THE readers of the New Englander have already been informed of the decease of the Rev. Mr. Tyler, the proprietor and principal conductor of this journal. His surviving associates regard it as a duty to their readers and to the memory of their departed friend, to occupy a few of the pages which remained unprinted at the time of his death, with some account of his life.

EDWARD ROYALL TYLER was a New Englander of the old stock. His earliest American ancestor, Thomas Tyler, a sea captain, emigrated from Budleigh in Devon shire, two centuries ago, to Boston in Massachusetts, where he married, and had four sons whose offspring were numerous and respectably connected. William Tyler, Esq., the second son of Thomas, and the greatgrandfather our deceased friend, was a respected citizen and magistrate of Boston. He was the father of a numerous family, and educated three of his sons at Harvard College. The Hon. Royall Tyler, the third son of William, received a degree at Harvard in 1743, was a member of the Council of Massachusetts under the royal government, and died in 1771, leaving two sons, John Steele Tyler, who was a colonel in the revolutionary war, and Royall Tyler, who distinguished himself as a citizen and a jurist in the state of Vermont.

The last named in this genealogy was the father of Edward R. Tyler. He graduated at Harvard College, with the highest honors, in 1776, and devoted himself to the profession of law. In that profession he established himself first at Guilford, in Vermont. Afterwards he removed to the adjoining town of Brattleboro, where he died highly esteemed more than twenty years ago. He was Chief Justice of Vermont, and was known as an author. His wife, the mother of our deceased associate,

was a daughter of Gen. Joseph Pearse Palmer, and grand-daughter of Gen. Joseph Palmer, whose biography is given in the third volume of this work. She is still living at Brattleboro, much esteemed and beloved for the excellence of her character. Of their eleven children, the eldest son died at the age of nineteen, when about to graduate at the University of Vermont; and the youngest died in 1831, at the age of thirteen. The third death among the children is that which has just occurred. Of the five surviving sons, two are clergymen in the Protestant Episcopal church, and one in the Presbyterian.

The subject of this notice was born at Guilford, Vermont, on the 3d of August, 1800. He passed the years of childhood there and at Brattleboro. In the expectation of being devoted to business pursuits, he was placed as a clerk in a counting house in the city of New York. But before he had passed out of his minority, that great change took place within him, which wakened him to higher aspirations, and led him into new pursuits. Under the preaching and pastoral care of the Rev. Dr. Spring, his religious character became clear and decided; and he was encouraged to enter upon a course of study with reference to the work of the ministry. After the necessary preparatory studies, he was admitted to the Freshman class in Yale College in 1821, when he had already entered his twenty-second year.

In college he was eminent as a scholar. He was one of the first three in a class of seventy. At the same time he was distinguished for the consistency and manly activity of his religious character. In the last year of his college course, he was the monitor of the Freshmen class, and in that capacity was led to take

a special interest in their moral and spiritual welfare. His kind and earnest efforts to do them good will never be forgotten. Some of his own classmates too, will always remember the conversations in which he endeavored to impress upon their minds the necessity of their being reconciled to God through Christ.

Having taken his degree at the close of his academic course in 1825, he immediately commenced the study of theology, being employed at the same time as a teacher in Cambridgeport, Mass. Early in 1826, he went to Andover, where he resided the greater part of a year, pursuing his theological studies, but without any formal connection with the Seminary. Having been regularly commended to the churches as a candidate for the ministry, he entered upon the work of preaching, about two years after his graduation at Yale College. In December, 1827, he was ordained pastor of the South Congregational Church in Middletown, Conn.

As a pastor, Mr. Tyler soon show ed himself a workman that need not be ashamed. There were some peculiarities in the field which he occupied, which made his work more arduous than that of an ordinary pastor. The church in which he accepted the pastoral office, was formed by secession from several neighboring churches in the progress of the excitement and schisms which attended "the great awakening" of 1740 and the following years. From the beginning, it renounced the peculiar constitution and confederation of Connecticut Congregationalism, and insisted upon a strict independency as its inalienable privilege. Its relations, therefore, to neighboring churches had not been such as to give it any external strength. Though eighty years had elapsed since its origin, its growth had been on the whole quite inconsiderable. The settlement of Mr. Tyler was the beginning of a new era in the history of that church.

By the blessing of God upon his labors, it began to prosper outwardly and spiritually. Strengthened by the accession of young and enterprising men, the society attempted the building of a new house of worship; and the building was completed partly by the aid which other churches gave in answer to his solicitation. In 1831, the church shared largely in the quickening movement which made that year memorable in so many churches; and he saw the success of his labors and the answer to his prayers.

His ministry at Middletown was interrupted by ill health; and in less than five years from the date of his ordination, he was compelled to resign the pastoral office. Relieved from official responsibility, he was soon encouraged with the promise of returning health; and after a few months he accepted a call from the church in Colebrook, Conn., where he was installed pastor in February, 1833. But his constitutional tendency to disease soon manifested itself again; and in June, 1836, his resignation of that pastoral charge was accepted and ratified.

For some time before his dismission from Colebrook, his mind had been much occupied with the questions then agitated in relation to slavery. The reaction in some quarters against the disorganizing ultraisms of some ill-taught reformersthe outcry of alarm and expostulation which proceeded from the best men at the south-and the zeal with which politicians of all parties emulated each other in paying homage to slavery as a political powerawakened in many minds a reasonable apprehension as to what might be the permanent effect of all this upon the public opinion of the free states. At such a crisis, Mr. Tyler thought he might do good by laboring to promote thorough views of the injustice and the anti-Christian character of slavery. In this hope, he accepted an appointment as agent for the American Anti-Slavery So

ciety. He continued in that employment till near the close of the following year. The nature of the service, withdrawing him in a great measure from sedentary occupation, and sending him from place to place, proved favorable to his health; and he began to feel a natural longing for some other employment which would restore him to his companionship with books, and to the enjoy ment of his family and home.

Such an employment he found in the editorial care of the Connecticut Observer, a weekly journal which had been published for some twelve years at Hartford, and which was to some extent under the patronage of the Congregational pastors of Connecticut. He became the editor of the Observer from the first of January, 1838. But in the month of December, just as he was preparing to remove to Hartford, he was brought quite low by an attack of acute disease, from which he had not sufficiently recovered when he hastened to enter on his new employment. The excitement, the unaccustomed labor, the care, and some troubles which he had hardly expected, were more than his enfeebled frame was able to sustain; and the consequence was that his health was permanently impaired. Yet his efforts under all his discouragements were in a high degree acceptable and useful. And when the publication of the Observer was relinquished in 1842, he had "purchased for himself a good degree" in the confidence of the pastors and churches of Connecticut. Some in whose minds his connection with the Anti-Slavery Society had operated to his disadvantage, saw and acknowledged the excellence of the

Observer, the consultations were already in progress which resulted in the establishment of the New Englander. The projectors of the work committed it to his guidance as proprietor and editor; for indeed he had been in their councils from the beginning. He began in circumstances of discouragement. A serious pecuniary loss, which came upon him unexpectedly after he had entered into engagements for the publication of the work, embarrassed his proceedings and depressed his spirits. In spite of all that we could do to lighten his editorial labors and to promote the success of the undertaking, his health failed rapidly till, for a considerable period, his life was despaired of. The force and elasticity of his mind, his judg. ment, his courage, and his power of thought, shared in the infirmity of his body. At last, in the summer of 1846, reduced to an absolute incapacity of pursuing the enterprise, he disposed of a part in the proprietorship of the work, and left his home in New Haven, little expecting ever to enter it again. He went to his mother's house in Brattleboro with only a faint hope that a complete release from all business responsi bility, and the invigorating influence of his native air, together with the peculiar remedial treatment of the water-cure establishment in that village, might afford him relief. Beyond his own expectations, and to the grateful surprise of his friends, he recovered, in the course of some three or four months, a degree of health in body and mind which he had not enjoyed for years before. The devout gratitude with which he acknowledged that great deliverance, can not be described in any way so well, as by transcribing here some passages from a letter which he addressed at the time to one of the friends with whom he was associated in the direction of this journal. The letter is dated, "Brattleboro, Sept. 25, 1846."

"As Providence has made you

my pastor, I shall take the liberty to be very frank in what I have to say respecting myself. Having been an invalid for eight years, and having passed through several courses of dangerous sickness, it seems to me a wonderful providence that a constitution is left which promises to be restored to perfect soundness and vigor. When I left home, ten weeks since, I was unable to walk steadily without aid, and had to be helped into the coach which carried me to the railroad station. Now I can walk for miles without weariness, jump, run, and climb mountains; and I enjoy a sensation of health to which I have been a stranger for years. I am not yet encouraged to believe that any permanent improvement has been made, unless I follow up my present course of bathing and exercise for a few months longer; but I am already capable of acting with a bodily and mental vigor and pleasure, of which I have not been conscious till now for a long period. But this, I trust, is not the best half of my report. At the time I left New Haven, and for weeks after that, my mind was in a state bordering on despair. Not an object, past, present or future, could I discover on which my thoughts rested with satisfaction. No appointment or dispensation of Divine providence pleased me. I was unsubmissive to the trials and afflictions with which a just, wise and good God had seen best to reprove me. In short, I know not how better to describe my state of feeling than to say, rather indefinitely, that a 'horror of great darkness' rested on my mind. This distress has been succeeded by what I fear may be a delusion, but a most surprising change, for which I can not be sufficiently grateful to the Savior of men. I can not now say that I am unhappy, or unwilling that all Divine appointments should stand. My misfortunes are all merciful, and my blessings transcendently above my deserts. But I will not weary you with any details." After some ex

pression of thanks to his associates for what they had done during his illness, "to save the New Englander from destruction," and of his "hope that it may yet survive to be the instrument of great good," he closes his letter by saying, "I even begin to hope that I shall yet be able once more to preach the glorious gospel of the blessed God,-a pleasure which I had quite despaired of ever again realizing."

The hope expressed in the closing sentence of the letter, was not entirely disappointed. After his return from Brattleboro, his health was such that he ventured to preach occasionally-though his efforts of that kind were for the most part in congregations to which he might preach without any great physical exhaustion. During the last summer, he spoke in public more freely and frequently than he had done for many years before. Some six weeks before his death, he ventured to supply the place of the pastor, for a single Sabbath, in the Broadway Tabernacle in New York. The effort appears to have been too great for his strength. It was followed by a slight cough and hoarseness, with some perceptible diminution of his bodily vigor. Still there was no alarm, he seemed only to have taken cold; though some of his friends feared that he might be relapsing into his old complaints.

On Thursday, the 28th of September, in the morning, a physician was called, who had long been accustomed to prescribe for him; but a medical examination of his case discovered no occasion for special anxiety. In the afternoon of that day, at about half past three o'clock, he suddenly fell into a state of unconsciousness; and at half past six he had ceased to live. It is believed that his death was caused by an attack of gout, and that the same disease which in various disguised forms had followed him for many years, had finished its work at last by striking at the lungs. To him,

his death was as sudden as the announcement of it in the newspapers was to his friends.

Mr. Tyler's contributions to this work have made our readers acquainted with his qualities as a writer. In the first volume he was the author of the articles on Capital Punishment,' on Lying,' on Wesleyan Perfectionism,' on 'Governor Yale,' and on The Relations of Man to the Moral Law.' In the second volume, the article on 'Promises' was the only one of any length the state of his health permitted him to contribute. For the same reason, the first three numbers of the third volume contained nothing from him but some slight notices of books; but in the concluding number the articles on Unitarian and Episcopalian Affinities,' on 'The Right of Civil Government over Life,' and on 'The Comparative Character and Merits of the Congregational and Presbyterian Systems are an indication that just then he was less than ordinarily under the power of disease. In the fourth volume, the three articles on 'Stuart's Apocalypse,' on 'The Bible a Revelation,' and on 'The Theory of the Christian Church and Ministry,' were from his pen. To the fifth volume, he contributed the articles on 'The Cold Water Cure,' on 'The Good Time Coming,' on 'The Causes and Cure of Puseyism,' on 'Torrey's Translation of Neander,' on 'The Extension of the Elective Franchise to the Colored Citizens of the Free States,' on The Ex-parte Council at Reading, Massachusetts,' and on 'The Kingdom of Heaven.' To the volume which we are closing with this brief memorial of him, he has contributed the articles on 'The Proposed Abolition of Slavery in West Virginia,' on 'The Church-as it was, as it is, and as it ought to be,' and on The Ethics of Religious Contro

versy.'

The mere recital of the subjects of these articles, is a sort of index to the habits and tendencies of his mind and to the favorite direction of

his studies. With a large and liberal mind, and with a ready talent for investigation and discussion in various departments of inquiry, he delighted chiefly in ethical studiesin that broad sense of the word ethical, which includes the relations of human conduct not only to the welfare of society, but also to the will,and government of God. We remember indeed, that several years ago, after his retirement from the pastoral office, he employed himself for a season in writing a system of Moral Philosophy, which was nearly ready to be printed, when he entered into other engagements. Some of the ablest among the articles above mentioned, may perhaps be recognized as chapters detached from that unfinished work.

Mr. Tyler's authorship was not limited to his connection with the periodical press. About a year af ter his settlement in the pastoral office at Middletown, he published a volume on the Christian doctrine of Future Punishment. Of that little volume, we hesitate not to say, that for simplicity and perspicuity of scriptural argument, and for the earnest force of common sense with which the conclusions are commended to the understanding and the sense of right, it is not surpassed by any popular work on the same subject within our knowledge. It deserves a new edition for extensive circulation. A few months later, he published a Sermon, maintaining the proposition that "God always prefers obedience to sin in its stead." To those who do not remember the position of our New England metaphysical theology twenty years ago, it would seem as if arguments on such a proposition before a Christian congregation must have been quite preposterous. Yet it is veritable history, that less than twenty years ago there were theologians in New England, of unquestionable piety and ability, whose reverence for God was so perverted by metaphysics, and their understanding of the