possible, to prevent being driven down it, and managed to keep in the market-place.

After being driven to and fro an hour or more his inhuman persecutors paused. A respectable looking person, who Mr. Russell afterwards learned was the chief constable, came to him and said, "If you will leave, all will then be quiet." Mr. Russell replied, “If I have broken the law punish me according to the law, and not in this manner. The constable then withdrew, without ever attempting to quell the lawless mob, who again assailed the solitary missionary with ruthless violence.

At length the beadle came in his church livery, and seized Mr. Russell by the collar, led him to the end of the town, and with a thrust pushed him along, and bade him "Begone!" Mr. Russell's strength was almost exhausted with the violent usage he had suffered in the market-place, but determined, if possible, to address those who had followed him thither, he stood on the side of a hedge bank, and preached as well as he was able. But his persecutors were not yet satisfied; they pelted him with stones, eggs, mud, and everything they could render available for the purpose. Even women, unmindful of the tenderness of their sex, joined in this cruel treatment; some of them knocked the dirt out of their patten rings to cast at the preacher. When Mr. Russell concluded the service he was covered from head to foot with slime, mud, rotten eggs, and other kinds of filth; and his clothes were torn and his flesh bruised.

At Farringdon similar treatment befel him, and at Shrivenham another violent reception awaited him; and when subsequently a member of the Society of Friends asked for the Methodist preacher the protection of a clerical magistrate, that worthy replied, "The people have as much right to take the course they do as the preacher has to preach in the streets." With such gentlemen as he for magistrates, it was no wonder that an uneducated and irreligious populace should assail the humble messenger of Christ with maddened fury. Thus humble and painful were the beginnings of that work which now includes eight score thousand members, which has more than 150,000 scholars in its Sabbath-schools, and above 3,000 places of worship, besides above three thousand other places of worship, such as rented chapels, rooms, barns, and cottages. And to keep alive this mighty move, now there are over 900 regular ministers, 14,000 local preachers, and 43,000 gratuitous Sunday-school teachers. No wonder that our Primitive Methodist friends still make a "noise" in

the land; and no wonder that the memories of a past-not very remote-make the probabilities of their

Established Church somewhat remote.

absorption" into the

LAZINESS IN BIBLE READING.

LORD, I discover an arrant laziness in my soul. For when I am

to read a chapter in the Bible, before I begin it, I look where it endeth; and if it endeth not on the same side, I cannot keep my hand from turning over the leaf, to measure the length thereof on the other side; if it swell to many verses, I begin to grudge.

Surely my heart is not rightly affected. Were I truly hungry after heavenly food, I would not complain of meat. Scourge, Lord, this laziness of soul. Make the reading of Thy Word not a penance, but a pleasure unto me. Teach me, that as, among many heaps of gold, all being equally pure, that is the best which is the biggest, so that I may esteem that chapter in Thy Word the best which is the longest.—Dr. Thomas Fuller.

MRS. HEMANS.

AMID the wild scenery of the Welsh mountains the genius of Mrs. Hemans was developed. The daughter of a merchanta Mr. G. Browne-she was born, in 1793, in the prosaic region of Liverpool; but, happily, from the uncongenial bustle of a large town she was soon removed to the romantic solitude of the Welsh hills. Her mother, a lady of Italian descent, early observed the poetical bent of the daughter's mind, and with great judgment encouraged it. Before Miss Browne reached her twelfth year a volume of her poems was published, and the success they met with encouraged her to persevere. In her case, the proverb which declares that clever children become dull men and women did not hold good. The growth of the mind kept pace with the growth of the body, and the promising spring brought forth a plenteous harvest.

Before she reached her nineteenth birthday, and when her fame was fully established, she was wedded to Captain Alfred Hemans, of the 4th Regiment. To the fact that the marriage proved an unhappy one, much of that melancholy which tinges her writings is doubtlessly due. Older than his wife, with health impaired by foreign

service, Captain Hemans found it needful, six years after marriage, to seek the mild climate of Italy. Mrs. Hemans, with her family i remained in England, and she never saw her husband again. The greater part of her life was spent amid the beautiful scenery of Wales, or in the neighbourhood of the equally beautiful “Lakeland” of Westmoreland and Cumberland. Her favourite residence, Rhyllon, is seen in our illustration; hard by is St. Asaph, a view of which we also give. About the year 1831 Mrs. Hemans removed to Dublin, and there resided until the time of her death, which took place in May, 1835. Her constitution, never strong, had been weakened by the sorrow, she so continually bore, and her life here closed when she had barely passed her forty-second year. From her death-bed she dictated what proved to be her last poem the beautiful "Sabbath Sonnet

"How many blessed groups this hour are bending

Through England's primrose meadow-paths, the way
Toward spire and tower, 'mid shadowy elms ascending,
Whence the sweet chimes proclaim the hallowed day!
The halls, from old heroic ages gray,

Pour their fair children forth; and hamlets low,
With whose thick orchard blooms the soft winds play,
Send out their inmates in a happy flow,

Like a freed vernal stream. I may not tread
With them those pathways-to the feverish bed
Of sickness bound; yet, O my God! I bless
Thy mercy, that with Sabbath peace hath filled
My chastened heart, and all its throbbings stilled
To one deep calm of lowliest thankfulness."

At home Mrs. Hemans has had many imitators-a proof that her writings have a deep hold upon the English mind; abroad, her poems have been translated into almost every language of the civilised world-a proof that they abound with those touches of Nature which make the whole world kin." Pre-eminently, her writings are "womanly" Grandeur, in the ordinary sense of the term, they do not possess; monotonous, by reason of their melancholy, they may occasionally seem; but their sad and simple beauty, telling of a heart which, in the midst of sorrow, has still a living faith in a living Redeemer, seldom fails to win. Her poems are full of humanity, but it is humanity which has been chastened by suffering, and which is trusting in God through Jesus Christ: they are fitted, therefore, first to win the heart, and then to point it to its highest duties.

In the " New Congregational Hymn Book" there is one hymn—

No. 721-from the pen of Mrs. Hemans. The Rev. Josiah Miller, M.A., in "Our Hymns: their authors and origin," calls it "a touching piece in an unusual and difficult metre.

It forms," he

adds, "part of a funeral dirge, given at the close of a poem in blank verse, and headed, 'The Funeral-day of Sir Walter Scott.' (He died on the 21st September, 1832.) The poem begins

'A glorious voice hath ceased!'

RHYLLON.

The funeral song consists of nine stanzas, of which four are given in the New Congregational' without alteration."

Mrs. Hemans contributed largely to "annuals" and to magazines.

Some few years after her death her works were collected and edited by her sister; and the fame of the poetess, growing during her life, has been widening on to the present hour.

ST. ASAPH.