Yet, after all that is easily alleged to this effect, it must be admitted that, if we were generally more consciously rooted and grounded in the truth, and thus better able to give a sufficient answer to every man that asketh of us a reason of the hope that is in us, the pleasant, joyous consciousness of our strength would broaden and genialize our spirit, and we should so adopt the counsel of the apostle as to our very manner even-viz., 'mildly and respectfully '-as to put to silence the ignorance of foolish men,' and favourably impress the better class among those who stand separated from us by the terrible gulf of unbelief.

'How many of my brethren would take an avowed Atheist to their homes?' And I had at once answered, 'Many.' And now I thought of one after another, who would have deemed that a red-letter day on which they had been favoured with an opportunity of showing that they had not in vain become the followers of Him who spoke the parable of the Good Samaritan, and who himself lived among, and died for, the ungodliest, 'not ashamed to call them brethren.'

My genial friend, John Langton, would have asked neither what 'his people' would think, nor whether, out of his stipend of 100l. per annum, paid by dribblets, as it suited the good pleasure of his farmer deacon, he could afford to show kindness to a brother man.

And my learned brother and neighbour, Dr. Jedson, would have brought the Atheist home, and installed him in the best room in the Parsonage, aye, and emptied his pocket too, if need were, provided always, that is to say, his wife would have let him.

And my sensitive little brother Howard, so pale and fragile, would have bundled away all his rabbis and Herr Professors with a will, and cleared the easy chair of lexicons, and 'kommentars,' and atlases, and gently pushed the sufferer-whom he would have pitied and yearned over all the more for his unhappy want of faith-into it, and, like a genuine Englishman, little as he looks one, asked, 'Now what'll ye have? and hurried out to make all straight with the domesticities, mother and all, resolving in his own mind that his guest should stay a month, at least. But why enumerate? Ah! brethren dear, I know ye well; and as I think of one and another of ye, all through the alphabet, my confidence in the genuineness of much of even our modern Christianity grows stronger, and my heart warmer. Happy are ye, and blessed shall ye be, though now for a season acquainted with grief, and too frequently with the grief that is hardest to be borne-that which frets the heart and galls the spirit.

CHAP. III.—THE BURIAL.

Ein Grab, o Mutter, ist gegraben dir

An einer stillen, dir bekannten Stelle,

Ein heimathlicher Schatten wehet hier,

Auch fehlen Blumen nicht an seiner Schwelle.

Drin liegst du, wie du starbest, unversehrt,

Mit jedem Zug des Friedens und der Schmerzen,
Auch aufzuleben ist dir nicht verwehrt:

Ich grub dir dieses Grab in meinem Herzen.'-Uhland.*

Mr. Jephson had promised to write, and he kept his word; but he still avoided, or omitted merely, to give me his address. The first. note was almost illegible. The writing was tremulous and blotted. The lid had been screwed on the coffin ere his arrival. It had been necessary; and thus one sad luxury that his soul craved was denied him. But he had passed the night in the room with the dead; and when, at last, wearied, and exhausted, and worn out, he had bowed his head in the sleep which sorrow sometimes brings, it was on the precious coffin-lid that the arm rested on which his head lay.

His mother's death had taken her attendants by surprise. 'She had been ailing,' but no one anticipated danger, when suddenly a change came over her, and she sunk into a stupor. Once she was heard, indeed, to say, 'My dear George,' but instantly relapsed into unconsciousness; till, at last, the spirit, ere it took its departure, flashed brightly for a moment; she half rose up in her bed-a solemn calm was on the face, and a smile, which the neighbours said 'they had never seen the like of,' filled her countenance with the light of a most refined and elevated gladness, as she slowly said, 'Father-Ithank-thee-that-thou-hast-heard-me-and-lettest-thy-ser

vant-at-last-depart-in-peace-for-my-eyes-see

She

finished her praises in another world, for she suddenly ceased to belong to this clouded sphere, dying as she uttered the words, my eyes see,' and thus awakening a thousand thoughts and feelings in the mind and heart of him who was now sleeping with his head resting on her coffin for his pillow.

His next letter was in a very different style. Strong, bold characters like so many vigorous broad-sword strokes. The clergyman, a Rev. Mr. Gallsbury, recently come to the parish, and who had not known his mother's worth, and fervent attachment to the communion in which her husband had formerly been himself a minister, for some whim or other, refused to allow the corpse to be brought into the church.

*For thee, dear mother, I have dug a grave;

Silent the place, and not to thee unknown;
A homelike shadow o'er it seems to wave ;
And sweet fair flowers are all about it grown.
And there thou liest, untouched by dark decay;
Each trace of pain, of holy calm each line,
Fondly preserv'd, as on thy dying day-
Thy grave, dear mother, is this heart of mine.'

This the son little heeded; but at the grave his feelings had received a shock which goaded his wounded spirit into a state of, for a time, unmitigable exasperation. Following alone the coffin of the mother whom he had idolized, with no friendly arm to lean on, lost in grief, and such thoughts and reminiscences as grief is sure to bring, he had not uncovered his head; and, moreover, a keen, searching March wind was roaring round till the pall could scarcely be retained in its place, and the clergyman's surplice, inflated like a balloon, threatened to bear him away, and the leaves of the prayer-book fluttered so, that if the minister had not known the service by heart, he never could have read it on such a boisterous day. But the clerical martinet would not tolerate any breach of ecclesiastical decorum. Perceiving the head of the heart-stricken mourner still covered, he stopped abruptly. But the pause was unnoticed. Poor Jephson's thoughts were not with the words that the cold-hearted official was reading so formally and precisely. The pause was protracted. In vain. At last, the clergyman, for the first time throwing any feeling into his tone, with a voice tremulous from excitement, peremptorily commanded him to uncover his head. Still he heard not. At length, some one shook him by the arm, and he was suddenly brought back from the world of thought, which to him was but a dreary one, and opened his eyes to the stern reality of the scene in which himself was unconsciously the principal figure. At the same time the clergyman repeated his peremptory injunction, which poor Jephson for a moment did not appear to comprehend; but the significance of which flashed into his mind, as the clerk said, in an undertone, but so as to be heard by the subject of his remark, "The man is an Atheist, sir;' and the clergyman replied, 'I know it."*

I can easily conceive the situation,' as our neighbours across the Channel would say. An earthquake would not have roused him more effectually. He made a movement forward, with his arm uplifted; but checked himself, and fixing his look upon him with an expression before which the eyes of the clergyman quailed, he demanded, in a voice of thunder, What hard and stony-hearted God he was the priest of? Then, turning abruptly to the undertaker, he said, 'Pay the man his fees, and bid him go;' and to the attendants, Lay my mother instantly in her grave, and have done with this ecclesiastical foolery.' There was that authority about him which insured obedience, and in spite of all interference, the coffin was lowered into the grave. He relapsed for a moment into a reverie, or stupor; then, rousing himself, he moaned his 'Farewell' to her, and turned away.

All this I learned, partly from his letter, and partly from other communications, subsequently. But his own powerfully indignant statement, in the strongest Saxon, full of breaks, and apostrophes, and bitter denunciations, and unjust conclusions, and reflections on a whole class of men, as if fairly represented by one whom the spirit of a resuscitated sacerdotalism, taking possession of a naturally hard and

See The Times' of the day.

unloving nature, had metamorphosed from a man into a priest, it would answer no good purpose to make public. After this, he was silent for some days, and my anxiety was beginning to be excited, when another and calmer communication came.

She sleeps in her quiet bed. And, as in infancy, I slept upon her breast, so in these later days have I laid myself down by her side. Did you ever spend a night on the grassy mound which holds a beloved one? The grave-yard would have pleased Gray. It is nearly a mile from the town, towards the summit of a considerable, but very gentle, ascent. Tall elms bound it on two sides, and it commands a prospect which fully reveals its loveliness only when night rules the world, and the pale watchers of the sky shed down their mysterious influences. Nought between me and the Pleiades! No dissonant creed, nor meddling priest, to break the solemn hush! There I have kept watch; I, on the earth; the stars, in heaven. Then I have gone back to the days of old, till the planets in their course have seemed to feel with me, and to speak to me as I used to fancy in my childhood. Ah, that childhood! The hymns my mother taught me came back; and the Hebrew Psalms, whose grand simplicity touched me. The nineteenth, and the eighth, recited themselves to me, and I listened unreluctantly. Then the twentythird offered itself, and I willingly recognised, as indeed I often have done, the enviable blessedness that a really true-hearted believer must possess, even though all be a delusion. But what do your genuine priests believe? your cold-blooded holders of mere creeds? No, I feel I am myself a truer man than-but I had resolved not to let that stony face, and harsh voice, and limping form, come between me and the pure heavens again. The grass is grown now on her grave, and the daisies deck the green, as the stars the blue. And I think I am becoming calm enough to be able soon to venture on a renewal of intercourse. Strange, I have conversed with you but once, and yet wish to open all my heart to you. Bating some points, which I confess appear to me to interfere with the harmony of the idea, I have always admired the portraiture of the life which originated the greatest of all the religions, certainly, that mankind has owned. But this much you know, the more candid of the Jews even also admit, who yet, as I do, disbelieve his divine mission. But I check my vagrant pen, to assure you that I am,

"Yours gratefully and respectfully.'

CHAP. IV.-THE RETURN.

It was towards the end of June when I once more saw my forlorn friend. He was shown into a room where I was conversing with a very fluent young man, of some two or three-and-twenty years of age, and who seemed far from indisposed to continue his remarks and inquiries. Mr. Jephson, therefore, soon sunk into the attitude of an easy and only half-interested listener, while Mr. Blair prolonged the interview.

Amiable, susceptible, and unstable, I should judge your young friend to be,' said he, after Mr. B. had left.

'You exactly hit it,' I replied; but you might add, conscientious, and with a good deal of the so-called religious sense, though vague and misty, partly by the fault of the understanding.'

And presently I added, "Thoroughly well-meaning, and intensely anxious to be right, he is neither happy nor useful. Young as he is, he has already passed through as many phases as the moon. Born and reared amid hyper-Calvinistic tenets and influences, while yet a youth, he recoiled so far from his father's dogmas-and spirit, I might add that he attached himself to the Methodists, who soon had his name on their "Preachers' Plan," and I am told he was reckoned a "most eloquent" speaker, and one who might possibly be encouraged to aspire so high as to become a "travelling preacher!" travelling preacher!" But having imprudently attended a short course of lectures delivered by some Baptist minister, he became an object of suspicion to his careful friends. His "orthodoxy" was questioned, and he was required to purge himself of all possible suspicion by methods peculiar, perhaps, to that zealous body. Then he found the Church of England to be the ark he wanted; at least for a time. For, being thrown among the Moravians, he was charmed by their apparent simplicity, and evangelical fervour, and idea of brotherhood; indeed, I think their appellation of "United Brethren" especially pleased him, and he was received into one of their communities in the north, and was 66 more satisfied and happy than he had ever been." But his evil spirit soon disquieted him again, and now he became convinced that the Baptists, after all, were the true witnesses for Christ; and, having been "through the water," he was as happy as the day was long. And now his changes were over; he was settled down for life; he should roam no more. Nor did he for nearly a whole year! But at last he made the wonderful discovery that his new friends, though Christians, were, strange to say, but men, and that it was possible for them not to possess a monopoly of truth, and yet to be very unwilling to admit so improbable a notion. He raised questions with the minister; disputed very cleverly, indeed, much too cleverly, with the deacons; and succeeded in converting some of the Sunday-school teachers into regular little notes of interrogation. At the same time, too, Ralph Waldo Emerson became his oracle; and, of course, Baptist ministers, and, indeed, Christians of all sects, soon ranked among the profanum vulgus. The light which he now received was wonderful. He became quite luminous; and as his chapel friends were so "crude" and " narrowminded as not to care much for the illumination he had imported from America, he turned his back on the "miserable sectarian lot," and was a thinker at large. And it being summer-time, to his great comfort, he "found his religion in the fields; there was more of God in the green wood, and the flowery mead, than in your dingy chapels, where,' &c., &c. And so Matthew, with his brother evangelists, as well as the modern Baptists, were discarded, and Christianity was to this youth of one-and-twenty a mere sucked orange.