charm, which the observers of a tamer and more ordinary diction can never hope to inspire.

"It is on devotional and moral subjects, however, that the peculiar character of his mind is most, and most successfully, developed. To this service he devotes his most glowing language; to this his aptest illustrations: his thoughts and his words at once burst into a flame, when touched by the coals of this altar; and whether he describes the duties, or dangers, or hopes of man, or the mercy, power, and justice of the Most High; whether he exhorts or instructs his brethren, or offers up his supplications in their behalf to the common Father of all, his conceptions and his expressions belong to the loftiest and most sacred description of poetry; of which they only want, what they cannot be said to need, the name and the metrical arrangement.

"It is this distinctive excellence, still more than the other qualifications of learning and logical acuteness, which has placed him, even in that age of gigantic talent, on an eminence superior to any of his immediate contemporaries; which has exempted him from the comparative neglect into which the dry and repul

sive learning of Andrews and Sanderson has fallen;-which has left behind the acuteness of Hales, and the imaginative and copious eloquence of Bishop Hall, at a distance hardly less than the cold elegance of Clark, and the dull good sense of Tillotson; and has seated him, by the almost unanimous estimate of posterity, on the same lofty elevation with Hooker and with Barrow.

"Of such a triumvirate, who shall settle the precedence? Yet it may, perhaps, be not far from the truth, to observe that Hooker claims the foremost rank in sustained and classic dignity of style, in political and pragmatical wisdom; that to Barrow the praise must be assigned of the closest and clearest views, and of a taste the most controlled and chastened; but that in imagination, in interest, in that which more properly and exclusively deserves the name of genius, Taylor is to be placed before either. The first awes most, the second convinces most, the third persuades and delights most: and, (according to the decision of one whose own rank among the ornaments of English literature yet remains to be determined by posterity,) Hooker is the object of our reverence,

Barrow of our admiration, and Jeremy Taylor of our love."

This admirable piece of biography permanently placed Heber among the first of our modern writers.

CHAPTER V.

Heber invited to take upon him the Charge of the Church in India-he declines—and on further consideration accepts it-consecrated Bishop of Calcutta-Address to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge-embarks for IndiaVoyage.

EARLY in 1803 the news of the death of Dr. Middleton, Bishop of Calcutta, arrived in England; and, chiefly through the instrumentality of his friend, Mr. Williams Wynn, the Preacher of Lincoln's Inn was invited to be his successor in that see. His situation, at the time when this proposal was made to him, has been thus sketched by one of his friends.

"Mr. Heber's election as preacher at Lincoln's Inn was a very flattering distinction, whether the character of the electors be considered, or the merits of his predecessor, or those of the distinguished persons before whom he was preferred; valuable, moreover, as placing somewhat more in oculis civium' a man intended by nature for a less obscure station than that

which he had for years been filling,-though assuredly that was one which he, had it been so ordained, would have continued to fill to his dying day, without any querulous suspicion that he had fallen on evil times when merit is overlooked, and talent suffered to spend itself on an unworthy field.

Thus usefully and happily was he engaged; -in town, occupying an honourable and important situation, and with easy access to men of letters, of whom the capital must ever be the resort;-in the country, inhabiting a parsonage, built by himself in a situation which he had selected, in the neighbourhood of most of his kindred, amidst friends who loved and reverenced him, and in a parish where none would have desired a greater satisfaction than to have done him a service;-when he was summoned from scenes where, to use a beautiful expression of Warburton's,' he had hung a thought upon every thorn,' to take upon himself the government of the church in India.

What his struggles at that moment were, those who were near him at the time know well. How could such a man contemplate such a charge without some self-distrust? How