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by his reason as the supreme earthly judge. | assailed him, not as the gloomy ministers Whatever might be his topic, or whatever of vengeance, but as the necessary exercise his employment, he never laid aside the

Ermine.

And yet, for more than thirty years, he was a member of the unreformed parliament, representing there that people, so few and singular, who dare to think, and

of virtues not otherwise to be called into activity. They came as the salutary lessons of a father, not as the penal inflictions of a judge. Nor did the Father, to whom he so meekly bowed, see fit to lay on him those griefs, under the pressure of which

speak, and act for themselves. He never the bravest stagger. He never witnessed gave one party vote, was never claimed as the irruption of death into his domestic an adherent by any of the contending fac-paradise, nor the rending asunder by sin, tions of his times, and, of course, neither the parent of death, of the bonds of love

won nor sought the favor of any. An impartial arbiter, whose suffrage was the honorable reward of superior reason, he sat apart and aloft, in a position which, though it provoked a splenetic sarcasm from Burke, commanded the respect even of those whom it rebuked.

and reverence which united to each other the inmates of that happy home-a home happy in his presence from whose lips no morose, or angry, or impatient word ever fell; on whose brow no cloud of anxiety or discontent was ever seen to rest. Surrounded to his latest hours by those whom

To the great Whig doctrines of Peace, it had been his chief delight to bless and Reform, Economy, and Toleration, he lent to instruct, he bequeathed to them the reall the authority of his name, and occa-collection of a wise, a good, and a happy sionally the aid of his voice. But he was an infrequent and unimpressive speaker, and sought to influence the measures of his day rather by the use of his pen, than by any participation in its rhetoric. His writings, moral, religious, and political, were

man; that so, if in future life a wider acquaintance with the world should chill the heart with the skepticism so often engendered by such knowledge, they might be reassured in the belief that human virtue is no vain illusion; but that, nurtured by

voluminous, though destitute of any such the dews of heaven, it may expand into mutual dependence as to unite them into fertility and beauty, even in those fat places one comprehensive system; or any such of the earth which romance disowns, and graces of execution as to obtain for them on which no poet's eye will condescend to permanent acceptance. But in a domestic rest. liturgy, composed for the use of his own A goodly heritage! yet to have transfamily, and made public after his death, he mitted it (if that were all) would, it must encountered, with as much success as can be confessed, be an insufficient title to a attend it, the difficulty of finding thoughts place amongst memorable men. Nor, and language meet to be addressed by the except for what he accomplished as the ephemeral dwellers on the earth to Him associate of others, could that claim be who inhabiteth eternity. It is simple, reasonably preferred on behalf of Henry grave, weighty, and reverential; and forms Thornton. Apart, and sustained only by a clear, though a faint and subdued, echo his own resources, he would neither have of the voice in which the Deity has revealed undertaken, nor conceived, the more neble

his sovereign will to man. That will he habitually studied, adored, and labored to adopt. Yet his piety was reserved and unobtrusive. Like the life-blood throbbing in every pulse and visiting every fibre, it was the latent though perennial source of his mental health and energy.

of those benevolent designs to which his life was devoted. Affectionate, but passionless-with a fine and indeed a fastidious taste, but destitute of all creative imagination-gifted rather with fortitude to endure calamity, than with courage to exult in the struggle with danger-a lover of mankind, but not an enthusiast in the cause of our

A peace, perfect and unbroken, seemed to possess him. His tribute of pain and common humanity-his serene and perspisorrow was paid with a submission so tran-cacious spirit was never haunted by the quil, as sometimes to assume the appear- visions, nor borne away by the resistless

ance of a morbid insensibility. But his affections, unimpaired by lawless indulgence, and constant to their proper objects, were subject to a control to be acquired by no feebler discipline. Ills from without

impulses, of which heroic natures, and they alone, are conscious. Well qualified to impart to the highest energies of others a wise direction and inflexible perseverance, he had to borrow from them the glowing temperament which hopes against hope, and is wise in despite of prudence. He had not far or long to seek for such an alli

ance.

On the bright evening of a day which had run its course some thirty or forty summers ago, the usual groups had formed themselves in the library already celebrated.

county of York, now fairly under the can vass of his own bright and joyous fancies. He moved in obedience to some impulse like that which prompts the wheelings of the swallow, or the dodgings of the barbel. But whether he advanced, or paused, or revolved, his steps were still measured by the ever-changeful music of his own rich

Addressing a nearer circle, might be heard voice, ranging over all the chords expressive

above the unbusy hum the voice of the Prelector, investigating the characteristics of Seneca's morality perhaps; or, not improbably, the seizure of the Danish fleet; or, it might be, the various gradations of sanity as exhibited by Robert Hall or Joanna Southcote; when all pastimes were sus

of mirth and tenderness, of curiosity or surprise, of delight or of indignation Eheu, fugaces!. Those elder forms are al now reposing beneath the clods of the valley; those playful boys are venerable dignitaries of the Church; and he who then seemed to read while he listened silently,

pended, and all speculations put to flight, to is now, in the garrulity of declining years, welcome the approach of what seemed a telling old tales, and distorting, perhaps in dramatic procession, emerging from the the attempt to revive them, pictures which deep foliage by which the further slopes of have long since been fading from the memothe now checkered lawn were overhung. ry. But for that misgiving, how easy to In advance of the rest two noisy urchins depict the nearer approach of William were putting to no common test the philan- Wilberforce, and of the tail by which, like thropy of a tall shaggy dog, their play- some Gaelic Chief or Hibernian demafellow, and the parental indulgence of the gogue, he was attended! How easy to slight figure which followed them. Limbs portray the joyous fusion of the noisy strol

lers across the lawn, with the quieter but not less happy assemblage which had watched and enjoyed their pantomime-to trace the confluence of the two streams of discourse, imparting grace and rapidity to the one, and depth and volume to the other -to paint the brightening aspect of the grave censor, as his own reveries were flashed back on him in picturesque forms and brilliant colors-or to delineate the subdued countenance of his mercurial associate, as he listened to profound contemplations on the capacities and the duties of man!

scarcely stouter than those of Asmodeus, sustaining a torso as unlike as possible to that of Theseus, carried him along with the agility of an antelope, though under the weight of two coat-pockets, protuberant as the bags by which some learned brother of the coif announces and secures his rank as leader of his circuit. Grasping a pocket volume in one hand, he wielded in the other a spud, caught up in his progress through the garden, but instinct at his touch with more significance than a whole museum of horticultural instruments. At one instant, a staff on which he leant and listened to the projector at his elbow developing his Of Mr Wilberforce, we have had occasion plan for the better coppering of ships' bot- to write so recently, and so much at large,

toms, at the next it became a wand, pointing out to a portly constituent from the Cloth Hall at Leeds some rich effect of the sunset; then a truncheon, beating time to the poetical reminiscences of a gentleman of the Wesleyan persuasion, looking painfully conscious of his best clothes and of his best behavior; and ere the sacred ca

that though the Agamemnon of the host we celebrate the very sun of the Claphamic system-we pause not now to describe him. His fair demesne was conterminous with that of Mr. Thornton; nor lacked there sunny banks, or sheltered shrubberies, where, in each change of season, they revolved the captivity under which man was

dence had reached its close, a cutlass raised groaning, and projected schemes for his in mimic mutiny against the robust form of deliverance. And although such conclaves William Smith, who, as commodore of this might scarcely be convened except in the ill-assorted squadron, was endeavoring to presence of these two, yet were they rarely convoy them to their destined port. But held without the aid of others, especially little availed the sonorous word of com- of such as could readily find their way mand, or the heart-stirring laugh of the stout member for Norwich, to shape a straight course for the volatile representative of the

thither from the other quarters of the sacred village.

It is not permitted to any Coterie altogether to escape the spirit of Coterie. too confident in the divine reality of their Clapham Common, of course, thought itself cause, to heed much what hostility they the best of all possible commons. Such at might awaken. They had been content to

least was the opinion of the less eminent of those who were entitled to house-bote and dinner-bote there. If the common was attacked, the whole homage was in a flame. If it was laughed at, there could be no remaining sense of decency amongst men. The commoners admired in each other the reflection of their own looks, and the echo of their own voices. A critical race, they drew many of their canons of criticism from books and talk of their own parentage; and for those on the outside of the pale, there might be, now and then, some failure of charity. Their festivities were not exhilarating. New faces, new topics, and a less liberal expenditure of wisdom immediately after dinner, would have improved them. Thus, even at Clapham, the discerning might perceive the imperfections of our common nature, and take up the lowly confession of the great Thomas Erskine-'After all, gentlemen, I am but

a man.'

But if not more than men, they were not less. They had none of the intellectual coxcombry since so prevalent. They did not instil philosophic and political Neology into young ladies and officers of the Guards,

pass for fools, in a world whose boasted wisdom they accounted folly. In their one central and all-pervading idea, they had found an influence hardly less than magical. They had esteemed it impossible to inculcate too emphatically, or too widely, that truth which Paul had proclaimed indifferently to the idolaters of Ephesus, the revellers of Corinth, the sophists of Athens, and the debauched citizens of sanguinary Rome.

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Their sons adopted the same creed with equal sincerity, and undiminished earnestness, but with a far keener sense of the hinderances opposed to the indiscriminate and rude exhibition of it. Absolute as was the faith of Mr. Wilberforce and his associates, it was not possible that the system called Evangelical,' should be asserted by them in the blunt and uncompromising tone of their immediate predecessors. A more elaborate education, greater familiarity with the world and with human affairs, a deeper insight into science and history, with a far nicer discernment of mere conventional proprieties, had opened to them a range of thought, and had brought them into relations with society, of which their

through the gentle medium of the fashion- fathers were comparatively destitute. Posable novel. They mourned over the ills in- itiveness, dogmatism, and an ignorant conseparable from the progress of society, with- tempt of difficulties, may accompany the out shrieks or hysterics. They were not ep- firmest convictions, but not the convictions icures for whose languid palates the sweets of the firmest minds. The freedom with of the rich man's banquet must be seasoned which the vessel swings at anchor, ascerwith the acid of the poor man's discontent. tains the soundness of her anchorage. To Their philanthropy did not languish with- be conscious of the force of prejudice in out the stimulant of satire; nor did it de- ourselves and others, to feel the strength of generate into a mere ballet of tender atti- the argument we resist, to know how to

change places internally with our antagonists, to understand why it is that we provoke this scorn, disgust, or ridicule-and still to be unshaken, and still to adhere with fidelity to the standard we have chosen; this is a triumph, to be won by those alone on whom is bestowed not merely the faith which overcomes the world, but the pure and peaceable wisdom which is from above.

tudes and sentimental pirouettes. Their philosophy was something better than an array of hard words. Their religion was something more than a collection of impalpable essences; too fine for analysis, and too delicate for use. It was a hardy, serviceable, fruit-bearing, and patrimonial religion. They were the sons, by natural or spiritual birth, of men who, in the earlier days of Methodism, had shaken off the lethargy in which, till then, the Church of England And such were they whom the second had been entranced-of men, by whose generation of the Evangelical party acagency the great evangelic doctrine of faith, knowledged as their secular chiefs. They

emerging in its primeval splendor, had not only overpowered the contrary heresies, but had perhaps obscured some kindred truths. This earlier generation of the evangelic school had been too ingenuous, and

fell on days much unlike those which we, their children, have known-days less softened by the charities and courtesies, but less enervated by the frivolities of life. Since the fall of the Roman republic, there had not arisen within the bosom, and armed | sist the tyranny with which the earth was with the weapons, of civilization itself, a threatened.

power so full of menace to the civilized Nor was it difficult to distinguish or to

world as that which then overshadowed Europe. In the deep seriousness of that dark era, they of whom we speak looked back for analogies to that remote conflict of the nations; and drew evil auguries from the event of the wars which, from Sylla to Octavius, had dyed the earth with the blood of its inhabitants, to establish at length a military despotism-ruthless, godless, and abominable. But they also reverted to the

grapple with their antagonists. The slave trade was then brooding like a pestilence over Africa; that monster iniquity which fairly outstripped all abhorrence, and baffled all exaggeration-converting one quarter of this fair earth into the nearest possible resemblance of what we conceive of hell, reversing every law of Christ, and openly defying the vengeance of God. The formation of the holy league, of which we are the

advent, even at that age of lust and cruelty, chroniclers, synchronized with that unhapof a power destined to wage successful war, py illness which, half a century ago, withnot with any external or earthly potentate, drew Thomas Clarkson from the strife to but with the secret and internal spring of which he was set apart and consecrated; all this wretchedness and wrong-the pow-leaving his associates to pursue it during the er of love, incarnate though divine-of twelve concluding years, unaided by his love exercised in toils and sufferings, and presence, but not without the aid of his at length yielding up life itself, that from example, his sympathy, and his prayers. that sacrifice might germinate the seeds of They have all long since passed away, a new and enduring life-the vital princi- while he still lives (long may he live!) to ple of man's social existence, of his indi- enjoy honors and benedictions, for which vidual strength, and of his immortal the diadem of Napoleon, even if wreath

hopes.

And as, in that first age of Christianity, truth, and with it heavenly consolation, had been diffused, not alone or chiefly by

ed with the laurels of Goethe, would be a mean exchange. But, alas! it is not given to any one, not even to Thomas Clarkson, to enjoy a glory complete and unalloyed..

the lifeless text, but by living messengers Far from us be the attempt to pluck one proclaiming and illustrating the renovating leaf from the crown which rests on that energy of the message intrusted to them; so time-honored head. But with truth there to those who, at the commencement of this may be no compromise, and truth wrings century, were anxiously watching the con- from us the acknowledgment, that Thomas vulsions of their own age, it appeared that Clarkson never lived at Clapham. Not the sorrows of mankind would be best so that comrade in his holy war, whom,

assuaged, and the march of evil most effectually stayed, by a humble imitation of that inspired example. They therefore formed themselves into a confederacy, carefully organized and fearlessly avowed, to send forth into all lands, but above all into their own, the two witnesses of the ChurchScripture and Tradition; - Scripture, to be interpreted by its divine Author to the de

of all that served under the same banner, he seems to have loved the best. At the distance of a few bow-shots from the house of Henry Thornton, was the happy home in which dwelt Granville Sharpe; at once the abiding guest and the bosom friend of his more wealthy brothers. A critic, with the soul of a churchwarden, might indeed fasten on certain metes and bounds, hostile

vout worshippers-tradition, not of doctri- to the parochial claims of the family of nal tenets, but of that unextinguishable Sharpe; but in the wider ken and more zeal, which, first kindled in the apostolic liberal judgment of the historian, the dignitimes, has not wanted either altars to re-ty of a true Claphamite is not to be refusceive, or attendant ministers to feed and ed to one whose evening walk and morning propagate, the flame. Bibles, schools, mis- contemplations led him so easily and so

sionaries, the circulation of evangelical books, and the training of evangelical clergymen, the possession of well attended pulpits, war through the press, and war in Parliament, against every form of injustice which either law or custom sanctioned such were the forces by which they hoped to extend the kingdom of light, and to re

often within the hallowed precincts.

Would that the days of Isaac Walton could have been prolonged to the time when Granville Sharpe was to be committed to the care of the biographers! His likeness from the easel of the good old Angler would have been drawn with an outline as correct and firm, and in colors as soft and as

transparent, as the portraits of Hooker or of thought, combined with profound reverencé Herbert, of Doune or of Watton. A nar- for hoar authority-a settled conviction of rative, no longer than the liturgy which the wickedness of our race, tempered by an they all so devoutly loved, would then have infantine credulity in the virtue of each

superseded the annals which now embalm his memory beneath that nonconforming prolixity which they all so devoutly hated.

separate member of it a burning indignation against injustice and wrong, reconciled with pity and long-suffering towards the individual oppressor-all the sternness which Adam has bequeathed to his sons, wedded to all the tenderness which Eve has transmitted to her daughters.

As long as Granville Sharpe survived, it was too soon to proclaim that the age of

The grandson of an Archbishop of York, the son of an Archdeacon of Northumberland, the father of a Prebendary of Durham, Granville Sharpe, descending to the rank from which Isaac Walton rose, was apprenticed to a linen-draper of the name of Halsey, a Quaker who kept his shop on Tower | chivalry was gone. The Ordnance clerk Hill. When the Quaker died, the inden- sat at his desk with a soul as distended as tures were transferred to a Presbyterian of that of a Paladin bestriding his war-horse; the same craft. When the Presbyterian re- and encountered with his pen such giants, tired, they were made over to an Irish Papist. When the Papist quitted the trade, they passed to a fourth master, whom the apprentice reports to have had no religion at all. At one time a Socinian took up his abode at the draper's, and assaulted the pedigrees, feoffments, and sepulchral infaith of the young apprentice in the mys- scriptions, till he saw his friend enjoying

teries of the Trinity and the Atonement. Then a Jew came to lodge there, and contested with him the truth of Christianity itself. But blow from what quarter it might, the storm of controversy did but the more

hydras, and discourteous knights, as infested the world in the eighteenth century. He found the lineal representative of the Willoughbys de Parham in the person of a retired tradesman; and buried himself in

his ancestral privileges among the peers of Parliament. He combated, on more than equal terms, the great Hebraist, Dr. Kennicott, in defence of Ezra's catalogue of the sacred vessels, chiefs, and families. He

endear to him the shelter of his native labored long, and with good success, to denest, built for him by his forefathers, like feat an unjust grant made by the Treasury that of the swallow of the Psalmist, in the to Sir James Lowther, of the Forest of Incourts and by the altar of his God. He glewood, and the manor and castle of Carstudied Greek to wrestle with the Socinian- lisle. He waged a less fortunate war against he acquired Hebrew to refute the Israelite- the theatrical practice of either sex appearhe learned to love the Quaker, to be kind ing in the habiliments of the other. He

to the Presbyterian, to pity the Atheist, and to endure the Roman Catholic. Charity (so he judged) was nurtured in his bosom by these early polemics, and the affectionate spirit which warmed to the last the current of his maturer thoughts, grew up, as he believed, within him, while alternately measuring crapes and muslins, and defending the faith against infidels and heretics.

The cares of the mercer's shop engaged no less than seven years of a life destined to be held in grateful remembrance as long as the language or the history of his native land shall be cultivated among men. The next eighteen were consumed in the equally obscure employment of a clerk in the office of Ordnance. Yet it was during this period that Granville Sharpe disclosed to others, and probably to himself, the nature, so singular and so lovely, which distinguished him the most inflexible of human wills, united to the gentlest of human hearts-an almost audacious freedom of

moved all the powers of his age, political and intellectual, to abolish the impressment of seamen, and wound up a dialogue, with Johnson, on the subject, by opposing the scriptural warning, 'woe to them that call evil good, and good evil,' to what he described as the 'plausible sophistry and important self-sufficiency' of the Sage. Presenting himself to the then Secretary of State, Lord Dartmouth, he denounced, with prophetic solemnity, the guilt of despoiling and exterminating in the Charib war that miserable remnant of the aboriginal race of the Antilles. As a citizen of London, he came to the rescue of Crosby, the Lord Mayor, in his struggle with the House of Commons. As a citizen of the world, he called on earth and heaven to stay the plugues of slavery and the slave-trade, and advocated the independence of America with such ardor as to sacrifice to it his own. Orders had reached his office to ship munitions of war to the revolted colonies. If

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