harvest cut down; and beg most sincerely an interest in your prayers, my excellent friend, that I myself may come to the barn-yard, like a shock of wheat fully ripe, every stalk bowed down with fruitfulness and humility.

"We are to have a spiritual festival here on Wednesday the anniversary of the Tunbridge Wells Bible Society; Lord Barham in the chair, and all the living ministers of religion for twenty-one miles around us, on the platform. 'Grace and peace be in your cup! Ever and affectionately yours."

Dr. Waugh evinced his friendship, too, by opening his heart to his friends in the expression of those recollections and feelings which it loved to cherish, and which no change nor time could efface. What a beautiful specimen of this is the letter which follows, written by him to the same good man whom we have already seen him strengthening for his last conflict!

"We are all longing to hear from you. I have been out here for two days, to enjoy a little rest and composure, and purpose to recall the joys of other years, by conversing a little with you. The recollection of the scenes of youth is, to my mind, like the breath of the morning. Worn out and vexed, I have frequently gone down to the Green Park Lodge to meet an old school-fellow, a man of heart and feeling. We go back, at one bound of the mind, five-and-forty years. We revisit the broom of Cowdenknowes, and the braes of Carrolside. We climb Thomas the Rhymer's Tower, where, according to his hoary prediction, the hare kittled on the hearth-stane.' We go over to Melrose Abbey, and stand on the marble under which the Douglas lies who fell at Otterburn; and

see the spot where St. Cuthbert sanctified the waters. We review the scenes of youth, when the heart was a stranger to guile, and the robbing of the laird's apple-trees the only crime with which the conscience was burdened. We plunge our thoughts so completely in our subject, that, leaving the lodge, I scarcely believe myself in London, and feel, as you once did at the panorama of Edinburgh near Leicester Square, when you proposed just to go over to Kinghorn that afternoon, and thought you would get home in the course of the evening. The good Mr. Brown might call this trifling; but it is a sort of playfulness of imagination that does the heart good; every good affection is suckled by it, and every unkind feeling dies at its touch.

"Poor Dr. Robert Young, of London Wall, is no more. On Thursday week I spoke over his grave. Somebody will soon perform the same sad office over mine. It will gratify you to be informed that the Duke of Sussex wrote a long, good, sympathising, and consolatory letter to his afflicted widow, and requested as many of the officers of the Royal North Britons as could make it convenient, to attend the funeral in their uniforms. They lined one side of the grave. Dr. Nicol preached the funeral sermon on Sabbath morning, from the death of Aaron.

"Let us keep up our hearts; we shall get home soon. Ever and affectionately yours."

He delighted to notice to his friends works of merit, and to expatiate on the beauty of productions of genius. But while most eager to encourage early talent, he was often teased by the applications made to him for assistance by persons wishing to come forward to the ministry, and for employment in missionary labour. While the kindness of his heart would not permit him to say aught that was harsh to any applicant, it was not of that cast which would have led him to countenance

2

either the presumptuous or the romantic. In his answers, he laboured, with gentleness, yet with firmness, to repress the tendencies of an unduly excited enthusiasm, and to guide the ardent but inconsiderate to sober views of themselves and of Providence, and to a due valuation and improvement of those means of utility which were open to them in a private sphere. To check the applicant who had mistaken the impulse of enthusiasm for a Divine call, and who imagined that piety can compensate for the want of learning and prudence, is a severity which is mercy to the individual, and likewise to the institution which would be despised and injured by the extravagances of the rash, the impetuous, and the unstable.

He delighted to mention, in his letters to his friends, such incidents, and to describe such scenes, as he thought would please them; and this he did with the most delightful gaiety. Thus he wrote to a friend an account of his going with the deputation of Dissenting Ministers with an address to the King, on the peace of Amiens:

"In the interview with the King, every thing was gracious on his part, and I hope loyal and dutiful on ours. The sight of the Duke of Portland, as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, in his robes, and of about four hundred of the leading men, heads of houses in the University, in their ancient dresses, with the ceremonial of their presentation to his Majesty on the throne, within four feet of which I stood; and also the sight of the University of Cambridge, which came next, was very noble. The King looked remarkably well,-more like a heathen god than a mortal man."

And in a letter from Ryegate:

"At a narrow door in the old castle here, you enter, and go down first by a flight of steps, and then, on the slanting ground, through an avenue cut out of the rock for the space of fifty-two yards, you come to a long room that will hold above four hundred people. In this room met the English barons in the reign of King John, with their swords girt on their thighs, their helmets on their heads, the flame of liberty in their manly bosoms, and settled the tenour of the Magna Charta, which afterwards they forced their sullen monarch to sign at Runnymede, near Windsor. We saw the seats on which, more than six hundred years ago, they sat; and as we looked around the dark subterraneous passage, slenderly lighted with three candles, we felt the sacred enthusiasm of the love of liberty and of man invade our breasts, and thought we heard the bursts of their indignation sounding through the vault. So much for the sublime! The lowest part of the excavation is twenty yards below the surface."

His talent for describing natural scenery was of no common order. While he marked the more obvious features which attract the eye of the ordinary observer, he could catch those real touches of the pencil of nature which no eye notes but that of taste and genius; and he could convey what he felt in terms so appropriate and so vivid as to excite the happiest impression of it in the minds of others. We see this talent in the following description of scenery in Denbighshire:

"I do not think that I ever had a more delightful ride than this morning, from six o'clock to eleven, over a part of Shropshire, Flintshire, and this county, every yard of which is highly cultivated, and of which I do not believe there is a furlong of even ground. The ever

varying prospect of gently rising hills and retiring valleys; streams of pure water from the high Welsh mountains; fields of wheat, barley, and oats, in the most healthy state; gentlemen's seats bursting every minute on your sight through clumps of trees; little decent churches on the neighbouring hills, with plantations of yew-trees around the habitations of the dead; the roads singularly good; the high mountains of Montgomeryshire rising in the distance to the clouds, on the left hand; the extensive valleys of Shropshire spreading themselves far as the eye can reach, on the right; the spires of Chester on the north-west,-with the sun behind us, and, by means of the ever-changing clouds, giving unceasing variety to the scene;--all afforded to my mind the most exquisite pleasure. How gracious and how kind is our God, who opens to our minds so many sources of innocent gratification!"

In another letter we see his deep interest in the parochial schools of his native land:

"I rejoice in the care of the General Assembly about the parochial schoolmasters, than whom, perhaps, there is not a more useful body of men in the kingdom. It will be the disgrace of the clergy, after the augmentations which have been made to their livings, to leave their brethren in the vale of poverty behind them.”

Dr. Waugh's solicitude for the improvement of youth was evinced not only by the weekly meetings which he held with them for their benefit, but by the letters which he wrote to them when involved in perplexities where counsel was necessary, or when exposed to sufferings to which nothing but the power of Divine grace can reconcile the youthful heart,-so apt to form prospects all fair and flattering, and to put far away