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For many years the parish of Stoke Newington was the favourite residence, if not of heroes and courtiers, at any rate of the excellent of the earth, of the Puritans and their successors, who gave up place and power rather than remain in a Church which they believed unscriptural, or the creed of which they could not subscribe to in a non-natural sense. Lucy Aikin described it as a very Elysian field of Nonconformity. There resided Fleetwood, who married Cromwell's eldest daughter, Mr. Aikin, Dr. Price, the antagonist of Burke, Mary Woolstonecroft, the first in modern times to outrage female conventionalism by her practical as well as theoretical demonstration of the rights of woman, and John Howard, the philanthropist, who travelled all over Europe to relieve the suffering and to set the captive free. Long, long before then, Laud writes in his diary, "We took another conventicle of Separatists in Newington Woods upon Sunday last in the very brake "what precious impudence!" where the King's stag should have been lodged for his hunting next morning." At a later time there came there to reside Sir Thomas Hartopp. Lady Hartopp was the daughter of Fleetwood, not by Ireton's widow, but by his first wife, sole heiress of a Norfolk gentleman. Sir John, who survived his lady ten years, and died at the great age of eighty-five, was a man of sterling merit. He was three times, in Charles II.'s reign, returned to Parliament for the county of Leicestershire. It was to him we owe the preservation of many of Owen's sermons and of many incidents connected with Owen's life, as they were on terms of intimate friendship. When it was the fashion to fine Dissenters, Sir John Hartopp had to pay the greater part of six or seven thousand pounds, levied by State Churchmen on the pious Nonconformists of Stoke Newington. Watts acknowledges, "I cannot but reckon it among the blessings of Heaven when I review those five years of pleasure and improvement which I spent in his family in my younger part of life."

It was while residing with Sir John Hartopp that Watts preached his first sermon, in 1698, and became Dr. Chauncey's assistant in Mark Lane. It was of this church Sir John Hartopp was a member. Under Dr. Chauncey the congregation had much declined, and the Doctor did a wise thing in 1701 in resigning his charge. The church invited the assistant to the vacant pulpit, which offer he accepted. In the following year Watts was ordained. Matthew Clark, of the church in Miles Lane, John Collins, co-pastor with the Rev. Robert Bragge, in Lime Street Paved Alley, Thomas Ridgeley, pastor of an Independent church, now extinct, in Thames Street, Benoni Rowe, and Thomas Rowe his tutor, assisting at the ordination. This church in Mark Lane was founded by the celebrated Caryl. After his death, the church invited Dr. John Owen to become their pastor, which he did, bringing with him a small congregation. In the list of names of members we find those of Lord Charles Fleetwood, Sir John Hartopp, Colonel Desborough, brother-in-law to the Protector, Colonel James Berry, Lady Abney, Lady Hartopp, Lady Vere Wilkinson, Lady Thompson, and the lively Mrs. Bendish, whose eccentricities would fill a

volume. About the time of his ordination Dr. Watts went to live with Mr. Thomas Hollis, in the Minories, where Moses, it is said, still keeps a poet, the great cloth merchant evidently perpetuating the custom of the place. Thence Watts went to reside with Mr. Thomas Bowes. The church and congregation moved to Pinner's Hall, and in 1708, to Bury Street. And it may interest our readers to know that the church, though Bury Street has long been left, still exists under the care of that well-known and truly useful minister of the Gospel, the Rev. I. Vale Mummery. It was not all sunshine at Bury Street. The Salters' Hall controversy created much unpleasantness, and estranged Watts from Bradbury, of New Court, the champion of orthodoxy. On one occasion the gentle Watts gave his brother rather a smart repartee. At the Red Cross Street Library, Watts having a weak voice, was unable to be heard, Bradbury called out, "Brother Watts, shall I speak for you?" "Brother Bradbury, you have often spoken against me," was the significant reply.

The writers of Watts's life are singularly hazy as to his connection with the Abney family, of which Dr. Johnson remarks, "A coalition like this, a State in which the notions of patronage and dependence were overpowered by the perception of reciprocal benefits, deserves a peculiar memorial." Mr. Milner puts down the commencement of the visit in 1713 or 1714. In the Gospel Magazine is the following anecdote:-"On one occasion the Countess of Huntingdon told Mr. Toplady that when she visited Dr. Watts he thus accosted her, 'Madam, your ladyship is come to see me on a very remarkable day.' 'Why is this day,' [she replied, so remarkable ?' The Doctor continued: "This day thirty years I came hither to the house of my good friend, Sir Thomas Abney, intending to spend but one single week under his friendly roof, and I have extended my visit to the length of exactly thirty years.' Lady Abney, who was present, immediately replied, 'Sir, what you term a long thirty years' visit I consider as the shortest my family ever received.""" Be that as it may, at Stoke Newington and Theobald's Dr. Watts spent very happy hours. As late as 1735 I find Doddridge visiting him at the latter place. As you walk from Cheshunt to Enfield the pedestrian gets a beautiful view of the stately residence-now inhabited by Mr. Alderman Cotton, M.P., in which Watts resided with the Abneys. At Cheshunt there also lived Lord Barrington, Mr. Pickard, and Mr. Richard Cromwell, and with all of them Dr. Watts was friendly. At Cheshunt they still show a row of trees under which the tra dition is Dr. Watts walked and meditated; and the church and churchyard contain some monumental inscriptions from the pen of the poet. The following lines appear to have been written by him at a western window at Theobald's :

"Little sun upon the ceiling.
Ever moving, ever stealing,

Moments, minutes, hours away,
May no shade forbid thy shining
While the heavenly sun declining
Calls us to improve the day."

The tradition that connects Sir Thomas Abney with the cemetery which bears his name is founded in fact. In 1700 Abney House was built by Mr. Gunston, and when Sir Thomas was well stricken in years he married for his second wife the sister of this Mr. Gunston, to whom Dr. Watts inscribed an ode on Happy Solitude, beginning,

"The noisy world complains of me

That I should shun their sight, and flee
Visits and crowds and company."

In a little while Watts had to write in a sadder strain. In his Lyric Poems there is one To the dear memory of my honoured friend, Thomas Gunston, Esq., who died Nov. 11, just when he had finished his seat at Newington." Upon Gunston's death the house became the property of Sir Thomas Abney. This gentleman deserves a word of recognition. He was a London merchant, knighted by King William, and Lord Mayor 1700. It is related of him, as evidence of his piety, that on what may be called his own day "he withdrew silently after supper from the public assembly at Guildhall, went to his own house, performed family worship there, and then returned to the company." His first wife was the daughter of Caryl, of whose Commentary on Job, Southey irreverently writes, "It may be deemed a most unquestionable proof of patience in any person to have perused." After the death of Sir Thomas, who was buried in St. Peter's, Cornhill, Dr. Watts lived on the same friendly footing with her ladyship and her daughter, who spent much of their time at Stoke Newington. It was here Dr. Watts's acquaintance commenced with the amiable and accomplished Countess of Hertford, celebrated for her literary acquirements and fervent piety. This lady, the friend of Mrs. Rowe and the patron of the poet Thomson, was the daughter of the Hon. Mr. Thynne, brother to Viscount Weymouth. She married Algernon, Earl of Hertford, son of Charles Seymour. Duke of Somerset, who, uniting in his own person the blood and the possessions of the illustrious houses of Percy and Seymour, was perhaps the greatest subject this country has ever seen by hereditary right. She appears to have possessed an elegant and cultivated mind, and to have gladly exchanged courtly splendour for her favourite literary pursuits and devotional exercises. Thomson thus apostrophises her in his "Spring":

"O Hertford, fitted to shine in courts
With unaffected grace, or walk the plain
With innocence and meditation joined
In soft assemblage, listen to my song,
Which thy own season paints, when nature all
Is blooming and benevolent like thee."

It was to this lady that Dr. Watts dedicated his " Reliquæ Juveniles or, Miscellaneous Thoughts in Prose and Verse on Natural, Moral, and Divine Subjects," chiefly written in younger years. On one occasion her ladyship writes: "My lord and my young people send their services to you. I assure you my little boy (George, Viscount Beauchamp) is grown a great proficient in your Songs for Children, and sings them with great pleasure." The

second Lord Barrington thought as highly of Dr. Watts as the first. In a letter dated 1735 he writes: "My late dear father was often com. mending me in a manner far above what I in any way deserved. But if I was to have chosen to whom I should have been so commended it should have been to Dr. Watts, at Lady Abney's." Another friend of Dr. Watts was the Right Hon. Arthur Onslow, Speaker of the House of Commons, who was on terms of courteous intercourse with the leading Dissenting ministers. It was at Stoke Newington he visited Dr. Watts in his dying state, and envied him his preparation for the world to come. It was here Dr. Lardner's nephew, "an understanding gentleman," came to visit Watts. "Sometimes of an evening, when they were alone, he would talk to his friends in his family, of his new thoughts concerning the person of Christ, and their great importance." Dr. Lardner would have it his last thoughts were completely Unitarian. Dr. Doddridge. perhaps a better authority, was of an opposite opinion. According to Mr. Belsham, "Watts's well-known volume of hymus and spiritual songs, so much used in Calvinistic congregations, was published when he was very young, and contains many expressions and many sentiments from which, though regarded by great numbers, his judgment revolted in maturer years, and which he would gladly have altered if he had been permitted by the proprietors of the copyright, who knew their own interests too well to admit of the proposed improvements." All this may be true, but it is not clear that Watts had ceased to be a Trinitarian. Dr.Watts was an inquirer all his life, and this did not please some of his friends. The Rev. Hugh Farmer writes to Dr. Doddridge under date of July 14, 1737: "The gentlemen, indeed, who are advocates for moderation seem to sink in his (Mr. Coward's) esteem. He begins to think Dr. Watts a Baxterian, and is almost come to an open rupture with him-not, indeed, on account of his heresy, but because he refuses to print a discourse which he desired him to compose on the person of Christ." Drs. Doddridge, Jennings, and Guyse equally fell under Mr. Coward's displeasure. Dr. Watts died in 1748; for a while the nouse and grounds at Stoke Newington were intact. In 1840 the house was pulled down, and the place thrown open to the public as the Abney Park Cemetery, by a company of which at the present time Sir Charles Reed is chairman.

For his age, Dr. Watts was a very accomplished man. He amused himself with painting; and his four characters of Youth, Age, Mirth, and Grief were placed in two of the parlours of the house at Stoke Newington. The walls of one of the front rooms upstairs were embellished with paintings taken from Ovid's "Metamorphosis." While the artist was away, Dr. Watts, in one of his cheerful moods, painted a swan on the water, which was there as late as 1820. On the window-shutters were some pictorial decorations, supposed to have been the production of the pencil of Dr. Watts: they are emblematical of Death and Grief, with the arms of Gunston and Abney. In his early life Watts was distinguished by a great love of natural history, as his sister tells us. It is curious how little we know of

his habits and tastes. He seems to have thought it undesirable for a tutor to be a married man. In his criticisms on Doddridge's proposals relative to a Dissenting academy for training young men for the Christian ministry, Dr. Watts suggests: "Whether a person who gives himself up to the office of a tutor may not as well continue single if he so think fit, and for himself and his pupils to board together in some house fit for that purpose. This was my tutor's practice; and, after all, if it be possible to find a tutor so admirably qualified as the author describes-it is five hundred to one if he meet with the one only pious, prudent, and invaluable partner." Doddridge characteristically remarks: "In answer to this terrible query, I must observe that I know but one family in which a tutor and his pupils could conveniently board, while I know half a dozen of the fair sex who do, in the main, answer the necessary character." Dr. Watts seems to have avoided all tender complications-unlike Dr. Doddridge, who, when a student, was of a rather amatory turn. This is the more surprising when we remember Dr. Watts as a poet. "Poets," wrote Cowley, "are scarce thought freemen of their company without paying some duties or obliging themselves to be true to love."

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CHAPTER VIII.—AN UNEXPECTED SUMMONS.

THE Schoolday was over, and the time for rest had come, but Arthur Dalebury wanted to arrange for the next day's duties before he considered the present day's toil really over. He had called upon his neighbour, and had again studied the little written paper which was the foundation of the good discipline and working order of her school. It lay open between the two, and Arthur was intently studying it.

"I shall need to make some alterations, but if you will let me copy it I shall be glad."

In a few minutes Arthur had laid the plans that he hoped would do much toward making his system of teaching successful. He had mapped out the day, apportioning to each half hour a certain amount of work, and doing that which he really ought to have done long before, for he decided as to the time in which each subject should be taught.

"You will put something in the place of our needlework," said Miss Fernwood.

"Yes, I think I shall have more time for arithmetic than you have. Boys need to understand that pretty well."

"And so do girls."

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