a father, as well as a Prince; he felt the private and social obligations as strongly as those which appertained to his Royal dignity. His domestic excellencies commanded the respect of his people, and the love of his family. Affectionate and faithful to the partner of his crown, and of his cares, he did not leave her a prey to the melancholy attending deserted state; the very splendours of which seem mockery to outrage affections."

"He taught his people, (says Mr. Cunningham,) by his devotion to his family, that they might be sharers of that order of pleasures, which their Monarch valued the most. He supplied to the country an example calculated to extend and perpetuate amongst us that taste which has been supposed to distinguish us from some foreign nations, and which is one of the main pillars of our greatness and welfare-I mean an ardent attachment to the joys of home."

No one

3. His character was decidedly Christian: and "Christian is the highest style of man." more firmly believed the truths of the Christian Revelation; or more highly estimated its rites of public worship, or the private duties it enjoins. The deceased King (adds Mr. Cunningham,)

was a man of scriptural, habitual, practical piety. In saying that his religion was scriptural, I mean much by the expression. His principles, views, tastes, interpretations of doctrine, and conceptions of practice, were faithfully, simply, exclusively drawn from holy writ. He regarded with alarm the slightest deviation from a scriptural model. He has been heard to express a wish to "hear less of Socrates, and more of Christ, from the pulpit." He was deeply attached to the formularies and homilies of our own church-compositions which it is impossible to estimate too highly, and of the authors of which it may be said, that having, as it were, stepped "first into the" troubled "pool," at the period of the reformation, they appear beyond all others to have experienced its healing efficacy. Our Sovereign is reported himself to have said of these early writers, "There were giants in the earth in those days." Using then the scripture as his rule, and the fathers of the church as his chief interpreters, he had arrived at the clear and strong recognition of all the leading doctrines of Christianity-the corruption of the human heart; the necessity of pardon through the atonement of a Saviour; and of a change and renewal of the man, by the power

and influence of the Holy Ghost. He is known to have hung over the bed of a dying child, and there with solemn emphasis to have inculcated these doctrines, as the sources of hope and joy to the contrite sinner. But his religion was not confined to the recognition of right principles. He was, probably, the only Sovereign in the world who attended the public services of religion every day. No one, who was ever permitted to become a spectator of these solemn approaches to the Throne of Grace, is likely to forget either his venerable image, or the apparent intenseness of his devotions, when, after Providence had deprived him of his sight, he was led to his seat in the chapel of his palace by the hands of his royal daughters. But, to those denied the privilege of witnessing this affecting scene; there remain many public and indisputable monuments of his personal piety. One of the first public acts of his reign was a Proclamation against Vice and Profaneness. The middle stages of it were exhausted in an almost single-handed conflict with Atheism: a conflict which, under God, has preserved, not merely our altars and churches, but the very name of Christianity upon our national records. And he lifted his sceptre, almost for the last time, to repel

what he deemed the invasion of Popery-an act of which, if some have questioned the policy, none can for an instant question the piety, the purity, and the magnanimity. The feelings, indeed, manifested by the Sovereign, both to the profession of Popery and to Popery itself, ought to be the feelings of every one in like circumstances, deadly hostility to the principles, tender charity to the men."

The liberality of our lamented Sovereign to pious persons of all religious denominations is indeed most remarkable, forms a distinguishing feature of his character, and does him honour, both as demonstrating his firm attachment to the Protestant religion, and his comparative indifference to those peculiar forms of it by which the best Christians are divided. "The fact is familiar, (observes the Rev. Mr. Hughes) that many subordinate stations about the court were filled by persons of undoubted piety; that His Majesty set a high value upon such persons; that he occasionally conferred with them on the subject of their distinguishing sentiments; that he was uniformly indulgent to their peculiarities; and that, according to their (unanimous) testimony, he deserved to be revered as an humble disciple of the Divine Redeemer."

Appendix.

WE have mentioned above, p. 194, the late King's liberality to a Mrs. DELANY, who was the daughter of Lord Lansdown, and the wife of Dr. P. Delany, of Dublin, author of a "Life of David, King of Israel," and of "Observations on Lord Orrery's Remarks on the Life and Writings of Swift," and several other works. Mrs. Delany was herself an ingenious writer, and maintained a correspondence with Dr. Swift from 1730 to 1736. She was also an artist of considerable merit, and completed a Flora of nine hundred and eighty plants, (which is referred to in the following extracts) in a very superior style.

Since this little volume was completed, a small collection of her letters to Mrs. F. Hamilton (from 1779 to 1788) has been published, which is highly interesting, and from which we borrow a few extracts, farther illustrating the urbanity and benevolence of his late Majesty and the Royal Family. Mrs. Delany died in April, 1788, near the end of her 88th year; her cha