JAMES MONTGOMERY.

THE name of Montgomery, under many an orthographic guise, is neither modern nor unknown in British history and literature. It was gallantly borne at the battle of Hastings by a distinguished kinsman of the Duke of Normandy, when

"Montgomery forward prest,

Where dauntless Harold fell

On Hastings' field-and earned a name,

That rivalled e'en the Conqueror's fame."

It appears in a list of "tenants by the head" in DoomsDay Book. It is the nomen of heroes in the rare old Ballads of "Otterburne" and "Chevy Chase." It is found in early records of the Peerage and landed gentry in various parts of the United Kingdom. It was arrayed on the side of royalty in the bloody strifes of the seventeenth century. It graced the Irish Episcopal Bench soon after the Restoration. It ranged itself among the men who fought and fell for American independence. It has adorned the annals of diplomacy, and entwined itself with the mystic wreath of poetry in the rough old Scottish author of "The Cherry and the Slae."

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The name, however, had all but died out from the nation's remembrance; and had not another star arisen in the broad hemisphere of fame, shining with a calm and steady radiance, it would long ere this have been entombed in the huge sepulchre of forgetfulness. But now, wherever the sweet accents of our mother tongue vibrate on the ear, thousands who are ignorant of its history in the annals of "old time," cherish it as a name worthy to be "had in everlasting remembrance;" and revere it as the designation of him who wears the proud distinction of THE "BARD of Sheffield."

I.

JAMES MONTGOMERY-for it is of HIM we speak-boasted no proud descent. He cared not to trace his lineage through long lines of courtiers, chieftains, and great men. But in very early life it was his far loftier privilege to adopt Cowper's expressions of honest pride in reference to his sainted ancestry:

My boast is not that I derive my birth

From loins enthroned, or rulers of the earth;
But higher far my proud pretensions rise,
The son of parents passed into the skies."

Those parents-John and Mary Montgomery-were natives of the north of Ireland. When quite a young man, John was brought to a knowledge of salvation in connexion with the Moravian settlement of Grace Hill, at Balleykennedy. After spending some months in England and Germany, he returned to Grace Hill, and married Mary Blackley, the daughter of a respectable member of that little Christain community. He was soon

set apart "for the work of the ministry," and was designated to the pastoral charge of a small congregation in Irvine, Scotland. Here, November the fourth, 1771, almost immediately after his parents arrived in North Britain, James, their eldest son and future Poet, first saw the light. Hence he was wont playfully to say, that he "had narrowly escaped being an Irishman." By such slight occurrences is a man's natal country determined, and his future career strongly influenced! Seven cities disputed the claim of Homer's birth-place; and the three countries of the United Kingdom may agree to divide among them the honours associated with the name of James Montgomery. The verdant Erin was the land of his ancestry; Scotia, the

"Land of mountain and of flood,"

was the country of his birth; and Albion, brightest and fairest of the three, was the home of his adoption.

Whatever may have been Montgomery's early physical development, his infant intellect was of a very observant, active, and sensitive character. He left his native town when he was only four years old; yet the main features of its natural scenery were vividly impressed upon his mind. He distinctly remembered that the silver moon, as she walked her measured way and looked over the mountain tops in full-orbed or crescent form, and the deep-flooding of the river, strongly arrested his attention. The anniversary of the King's birth-day, when the loyal people threw open their windows, and the troops fired over the houses, so excited his martial ardour that he seized his little drum, rushed into the street, "beat to arms," and

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resolved to be a soldier. A merry automaton, clapping its mimic hands and screeching from a window, sent him home terror-stricken, with marvellous tales about the supernatural creature whose strange deportment had excited his alarm. He was also an early dreamer,—most Poets are, and in one of his midnight phantasies he fancied himself pursued by a herd of cattle, which so deeply impressed him that, to the end of life, he carried about a horrible dread of cows and bullocks. These and. other early impressions, not marvellously poetic, he was wont to relate in his hours of social and friendly intercourse.

II.

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As if not altogether to "escape being an Irishman," Montgomery returned with his parents to Grace-Hill; and there, for two years, Jemmy Mc Caffery, the village pedagogue, did his best to bring him on in his learning" with what success we are not informed. Another movement, the influence of which upon his glorious future none can fully estimate, was then resolved upon. Scotland has had her four years of his infancy; Ireland her four-and-twenty months of his boyhood; and England must now receive him as her foster-child for the rest of his life, the long term of seventy-seven years. About six miles from Leeds, in the very heart of the manufacturing district, there is a Moravian establishment called Fulneck, and here young Montgomery was sent to be educated and fitted for the great battle of life. We have a strong impression that the arrangements of this establishment, and the mode of education therein

adopted, were not exactly suited to the mental temperament of our hero. He himself, however, recognised in this removal a kindly ordering of that special Providence which so tenderly guarded his entire career. In his reminiscences of "DEPARTED DAYS," he touchingly and devoutly sings:

For hither, from my native clime,

The hand that leads Orion forth,

And wheels Arcturus round the north,
Brought me in life's exulting prime :
Blest be that hand!-Whether it shed
Mercies or judgments on my head,
Extend the sceptre, or exalt the rod,-

Blest be that hand!-It is the hand of God.

The moral, literary, and religious advantages of this well-ordered seminary were no doubt great; and Montgomery shared them to the full. Yet, as a whole, his progress was anything but satisfactory. He was melancholy, and very indolent in his studies, a fact which he attributes to a raging and lingering fever, caught on a hot summer day, as he lay under a hedge-row listening to one of the masters reading passages from Blair's "Grave." He had to be "driven like a coal-ass through the Greek and Latin Grammars;" and a smart rap on the head, from the fiddle-stick of his music master, was no uncommon visitation. The school "Diary" at Fulneck contains a few entries not at all complimentary to the diligence and progress of this favoured pupil. More than once you read, that "complaints were made, that James Montgomery was not using proper diligence in his studies, and was admonished on the subject."