bering myself with that elect people. Many an alarming nquiry, which if followed up by a prayerful appeal to the Bible might have led me then to Jesus, was effectually stifled by this misconception. I know that the clause can be explained so as to do away with this wrong inference; but I cannot help lamenting that expressions put into the mouths of children as a confession of faith, should be left liable to any such misconstruction. My attachment to the Established Church of England is warm and sincere: it has, as the sequel will show, withstood many assaults, and increased in proportion as it was assailed; but its formularies, however excellent, are the work of fallible man, therefore imperfect and open to improvement; and this little word 'me' in the clause alluded to, is a most mischievous misleader.

Not wishing to return to the subject, I will close this letter by the relation of an incident, which, coupled with the recollection of my own youthful cogitations, deepened painfully the impression I have here admitted. When engaged, a few years since, in giving Sabbath instruction at my own house to a number of young people, I was particularly distressed by a report that one fine boy, about twelve years of age, had been led into habits of intoxication. It soon after happened that on a Saturday night I gave a little feast, a tea-party, to the boys, and on their assembling I discovered to my great horror that the lad in question was not sober. I took him aside, spoke shortly to him, and sent him home under the care of an older, and steady boy. The circumstance affected me greatly I resolved to mark in the most emphatic manner, my reprobation of the sin, and to address him on the following evening, in presence of his companions, as one who by such a line of conduct placed himself without the pale of our little society; hoping that by a temporary public exclusion,

and much private admonition and persuasion, he might be brought to struggle against the vile propensity.

On that Sunday morning a sermon was preached for the benefit of the National School to which this boy belonged; and as usual some of the children were selected to repeat the catechism in church. It was the Military Chapel at Sandhurst, filled in every part with its imposing array; and the little catechumens were placed near the communion table, each speaker having to advance a step or two into open view, standing singly conspicuous. Judge of my feelings, when, wearing an aspect of the utmost confidence, but still flushed and debilitated through his last night's debauch, my unhappy little drunkard stepped forth, and with great distinctness and self-complacency repeated those words: "I learn to believe. thirdly in God the Holy Ghost, who sanctifieth ME, and all the Elect people of God."

I fairly burst into tears. I will add no comment, but simply leave on record my fervent hope that God may put it into the hearts of those who have the power so to do, to revise what in the main is so truly excellent and scriptural, and by a few verbal corrections to do away with whatever may cast a stumbling-block before the lambs of our fold,

LETTER III.

EARLY DAYS.

CONNECTED With this period of my early life are recollections that I would not lose. They are vivid, because, as I have said, I was a thinking child, and having been accustomed to listen with eagerness to the conversation of my seniors, I had insensibly imbibed their feelings. The recent horrors of the French revolution, and the kindred spirit that had burst out with sanguinary violence in Ireland, while the social frame of England herself was deeply shaken by the roll of those waves that were not permitted to burst over her favoured soil, of course formed a very prominent topic of conversation. Indeed, every mind was more or less engrossed by it; and my father, an enthusiastic loyalist, devoted to the constitution in Church and State, had offered more than verbal resistance to the enemy; for, as I often heard told, when some apostles of revolution visited our city, and sought to stir up the lower classes to outrages for which they had long been secretly ripening, my father, whose bodily strength was as formidable as his mind was energetic and his appearance commanding, had placed himself in the fore-front of a party of gentlemen who stormed the quarters taken up by these movers of sedition, interrupted their dangerous proceedings, overpowered all resistance, and drove the intruders out of the town. He was not fond of hearing his own praises

bestrode our city, firmly planting there his two cloven hoofs of Popery and Socinianism. Many of our leading men belonged to these two systems, the former, the Jerninghams, Petres, &c., making up in wealth and private influence for what our then Protestant constitution withheld of political power, and the latter mingling its bad leaven in every part of the mass, sending to parliament one of the most active of its communion, to represent the ancient city. Of course, we had within us the elements both of a French revolution and an Irish rebellion; and with an immense manufacturing population, often distressed, and notoriously disaffected, much solicitude prevailed among those who in either case would become the first victims of a popular explosion. The clergy were peculiarly marked for destruction, looked upon on one side as a body of place-holders, who wrung from the people ample payment for services which the latter valued at nothing; and by the other party as heretical leaders, whose teaching, as the Douay Bible courteously remarks, is to be regarded as the howling of wolves, and themselves treated accordingly. Both parties beheld in the Church of Englande the most insurmountable barrier to their designs upon the civil and religious institutions of the country; and they were perfectly right, for so it unquestionably is; and long may it so remain !

Born into this exciting period, and hearing from my earliest infancy such matters canvassed, not as theories, but as realities threatening our very existence, I became deeply engaged in them at five or six years old, an age when few children dream of public affairs: and well do I remember the sagacious shake of the head with which the present Bishop of Gloucester, Dr. Monk, then domiciled under my father's roof preparatory to entering college, remarked, on

ight, that Missy has since encountered many rebukes for ndulging a taste not considered lady-like, and for striving o rouse the mothers of her native land into an appreciation of their high privilege of forming the minds of future Engishmen; and the importance of training them up, even from he nursery, in the sound principles of our matchless constiution. And does Missy repent? Far, far from it; she has ived to send one manly youth of her own nursing, though not her own offspring, to swell the phalanx of Protesters ; nay, of political Protesters, in a place where the war of principles is waged with stern determination: she is yet preparing another; and if instead of two, two hundred English boys had been committed to her guidance, she would, the Lord being her helper, have formed them into a body of fellow-soldiers with those who now contend on the broken, but still precious ramparts of our Protestant constitution.

The era to which I would now revert was that of Napoleon's menaced invasion. Oh, what a spirit did it rouse among us! I could not then fully appreciate what now I remember with delight, the alacrity of our labouring classes in enrolling themselves, and forming local regiments of voluntary soldiers, officered by the very men against whom their enmity had lately blazed forth, and with most cheerful subordination obeying them. It was a lovely sight, even lovelier to me in the retrospection than it was at the time, to behold England rushing to arms in defence of her own sacred homes, and rushing, not with the madness of man's rage or in the pride of man's strength, but with reiterated appeals to Him who alone giveth victory to kings and peace to their people. How deep, how solemn was the stillness of that oft-recurring season of which we had been forewarned by a square pamphlet being laid on my father's breakfast-table some days previous, entitled "A Form of Prayer, with fast