I seek Thee: my soul thirsteth for Thee, my flesh also longeth after Thee in a barren and dry land where no water is.' Words cannot express a stronger love than this. It is not the love of one-if it deserves the name-who gazes with admiration on this marvellous frame of nature, or breaks out into admiration at the works and wisdom of God manifested in His providence. It is not the resignation of the saint willing to exchange this world for another. It is not the ecstatic joy of the martyr stretching forth his hand to lay hold of an incorruptible crown. It is, if I may use the term, more human, more personal than these-an ardent passionate longing, which cannot rest satisfied with regarding the beloved object in any other light than in reference to itself; which must bind its personality with that of its own being. For love like this cannot exist except towards a person. And thus, as I have said before, throughout David's Psalms, God is addressed, not merely as a righteous judge, as a protector of them who put their trust in Him, as a refuge for those who are in distress, but as a personal friend, far more personal than any human friend can be. God is a friend to whom David turns spontaneously, finding in the thought and presence of God that joy, rest, and refreshment which only true personal love can bestow-turns with an ardour which nothing but his own words can express. "The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart hath trusted in Him, and I am helped; therefore my heart danceth for joy, and in my song will I praise Him.'

And this is the feeling which gives so delightful a poise, a unity so substantial to his whole life. This it is which like a holy flame devours up the dross, and turns all to precious purity. Poets have been fond of representing the effects of human love in exalting, purifying, and ennobling the souls and even the bodies of men. They have looked

upon it as the groundwork of all heroism; as that which first gives true depth of character, true dignity of feeling to man or woman. And rightly so. But how much more deep and ennobling was the love of such a man as David to Him who is the source of all love-yea, who is love itself; for 'God is love,' says the Apostle, and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God!' David, indeed, had great failings they were perhaps almost inseparable from such a nature. But this Divine love was ever burning brightly within him. This habitual recognition, not of God's presence only, to which men of religious minds may attain, but of that presence as the presence of a friend, more lovable, more near, more precious than any human friend can ever be, was a constant renewal of David's nature. His strength, his joy, as he calls it, it wrought out in David what human friendships work out in an inferior degree-a likeness and approximation to the person beloved; so that of David alone it is said, with all his great imperfections, 'He was a man after God's own heart.' That abiding sense of God's presence mingling in his earlier days with the simple joys of childhood and the fresh scenes of nature, linking the boy to the child in the first dawnings of enthusiasm, and the first essays of youthful strength, shedding its benign light over the thoughtful experience and meditations of his manhood, descended with him into the vale of years, connecting together every stage of his chequered life. And as he looked back upon the vision of past years, it was this that enabled him to exclaim in the familiar words, 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.'

Could men now attain to this love of God, how would manhood grow in faith and hope as it grew in strength,

xlviii A SERMON ON THE PSALMIST OF ISRAEL.

instead of that unbelief and despair which spring up when they have outlived the simple creed of childhood! How might old age, like David's, glow with intenser love and more beatific vision, instead of burying beforehand all its nobler affections-without charity, therefore without faith or hope!

IT IS POSSIBLE that our readers may have seen near Temple Bar, close to the proposed site of the New Law Courts, a large stone building of unusual proportions and not less unusual style. Its lancet windows and portly tower surmounted with pinnacles cannot be mistaken among the forest of dingy chimney-pots and rickety tenements of Fetter Lane and the neighbouring alleys. This is the new Public Record Office, still in progress, and slowly advancing towards completion. Although one portion of the building has now been erected for several years, another generation will, in all probability, pass away before the whole is finished, according to the original designs of its architect. The neighbourhood around is classic ground. Like all things else, it has seen the ups and downs of life, it has experienced the caprices of fashion and gentility. Here fluttered in happier days poor Oliver Goldsmith and his peach-coloured coat. Here met, at Dr. Johnson's residence in Bolt Court, the greatest of artists and the greatest of politicians; and here the prying, bustling James Boswell, most assiduous of hero-worshippers, gathered leaf by leaf his immortal crown. In Fetter Lane still stands the house of Dryden the poet, now converted into the base uses of a beer-shop, once commanding an extensive view of

From the Quarterly Review for April, 1871; under the following heading:- Calendars of State Papers, published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, London, 1856-70. Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, London, 1858-70. Libraries and Founders of Libraries. By Edward Edwards, London, 1865.

B

the Master of the Rolls' garden, with its flowers and fruittrees. Here also, at a still earlier period, was the quiet retreat' of Gilbert Burnet the historian, and of his patron, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, not more famous for his law than for his marriage with Lord Bacon's niece, the last of her family. Now poets, painters, and historians have taken wing. The 'quiet retreat' has been invaded by the shrill whistle of the steam-press and the rattle of manufactories. Except a dingy chrysanthemum here and there, or a patch of grass in some forgotten and neglected corner, nothing remains of the Master's garden. Part of it is occupied by the Judge's chambers, part by the huge block of the National Record Office.

Externally, the new building has not much to recommend it on the score of, artistic beauty. To which of the recognised styles of architecture it ought to be referred would puzzle Mr. Ruskin himself to determine. Its pinched buttresses, squared and gradiated with the undeviating precision of rule and compass, its quadrangular windows glazed with tale, the absence of all ease and freedom in its meagre ornaments and narrow proportions, reveal the mechanical graces of official Gothic. Evidently, it is intended to be more solid than beautiful, more useful than elegant. The interior is even less attractive than the exterior. A square vestibule, badly lighted, conducts the visitor to a number of narrow passages flagged with brick; iron doors to the right and left, marked with cabalistic numerals and furnished with small circular ventilators, divide these passages with geometrical exactness. Here are preserved in iron gratings, furnished with shelves of slate, the national records and State papers. Story succeeds to story, with imperturbable uniformity, from roof to basement. No thought of beauty or general effect has entered the mind of the architect, or, rather, has been permitted to enter it. There is none of that gracefulness of outline or grandeur of design which strikes the beholder in