among trees, built by the bishop in a rather unpromising spot, selected on account of the fine view of Newport, the downs, the beach, and the sea, which is obtained from the ridge of the hill over which he must pass on his way to and from the town. The only beauty which the scene lacked when I saw it was a brighter verdure. It was the end of summer, and the downs were not green. They were sprinkled over with dwellings and clumps of trees; rocks jutted out for the waves to break upon, the spray dashing to a great height; on the interval of smooth sand the silver waves spread noiselessly abroad and retired, while flocks of running snipes and a solitary seagull were the only living things visible. This interval of smooth beach is bounded inland by the pile of rocks which was Berkeley's favourite resort, and where the conversations in the Minute Philosopher are supposed to have taken place. They are not a lofty, but a shelvy, shadowy pile, full of recesses, where the thinker may sit sheltered from the heat, and of platforms, where he may lie basking in the sun.

Purgatory is a deep and narrow fissure in the rock where the sea flows in; one of those.fissures which, as Dr. Channing told me, are a puzzle to geologists. The surfaces of the severed rocks are as smooth as marble, though the split has taken place through the middle of very large stones. These rocks are considered remarkable specimens of puddingstone. After fearfully looking down into the dark floods of Purgatory, we wandered about long among the piles of rocks, the spray dashing all around us. Birds and spiders have thought fit to make their homes amid all the noise and commotion of these recesses. Webs were trembling under the shelves above the breakers, and swallows' nests hung in the crevices. These are the spots in which Dr. Channing passed his boyhood, and here were the everlasting voices which revealed to him the unseen things for which he is living.

The one remarkable thing about him is his spirituality; and this is shown in a way which must strike the most careless observer, but of which he is himself unconscious. He is not generally unconscious; his manner, indeed, betokens a remarkable self-consciousness; but he is not aware of what is highest in himself, though painfully so of some other things. Every one who converses with him is struck with his natural, supreme regard to the true and the right; with

the absence of all suspicion that anything can stand in competition with these. In this there is an exemption from all professional narrowness, from all priestly prejudice. He is not a man of the world: anxious as he is to inform himself of matters of fact and of the present condition of affairs everywhere, he does not succeed well; and this deficiency, and a considerable amount of prejudice on philosophical subjects, are the cause of his being extensively supposed to be more than ordinarily professional in his views, judgments, and conduct. But in this I do not agree, nor does any one, I believe, who knows him. No one sees more clearly than he the necessity of proving and exercising principles by hourly action in all kinds of worldly business. No one is more free from attachment to forms, or more practically convinced that rules and institutions are mere means to an end. He showed this, in one instance out of a thousand, by proposing to his congregation some time ago that they should not always depend on their pastors for the guidance of their worship, but that any members who had anything to say should offer to do so. As might have been foreseen, every one shrank from being concerned in so new an administration of religion; but Dr. Channing was disappointed that the effort was not made. No one, again, is more free from all pride of virtue. His charity towards frailty is as singular as his reprobation of spiritual vices is indignant. The genial side of his nature is turned to the weak, and the sorely tempted and the fallen best know the real softness and meekness of his character. He is a high example of the natural union of lofty spirituality with the tenderest sympathy with those who are the least able to attain it. If the fallen need the help of one into whose face they would look without fear, Dr. Channing is that one, even though he may be felt to be "repulsive" by those who have no particular claim upon his kindness; and as for spiritual pride, when it has once passed his credulity, and got within the observation of his shrewdness, it had better be gone out of the reach of his rebuke.

It may be seen that I feel the prevalent fear of him to be ill-grounded. There is little gratification to one's self-complacency to be expected in his presence. He never flatters, and he is more ready to blame than to praise; but his blame, like every other man's, should go for what it is worth; should be welcome in as far as it is deserved, and should pass for VOL. II.-M

1

nothing where it is not. But there is no assumption and no bitterness in his blame; it is merely the expression of an opinion, and it leaves no sting. All intercourse with him proceeds on the supposition that the parties are not caring about their petty selves, but about truth and good, and that all are equal while engaged in this pursuit. There is no room for mutual fear in such a case. He one day asked an intimate friend, a woman of great simplicity and honesty, some question about a sermon he had just delivered. She replied that she could not satisfy him, because she had not been able to attend to the sermon after the first sentence or two; and he was far better pleased with the answer than with the flatteries which are sometimes addressed to him about his preaching. This lady's method is that in which Dr. Channing's intimate friends speak to him, and not as to a man who is to be feared.

I have mentioned prejudice on philosophical subjects to be a drawback on his liberality. This might have been the remark of a perfect stranger, as long as his celebrated note on Priestley remains unretracted in public, whatever he may say about it in private. His attachment to the poetry of philosophy-the mysticism prevalent among the divines of New-England who study philosophy at all-and his having taken no means to review his early decisions against the philosophers of another school, are the cause of a prejudice as to the grounds, and an illiberality as to the tendencies of any other mental philosophy than his own, the results of which are exhibited in that note. This is not the only instance in Dr. Channing's life, as in the lives of other cautious men, where undue caution has led to rashness. His reason for writing that note was a fear lest, the American Unitarians being already too cold, they should be made colder by philosophical sympathy with the Unitarians of England. This fear led to the rashness of concluding the English Unitarians to be generally disciples of Priestley; of attributing to Priestley's philosophy the coldness of the English Unitarians; and of concluding Priestley to be the perfect exponent of the philosophy which the American divines of Dr. Channing's way of thinking declare to be opposed to spiritualism.

Disposed as Dr. Channing is to an excess of caution both by constitution and by education, he appears to be continually outgrowing the tendency. He has shown what his moral courage is by proofs which will long outlast his indi

cations of slowness in admitting the full merits of the abolitionists. Here, again, his caution led him into rashness; into the rashness of giving his sanction to charges and prejudices against them, the grounds of which he had the means of investigating. This is all over now, however; and it was always a trifle in comparison with the great services he was at the same time rendering to a cause which the abolitionists cared for far more than for what the whole world, or any part of it, thought of their characters. He is now completely identified with them in the view of all who regard them as the vanguard in the field of human liberties.

When I left his door at the close of my first visit to him, and heard him talked of by the passengers in the stage, I was startled by the circumstance into a speculation on the varieties of methods and degrees in which eminent authors are revealed to their fellow-men. There is, to be sure, the old rule," by their fruits ye shall know them;" but the whole harvest of fruits is in some cases so long in coming in, that the knowledge remains for the present very imperfect. As a general rule, earnest writers show their best selves in their books; in the series of calm thoughts which they record in the passionless though genial stillness of their retirement, whence the things of the world are seen to range themselves in their right proportions, in their justest aspect; and where the glow of piety and benevolence is not damped by, but rather consumes fears and cares which relate to self, and discouragement arising from the faults of others. In such cases a close inspection of the life impairs, more or less, the impression produced by the writings. In other cases there is a pretty exact agreement between the two modes of action, by living and writing. This is a rarer case than the other; and it happens either when the principles of action are so thoroughly fixed and familiarized as to rule the whole being, or when the faults of the mind are so intimately connected with its powers as to be kept in action by the exercise of those powers in solitude, as they are by temptations in the world.

There is another case rarer still; when an earnest writer, gifted and popular, still falls below himself, conveying an impression of faults which he has not, or not in the degree in which they seem to appear. In such an instance a casual acquaintance may leave the impression what it was, while a closer inspection cannot but be most grateful to the

observer. In my opinion, this is Dr. Channing s case. His writings are powerful and popular abroad and at home, and have caused him to be revered wherever they are known; but revered as an exalted personage, a clerical teacher, conscious of his high station, and endeavouring to do the duties of it. A slight acquaintance with him must alter this impression, without, perhaps, improving it. When he becomes a companion, the change is remarkable and exhilarating. He drops glorious thoughts as richly as in his pages, while humble and gentle feelings shine out, and eclipse the idea of teaching and preaching. The ear listens for his steps and his voice, and the eye watches for the appearance of more of his writings, not as for a sermon or a lesson, but as a new hint of the direction which that intellect and those affections are taking which are primarily employed in watching over the rights and tendencies, and ameliorating the experience of those who occupy his daily regards.

MUTES AND BLIND.

"Another noble response to the battle-cry of the Prince of Peace, summoning his hosts to the conquest of suffering and the rescue of humanity."-Rationale of Religious Inquiry,

SOME Weeping philosophers of the present day are fond of complaining of the mercenary spirit of the age, and insist that men are valued (and treated accordingly), not as men, but as producers of wealth; that the age is so mechanical, that individuals who cannot act as parts of a machine for creating material comforts and luxuries are cast aside to be out of the way of the rest. What do such complainers make of the lot of the helpless in these days? How do they contrive to overlook or evade the fact that misery is recognised as a claim to protection and solace, not only in individual cases, which strike upon the sympathies of a single mind, but by wholesale; unfortunates, as a class, being