and to all equally unexpected, he felt thankful he had made his peace with God before. When asked by a Christian brother what were his hopes, he replied, "I have no fear about the future; all is well." Weak in body, yet strong in the Lord, he entered on his reward on the 12th of June, 1855.

His death was improved by one of the brethren of the New Connexion in their chapel, to a crowded congregation, on the 24th; and on the 1st of July, at the Clive Independent Chapel, by the Rev. J. D. James, his former pastor. The congregation on this occasion was very large. Mr. James feelingly said, " Brother Chester was a good man. Many hearts bear testimony to the excellency of his character and life. But his works follow him. We mourn his loss to the church and the world, but rejoice that God hath 'committed such treasures to earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God.' Thus the memory of the just is blessed.'"

Such is the memory of our lamented friend. Mighty in prayer-earnest in labouring for souls-mild and gentle in rebuke he is a character worthy to be held up by every reader as a mirror, that each may see how far his excellences reflect on them. AMICUS. December, 1857.

LAMARTINE.*

LAMARTINE, after having occupied spacious and splendid apartments in the Rue de l'Université for twenty years, was obliged to remove to an humble dwelling in the Rue de la Ville l'Evêque. reader is now invited to his city abode, in company with one of his frequent guests, who will conduct us to No. 43, Rue de la Ville l'Evêque.

My

At the end of a court stands a small house of modern aspect. You enter by a gallery with glass doors, a kind of verandah, that serves for an antechamber. Next comes a little room almost gloomy, and you immediately arrive at the parlour. This parlour, which opens on a pretty little garden, forms a gallery. Its furniture is of antique simplicity,-a sofa, a few armchairs and chairs, a large centre table, and two consoles laden with flowers.

I was much astonished when certain

*Lamartine is so well known to the English reader, that everything concerning him has a charm. The above, which was written by a Literary Gentleman for a Foreign Journal, is specially interesting.

journals deemed it their duty to make a violent attack on the luxurious habits of Lamartine. "Do you know," said I to him one evening, "that a witty journalist asserts that you have six English horses in your stables?” "If I had stables," he replied, "I should not be so much embarrassed. I might lodge two little cows that I bought to-day to send to Saint Point. For want of a stable, I am obliged to leave them with, their seller, which is quite vexatious."

In this parlour you see a few objects of art-a fine marble clock, designed by Mme. de Lamartine; two busts of the master of the house, one in bronze, by Count d'Orsay, the other in marble, by Mr. Salomon; also a picture by Gudin, a picture by Gigoux, several paintings by Mme. de Lamartine, and a portrait of the poet by Gerard.

Lamartine works in his bed-room. It is on the first story, which any one but a Parisian would call the second. It has a bed, a few flowers on the chimneypiece, a small table covered with books, two chairs, a Voltaire arm-chair, and no other furniture. Lamartine rises at six o'clock in winter as well as in summer. Hurrying on his clothes, he installs himself in his arm-chair, and writes on his knees, his feet resting on the andirons. While he is working, three or four greyhounds slumber or gambol at his side. At noon, the servant comes to tell him that breakfast is ready, and the writer throws aside his pen, to resume it on the following morning.

Lamartine has written and published fifty volumes, but he has not a single copy of his works at home. I one day lent him the seventh volume of his History of the Restoration of Monarchy," which he had occasion to consult.

66

He has a prodigious memory. The poet has boxed up in his brain all the dates of chronology. Ask him in what year of Rome Tiberius Gracchus died, and he will tell you without hesitation. I know of no more extraordinary memory of this kind except that of M. Villemain.

No celebrated man has been inundated with more pieces of verse than Lamartine. "I know the number of contemporaneous poets," he said, one day, with a smile," by the number of pieces which they have addressed to me. France has more than ten thousand." He has also received more than two thousand letters from unknown friends, who each asked for an autograph. If he has answered

all his correspondents, how many hours he must have stolen from his work!

In the afternoon, Lamartine is occupied with his correspondence and his business affairs; and when the weather is fine, he goes out to walk.

Every evening, without exception, he receives company. His saloon is one of the most curious in Paris. There is no celebrated foreigner newly arrived in France who does not solicit the honour of being presented to the illustrious writer; so that in this parlour you see successively specimens of every nation. The composition of this saloon sometimes presents the most motley aspect it is the fold of eclecticism.

Lamartine has friends and admirers in all parties. You meet in his parlour expeers of France, and new senators; the lord elbows the Russian prince, and the legitimist is seated at the side of the republican. There you find the old names of the aristocracy, the young renowns of literature, admirals, generals, ex-statesmen, illustrious refugees, journalists,-society entire on a small scale. Madame de Lamartine, who gracefully does the honours of the saloon, is one of the busiest women in the world. It is no slight task to receive new visitors every evening, to find an amiable word for every one, a phrase not too commonplace for another, to move each instant from place to place, and to keep up the fire of conversation perpetually among persons, with nearly all of whom you are almost unacquainted. There, as everywhere else, conversation has its hazards. Lamartine scarcely ever joins in it, save when a few intimates are alone present. He then recounts, and his speech has all the magic of his style,— the adventures of his youth, the events in which he has more or less directly participated, and the episodes of the drama in which he played so conspicuous a part in 1848.

One evening I reached Lamartine's parlour at the moment when a Moldavian lady of high rank, the Countess de Sturza, was tearing the veil from the harems at Constantinople. The Countess de Sturza, during her sojourn in the capital of the Ottoman empire, was several times invited to dine with the wife of Fuad-Effendi, and with Mrs. Reschid Pacha. She thus saw, by special privilege, the interior of those impregnable fortresses. According to the account of the witty Countess, the lot of the Turks must be much less enviable than it ap

pears when looked upon in the distance of European perspective. Women, fat, ill-made, lazy, dirty, and more ignorant than the carps of the Bois de Boulogne, such are the inmates of almost all the harems. Add to this, that these women pass the whole day in disputing with each other, in mutually exchanging jealousies, insults, and even blows, and you will comprehend that the bliss of the lordly Turks, which has inflamed for centuries the imagination of the rhetoricians, still leaves, to be complete, too much to be desired. The harem is a hell where four or five furies employ their time in tormenting a miserable victim, while calling him all the time, “My lord," and "My master."

The dinner of Turkish ladies consists of about thirty dishes, which pass one after another, on a little table one foot high. The ladies are seated all around, not on cushions, as the keepsakes represent them, but on mattresses. The Chinese use, instead of spoon and fork, little sticks, which they manoeuvre with marvellous dexterity: the Mussulman women have neither forks nor sticks,— they eat of all the dishes with two fingers, the fore-finger and the thumb. Usage does not permit a Turkish lady of high rank to thrust her fingers more than three times in any dish whatever. If she should happen, by gluttony, to violate this custom, she would be exposed to the jeers of her rivals. Turkish women generally have little appetite, in consequence of their habit of munching dried preserves, pastry, and sugar plums, from morning to evening. They are children, who, at the end of a few years, reach such a state of obesity, that they almost die of a plethora.

When the clock strikes eleven, there is no one remaining in the parlour of M. de Lamartine. It is known that the great writer needs to go to bed early, so as to be at work again at six o'clock in the morning.

WEBSTER'S OPINION OF BYRON.

I HAVE read Tom Moore's first volume of Byron's life. Whatever the human imagination shall hereafter picture of a human being, I shall believe it all within the bounds of credibility. Byron's case shows that fact sometimes runs by all fancy, as a steamboat passes a scow at anchor. I have tried hard to find something in him to like, besides his genius and his wit; but there was no other

understood only by those near you is almost as bad as to speak in an unknown tongue. But the opposite extreme of pitching the voice, as if the brethren and sisters were all dull of hearing, is equally to be avoided.

2. Always be short. If you observe this rule, you can hardly fail of being heard with pleasure. If your remarks are brief, although they may be ever so uninteresting, they cannot be tiresome. When the brethren see you get up, if they do not anticipate anything very enlivening, they at least have the comfort of feeling that you will not weary them with long-winded exhortation.

3. Always have a point, and speak to the point. A single idea clearly exhibited, and strongly enforced, is worth more than a half-hour of rambling remarks.

What

4. Speak with earnestness. comes from the heart will be likely to go to the heart.

5. Don't speak so often as not to allow others to occupy their due share of the time.

RIGHT KIND OF PREACHING.

It was a beautiful criticism made by Longinus, upon the effect of the speaking of Cicero and Demosthenes. He says the people would go from one of Cicero's orations exclaiming, "What a beautiful speaker! what a rich, fine voice! what an eloquent man Cicero is!"-They talked of Cicero; but when they left Demosthenes they said, "Let us fight Philip!" Losing sight of the speaker, they were all absorbed in the subject; they thought not of Demosthenes, but of their country. So, my brethren, let us endeavour to send away from our ministrations the Christian, with his mouth full of the praise-not of " preacher," but of God; and the sinner, not descanting upon the beautiful figures and well-turned periods of the discourse, but inquiring, with the brokenness of a penitent, "What shall I do to be saved?" So shall we be blessed in our work; and when called to leave the watch-towers of our spiritual Jerusalem, through the vast serene, like the deep melody of an angel's song, heaven's approving voice shall be heard

our

"Servant of God, well done!

Thy glorious warfare's past; The battle's fought, the victory's won, And thou art crown'd at last."

CALVIN ON READING SERMONS. CALVIN expresses himself very distinctly and beautifully in his letter to Somerset, against the prevalent practice of reading sermons. "The people," he says, must be taught in such a manner that they may be inwardly collected and made to feel the truth of what the Bible says, that the word is a two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. I say this to your highness, because there is too little of living preaching in our kingdom, sermons there being mostly read and recited. I understand well enough what obligates you to adopt this method; there are few good, useful preachers, such as you have, and you fear that levity and foolish imaginations might be the consequences, as is often the case, by the introduction of a new system. But all this must yield to the command of Christ, which orders the preaching of the Gospel. No possible danger must be permitted to abridge the liberty of the Spirit of God, or prevent its free course among those whom he has adorned with his grace for the edifying of the church."

PULPIT ORATORY.

A THEOLOGICAL student once wrote to Mr. Garrick for advice on public speaking, and he gave the following reply:

"My dear Sir,-You know how you would feel and speak in the parlour to a dear friend who was in imminent danger of his life; and with what energetic pathos of diction and countenance you would enforce the observance of that which you really thought would be for his preservation. You would be yourself; and the interesting nature of your subject, impressing your heart, would furnish you with the most natural tone of voice, the most proper language, the most engaging features, and the most suitable and graceful gestures. What you would be in the parlour, be in the pulpit, and you will not fail to please, to affect, to profit."

VARIOUS circumstances have contributed to fix the minds of English readers on Andover, above all the other Theological Schools of the United States. They will, therefore, we feel assured, be gratified with the statement of its operations which

we are now enabled to lay before them. Its present number of students is larger than for many years past. Its three classes give an aggregate of 100. From its Triennial Catalogue for 1857, we gather the following general summary :

SPURGEON ON MINISTERIAL
SUPPORT.

MR. Spurgeon continues to gather immense crowds wherever he appears. Every Thursday evening he devotes to preaching in his chapel in the Borough, and on these occasions his expositions are frequently short, racy, and practical. Lately he spoke from the text, "The word of God is not bound;" and after some admirable practical remarks, suited to the experience of ministers, many of whom were present, showing how the preacher is often "bound" in delivering his message, among other things he said:

"Ministers are often bound by worldly cares. This may occur when the cause is little suspected. A well-fed deacon steps into the vestry, and throwing himself on a cushioned seat at his ease, remarks to a brother deacon 'Don't you think our minister is sadly in want of life? His sermons have become very dull of late. What can be the matter? If he does not change his style, the congregation will fall off and the funds will suffer.' Little does the worthy deacon understand the cause of this to lie under his own control, rather than his minister's.

choose his text for that morning he was discussing with himself how he should pay the next quarter's rent for his very modest dwelling; or when his sermon should have been prepared, he had to nurse a sick child, for whom he could not afford to pay an attendant; or some other necessary care kept him employed; and whatever blame there is in the matter is yours, Mr. Deacon, who, with your comfortable family, house, and well-filled purse, give no proper attention to the physical wants of your pastor.

"I can afford to speak freely on the subject," he continued, "because my deacons amply provide for all my wants. But this is not the case with many of my brethren, who, to the disgrace of their churches, are 'bound' by poverty and care in the preaching of the word of God. Your very horses won't work except you feed them. Feed your ministers as you do your horses, before you find fault with their dulness in the pulpit. He that preaches the Gospel is entitled to live of the Gospel. It is true also that if the church will not properly support the minister, he is entitled to support himself by his labour. Thus Paul was a tent-maker. Your ministers may be tent-makers, if they can't live otherwise. But this would be a bad plan, both for ministers and their customers, to say nothing of their flocks. Be very sure the ministers' tents will be but poor, unsaleable articles. He is not the man to suit the market. Keep him out of that line if you value his character. It needs all his attention to be a good preacher. If you try him in both lines, it will be a failure in both. You would not have Sir Colin Campbell, the Commander of the British army in India, to open a shop in Calcutta. It would be a strange sight, to see one of our dragoons before Lucknow or Delhi, taking charge of an apple stall!"

This is a fair specimen of Mr. Spurgeon's more homely style. It addresses itself to the popular mind by images, and leaves a powerful impression even when it raises a laugh.-Presbyterian.

THE BEDFORD FAMILY AND THE STATE CHURCH.

THE illustrious house of Russell have come in for a good share of the Church property distributed by the Crown at the Reformation. At the period of the first French Revolution (1792), the then Duke of Bedford, having provoked Mr. Burke by some reflections on a pension recently granted to him, that powerful writer retorted upon him in the following strain:--

"I know not how it happened, but it really seems that whilst his Grace was meditating his well-considered censure upon me, he fell into a sort of sleep.