seems little understood in Russia: Potemkin had no idea of encouraging Cherson, but by ruining Taganrog: and at present Cherson is to be sacrificed to the new favourite, Odessa."

CHAPTER III.

Heber returns to England—takes orders-marries-and settles at Hodnet.

The

MR. HEBER returned to this country in 1807, and shortly afterwards took holy orders. valuable living of Hodnet had been reserved for him since his father's death, and being now put into possession of it, he married Amelia, daughter of the late Dr. Shipley, Dean of St. Asaph, and (to adopt the words, of one of his friends) "happy in the prospect of those domestic endearments which no man was more qualified to enjoy, settled himself in his rectory. In no scene of his life, perhaps, did his character appear in greater beauty than whilst he was living here, 'seeing God's blessings spring out of his mother-earth, and eating his own bread in peace and privacy.' His talents might have made him proud, but he was humble-minded as a child-eager to call forth the intellectual stores of others, rather than to display his own

-arguing without dogmatism, and convincing without triumph-equally willing to reason with the wise, or take a share in the innocent gaieties of a winter's fire-side; for it was no part of his creed that all innocent mirth ought to be banished from the purlieus of a good man's dwelling; or that he is called upon to abstract himself from the refinements and civilities of life, as if sitting to Teniers for a picture of the Temptations of St. Anthony. The attentions he received might have made him selfish, but his own inclinations were ever the last he consulted; indeed, of all the features in his character this was, perhaps, the most prominent— that in him, self did not seem to be denied, to be mortified, but to be forgotten. His love of letters might have made him an inactive parishpriest, but he was daily amongst his parishioners, advising them in difficulties, comforting them in distress, kneeling, often to the hazard of his own life, by their sick-beds; exhorting, encouraging, reproving as he saw need; where there was strife, the peace-maker; where there

*

* Heber was, on one occasion, brought to the brink of the grave by a typhus fever caught in this way.

was want, the cheerful giver.

Yet in all this there was no parade, no effort, apparently not the smallest consciousness that his conduct differed from that of other men-his duty seemed to be his delight, his piety an instinct. Many a good deed done by him in secret only came to light when he had been removed far away, and but for that removal would have been for ever hid-many an instance of benevolent interference where it was least suspected, and of delicate attention towards those whose humble rank in life is too often thought to exempt their superiors from all need of mingling courtesy with kindness. That he was sometimes deceived in his favourable estimate of mankind, it would be vain to deny; such a guileless, confiding, unsuspicious singleness of heart as his, cannot always be proof against cunning. But if he had not this worldly knowledge, he wanted it perhaps in common with most men of genius and virtue; the wisdom of the serpent' was almost the only wisdom in which he did not abound.”*

"He laboured to accommodate his instruc

tions," says another witness," to the comprehension of all; a labour by no means easy to a mind stored with classic elegance, and an imagination glowing with a thousand images of sublimity and beauty. He rejoiced to form his manners, his habits, and his conversation, to those who were entrusted to his care, that he might gain the confidence and affection of even the poorest among his flock; so that he might more surely win their souls to God, and finally, in the day of the last account, present every man faultless before His presence with exceeding joy. He was, above all, singularly happy in his visitation of the sick, and in administering consolation to those that mourned; and his name will long be dear, and his memory most precious, in the cottages of the poor, by whose sick beds he has often stood as a ministering angel."

The following anecdote is taken from a recent number of the London Weekly Review:

"There was in the parish an old man who had been a notorious poacher in his youth, and through the combined influence of his irregular mode of life, drunken habits, and depraved associates, had settled down into an irreligious