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I will not detain your Grace and the Board further than to say, that indeed the services effected were worth the life of any man, however highly valued, however dear to others, and whatever, under other circumstances, might have been the term of its duration."

"Although the injunction laid by the Board is thus fulfilled, and any word that can be added must want that sanction, and require apology as a freedom not commonly permitted, yet in returning this sheet to the press, it is impossible to disguise the sense of its inadequacy; and more particularly as no thought existed of the address surviving the occasion by which it was produced.

"It must now remain for others to trace, more ably and distinctly, the several stages of that prosperous and well finished course, which took its commencement from the bosom of this country, and its central city, in which the distinguished prelate, the subject of this short address, had his early and successful culture, and where he exhibited the first earnests of his genius, his great capacity for every good attainment, and his blameless conduct.

"It will remain for others to trace the rising strength of his increasing years and more mature acquirements, to the rank which he obtained in the church, in whose ministries and service every effort of his mind and soul was so happily expended.

“It will remain for others to follow him with an heedful eye to a distant and far-severed clime, where every generous quality of his cultivated mind, and each particular of his rich attainments, found their full scope, and were displayed with such large results of solid benefit and per

manent esteem.

"It will remain for others to track his progress through long leagues of travel, both by land and sea, in his several visits to remoter parts of his extensive diocese: and to contemplate him in the fixed scene and circle of his customary

"They will behold him forming, at once, and with the outline and the true proportions of a master's hand, the noble plan of a college which may from henceforth be regarded as the seed plot of every good and profitable plant which may be trained, and fitted, and set out in the soil in which they are to flourish through succeeding generations. They will observe him forming, with equal skill and foresight, the statutes for that great establishment; which may thus appear to have sprung up almost at the first step placed in India by one, who was soon to pass to an everlasting mansion, but whose temporary labours were thus calculated for endurance, even on this transitory globe.

"One thing, however, remains yet for the mover of the resolutions here alluded to; and before this sheet, which must not tarry for enlargement, returns to the hand which must give it to the public, it may furnish some amends for what is here defective and inadequate, to express an earnest hope, that the last-transmitted fruits of an enlightened mind and solid judgment, the two concluding Charges delivered by the Bishop to his Clergy, may find a more general circulation, by multiplied and numerous copies, through his native land. The view presented in those exquisite discourses, of the provisions made by the Great Author of our common hope for planting and perpetuating his church, with the steps which followed thereupon in the first ages of the Christian era, and the pattern there drawn of the sacred bond of fellowship and concord; of faith, discipline, and practical proficiency; are calculated, as all his labours were, for the general advantage of the Christian world, and should have as wide a range. Should this suggestion be regarded, and this wish be fulfilled in any manner, it will compensate for defects in what is thus given to the public; and will establish a more effectual, and a thousandfold more precious, monument to the memory of this exemplary prelate, than that which is so properly projected for him by the two Societies to which, for the best

cordial spirit of concern (more promptly felt than testified), which served at once both to excite, and to restrain expressions; which at the moment of delivery could not endure the seal of silence, but which touched with diffidence a subject that surpassed its powers.

"St. Martin's Vicarage, January, 1823.”

No. VIII.

CHARLES SHAW LEFEVRE, Esq.

MR. LEFEVRE was born in Yorkshire, in 1759, and was the only son of the Rev. George Shaw, who had patrimonial estates in that county, and who lived to the great age of ninety-two years, an exemplary and enlightened member of the Church of England. He received his education at Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow, after having finished his academical studies with distinction. He then was entered at Lincoln's Inn, intending to follow the profession of the law. In due progress he was called to the bar, and for several years went the midland circuit.

In 1789, he married Helena, only daughter of John Lefevre, Esq., of Old Ford, Middlesex, whose name he assumed. and by the death of that lady's father, shortly after their marriage, became possessed of an ample fortune, and fixed his residence at the house of his venerable mother-in-law, near Reading, in Berkshire. From this time he pursued the law no longer as a profession, but merely as a liberal study: he did not, however, withdraw himself from business, but became an active magistrate for Hampshire; and so distinguished himself in that character by his assiduity and intelligence, that on the death of Mr. Serjeant Kerby, he was chosen, and continued for several years, to be perpetual chairman of the quarter sessions. He was afterwards made recorder of Basingstoke.

In 1796, Mr. Shaw Lefevre extended the sphere of his utility, and was returned as a member of parliament for the

to sit in parliament from this time to the last dissolution in 1820: but it was at the general election in 1802, that his political connection with the borough of Reading commenced. At that period, the inhabitants of Reading, conceiving that the old interest which had long preponderated there might be overturned, looked out for a man of character and opulence, that would come forward as their champion and assert their independence. In this critical conjuncture all eyes were turned towards their neighbour, Mr. Lefevre, as the fittest person for this purpose. A few friends accordingly waited on him with a tender of their services, and he answered nobly to their call. A contest ensued of the most severe nature; but under such a leader, and so supported, the conflict was not long doubtful, and it ended in the return of Mr. Lefevre by a decided and triumphant majority. Once seated for the borough, he was afterwards so firmly supported by his friends, that he maintained his post through four successive elections, against all opposition. At the last general election in 1820, in consequence of his declining health, which had obliged him to seek a milder climate, he, with great reluctance, withdrew from public life, and resigned into the hands of his constituents the trust which he had held so long, so honourably to himself, and so advantageously to the borough of Reading.

We have reason to know, that the uniform and steady 'support of his friends at Reading had made an indelible impression on Mr. Shaw Lefevre's mind and heart, and that the most mortifying circumstance of his long and severe indisposition was the utter inability it laid him under of expressing personally to all his friends, after his return to England, the deep sense of his continued obligations to them, from their first notice of him down to the period of his political separation from them. If the borough of Reading is now as free and open a borough as any in England, not excepting Westminster itself, it ought never to be forgotten that it is mainly indebted for this high distinction to the bold measures

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