father has often witnessed this.

Thomas Scott and Rowland Hill.

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The following taken from the same letter, discloses the genuine humour of the poet, which, like the sun behind a black cloud, flashed out occasionally with such surprising brilliancy :

"Mon aimable et très cher Ami,-It is not in the power of chaises or chariots to carry you where my affections will not follow you. If I had heard that you were gone to finish your days in the moon, I should not love you the less, but should contemplate the place of your abode as often as it appeared in the heavens, and say, Farewell, my friend; lost, but not forgotten. Live happily in thy lantern, and smoke the remainder of thy pipe in peace. Thou art rid of the earth at least, and all its cares. So far, I can rejoice in thy removal; and as to the cares that are to be found in the moon, I am resolved to suppose them lighter than ours below-heavier they can hardly be." The following extract illustrates the same side of his strange nature:

"Mr. Bull is an honest man. We have seen him twice since he received your orders to march hither, and faithfully told us that it was in consequence of those orders that he came. He dined with us yesterday. We were all in pretty good spirits, and the day passed very agreeably. It is not long since he called on Mr. Scott. Mr. Raban came in. Mr. Bull began addressing the former-'My friend, you are in trouble; you are unhappy-1 read it in your countenance.' Mr. Scott replied he had been so, but he was better. Come, then,' says Mr. Bull, 'I will expound to you the cause of all your anxiety. You are too common; you make yourself too cheap. Visit your people less; converse more with your own heart. How often do you speak to them in the week?' Thrice.' 'Ay, there it is. Your sermons are an old ballad, your prayers are an old ballad, and you are an old ballad, too.' 'I would wish to tread in the steps of Mr. Newton.' 'You do well to follow his steps in all other instances; but in this instance you are wrong, and so was he. Mr. Newton trod a path which no man but he could have used so long as he did, and he wore it out long before he went from Olney. Too much familiarity and condescension cost him the estimation of his people. He thought he should insure their love, to which he had the best possible title, and by these means he lost it. Be wise, my friend; take warning, and make yourself scarce if you wish that persons of little understanding should know how to prize you.' When he related to us this harangue, so nicely adjusted to the case of the third person present, it did us both good; and, as Jacques says—

'It made my lungs to crow like chanticleer.'"

We have only space left for the following characteristic note of Rowland Hill, written after a rather unbecoming exhibition on the organ, by M. Duprée, the King's organist, which greatly annoyed Mr. Hill:

"My dear Brother Bull,-How you must think of my treatment last Tuesday evening, when His Majesty's tweedle-dee and tweedledum man interrupted our worship; and that after such a serious introduction of singing with our organ which we enjoyed the Sabbath before. Pride must have its fall, and for the future all the tweedledums that Kings love they shall keep among themselves. Their fine. airs will never do for a Methodist meeting-house. And so farewell

to the first and the last of the business. Brother Bull, thanks, a thousand thanks, for your last visit. The people sucked it in very greedily. That proves they desired the sincere milk of the Word, that they may grow thereby. But I forget the design of my letter. After my Tuesday blunder, Mrs. Hill and I came over to Mr. Neale's, in hopes of an interview with you at his house; but like a nimble Jack, we found you gone, and so we did our very best to patch up our bad behaviour. I rejoice with you that your lovely son is as he is. Jesus gives you this joy. His great sacrifice procured all we ever had, now have, and ever shall have.

"Past ten ten o'clock; eyes half shut; mind marvellously stupid; spirit much exhausted; and candles burning to waste. I shall therefore save the best part of a halfpenny if I finish directly.-Yours very gratefully and affectionately, R. HILL.

"Madam Hill's love to Madam Bull.

"London (some day, I know not what, in the month of February, 1793, and here ends my present knowledge)."

But we must pause in our wanderings over this enchanted ground. Nor must we forget to express our high estimate of the tact and talent evinced by the author in the compilation of these Memorials. The volume is written throughout in a spirit worthy of his progenitors. With regard to the subject of his memoir, the impression left upon the reader is one of unmingled admiration of the man and the minister. We cannot refrain from adding the following extract as a testimony to the excellence of Mr. Bull, as well as to the value of Calvinism. Speaking of his large audiences in London, he says: "I could not please everybody. I believe I am strictly and properly a unique,—that is to say, solus cum solo, unus sui generis. I don't care a straw what they call me. I only want to live Christ-to Him, for Him, in Him, and always with Him." Again he says,-"He that would excel as a minister must unite the unction of the Mystic, the simplicity of the Moravian, and the deep, clear, sound judgment of the Calvinist. If either is wanting, the preacher is naught. Oh, my son, labour to unite sound judgment, divine unction, and all the simplicity of love!"

ART. XI.-The Rev. James D. Burns.

The Vision of Prophecy, and other Poems. By JAMES D. BURNS, M.A. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas.

Three Sermons Preached in Trinity Presbyterian Church, Hampstead. By the REV. JAMES D. BURNS, M. A. London: Nisbet and Co. 1864.

R. BURNS, a native of Edinburgh, where he was born,

university, became, almost at the earliest age permissible, a

Hampstead and Mentone.

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minister of the Free Church of Scotland. In 1845 he was settled as its minister in Dunblane; but a fragile constitution, already overtasked by study, soon broke down, and enforced first a long absence from an affectionate flock, and eventually an entire separation. Five years were spent in Madeira, and a shorter period in Jersey and the south of England, in search of health, which he so far recovered as to be able, ten years ago, to undertake the charge of the Presbyterian Church at Hampstead. In that airy and beautiful suburb he was not unconscious of the mighty influences which stir the great metropolis, whilst at the same time, remote from interruption, he had leisure to read, and meditate, and pray. His congregation was at first not very numerous, but it grew, and its members were tenderly attached to himself, and many of them were well able to appreciate his sermons, which, always thoughtful, always evangelical, were often bright with an exquisite beauty. Happy in the love of his people, and in the intercourse of an intelligent Christian society, the useful but uneventful years passed on. Installed in "the Manse,' and a little household beginning to rise up around him, the remembrance of former weakness had almost passed away, when, with new and alarming symptoms, the subtle malady returned. An instant migration to a milder climate was enjoined. In January, 1864, he hastened to Mentone. A season of unwonted severity rendered the change less beneficial than had been hoped, and although he considerably rallied in the summer, soon after his return to his winter retreat it was evident that he was a dying man. On the 25th of November, his neighbour, the Rev. A. Burn Murdoch, came over from Nice to see him. His visitor mentioning as a cause of thankfulness compositions which he had published, and which might still be serviceable, he replied, "My dear fellow, when it comes to this there is nothing for it but that word-Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.' Men may sit in their studies and write against the Bible, and may point their pens against this and that in the Bible, but I feel now, what I have often thought in speaking to others, as I myself now am, that this is the only rock-Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." On the following evening his sickroom was joyfully surprised by the arrival of that friend and fellow-elder, whose thoughtful love had been the daily solace of his Hamsptead ministry. Much overcome at Mr. Matheson's arrival, as soon as he could speak he said, "I have been greatly weaned the last few days from all kinds of longings; but if there was any one on earth whom I much wished to see once more, it was you: and now God has enabled me to shake you by the hand." The visit was opportune, for next

day, November 27th, the Sabbath of earth was exchanged for the rest which awaiteth God's people. His remains were brought home, and laid beside brethren in Highgate Cemetery, and as the procession was moving towards the open grave, tears started into many an eye, when from clear but faltering voices rose the hymn :

"For ever with the Lord!
Amen, so let it be."

The rough parishioners of Haworth carried Grimshaw to the grave amidst songs of holy triumph, and very touching were the strains of faith and hope, as they rose through the feeble winter sunshine, from youthful mourners, at their pastor's funeral.

Now that he is gone, it is our grief that we did not see more of him while living, and another grief that now, to the most of people, he must continue unknown. For he was quite uncommon. A lofty idealism, which cheerfully accepted homely realities, and a consummate scholarship, which never disdained the joys and sorrows of the poorest; a determination to know nothing amongst men save Christ crucified, along with a necessity to admire the wonders of creation and the glories of art; a width of sympathy and a range of acquirement which would have gladly made acquaintance with all the true and all the beautiful, but which with growing relish returned evermore to the simplicities of Scripture; a faith at home in the Westminster formulas, a fancy free of the universe; a taste which revelled in the dream-like descriptions of Camoens and the mystic intuitions of Wordsworth, but which could lay down the favourite volume in order to visit a reformatory, or plead with anxious eagerness the cause of some Christian mission: surely it was no common union, and even amongst ministers, the man is rare in whom such attributes combine. In Mr. Burns they met, and not only did their meeting occasion no conflict, but in his true and harmonious nature they so thoroughly coalesced, that it would have been hard to say which was the most genuine or characteristic outcome of the inner man; except in so far as of all affinities, the most powerful are the mutual attractions of piety; and the delight which he found in "the saints, the excellent of the earth," as well as their delectation in him, showed plainly that the man of taste and the man of letters was still more entirely the man of God.

Of his powers as a poet the volume named at the head of this article may give some idea. Specimens of its hymns have found their way into Sir Roundell Palmer's "Book of Praise" and many recent collections; and in order to be appreciated, the "Atlantis" and longer pieces need to be