"I sympathize with your now happily pro- | in every week, and a Sabbatical hour in every mising exertions in behalf of the race of inno- day." Those days and hours gave him back cents, whose lot it has hitherto been to be made the subject-matter of depredation, for the purpose of being treated worse than the authors of such crimes are treated for those crimes in other places." There are, in this work, some occasional additions to the stock of political anecdotes. Of these we transcribe the following speci mens: "Franklin signed the peace of Paris in his old spotted velvet coat (it being the time of a court-mourning, which rendered it more particular.) What,' said my friend the negotiator, is the meaning of that harlequin coat?' It is that in which he was abused by Wedderburne.' He showed much rancour and personal enmity to this country-would not grant the common passports for trade, which were, however, easily got from Jay or Adams. "Dined with Lord Camden; he, very chatty and pleasant. Abused Thurlow for his duplicity and mystery. Said the king had said to him occasionally he had wished Thurlow and Pitt to agree; for that both were necessary to him-one in the Lords, the other in the Commons. Thurlow will never do any thing to oblige Lord Camden, because he is a friend of Pitt's. Lord Camden himself, though he speaks of Pitt with evident affection, seems rather to complain of his being too much under the influence of any one who is about him; particularly of Dundas, who prefers his countrymen whenever he can.-Lord Camden is sure that Lord Bute got money by the peace of Paris. He can account for his sinking near £300,000 in land and houses; and his paternal estate in the island which bears his name was not above £1500 a-year, and he is a life-tenant only of Wortley, which may be £8000 or £10,000. Lord Camden does not believe Lord Bute has any the least connexion with the king now, whatever he may have had. Lord Thurlow is giving constant dinners to the judges, to gain them over to his party, was applied to by * a wretched sort of dependant of the Prince of Wales, to know if he would lend him money on the joint bond of the prince and dukes of York and Clarence, to receive double the sum lent, whenever the king should die, and either the Prince of Wales, the dukes of York and Clarence, come into the inheritance. The sum intended to be raised is £200,000. * ""Tis only a hollow truce, not a peace, that is made between Thurlow and Pitt. They can have no confidence in each other." It is perhaps the most impressive circumstance in Mr. Wilberforce's character, that the lively interest with which he engaged in all these political occurrences was combined with a consciousness not less habitual or intense of their inherent vanity. There is a seeming paradox in the solicitude with which he devoted so much of his life to secular pursuits, and the very light esteem in which he held them. The solution of the enigma is to be found in his unremitting habits of devotion. No man could more scrupulously obey the precept which Mr. Taylor has given to his "Statesman"-To observe a "Sabbatical day to the world, not merely with recruited energy, but in a frame of mind the most favourable to the right discharge of its duties. Things in themselves the most trivial, wearisome, or even offensive, had, in his solitude, assumed a solemn interest from their connexion with the future destinies of mankind, whilliant and alluring objects of human ambition had been brought into a humiliating contrast with the great ends for which life is given, and with the immortal hopes by which it should be sustained. Nothing can be more heartfelt than the delight with which he breathed the pure air of these devotional retirements. Nothing more soothing than the tranquillity which they diffused over a mind harassed with the vexations of a political life. Mr. Wilberforce retired from Parliament in the year 1825. The remainder of his life was passed in the bosom of his family. He did not entirely escape those sorrows which so usually thicken as the shadows grow long, for he survived both his daughters; and, frera that want of worldly wisdom which always characterized him, he lost a very considerable part of his fortune in speculations in which he had nothing but the gratification of parental kindness to gain or to hope. But never were such reverses more effectually baffled by the invulnerable peace of a cheerful and selfapproving heart. There were not wanting external circumstances which marked the change; but the most close and intimate ob server could never perceive on his countenance even a passing shade of dejection or anxiety on that account. He might, indeed, have been supposed to be unconscious that he had lost any thing, had not his altered fortunes occasionally suggested to him remarks on the Divine goodness, by which the seeming calamity had been converted into a blessing to his children and to himself. It afforded him a welcome apology for withdrawing from society at large, to gladden, by his almost constant presence, the homes of his sons by whom his life has been recorded. There, surrounded by his children and his grandchildren, he yielded himself to the current of each successive inclination; for he had now acquired that rare maturity of the moral stature in which the conflict between inclination and duty is over, and virtue and self-indulgence are the same. Some decline of his intellectual powers was perceptible to the friends of his earlier and more active days; but "To things immortal time can do no wrong, And that which never is to die, for ever must be young." Looking back with gratitude, sometimes eloquent, but more often from the depth of the emotion faltering on the tongue, to his long career of usefulness, of honour, and enjoyment, he watched with grave serenity the ebb of the current which was fast bearing him to his eternal reward. He died in his seventy fifth year, in undisturbed tranquillity, after a very brief illness, and without any indication of bodily suffering. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the presence of a large 22 number of the members of both Houses of Parliament; nor was the solemn ritual of the church ever pronounced over the grave of any of her children with more affecting or more appropriate truth. Never was recited, on a more fit occasion, the sublime benediction"I heard a voice from heaven, saying, Write, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them." The volumes to which we have been chiefly indebted for this very rapid epitome of some of the events of Mr. Wilberforce's life, will have to undergo a severe ordeal. There are numberless persons who assert a kind of property in his reputation, and who will resent as almost a personal wrong any exhibition of his character which may fall short of their demands. We believe, however, though not esteeming ourselves the best possible judges, that even this powerful party will be satisfied. They will find in this portraiture of their great leader much to fulfil their expectations. Impartial judges will, we think, award to the book the praise of fidelity, and diligence, and unaffected modesty. Studiously withdrawing themselves from the notice of their readers, the biographers of Mr. Wilberforce have not sought occasion to display the fruits of their theological or literary studies. Their taste has been executed with ability, and with deep affection. No one can read such a narrative without interest, and many will peruse it with enthusiasm. It contains several extracts from Mr. Wilberforce's speeches and throws much occasional light on the political history of England during the last half century. brings us into acquaintance with a circle in which were projected and matured many of the great schemes of benevolence by which our age has been distinguished, and shows how partial is the distribution of renown in the world in which we are living. A more equal dispensation of justice would have awarded a far more conspicuous place amongst the benefactors of mankind to the names of Mr. Stephen and Mr. Macaulay, than has ever yet been assigned to them. Biography, considered as an art, has been destroyed by the greatest of all biographers, His success must be forJames Boswell. gotten before Plutarch or Isaac Walton will find either rivals or imitators. Yet memoirs, into which every thing illustrative of the character or fortunes of the person to be described is drawn, can never take a permanent place in literature, unless the hero be himself as pie turesque as Johnson, nor unless the writer be gifted with the dramatic powers of Boswell. Mr. Wilberforce was an admirable subject for graphic sketches in this style; but the hand of a son could not have drawn them without impropriety, and they have never been delineated by others. A tradition, already fading, alone preserves the memory of those social powers which worked as a spell on every one who approached him, and drew from Madame de Staël the declaration that he was the most eloquent and the wittiest converser she had met in England. But the memory of his influence in the councils of the state, of his holy character, and of his services to mankind, rests upon an imperishable basis, and will de It scend with honour to the latest times. THE LIVES OF WHITFIELD AND FROUDE.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1838.] If the enemies of Christianity in the com- proofs of the credibility of the Gospels. A mencement of the last century failed to accom- greater than any of these, Joseph Butler, was plish its overthrow, they were at least successful in producing what at present appears to have been a strange and unreasonable panic. Middleton, Bolingbroke, and Mandeville, have now lost their terrors; and (in common with the heroes of the Dunciad) Chubb, Toland, Collins, and Woolston, are remembered only on account of the brilliancy of the Auto-da-fe at which they suffered. To these writers, however, belongs the credit of having suggested to Clarke his inquiries into the elementary truth on which all religion depends; and by them Warburton was provoked to "demonstrate" the Divine legation of Moses. They excited Newton to explore the fulfilment of prophecy, and Lardner to accumulate the The Life and Times of the Rev. George Whitfield, 1838. induced, by the same adversaries, to investi- In that confidence they had grappled with every difficulty, and had wielded with equal energy and ease all the resources of genius and of learning. Alternately search ing the depths of the heart, and playing over, der years, from intermeddling with the tavern the mere surface of the mind, they relieved business." In such a situation he almost inthe subtleties of logic by a quibble or a pun, evitably fell into vices and follies, which have and illuminated, by intense flashes of wit, the been exaggerated as much by the vehemence metaphysical abysses which it was their de- of his own confessions, as by the malignity of light to tread. Even when directing the spirit- his enemies. They exhibit some curious inual affections to their highest exercise, they dications of his future character. He robbed hazarded any quaint conceit which crossed his mother, but part of the money was given their path, and yielded to every impulse of to the poor. He stole books, but they were fancy or of passion. But divinity was no books of devotion. Irritated by the unlucky longer to retain the foremost place in English tricks of his play-fellows, who, he says, in the literature. The Tillotsons and Seckers of a language of David, "compassed him about later age were alike distrustful of their read- like bees," he converted into a prayer the proers and of themselves. Tame, cautious, and phetic imprecation of the Psalmist "In the correct, they rose above the Tatlers and Spec- name of the Lord I will destroy them." The tators of their times, because on such themes mind in which devotional feelings and bad it was impossible to be frivolous; but they can passions were thus strongly knit together, was be hardly said to have contributed as largely consigned in early youth, to the culture of the as Steele and Addison to guide the opinions, master of the grammar-school of St. Mary de or to form the character of their generation. Crypt, in his native city; and there were given the first auspices of his future eminence. He studied the English dramatic writers, and represented their female characters with applause; and when the mayor and aldermen were to be harangued by one of the scholars, the embryo field-preacher was selected to extol the merits, and to gratify the tastes of their worships. His erratic propensities were developed almost as soon as his powers of elocution. Wearied with the studies of the grammarschool, he extorted his mother's reluctan consent to return to the tavern; and there, he says, "I put on my blue apron and my snuffers, washed mops, cleaned rooms, and, in one word, became professed and common drawer for nigh a year and a half." The tapster was, of course, occasionally tipsy, and always in request; but as even the flow of the tap may not be perennial, he found leisure to compose sermons, and stole from the night some hours for the study of the Bible. This depression of theology was aided by the state of political parties under the two first princes of the house of Brunswick. Low and high church were but other names for whigs and tories; and while Hoadley and Atterbury wrangled about the principles of the revolution, the sacred subjects which formed the pretext of their disputes were desecrated in the feelings of the multitude, who witnessed and enjoyed the controversy. Secure from farther persecution, and deeply attached to the new order of things, the dissenters were no longer roused to religious zeal by invidious secular distinctions; and Doddington and Watts lamented the decline of their congregations from the standard of their ancient piety. The former victims of bigotry had become its proselytes, and anathemas were directed against the pope and the pretender, with still greater acrimony than against the evil one, with whom good protestants of all denominations associated them. The theology of any age at once ascertains and regulates its moral stature; and, at the period of which we speak, the austere virtues of the Puritans, and the more meek and social, though not less devout spirit of the worthies of the Church of England, if still to be detected in the recesses of private life, were discountenanced by the general habits of society. The departure of the more pure and generous influences of earlier times may be traced no where more clearly than in those works of fiction, in which the prevailing profligacy of manners was illustrated by Fielding, Sterne, and Smollet; and proved, though with more honest purposes, by Richardson and Defoe. It was at this period that the Alma Mater of Laud and Sacheverel was nourishing in her bosom a little band of pupils destined to accomplish a momentous revolution in the national character. Wesley had already attained the dawn of manhood when, in 1714, his future rival and coadjutor, George Whitfield, was born at a tavern in Gloucester, of which his father was the host. The death of the elder Whitfield within two years from that time, left the child to the care of his mother, who took upon herself the management of the "Bell Inn;" though as her son has gratefully recorded, she "prudently kept him, in his ten At the Bell Inn there dwelt a sister-in-law of Whitfield's, with whom it was his fortune or his fault to quarrel; and to sooth his troubled spirit he "would retire and weep before the Lord, as Hagar when flying from Sarah." From the presence of this Sarah he accordingly fled to Bristol, and betook himself to the study of Thomas à Kempis; but returning once more to Gloucester, exchanged divinity for the drama, and then abandoned the dra matists for his long neglected school-books. For now had opened a prospect inviting him to the worthy use of those talents which might otherwise have been consumed in sordid occupations, or in some obscure and fruitless efforts to assert his native superiority to other men. Intelligence had reached his mother that admission might be obtained at Pembroke College, Oxford, for her capricious and thought. ful boy; and the intuitive wisdom of a mother's love assured her that through this avenue he might advance to distinction, if not to fortune. A few more oscillations between dissolute tastes and heavenward desires, and the youth finally gained the mastery over his lower appetites. From his seventeenth year to his dying day he lived amongst imbittered enemies and jealous friends, without a stain on his reputation. In 1731 the gates of Pembroke College had And thus also was ended his education. Before the completion of his twenty-first year, Whitfield returned to Gloucester; and such was the fame of his piety and talents, that Dr. Benson, the then bishop of the diocess, offered to dispense, in his favour, with the rule which forbade the ordination of deacons at so unripe an age. The mental agitation which preceded his acceptance of this proposal, is described in these strange but graphic terms in one of his latest sermons. finally closed on the rude figure of one of her] For some time I could not avoid singing illustrious sons, expelled by poverty to seek a Psalms wherever I was, but my joy became precarious subsistence, and to earn a lasting gradually more settled. Thus were the days reputation in the obscure alleys of London. of my mourning ended." In the following year they were opened to a pupil as ill provided with this world's wealth as Samuel Johnson, but destined to achieve a still more extensive and a more enduring celebrity. The waiter at the Bell Inn had become a servitor at Oxford-no great advancement in the social scale according to the habits of that age-yet a change which conferred the means of elevation on a mind too ardent to leave them unimproved. He became the associate of Charles, and the disciple of John Wesley, who had at that time taken as their spiritual guide the celebrated mystic, William Law. These future chiefs of a religious revolution were then "interrogating themselves whether they had been simple and recollected; whether they had prayed with fervour Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and on Saturday noon; if they had used a collect at nine, twelve, and three o'clock; duly meditated on Sunday from three to four on Thomas à Kempis, or mused on Wednesday and Friday from twelve to one on the Passion." But Quietism, indigenous in the East, is an exotic in this cold and busy land of ours, bearing at the best but sorry fruit, and hastening to a premature decay. Never was mortal man less fitted for the contemplative state than George Whitfield. It was an attempt as hopeless as that of converting a balloon into an observatory. He dressed the character indeed to admiration, for "he thought it unbecoming a penitent to have his hair powdered, and wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes." But the sublime abstractions which should people the cell and haunt the spirit of the hermit he wooed in vain. In the hopeless attempt to do nothing but meditate, "the power of meditating or eyen of thinking was," he says, "taken from him." Castanza on the "Spiritual Combat" advised him to talk but little; and "Satan said he must not talk at all." The Divine Redeemer had been surrounded in his temptations by deserts and wild beasts, and to approach this example as closely as the localities allowed, Whitfield was accustomed to select Christ Church meadow as the scene, and a stormy night as the time of his mental conflicts. He prostrated his body on the bare earth, fasted during Lent, and exposed himself to the cold till his hands began to blacken, and "by abstinence and inward struggles so emaciated his body as to be scarcely able to creep up stairs." In this deplorable state he received from the Wesleys books and ghostly counsels. His tutor, more wisely, sent him a physician, and for seven weeks he laboured under a severe illness. It was, in his own language, "a glorious visitation." It gave him time and composure to make a written record and a penitent confession of his youthful sins-to examine the New Testament; to read Bishop's Hall's Contemplations; and to seek by prayer for wisdom and for peace. The blessings thus invoked were not denied. "The day-star," he says, "arose in my heart. The spirit of mourning was taken from me. "I never prayed against any corruption I had in my life so much as I did against going into holy orders so soon as my friends were for having me go. Bishop Benson was pleased to honour me with peculiar friendship, so as to offer me preferment, or to do any thing for me. My friends wanted me to mount the church betimes. They wanted me to knock my head against the pulpit too young, but how some young men stand up here and there and preach, I do not know. However it be to them, God knows how deep a concern entering into the ministry and preaching was to me. I have prayed a thousand times, till the sweat has dropped from my face like rain, that God of his infinite mercy would not let me enter into the church till he called me to and thrust me forth in his work. I remember once in Gloucester, I know the room; I look up to the window when I am there, and walk along the street. I know the window upon which I have laid prostrate. I said, Lord, I cannot go, I shall be puffed up with pride, and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Lord, do not let me go yet. I pleaded to be at Oxford two or three years more. I intended to make one hundred and fifty sermons, and thought that I would set up with a good stock in trade. I remember praying, wrestling, and striving with God. I said, I am undone. I am unfit to preach in thy great name. Send me not, Lord-send me not yet. I wrote to all my friends in town and country to pray against the bishop's solicitation, but they insisted I should go into orders before I was twentytwo. After all their solicitations, these words came into my mind, 'Nothing shall pluck you out of my hands;' they came warm to my heart. Then, and not till then, I said, ‘Lord, I will go; send me when thou wilt.' He was ordained accordingly; and when the bishop laid his hands upon my head, my heart,' he says, 'was melted down, and I offered up my whole spirit, soul, and body.” A man within whose bosom resides an oracle directing his steps in the language and with the authority of inspiration, had needs be thus self-devoted in soul and body to some honest purpose, if he would not mistake the voice of the Pythoness for that which issues from the sanctuary. But the uprightness and inflexible constancy of Whitfield's character rendered even its superstitions comparatively harmless; and the sortilege was ever in favour of some new effort to accomplish the single object for which he henceforward lived. The next words which "came to his soul with | bed-chamber. Such indeed was its force, that power" were "Speak out, Paul," and never when the scandal could be concealed behind a was injunction more strictly obeyed. well adjusted curtain, "e'en mitred auditors' "Immediately," he says, "my heart was would nod the head." Neither English reserve, enlarged, and I preached on the Sunday morn- nor the theological discrimination of the ing to a very crowded audience with as much Scotch, nor the callous nerves of the slavefreedom as if I had been a preacher for some dealers of America, nor the stately self-posyears. As I proceeded I perceived the fire session of her aborigines, could resist the enkindled, till at last, though so young, and chantment. Never was mortal man gifted amidst a crowd of those who knew me in my with such an incapacity of fatiguing or of infant childish days, I trust I was enabled to being fatigued. speak with some degree of gospel authority. Sone few mocked, but most for the present seemed struck, and I have heard since that a complaint had been made to the bishop that I drove fifteen mad by my first sermon. The worthy prelate, as I am informed, wished that the madness might not be forgotten before next Sunday." No similar praise could be honestly awarded to Whitfield's present biographer. He has followed the steps of the great itinerant from the cradle to the grave, in a volume of nearly six hundred closely printed pages, compiled on the principle that nothing can be superfluous in the narrative of a man's life which was of any real importance to the man himThus early apprized of the secret of his self, or to his associates. The chronicle so strength, his profound aspirations for the drawn up, illuminated by no gleams of philo growth of Christianity, the delight of exer- sophy, human or divine, and arranged on no cising his rare powers, and the popular admi- intelligible method, is a sore exercise for the ration which rewarded them, operating with memory and the patience of the reader. It combined and ceaseless force on a mind im- records, without selection or forbearance, thirpatient of repose, urged him into exertions, teen successive voyages across the Atlanticwhich, if not attested by irrefragable proofs, pilgrimages incalculable to every part of this might appear incredible and fabulous. It was island, and of the North American continent, the statement of one who knew him well, and from Georgia to Boston-controversies with who was incapable of wilful exaggeration-Wesley on predestination and perfection, and and it is confirmed by his letters, journals, and with the bishops on still deeper mysteries— a whole cloud of witnesses-that "in the com- chapel buildings and subscriptions-preachpass of a single week, and that for years, he ings and the excitement which followed them spoke in general forty hours, and in very and characteristic sayings and uncharactermany sixty, and that to thousands; and after his labours, instead of taking any rest, he was engaged in offering up prayers and intercessions, with hymns and spiritual songs, as his manner was, in every house to which he was invited." istic letters, meetings and partings, and every other incident, great and small, which has been preserved by the oral or written traditions of Whitfield's followers. His life still remains to be written by some one who shall bring to the task other qualifications than an honest zeal for his fame, and a cordial adoption of his opinions. Given, a preacher, who during the passage of the sun though the ecliptic, addresses his audience every seventh day, in two discourses From the conflict with the enemies who of the dwarfish size to which sermons attain had threatened her existence, the church miliin this degenerate age, and multiply his efforts tant turned to resist the unwelcome ally who by forty, and you do not reach the standard now menaced her repose. Warburton led the by which, for thirty-five successive years, van, and behind him many a mitred front . Whitfield regulated this single branch of his scowled on the audacious innovator. Divested exertions. Combine this with the fervour of the logomachies which chiefly engaged the with which he habitually spoke, the want of attention of the disputants, the controversy all aids to the voice in the fields and the tho- between Whitfield and the bishops lay in a roughfares he frequented, and the toil of be- narrow compass. It being mutually conceded coming distinctly audible to thousands and that the virtues of the Christian life can result tens of thousands; and, considered merely as a only from certain divine impulses, and that to physical phenomenon, the result is amongst lay a claim to this holy inspiration when its the most curious of all well authenticated legitimate fruits are wanting, is a fatal delumarvels. If the time spent in travelling from sion; he maintained, and they denied, that the place to place, and some brief intervals of person who is the subject of this sacred influrepose be subtracted, his whole life may be ence has within his own bosom an independent said to have been consumed in the delivery of attestation of its reality. So abstruse a debate one continuous or scarcely uninterrupted ser- required the zest of some more pungent ingremon. Strange as is such an example of bodily dients; and the polemics with whom Whitfield and mental energy, still stranger is the power had to do, were not such sciolists in their callhe possessed of fascinating the attention of ing as to be ignorant of the necessity of rivet hearers of every rank of life and of every va- ing upon him some epithet at once opproriety of understanding. Not only were the brious and vague. While, therefore, milder loom, the forge, the plough, the collieries, and spirits arraigned him as an enthusiast, Warthe workshops, deserted at his approach, but burton, with constitutional energy of invective, the spell was acknowledged by Hume and denounced him as a fanatic. In vain he deFranklin-by Pulteney, Bolingbroke, and Ches-manded a definition of these reproachful terms. terfield-by maids of honour and lords of the To have fixed their meaning would have been с |