ART. II.-Memoir of Joshua Watson.
CHURTON, Archdeacon of Cleveland.
J. and H. Parker.

Edited by EDWARD 2 Vols. London:

THE present volumes may more strictly be regarded as a commemoration of worthies, a record of a band of brothers all acting together, all thinking the same thing, and working might and main in the same cause, than as the memoir of an individual. They constitute, in fact, a memorial of the opinions and doings of the leaders of the orthodox party, previous to the rise of the Oxford school, as it has been called, and subsequently in partial connexion with that movement. Few good Churchmen, who have made themselves a name any time in the last sixty or even eighty years, but have a place given them in this chain of fathers; and the story of these godly, zealous, and yet eminently prudent men, is an example in our later days of change and disruption, which must certainly be regarded as well-timed. Steady conviction, sensibly following out the end in view by rational, persistent efforts, is at all times pleasant to observe. It gives a sort of confidence in the stability of the right, which is now and then necessary to sustain our courage; and we believe few generations need such pictures and such lessons more than our own, who have had to trace in what, at least in retrospection, seems a short period, so many careers of early brightness, of change, and of final disappearance from the field of our vision-leaving an inevitable sense of disappointment and desertion.

As the type and representative of these peculiar qualities, Joshua Watson, the editor's main and avowed subject, stands the central figure of the group, and as such deserving of especial study. His is a name to us all, and perhaps little more than a name to our younger readers; for those who are only actors and workers, and that not on their own account, but under the shadow of a cause and a principle, are apt to live rather in their works than on men's lips and in their memories. Yet whatever the force of the impression we have retained of him, the nature of that impression will be the same in us all. Rarely, indeed, do we meet with a character of such consistency, whose whole life was such a natural sequence, so uniform in its principles, so unswerving in its course, so sustained by a fixed code of right and wrong, carried out as far as human infirmity will permit with undeviating rectitude. In him we have an illustration how the world, or we will rather say society, is affected by

an exhibition of real fidelity and trustworthiness, not as negative qualities withholding from error, but as positive, active, influential principles, accomplishing important results. There is something really startling in the confidence and sense of reliance he inspired. We are constantly struck by language held towards him by his friends, often in station, his superiors, of implicit faith in his word, his judgment, his honesty of purpose, not only as present qualities, but as of certain continuance, and always to be reckoned on. Our own experience would lead us to strong misgivings of such undoubting confidence in any creature, however highly we had reason to think of him; but really in this case there is no evidence of the trust being misplaced. None of his friends seems to have been disappointed in Joshua Watson's honesty, fidelity, disinterestedness, sincerity, and sympathy. They always depended on them, and they never seemed to fail. No doubt a pre-eminently good understanding and correct judgment are indispensable to the full public adequate exhibition of this excellence; but it was the moral element in his character which gained it such weight. He possessed that invaluable virtue, quality, habit, practice, whatever we call it, never to disappoint reasonable expectation. He was clearly something to lean upon. All his friends knew Joshua Watson would help them if he could, and do his best, not by fits and starts, but with constant care. He was never so far engrossed with schemes of his own as not to be able to turn to those of his friends, and take a subordinate, executive part. He kept an active mind under, and schooled himself to be content, not always to originate, even in his own peculiar line, and to be the patient, watchful, intelligent worker-out of plans that others set going. He was always alive to the work other people were doing, its importance, extent, ability; and, busy as he always was, was not one of those busy men who undertake so much that they think they do everything. Possessed of very strong convictions, he held these convictions in check, and kept guard over himself always to see things as they are; neither heightened by imagination nor lowered by prejudice; assuming in himself, even where least tempted, a full share of natural weaknesses, and using all proper precautions against them. Again, we note a singular guardedness never to presume, or to allow his prominence in affairs to supplant the actual heads from their due honours; and an habitual caution never to use his influence as patronage. These, amongst other qualities, which will come forward in a fuller analysis of his character, account for the extraordinary confidence it inspired, and which found expression in what often sounds extreme language.

Van Mildert writes, as Dean of Paul's, grateful for his prudent advice in the difficulty Queen Caroline threw them into:-'I never yet found you a broken reed to lean upon, and I am persuaded I never shall;' and another, 'I never have and I never shall be disappointed in you.' The widowed Mrs. Rose, after long experience, calls him the source of help that has never yet failed her; and the Canadian Bishop Inglis, in a flight of enthusiasm on hearing of Joshua Watson's illness, writes:- His name, his bare existence on our planet, is something. Yea, it is hope, and strength, and power.' We are not commending such an abandonment to an idea as these last words imply; but it is something that no rude shock ever came to change the tone and throw contempt on this hyperbolical eulogy. Joshua Watson's birth and training were, we believe, especially friendly to the development of his characteristic excellences. His father was the younger son of a Cumberland statesman, as the class of landed yeomen are called in that county, and had very early expressed the wish to become a clergyman, a desire which his father somewhat angrily repressed. Checked in this first aspiration he could not settle at home, but set off in his seventeenth year to make his fortune in London. Here he got a situation as shop-boy, of ten pounds a year, from which he rose gradually till, ten years later, he was successfully established as a wine merchant on Tower Hill. But his first tastes had not deserted him, and those who knew him in old age felt that he would have adorned the profession he had so early marked out for himself. He married Dorothy Robson, sister of the then master of Sherborne Hospital, Durham, by whom he had two sons; John James Watson, afterwards rector of Hackney and of Diggeswell, Herts, and Archdeacon of S. Alban's; and Joshua, the subject of this memoir, born on Ascension Day, May 9, 1771.

'When he (Mr. Watson), had lived to see the wish which he had so earnestly cherished for himself fulfilled in the elder of his two sons, and the younger was able to take the more active part of his share in the city business, he withdrew by degrees from the occupation of the counting-house, and made his residence in the suburban village of Homerton, near the spot on which the newly-founded church of St. Barnabas now stands. Here he lived till the death of his wife in A.D. 1812; when, yielding to the affectionate request of his children, he consented to make his abode alternately with them, passing the summer months at Diggeswell, and the winter at Clapton. At Clapton, at the house of his younger son, when he had completed his eighty-second year, and increasing infirmity had prevented any further removal, he died on the 12th of August,

1821.

Those who remember the father of Joshua Watson, describe him as a man of the simplest habits; one who, though not slothful in business, and rather distinguished for the prudent foresight which is necessary to conduct a merchant's business to success, retained to old age the trustful heart and affectionate spirit of childhood. . . He left behind him in the words of Bishop Van Mildert, at his most tranquil and Christian-like departure, an example of

blameless excellence;" from which his son, who had ministered to his declining years "with a sort of devotional delight and satisfaction, derived much in the formation of his own character' while his aged parent lived, and still more in the recollection and imitation of his virtues."

To these testimonies it may now be added, that, from papers which he left behind, it appears that several years before his death he divided his property between his two sons, reserving to himself a moderate annual allowance for personal expenses, of which, however, he gave away three-fourths in gifts and benefactions.'-Vol. i. pp. 7-9.

While his elder son carried out his own earliest ideal, he designed that the younger should assist him in the labours of his second choice, and gave him education suited to this destination. While John James was sent to the Charterhouse, Joshua was kept at a private school till thirteen. There, however, he acquired the rudiments of classical education under his master's son, a Cambridge graduate. He was afterwards removed to a city school to learn, with other merchants' sons, the mysteries of accounts, book-keeping, and such an acquaintance with continental languages as a year's study could impart; and when scarcely fifteen he was taken into his father's counting-house in Mincing Lane. Under these apparent disadvantages, he contrived in the course of years to acquire a considerable amount of classical and general knowledge. His tastes were always sound and grave. As a school-boy, Josephus had been his favourite, even stolen study, while a turn for romance was indulged by pouring over Cassandra, one of those wonderful prolix old tales which are beyond the powers of our feeble modern digestion to get through. He spent 507. his father gave him for books, in a selection of historians and poets, with which he made himself well acquainted, and so far cultivated his judgment, taste, and perception, that his learned and more highly educated friends were subsequently very glad to apply to him for advice and friendly criticism. In the midst of a busy career he seems to have been a reader, with the advantage of a very strong and retentive memory; and in writing he had an easy ready style, which perfectly expressed what he wanted to say. Thus he did not suffer in any sense from what is called a defective education, while we have always believed that a training in a merchant's counting-house, the familiarity- with large interests and large sums gained there, tends, under favourable circumstances, such as Joshua Watson would possess with his father, to forming a liberal and generous spirit. We think all persons whose business it is to collect money, to persuade others to give of their substance in an exceptional, profuse, extensive fashion, will say that merchants, bankers, and persons connected with trade in some way or other, have the most munificent notions of giving. While the virtues of integrity and honesty have a

chance of being studied in a wider, more thoughtful, and intelligent spirit, where buying and selling is the business of life, and there are constant questions brought before the conscience, than when the practice of them is taken for granted, and the mind is never tried with difficult and knotty points. People often fail in high-minded, unselfish honesty, from ignorance, and from a notion founded on this consciousness of ignorance, that they must be on their guard; look after themselves, and so forth. Women, from this cause, often show to disadvantage in business transactions. The same has been said of clergymen, with perhaps some truth, and for a like reason; assuming themselves professionally removed from danger of sin in this direction. A story is told in these memoirs of William Stevens, one of the chain of devoted laymen from Evelyn and Nelson, up to Joshua Watson, whose education and calling were also mercantile, which bears on this point. Hearing a young lady in whom he was interested boast to some of her female acquaintances of a cheap bargain which she fancied she had made, O, yes,' said Stevens,' you are fit to live in the world.' From any one else, says the narrator, the speech would have gone for one of little meaning; but from him, who, as she was well aware, was one who detested all craft and covetousness, it came with heart searching power. His acquaintance with trade had led him to analyse all the injustice and even dishonesty involved in cheap bargains, and in the craving after them. We have no doubt that Joshua Watson's earliest training for his various and important trusts was not only excellent as giving him a perfect knowledge of business and accounts, but as cultivating his conscience, showing him where lie the pitfalls of temptation, giving him higher ideas of the duties and responsibilities connected with money, and a clearer perception of fairness and justice where the rights of others are concerned.

6

He had been admitted his father's partner when of age, and evidently showed talents for business; for on his father's retirement, he was, about the year 1810, sought out by a firm in Mark Lane, and requested to become partner in their concern; where, chiefly by executing government contracts, a sort of traffic which from all accounts craved wary walking, he made the whole of his fortune, and in 1814 retired, at the age of forty-three, while this fortune was continually increasing, to devote himself to the public labours of charity and benevolence which already engaged much of his time and interest. The following extract from a letter to a subordinate in his own and his father's business, written some years after this event, shows a serupulous conscience always alive to the temptation of buying and selling, and bears on what we have been saying: