Missionary Society at Sheffield. In that year the Sheffield Iris became extinct. The poet continued to read with interest the periodicals and new books of the day: he wrote a hymn now and then, but even that slight exertion affected his health. In 1849 the new edition of his Poems, in four volumes, was published by Messrs. Longman, and in 1850 the edition in one volume. Montgomery was startled, in 1851, by reading in an American newspaper a notice of his death, with a sketch of his life and character. On the evening of July 19th, 1852, he delivered a lecture at the Music Hall, On Some Passages of English Poetry Little Known; but his feeble state excited the sympathy of his audience, all of whom were now conscious that it was the last time they should ever so meet and hear him.' In October of that year he 'cried many a time' over Uncle Tom's Cabin; and so late as February, 1854, he listened with much interest to passages from Landor's Last Fruit off an Old Tree. He had hoped to spend Easter of that year at Fulneck, but failing strength disappointed him. On the afternoon of Saturday, the 29th of April, he called on Mr. Holland, and complained of some oppression at the chest, but walked home as usual. He was 'fidgety › during the evening, and at family-worship handed the Bible to Sarah Gales, and asked her to read: he then knelt down, and prayed with peculiar fervour. He retired to rest at his accustomed hour, but the next morning a servant found him lying unconscious on the floor, where he must have been for several hours. Medical aid was procured, and he recovered so far as

to take a little dinner. At half-past three in the afternoon, while Miss Gales was sitting by his bedside, watching him apparently asleep, a slight change passed over his features. Montgomery was gone.

He was buried on the 11th of May, in the cemetery at Sheffield, amid such demonstrations of respect as were never paid to any individual in Sheffield before. The shops were generally closed, and the manufactories deserted. All the official bodies of Sheffield were represented in the procession. The vicar of Sheffield and twenty-four of the clergy formed part of it. The burial service of the Church of England was read by the vicar, and at its conclusion a hymn, written long before by the poet himself, was sung by the parish choir and the children of the boys' and girls' charity schools. The coffin bore the inscription- James Montgomery: died April the 30th, 1854, in the 83rd year of his age.'

We have not space to offer anything like a satisfactory estimate of this good man's poetical genius. That he had from an early age the poetic temperament strongly developed cannot be questioned; nor need we hesitate to say that no religious poet has ever surpassed him in the grace and melody of his diction, the purity, pathos, and fervour of his thought. A great charm in Montgomery's sacred poetry results from its evident sincerity the glittering conceits with which Moore has surrounded pious themes do not ring sound when we compare them with the simple earnestness which breathes from every line of the happiest effusions of the poet of Sheffield. Not force and passion, but chaste

beauty and gentle pathos, are the characteristics of what Montgomery wrote; and the piety of the man had so permeated and leavened his entire being that without a thought or effort it coloured everything that proceeded from his pen. No short poems in the language have found a wider circulation or a more universal acceptance than Prayer and The Common Lot; and we might easily gather from The Pelican Island and The World before the Flood specimens of a more daring flight than are familiar to such as know Montgomery mainly as a hymnologist. We find nowhere in his four volumes that insight, passion, and reach of reflection, which distinguish the highest class of the poetry of to-day. The beautiful Lines to a Mole-hill in a Church-yard, which Montgomery amplified and spoiled in his latest edition, have always appeared to us to comprise, within a short space, the most favourable characteristics of his poetry there is, indeed, that undue dilution of thought, which marks the composition of one who never learned to compress: but there are likewise a vein of gentle original reflection, a pathos which permeates the whole, a sympathy with all that is or was human,—all sobered somewhat by the poet's pervading sadness, and all expressed in words so choice, so harmonious, so naturally arranged, as prove how lightly the material trammels of verse sat upon his gentle and graceful spirit. No wonder if all who knew him loved the simple, pious, amiable, weak old man; no wonder if Sheffield was and is proud to claim him as her citizen; no wonder if the little Scotch town by the shore of the Atlantic, that gave him birth, and then saw him no

more till he came back a man of threescore years and ten, frail, timid, and famous, makes it her proudest boast that there was born James Montgomery; and preserves in her archives, with maternal solicitude, the manuscript of The World before the Flood.

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V.

FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.*

HERE is a peculiar pleasure in paying a visit to a friend whom you never saw in his own house before. Let it not be believed that in this world there is much difficulty in finding a new sensation. The genial, unaffected, hard-wrought man, who does not think it fine to appear to care nothing for anything, will find a new sensation in many quiet places, and in many simple ways. There is something fresh and pleasant in arriving at an entirely new railway station, in getting out upon a platform on which you never before stood; in finding your friend standing there looking quite at home in a place quite strange to you; in taking in at a glance the expression of the porter who takes your luggage and the clerk who receives your ticket, and reading there something of their character and their life; in going outside, and seeing for the first time your friend's carriage, whether the stately drag or the humbler dog-cart, and beholding horses

* Friends in Council: a Series of Readings and Discourses thereon. A New Series. Two Volumes. London: 1859.