by those, to whom thoughts collected in my course of reading in many tongues and through many years may not perhaps be uninteresting.. Many of them were taken down in leisure evening hours, amidst the gambols and prattle of my children, and sometimes under the soothing influence of strains of "linked sweetness" awakened by the sympathy of soul, voice, and fingers of some loved child, in a large family circle, long, mercifully, unbroken. From childhood I was familiar at least with the title pages of a large library, liberally stocked by my father with writers of all schools and shades of opinion. Many an hour, that might have been occupied more profitably to health in the ball-court or cricket-ground, was spent "in angulis et libellis."

Any thoughts of my own are so few, and of so little worth, that I may say in the words of a well-known French essayist of the sixteenth century, "I have only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the string that ties them."

To occupy an occasional hour collecting and meditating upon the thoughts of superior minds, many of which "still rule our spirits from their urns," has its sufficient reward, and tends to soothe and elevate our ordinary life with the music of nobler thoughts.

I do not mean to be understood as adopting the sentiments expressed in all the following Extracts. Many have been made as illustrating various phases of opinion of learned, earnest, and thoughtful writers, on subjects in respect of which candour and moderation (Tò Étieïxes), in its largest sense, ought especially to be cultivated by the enquiring student. I have learned, during a long life, that valuable truths are found in many and various schools of theology, politics, and literature. Their comparative merit must be judged by reference to the Standard of all truth, to HIM who is "the way, the truth, and the life." We must also, in forming a judgment upon the opinions of others, bear in mind the words of the Grecian sage, "Know thyself," said by Plato to have been inscribed in gold on the temple of Apollo ;

and those of Archbishop Whateley, "Never is the mind less fitted for self-examination than when occupied in detecting the faults of others."

If I were within reach of my library, I might be tempted to add some extracts from Essays written in my professional life upon some interesting questions connected with Ethico-legal Evidence, Criminal Jurisprudence, and Constitutional Law; and upon the principles of a sound legal education, to which the attention of the public and parliament was then only recently attracted; but as they are not now at hand, I merely refer to them in a note.*

"On the admissibility in evidence of the confessions of prisoners in criminal cases, and the challenge of Jurors." (London and Dublin, 1842.) "Letters on legal education, addressed to the late Right Hon. George A. Hamilton, M.P." "Letter to the late Lord Lyndhurst on the exercise of the Perogative in the appointment of Sheriffs under the Vice-royalty in Ireland:" this formed the subject of an animated debate in the House of Lords, Lord Lyndhurst making much use of the Letter. "A Pamphlet on the admissibility of the evidence of accomplices in criminal cases,"-sometimes I believe quoted, but erroneously, as mine,--was written by a relative, Henry Joy, afterwards Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Ireland.

Before laying down my pen, I am tempted to express regret that I have spent more leisure hours in my professional life amongst books, than over the great volume of Nature which the beneficent CREATOR has opened alike to all. Its influence upon the physical and mental life is at once cheering, soothing, and exalting. This thought is suggested by the scene now before me, where Helmcrag, looking down "with motionless brow" upon the vale and lake of Grasmere,

66 seems to send

Its own deep quiet to restore our hearts."

These objects are inseparably associated with the genius of the venerable Seer of Rydal Mount.

Before leaving the Church-yard at Grasmere this morning, after following, to her last resting-place, the child of an industrious neighbouring dalesman, I lingered over the grave of Wordsworth. Its simplicity is in sympathy with his poetry and his life. "He reposes beneath the green turf, among the dalesmen of Grasmere, under the sycamores and yews of a country Church-yard, by the

side of a mountain-stream and the mountains which he loved. A solemn voice seems to breathe from his grave, which blends its tones in sweet and solemn harmony with the accents of his poetry, speaking the language of humility and love, of adoration and faith." These words, now before me,

are those of his relative and biographer, the Bishop of Lincoln, whose learned, pious, and reverential Commentary upon the Holy Scriptures, and particularly upon the Psalms, is appreciated by all scholars and students of Scripture.

It is my heart-felt wish that you and I may learn a life-long lesson from the muse of Wordsworth, Priest of Poetry and Truth, ever faithful to nature, patriotism, and Christian philosophy, with whose words, upon the vale of Grasmere, I lay down my pen.

"I would call thee beautiful, for mild,

And soft, and gay, and beautiful thou art,
Dear valley! having in thy face a smile,

Though peaceful, full of gladness. Thou art pleased,
Pleased with thy crags and woody steeps; thy lake,

And one green island, and its winding shores,

The multitude of little rocky hills;