more sober discretion in the presence of his betters, to the other.

The drinking usages of society, even amongst the clergy, were not in those days very much in advance of what they now are in England. Wine and even stronger beverages were not always banished from their tables. A scene is well remembered at that of Dr. Milnor, which produced no little sensation; it must, most probably, have been on occasion of a dinner-party given to delegates and visitors to the meeting of the Bible Society in 1827 or 1828.

A clergyman, not of the Episcopal Church, was relating that a motion had been made, at the dinner-table of one of the Long-Island Sound steamers, that the claret-bottles should be removed unopened from the table. To rebuke the fanatical teetotaler he had laid his hand violently upon the one before him, and declared that no man should thus abridge him of his rights. The impropriety of such a course on the part of a minister of temperance and of gentleness, was strongly felt. No such sentiment animated the bosom of our amiable host. On the contrary he was gradually led, voluntarily, to abandon all those usages of the kind, which he had naturally and without reflection adopted when a member of the bar and of Congress.

Although his own temperance was always marked and most exemplary, yet being of a ruddy complexion, an uncharitable judgment might possibly have leaned to a different conclusion; and so, upon his going to England, an honored representative of many of our great religious and benevolent societies, and mentioning to a friend that he had just heard with regret that the Temperance Society wished him to appear as their delegate in London, expressing fears whether he could find either time. or strength to execute so many commissions; his friend playfully remarked that on this particular occasion he thought he might be excused, as there was "prima facie" evidence that. he was not a suitable representative.

His going to England in 1830 was so marked an incident in his life, that it has received, as it merited, very prominent notice in his biography.

One of the acting Secretaries of the General Missionary Society at the time, had it in charge to visit the Doctor before

his departure, and to discuss more in detail than had been done by letter, the views of the Board in wishing thus to open a channel of more free and frequent communication with the two noble Societies, for Foreign Missions, of our Mother Church in England; to obtain copies of their Reports, and an insight into their methods of conducting the Missionary work. His zeal for such Missions was already sufficiently ardent; but it was thus his administrative mind became more fully imbued with those wise maxims for conducting such institutions, which prepared him so admirably for the duties of Secretary of our Foreign Committee, when, soon after his return, the Committees were reörganized.

That was a delightful gush of Missionary zeal, which carried almost every thing before it, at the General Convention of 1835; but there was one cross current in the tide, which, for nearly twenty years, has swept the Society aside from. those wise, mature and effective methods for raising funds, which were recommended by Dr. Milnor upon his return, fol lowing, as nearly as possible, in the footsteps of the experience of our older English brethren. At a recent General Convention, the able Bishop of Maine, from a Committee called upon to report upon that subject, reäffirms precisely the same views. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions started upon a similar plan, and now for nearly half a century have been successfully pursuing it. If one would achieve like success the same method must be thoroughly organized in all parts of our Church. Its leading idea is small, but perfectly regular contributions from the greatest number, growing out of real intelligent interest in the cause of missions, and sanctified by sincerity, self-denial, and prayer; and in order to all this, monthly missionary papers, and missionary prayermeetings; extended and continually extending missionary associations; the periodical employment of agents and returned missionaries to disseminate information and to arouse the distant clergy; the careful avoidance of special appeals and spasmodic efforts; and the thorough incorporation of the missionary spirit and the missionary work, into the daily church life of the teeming millions of our country. All this accomplished, and there will no longer be any lack of ministers for the home

field, or of missionaries to the heathen, or of means to carry on the work to the world's end.

Towards the close of his ministry, those circumstances were rapidly culminating which led to the transplanting of old St. George's to its present more commanding position. On a certain occasion, returning home, from several hours' absence, quite worn and weary, to the inquiries of an anxious guest he replied, that the fatigue of his parochial visitations had become insupportable; and that although the cheap public convey. ances of the city every year furnished him with greater facilities for the discharge of these duties, yet, having parishioners in every ward in the city, the distances upon the cross routes, on foot, had become quite unmanageable. And yet it was with extreme reluctance that he could be brought to contemplate the result to which all this tended.

It must have been observed that most of these memories are those of a pleased and favored guest, of the worth and excellencies of an honored and beloved host. Towards his clerical brethren, from all parts of the country, there were no bounds to his generous hospitality. Indeed, when the facilities of the Post-Office and of travel were so much less, and the religious press was only just coming into use, it is not easy now for us to conceive how much the interests of the Gospel in the Church, so dear to his heart, were in those days promoted by the constant intercourse which took place under his hospitable roof, between clergymen of congenial views, from Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Virginia, South-Carolina, and other parts of the country. In a very different way, and for a long period, he performed in America the like blessed offices towards the best interests of the Church, which Simeon was performing in England, and in which they were both very much aided by their private fortunes and gentlemanly deportment.

The benevolence and generosity of his nature always prompted him to take the lead in every good work, and by heading subscriptions for distant churches, colleges, and theological seminaries, always with liberal and sometimes with munificent donations, he set an example, not only to his own people, but to a large circle of earnest Christians, in other city VOL. VI.-6

churches, who accepted such donations not so much as an example of giving, as an indorsement of a good cause, worthy of their patronage. Many, very many, with means to bestow and hearts inclined to give, were truly glad and thankful to follow the lead of such a master in Israel.

There was a certain statesman-like candor and equipoise about Dr. Milnor admirably fitting him to gain upon the confidence and respect of those from whom he differed, with regard to Church doctrines and practices, or with regard to the methods then best fitted to honor the Divine Redeemer, promote the welfare of religion generally, or in particular to advance the interests of the Episcopal Church, to which he was both intelligently and firmly attached. Unlike some others, he was averse to extremes; and the exactness with which he conformed to all the canons and rubrics of the Church, at once elevated the evangelical interest above the suspicion of fanaticism and methodism, against which for a while it had to bear up. His name, and that of the venerable Bishop Griswold, soon elevated this cause above the contempt with which some had affected to treat it, on account of the alleged ignorance, eccentricities, and improprieties of conduct, of some of its clerical advocates in the great cities of our country. The evangelical interest in New-York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, now stands deservedly as high, for ability, learning, zeal, and piety, as any other religious interest in this or any other country, and for the breadth and firmness of the ground upon which it rests, it is indebted, under God, to no name more than to that of the lamented Dr. Milnor of St. George's Church, New-York. · B. B. S.

Sept. 30th, 1858.

BISHOP GRISWOLD.

ADVANCING years have their peculiar trials. They are rarely intense and harrowing-almost never, when youth and middle age have been consecrated to duty and to God; and where a serene hope of a glorious immortality imparts a glow to its waning light. Still it is a trial, with intellect not at all enfeebled, with conscious energies and vigor of purpose wholly unimpaired, to feel a sense of weariness paralyzing every power before the work of any day is half-accomplished, and a prefer

ence for repose and peace unnerving the will for any arduous conflict.

But even here the law of compensation asserts its power. If the counsels of age are prosy, its memories are pleasing. And although, after an uninterrupted ministry of more than forty years, an aged clergyman will find few willing listeners. amongst his younger brethren, to the lessons of his experience, whether given for encouragement or warning, yet there are few who will not listen with delight, when, in a moment of innocent garrulity, they find him willing to chat about the events of his youth. This gratification amounts to absolute delight, if he is found to possess a happy faculty for sketching character, and is full of anecdote, with which to enliven his sketches. This affords a treat almost as exquisite as if he were capable of seasoning the whole very pleasantly with sarcasm or with humor, or, better still, with both.

When the exalted piety of those worthies, some of whose memories, too familiar and minute to be embodied in their more dignified memoirs, are about to be sketched by the present writer, is considered; and when he calls to mind the admirable maxim, "De mortuis nil, nisi bonum," he becomes somewhat painfully aware of the difficulty of the task to which he has been invited, and which, with many misgivings, he now undertakes.

The image of the Rev. Mr. Griswold as an example of vigor. ous, dignified, and almost perfect manhood, somewhat below its middle period, does not date back so far in his memory, as the comments made upon his character, his preaching, and his whole ministry by several members of the writer's family, who attended Mr. Griswold's church, having withdrawn from the Puritan associations of a long line of ancestors. Poetic in their tastes, and having enshrined Cowper in the very highest niche of their temple of admiration, how often have they been heard to apply the exquisite descriptions of that most Christian poet, of what a clergyman ought to be, to what their pastor was-Goldsmith's village parson was found alive again. And absolutely prosaic as was the old frame-church, more glass than wood; and the bleak little parsonage, by the bay-side, with its weather-boarding and blinds radiant in green and white, the saint-like inmate, even then was seen, by the eye