ital; but they were kindly received by the royal | a short cut-not a royal road, but a bog road-to family and their court. Alexander returned short- their own by-objects. Paddy would be most grately after, and he showed that his professions of re-ful, most sincerely grateful to you, and would bless gard when in England were sincere, by receiving your honor, and your honor's honor, with all his them without ceremony, and by treating them with heart; but he would nevertheless not scruple, on the warmth and confidence of friendship. The every practicable occasion, to-to-to cheat, I will following spring they left St. Petersburg for Mos- not say, that is a coarse word—but to circumvent cow, and after passing through Tartary and Greece, you. At every turn you would find Paddy trying returned home through Italy and France. to walk round you, begging your honor's pardonhat off, bowing to the ground to you-all the while laughing in your face, if you found him out; and if he outwitted you, loving you all the better for being such an innocent. Seriously, there is no doubt that the Irish people would learn honesty, tives, and proper training, in due time; but do not leave time out of your account. Very sorry should I be, either in jest or earnest, to discourage any of that enthusiasm of benevolence which animates you in their favor; but as Paddy himself would say, "Sure it is better to be disappointed in the beginning than the end.' Each failure in attempts to do good in this country discourages the friends of humanity, and encourages the railers, scoffers, and croakers, and puts us back in hope perhaps half a century. Therefore think before you begin, and begin upon a small scale, which you may extend as you please afterwards." A third journey, in 1822, was undertaken principally from a desire to interest the Emperor Alexander in the abolition of slavery, and to plead the cause of the poor Greeks. They had several interviews at Vienna, and the emperor entered warmly into Allen's benevolent projects. Alex-punctuality, order, and economy, with proper moander was himself going to Verona, and he urged our philanthropist to visit that place. Here again they met met for the last time on earth. Their parting was touching, for difference of station and the formalities of a court were overlooked in the warm gushing feelings of affection. They continued in conversation for some hours, being, to use his own words, "both loath to part. It was,' he goes on to say, "between nine and ten o'clock when I rose. He (the emperor) embraced and kissed me three times, saying, 'Remember me to your family; I should like to know them. Ah! when and where shall we meet again!' Mr. Canning had desired the British minister at Turin to make inquiries into the real state of the Waldenses, who were suffering severe persecution. Mr. Allen, who had proceeded thither on leaving Verona, agreed to accompany that gentleman into the valleys, and in consequence of the report they gave, some important privileges were granted. 1 In 1826 Mr. Allen discontinued his lectures at Guy's Hospital, and his farewell address to the students was printed. It was so beautiful and appropriate, that it would be well if it had a wider circulation. The following year he was married a third time to a widow lady belonging to the Society of Friends. His choice was again a happy one, and tended to gild his declining days. This lady died before him, eight years after their union. He now spent a great part of his time at a small house near Lindfield, in the midst of the cottages for the poor he had been instrumental in erecting. It was his favorite retreat from the fatigue and bustle of public life. He had not, however, finished his career of usefulness. In 1832 he took another journey, which embraced Holland, Hanover, Prussia, and Hungary; and in 1833 he crossed the Pyrenees, and visited Spain for the same objects as before. In 1825 he established a School of Industry at Lindfield near Brighton; and about the same time (in conjunction with the late John Smith, M. P.) made trial of a plan he had long had in contemplation-a Cottage Society, now entitled "The Society for Improving the Condition of the Laboriug Classes." He was desirous of introducing this plan into Ireland, and we cannot forbear giving the following amusing letter from Miss Edgeworth on the subject. After expressing her fears that the scheme would be found impracticable in the present state of the Irish peasantry, she says: "Your dairy plans, for instance, which have We cannot pass over a passage in his history succeeded so well in Switzerland, would not do in which, though trifling, shows his character as truthis country, at least not without a century's ex-ly as his public acts of benevolence. periments. Paddy would fall to disputing with the dairyman, would go to law with him for his share of the common cow's milk, or for her trespassing, or he would pledge his eighth or sixteenth part of her for his rent, or a bottle of whiskey, and the cow would be pounded, and repledged, and re-pounded, and bailed, and canted, and things impossible for you to foresee-perhaps impossible for your English imagination to conceive would happen to the cow and the dairy When up wards of seventy, he was obliged, from weakness, to discontinue those labors which had so long been his delight. To avoid the temptations to impatience often felt after a life of activity, and also with the idea of being useful, he endeavored to make acquaintance with all the young people in his neighborhood, and devoted much time to their instruction and amusement; thus, like the setting sun, he shed light and beauty to the last. His health gradually declined; and his death, which was peaceful, took place on the 30th of December, 1843. Few rise to the honors, and fewer still to the usefulness, which William Allen attained. Tal ent and fortuitous circumstances aided his progress; but the secret of his success was steadiness of purpose and unwearied industry. His labors were systematic, which prevented either loss of time or confusion; and the strong sense of duty, which was the spring of all his actions, kept him from turning giddy with applause. His life teaches a useful lesson, and his example is not the least benefit he has conferred on the world. "He being dead yet speaketh." From Chambers' Journal. JOHN FOSTER, THE ESSAYIST. JOHN FOSTER, whose essays are justly ranked among the most original and valuable works of the day, was born in 1770, in the Vale of Todmorden, whose serene beauties, and the quiet associations of humble life, may be said to have moulded his retiring habits and vigorous cast of thought. Like Hall, Mr. Foster was pastor of a Baptist congregation; and after running his useful course, he died in 1843, at Stapleton, near Bristol, where he had resided for the last thirty years of his life. Further than these few particulars, it is unnecessary to say anything biographically of Foster. The remarkable thing about him was his ardent and pure thinking. If ever there was a man who may be said, in the language of the old paradox, to have been "never less alone than when alone, and never more occupied than when at leisure," that man was John Foster. The exercises of the Christian ministry, in which a considerable portion of his life was engaged, were conducted for the most part in a noiseless manner, and in the shadiest nooks of the field of labor; so that when his now celebrated essays came forth to the public, they were to all but a few virtually anonymous publications. No one who has deeply acquainted himself with these admirable productions, will need to have repeated to him that profound laborions thought was the business of Foster's life; and the absence of this mental habitude in others, especially in those who occupied the more conspicuous positions in society, was often lamented by him with a bitterness which might almost have been mistaken for misanthropy. added here, though it would be impossible, in a The scale on Reference has been made to the solitary liabits of Mr. Foster's life. It must not be supposed, This habit of mind showed itself in a remarka- however, that he was, to use his own expression, ble manner both in his ministerial exercises and the "grim solitaire." He chose as the partner in his ordinary conversation. The character of of his retirement a lady whose talents and force of both were such, as to impress upon the hearer character he ever held in high and deserved rethe notion that he was merely thinking aloud. spect. It is generally believed that when Mr. There was no physical animation or gesture, none Foster proposed to her that union which subseof that varied intonation which commonly gradu- quently took place, she declared that she would ates the intensity of excitement. He threw out marry no one that had not distinguished himself all the originality of his views, and the boundless in the literature of his day, and Foster's Essays variety of his illustrations, in a deep monotonous in "Letters to a Friend" were the billets-dour of tone, which seemed the only natural vehicle for this extraordinary courtship. It is amusing to such weighty, comprehensive conceptions. This recollect that after the first evening which Foster was only varied by an earnest emphasis, so fre- spent in company with his future wife, he described quent in every sentence, as to show how many her as a "marble statue surrounded with iron modifying expressions there were which it was palisades." necessary to keep in distinct view, in order fully to realize the idea of the speaker. It may be The high walls with which his residence at Stapleton was surrounded, and which permitted not a glimpse of the house or garden, seemed to proclaim inaccessibility, and to say to the visitor, as plainly as walls can speak, "No admittance." No sooner, however, were these difficulties surmounted by the good offices of an old servant, who seemed a sort of natural appendage to her master, than a charming contrast was felt between the prohibitory character of the residence and the impressive but delightful affability of the occupant. His only hobby was revealed by the first glance at his apartments. The choicest engravings met the eye in every direction, which, together with a profusion of costly illustrated works, showed that if our hermit had in other respects left the world behind him, he had made a most self-indulgent reservation of the arts. 16 admiration excited by his genius. The unrepressed exudation of his nature in these compositions invests them with the same charm which has been noticed as attaching to his conversation, which we have designated as thinking aloud." His accessibility by the young was one of the most beautiful features in his character, and will remind those of Mr. Burke, who are acquainted with the more private habits of his life. The exquisite and redundant kindness of his letters to young friends is perfectly affecting, and shows how necessarily simplicity and condescension are the attributes of true intellectual and moral greatness. It would be next to impossible to convey to any one who was not acquainted with Mr. Foster a correct impression of his personal appearance. But the great curiosity of the house was a cer- His dress was uncouth, and neglected to the last tain mysterious apartment, which was not entered degree. A long gray coat, almost of the fashion by any but the recluse himself perhaps once in of a dressing gown; trousers which seemed to twenty years; and if the recollection of the wri- have been cherished relics of his boyhood, and to fer serves him, the prohibition must have extended have quarrelled with a pair of gaiters, an interin all its force to domestics of every class. This vening inch or two of stocking indicating the diswas the library. Many entreaties to be favored puted territory; shoes whose solidity occasionally with the view of this seat of privacy had been si- elicited from the wearer a reference to the equiplenced by allusions to the cave of Trophonius, and ments of the ancient Israelites; a colored silk in one instance to Erebus itself, and by mock sol- handkerchief, loosely tied about his neck, and an emn remonstrances, founded on the danger of such antique waistcoat of most uncanonical hue-these, enterprises to persons of weak nerves and fine with an indescribable hat, completed the philososensibilities. At length Mr. Foster's consent was pher's costume. In his walks to and from the obtained, and he led the way to his previously un- city of Bristol (the latter frequently by night) he invaded fastness—an event so unusual, as to have availed himself at once of the support and protecbeen mentioned in a letter which is published in tion of a formidable club, which, owing to the diffithe second volume of his "Life and Correspond-culty with which a short dagger in the handle was ence." The floor was occupied by scattered gar-released by a spring, he used jocosely to designate ments, rusty firearms, and a hillock of ashes from as a "member of the Peace Society." So utterly the grate which might well be supposed to have been the accumulation of a winter, while that which ought to have been the writing-desk of the tenant was furnished with the blackened remains of three dead pens and a dry inkstand by way of cenotaph. Around this grotesque miscellany was ranged one of the selectest private libraries in which it was ever the good luck of a bibliomaniac to revel. The choicest editions of the best works adorned the shelves, while stowed in large chests were a collection of valuable illustrated works in which the book-worm, without a metaphor, was busy in his researches. A present of Coleridge's "Friend" from the book-shelves is retained by the writer as a trophy of this sacrilegious invasion. careless was he of his appearance, that he was not unfrequently seen in Bristol during the hot weather walking with his coat and waistcoat over his arm. This eccentricity gave rise to some curious mistakes. On one occasion, while carrying some articles of dress, in the dusk of the evening, to the cottage of a poor man, he was accosted by a constable, who, from his appearance, suspected they were stolen, some depredations of the kind having been recently committed in the neighborhood. Mr. Foster conducted the man to the seat of an opulent gentleman, with whom he was engaged to spend the evening; and the confusion of the constable may be easily imagined when he was informed of the name of his prisoner, who dismissed him with hearty praise for his diligence and fidelity. It will readily be supposed, from what has been said of the secluded habits of Mr. Foster, that the intercourse of friendship must have been greatly His was one of those countenances which it is sustained by means of correspondence. From the impossible to forget, and yet of which no portrait frequency of personal and private references in very vividly reminds us. His forehead was a triletters, a large proportion of such compositions umph to the phrenologist, and surrounded as it must in all cases be withheld from the public eye, was by a most uncultivated wig, might suggest from ordinary motives of delicacy. Happily, how-the idea of a perpendicular rock crowned with ever, without any violation of this decorum, a straggling verdure; while his calm but luminous large body of Mr. Foster's correspondence has eye, deeply planted beneath his massive brow, been given to the world, the perusal of which by those who were not privileged with his friendship, must have mingled a more tender feeling with the might be compared to a lamp suspended in one of its caverns. In early life, his countenance, one would suppose, must have been strikingly beauti ful; his features being both regular and commanding, and his complexion retaining to the last that fine but treacherous hue which probably indicated the malady that terminated his life. His natural tendency to solitary meditation never showed itself more strikingly than in his last hours. Aware of the near approach of death, he requested to be left entirely alone, and was found shortly after he had expired in a composed and contemplative attitude, as if he had thought his way to the mysteries of another world. QUAKER LOVE. BY LEITCH RITCHIE. MANY years ago I spent a day in the town of Elm's Cross, and although no adventure befell me there to fix the place in my memory, I see it be fore me at this moment as distinctly as that picture on the wall. I had an impression all that day, however erroneous, that it was Sunday. There was a Sunday silence in the streets, a Sunday gravity in the passers-by, a Sunday order and cleanliness in their habiliments. The lines of houses were ranged with the most sober decorum, and the little lawns which many of them possessed were laid out with the square and compass. The trees were not beautiful, but neat, for nature was not indulged in any of her freaks at Elm's Cross; and indeed it seemed to me that the very leaves had a peculiarly quiet green, and the flowers a reserved smell. The majority of the better class of the inhabitants of this town were Friends; and it appeared-if my imagination did not run away with me that, through the influence of wealth and numbers, they had been able to impress the external characteristics of their society upon the whole place. But no; my imagination could not have run away with me; for the moment imagination enters Elm's Cross, it is taken into custody as a vagrant, and kept in durance during its sojourn. There one loses the faculty of day-dreaming; and, although I was a young fellow at the time, halfcrazy with sentiment and love of adventure, even the fair Quakers, some of whom were beautiful, in spite of their bonnets, had no more effect upon me than so many marble statues. But perhaps it will give a better idea of the spirit of the place, if I say that the only one of them on whom I bestowed a second look had arrived at that time of life when the controversy begins as to whether a woman should be reckoned a young or an old maid. That seemed to love whate'er they looked upon. Yet there was no feeling in this love, such as we of the world demand in the love of her sex; the richness of her cheek was as cold as the bloom of a flower; and as, with noiseless step, and demure, nun-like air, she glided past, I felt as if I had seen tion of woman, but only an imitation. a portrait walk out of its frame, a masterly imita This was why I turned round and looked at her again; and as I looked, a kind of pity rose in my inexperienced heart that one so fair should pass through life unstirred by its excitements, untouched by its raptures, even untroubled with its sorrows. As the novelty wore off, I hated the cold formal air of everything around; the atmosphere chilled me; the silence disturbed me; and the next morning I was glad to launch again upon the stormy world, and leave this lonely oasis to its enchanted repose. Some time after, when giving the history of this day to a friend, who proved to be personally acquainted with the place and people, he told me that the lady on whom I had looked twice had been for many years not only the reigning beauty of Elm's Cross, but the benevolent genius of the town and neighborhood; and he related a passage in her early life which made me qualify a little my opinion as to the passionless tranquillity of her feelings, and the uneventful blank of her history. Not that the thing can be called an adventure, that the incident has any intermixture of romance-that would be absurd. It passed over her heart like a summer cloud, which leaves the heavens as bright and serene as before; but somehow or other it infused a suspicion in my mind, that however staid the demeanor and decorous the conduct, human nature is everywhere alike-that the dif ference is not in the feelings, but their control. Her father was one of the wealthiest inhabitants of the town, and Martha Hargrave was an only child, the expectant heiress of his fortune, and likewise possessed, in her own right, of £5000, safely invested. In such circumstances, it may be supposed that when she grew up from the child into the girl she attracted not a little the attention of blushing stripplings and speculative mammas. These were, with the exception of one family, of her own society-for Mr. and Mrs. Hargrave were Quakers of the old school, and confined themselves almost exclusively within the circle of Friends. The exception was formed by a widow lady and her son; the former an early intimate. of Mrs. Hargrave, now living on a small annuity, This middle-aged person (not to use the offen- from which, by means of close economy, she consive expression offensively) was, like all Quakers trived to save a little every year to pay for her when they are beautiful, beautiful to excess. Re- boy's outfit in the world. Richard Temple was taining an exquisite complexion, even when her well calculated to be the object of a mother's dothair was beginning to change, she seemed a per- ing affection; he was a fine, spirited, generous, sonification of the autumnal loveliness which handsome lad, two or three years older than Marmakes one forget that of the spring and summer. tha, of whom he was the playmate in childhood, Her voice, mellowed by time, was better calcu- the friend in youth, and something more after lated to linger in the ear than the lighter tones of youth; and it harmonized well with her soft, dovelike eyes, that. How it came that a penniless boy thought as he did of the Quaker heiress, may seem a mystery; but it must be recollected that the con ventional distinctions of society make little impression upon children brought up together upon terms of equality. Richard looked upon Martha as his sister, till he began to feel as a personal injury the admiring looks that were thrown upon her from under the broad brims of the young Quakers; and even when the fact at length forced itself upon him that she was rich, and he poor, that she rolled in a carriage, and he walked on foot, that her parents were among the first people in the place, and his only one a solitary and almost indigent widow, the encouragement of his fond and unreflecting mother, and of his own gallant heart, triumphed over the misgivings of prudence; and the affection of the boy was suffered to ripen, unchecked, into the love of the young man. say that their intercourse had entirely changed its character. Richard was not only interested, but likewise in some degree amused, by the transmutation of the young girl into the demure and circumspect Quaker. In essentials, however, she was not altered, but improved and exalted; and even her physical beauty acquired a new character of loveliness as the development of her moral feelings went on. But over all, there was what seemed to the young man, now that he was accustomed to the common world, an iciness of manuer, which repelled his advances; and he continued to love on without daring to disclose the secret of his bosom. What matter? It was no secret to her whom it concerned; for friend Martha, with all her demureness, had a woman's heart and a woman's eyes. At the end of the three years I have mentioned Mrs. Temple died, and Richard, now alone in the world, and with tolerable prospects in business, began in due time to ask himself, with a quaking heart and a flushing brow, whether it were possible for him to obtain the Quaker girl for his bride. After much cogitation on this subject, and a thousand misgivings, his Martha an eloquent history of his love, accompanied by a frank statement of his affairs and prospects, and a solicitation for permission to woo her for his wife, he enclosed the letter, open, in a briefer one to her father, and dispatched the fateful missive. While this process was going on with Richard, in Martha the wildness of childhood sobered gradually down into the demure circumspection of the Quaker girl. Her step became less buoyant, her glance less free, her speech less frank, her air more reserved; and as time wore on, Richard occasionally paused in the midst of one of his sallies, and looked at her in surprise, in a kind of awe, as if he already felt a foreshadowing of the approach | characteristic daring prevailed; and addressing to of majestic womanhood. But nevertheless, when he came one day to bid her farewell before his cxodus into the world, her heart was too full of the memories of her childish years to remember its new conventionalism, and she stood before him | with her hands crossed upon her bosom, gazing in his face with a look of girlish fondness, that was The reply came from Mr. Hargrave. It was made still softer by the tears that stood trembling cold, calm, decisive. He was obliged by the good in her beautiful eyes. He was to proceed to opinion entertained by his young friend of his London, to be completed in his initiation into mer-daughter, but Martha had altogether different cantile business, and might be absent for yearsperhaps forever for his mother was to accompany him; and Martha felt the separation as her first serious distress. Richard was old enough to be aware of the nature of his own feelings; and perhaps if Martha had been in one of her grand moments, he might have dared to appeal to the grow ing woman in her heart. But she appeared to him on this occasion so young, so gentle, so delicate, that he would have thought it a profanation to talk to her of love. As the moment of parting arrived, he drew her towards him with both hands; his arms encircled her waist; and-how it happened I know not, for the thing was wholly out of rule-his lips were pressed to hers. The next moment he started from his bewilderment; his eyes dazzled; Martha had disappeared. He did not know, when in the morning the stage-coach was carrying him from Elm's Cross, that a young girl was sitting behind a blind in the highest room of that house watching the vehicle as it rolled away, till it was prematurely lost in her blinding tears. I am unable to trace the adventures of Richard Temple in London; but they appear to have been comparatively fortunate, since, at the end of only three years, he was a junior partner in a young but respectable firm. He had seen Miss Hargrave several times during the interval; but I need not views. Setting aside the oppositeness of their circumstances and position in this world, which would in itself be an insurmountable objection, their religious views were not so much alike as was necessary in the case of two persons pressing forward, side by side, to the world which is to come. He hoped friend Richard would speedily forget what, to a rational-minded person, ought to be hardly a disappointment, and, when his fortune permitted it, select from his own denomination a wife of his own degree. This insolent letter, as the young man termed it, had no effect but that of rousing the fierce and headlong energy of his nature. He knew Martha too well to believe that she had any share in such a production; and he wrote at once to Mr. Hargrave to say that his daughter was now old enough to decide for herself, and that he could not think of receiving at second hand a reply involving the happiness or misery of his whole life. On the following day he would present himself at his house in Elm's Cross, in the hope of hearing his fate from Martha's own lips, even if in the presence of her father and mother. |