season. He showed himself preeminently to be a wise masterbuilder.

During the winter of 1816-17, a class of four young men, for the purposes of study, under the instruction and guidance of our good Bishop, were daily assembled in the same room. By far the most highly gifted of the class, a brother of the present Bishop of Massachusetts, soon paid the sad penalty of over-devotion to the muse and to his books; and after com. mencing his ministry in Virginia with the most animating prospects of success, was called to put off his armor before he had fairly girded it on. Two others have attained to the honors of the Doctorate, and now, in a green old age, (old age! it does not seem possible!) are still preaching the "Gospel of the grace of God;" one of them having for years held aloft the Gospel banner in a foreign land, constrained by "the love of Christ," and strongly feeling that he was "a debtor to the Greeks." We had regular seasons for calling-separately, or in company-upon the Bishop, and often has he been addressed by his friend Eastburn, "Come, you must call with me, or else we shall have a Quaker meeting;" for the one was diffident, the other decidedly taciturn; and it required some little acquaintance with the good Bishop's peculiar ways to draw him out, when few could prove as entertaining-none as instructive.

His qualities as a guide and teacher, however, were rather negative and incidental than direct. At the time, there was a deep feeling of want both of positiveness and of interest. And it was only later in our ministry that we became fully aware how much we were indebted to our wise and experienced teacher, for a ready solution of some hard polemic difficulty, the guidance of some apt and pithy maxim, and the suggestion of some discreet course of action under certain contingencies. His moderate but decided churchmanship; his happy distance from either extreme of a cold formalism or a wild enthusiasm ; the prominence he gave to the simple preaching of the cross; the wise rules he enforced and so discreetly acted upon, of commending the Church to those without, at the same time. that no needless offense was given, made an impression upon his many students far more valuable than any amount of mere book-learning.

Some years later, on a certain occasion, the writer was the companion in travel with the Bishop in a stage-coach from Bristol to Boston. His usual gravity was observed to amount even to sadness and profound depression of spirits. At length he stated its cause. An ecclesiastical council had lately given a decision in a difficulty which had arisen between the Rev. Dr. Jarvis and the Vestry of St. Paul's Church, Boston; which, in the exercise of a wise discretion, he had seen fit so to modify as to make it bear as lightly as possible upon the Parish. Convention was about to meet, and he had reason to fear that this action of his would be discussed in no very friendly spirit. If not sustained, he entertained serious fears whether it would not tend materially to weaken the just powers of a Bishop, in such cases. It was then he was first heard to utter a sentiment, afterwards often repeated by him, in various forms, or perhaps then for the first time the expression of it made an indelible impression: "I have long since observed that those who entertain very exalted ideas of the respect and deference which should be paid to a Bishop, always mean provided I were Bishop." So much sympathy was aroused by this conversation, that early the next morning the Bishop was called upon at his lodgings, which on this occasion were with the Rev. Dr. Gardener, who, in this matter, was warmly on his side a private interview was solicited, and the offer of services made, if they could be of any use. "No," replied the calm and courageous man of God, "I never employ concerted action in such emergencies; I choose to commit my way unto the Lord, and to trust only and wholly in Him!" Accordingly he was fully and nobly sustained.

We were met in Boston by a small one-horse carriage, in which the Bishop was to make a partial visitation of portions of New-Hampshire and Vermont. Communications made under such circumstances, in a journey of two hundred miles, are often more free and unrestrained than during a whole lifetime, of somewhat intimate intercourse, besides. One of these was so characteristic as to have been recorded at the time, though that record has been mislaid. The Bishop spoke of his first settlement. Great was the want of clergy in Connecticut, at the time; but small indeed was the pecuniary inducement to choose the sacred profession. Three calls were before him

at the same moment, but neither of them adequate to the support of a growing family. The short-sighted prudence of most men would have made choice of the best of them. His larger sagacity led him to precisely the opposite conclusion, foreseeing that when a near, inevitable separation should take place, as it soon did by his removal to Bristol, it would be much easier to bring about a dissolution of his connection, and with far less likelihood of being exposed to censure, or suspected of unworthy motives.

The morning of the last day of their common journey, found them, for a special reason, under the necessity, in order to reach a certain place, of making a circuitous journey of sixtyfive or seventy miles, upon river-bottoms and over a level road; or of selecting a much shorter route of about forty-five miles, but across a country more hilly and abrupt than any other since travelled, except amongst the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, on horseback. It is believed that, to relieve the horse, the Bishop walked that day, up-hill and down-hill, not less than twenty miles. Out of the carriage the horse could not well be managed, and he continued to insist upon it, that the lightest person should do all the driving, and himself all the walking. Mercy to the dumb beast-consideration for the convenience and comfort of others, were ever uppermost in his unselfish nature.

On another occasion, being obliged to make a melancholy journey from Rhode Island into Connecticut, on account of some great domestic sorrow, in mid-winter, and over bad roads, he was so unfortunate in his hired horse, as to have been detained on the way several days longer than he expected, greatly to his own discomfort and exposure; but when asked why he did not urge his horse forward, his only reply was the quiet remark: "If a horse will not go fast without whipping, he must go slow for all me."

Either during this visit or some time after, whilst staying at the humble parsonage in Middlebury, Vt., and attempting some necessary official writing, owing to the narrow quarters, great fears were entertained lest he should be annoyed and interrupted by the slight disturbance made by the children at play. As soon as it was observed, he exclaimed: "Oh! never mind, to me the noise of children is like the music of birds!"

The appearance and bearing of our good Bishop when presiding in his own conventions, were about the farthest possible from severe and commanding. It was by no means wanting in a certain quiet dignity, which always commanded respect, and repressed familiarity or rudeness. It was not positive enough to aid much in facilitating the dispatch of business, but then it was so perfectly firm and self-possessed, and marked with so much candor and forbearance towards those who differed from him, and with such uniform consideration of the rights, interests, and feelings of all classes of persons, that it effectually secured all the desirable ends of a more efficient presidence. To the few who were favored with the opportunity of watching his course, through a great number of years, from the conventions of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, when they consisted of but a mere handful of earnest yet inexperienced men, (inexperienced, it is meant, not in affairs, but in church business,) until he was called upon to preside in the House of Bishops, it was delightful to observe how exactly alike the good and great man always appeared; pursuing the even tenor of his quiet way, undisturbed by confusion, undismayed by opposition, unmoved by demonstrations of growing reverence and respect. There were a few who never could rise superior to the depreciating estimate which they had attached to him, simply because he had not been called from some great city parish, to preside over the important and growing interests of several confederate dioceses. But during the whole period that he acted as Presiding Bishop, a vast majority of those whose good opinion in the councils of the Church was worth having, had come to understand his extraordinary endowments of mind, his wonderful acquirements (considering his limited opportunities) in scientific knowledge and theological lore, and his still more exalted moral worth.

In the old time there were some men of one generation "who stoned the prophets;" and some of another generation "who built their sepulchres." In the case of our good Bishop there were some of the same generation who did both. It was not until after he ceased to walk amongst men, that all began to be sensible that they had been "entertaining an angel unawares." Living, all were ready to pronounce him a good man; now that he is dead, few will deny that he was equally great.

After enjoying somewhat enlarged opportunities of compar

ing the maxims of administration of several of the most distinguished of our first class of Bishops, in their respective dioceses, the writer feels no hesitation, as far as he is capable of judging, in pronouncing in favor of those which the sound common-sense, upright mind, and kind feeling of Bishop Griswold very early laid down for the guidance of his own conduct; and what is more, he strictly and conscientiously adhered to the maxims thus self-imposed, for to a great extent they were self-imposed, since they grew out of the exigencies of a branch of the Church placed under new, peculiar, and most difficult and trying circumstances. All previous experience of Bishops, whether in the Cyprianic or subsequent ages; whether of the Church of England, or amongst the Non-Jurors, was of very limited applicability here. And few acquainted with all the facts in the case will doubt that the interests of the Church through all New-England, would best be promoted by a careful observance of these maxims.

Reference to a single trait more will close this sketch. "He was indeed a man, who had seen affliction at the rod of His mouth!" "The Almighty," for a long period, seemed to have assailed him with "all his storms." Of a large and remarkably fine family of children, most had passed away before he removed from Bristol. The wife of his youth was taken from his side, in a moment, by almost instantaneous death. Though not a demonstrative man, he was well known to be a person of very deep, tender, and abiding sensibilities. "But he was dumb; he opened not his mouth, his God had done it ;" and he that had long preached that the afflicted should not murmur, should he complain? It entered into his very soul and served to mould his whole character. He was uniformly as patient and submissive as a little child. As a passing stranger remarked, who knew him well, but had never heard the particulars of his domestic affliction, as he looked over into the narrow burial-ground in the rear of the little church in Bristol, and asked whose were those eight uniform white marble head-stones all in a row, and was told that they were in memory of eight grown children of the Bishop, "Ah!" he exclaimed, "I now understand why he is so much better than other men !" B. B. S.

September 16th, 1858.