her white gown, appeared, a sunbeam fell on the cottage door and lighted up the darkest hearth. The pastor, he was the universal friend. They came to him to settle their quarrels. In a contest of rights, they chose him as the judge, and from his judgment no one ever thought of appealing: for who would question the opinion of one who was so learned; and who would refuse the law from a lawgiver who had his code written in the hearts of all?

Without a touch of formality or condescension he moved amongst them. His knock at the cottage door was a welcome signal, and he dropped into the seat which the good wife dusted and set for him, with the freedom of a friend. After the curtsey and the smile of welcome, he listened to their histories; simple annals, but the annals of life; the same in all ranks, and in all places-family troubles, trials of temper, daily crosses, anxieties and bereavements, the bad temper of neighbours, the struggles with our own bad temper. He heard all, not as if he endured the tale, but because he liked it, and took interest in it: and these stories were his opportunities for the lessons which he wished to teach; for the incidents of daily life were the pegs on which he could hang his instructions; passing, by a natural transition, from the trials of life to its comforts, its discipline, and its aims; and these lessons dropped from him naturally, not as set sermons, or grave saws, but as hints which he offered to them with guileless simplicity, taken from his own experience. He had no need to say much; for there was in himself, in his life and looks, that which spoke better than words. They saw how he took his own trials, and bore himself under them; how he met crosses and turned them to profit, and threw on the edges of the darkest cloud the silver lining of Divine light. He could tell them of a peace independent of circumstances; and, having tried it, he could commend it to them. He was happy-that they plainly saw; he wanted them to be happy of that they had no doubt: how they might be happy, he was there to tell them; and they became anxious to learn the lesson, for it was worth while to follow one who was himself so cheerful and so full of goodness: as to his learning and gifts of knowledge, they knew little and cared little. They might be pleased at times to think that their parson was a great scholar and a grand preacher; but if he had been Porson, or Robert Hall, it would have made no difference in their estimate. It was as a pastor they knew him. He came to their cottages, and sat down by their firesides, and understood their ways, and felt for their troubles; and never stood aloof from them, or looked down coldly, or treated them, as if he stooped down to them from a height, with a gracious but grating condescension. He was one of themselves-a plain man like themselves-walked with them the same round of duty on the same road, only a step in advance,

turning back and offering them his hand to help them over their difficulties. So they trusted him, and loved him, not for what he gave, (money cannot buy love,) but for the fellowfeeling he had with them, sympathy more precious than gold. Thus he spent his life in the Forest, and had no mind to leave it; the work he had himself chosen was that which he wrought willingly to the end. Not indeed that Mr. Gisborne lived a rude or boorish life; far from it, he had literary tastes and pursuits. Of literature he was fond. In writing, skilful and popular. He observed natural history with a curious and vigilant eye; and there was not a flower that grew within the circuit of the Forest, or an insect which flitted its brief life on the wing, that he had not noticed and eagerly studied; and nature, a bountiful mistress, threw open to her admirer a cabinet of marvels. With these he enriched his thoughts. And his library was like his mind, full of curious things, stored up and preserved-birds stuffed, and birds alive, creatures he had caught and tamed, for all living creatures loved the gentle being. Probably, had he been left to himself, he would have passed his life without interruption within his forest parish, its hamlet, its dells, and its woods. But he was con

nected with Mr. Babington by marriage, and there were sacred interests which connected him with Wilberforce. The same college at Cambridge (St. John's) had received them both. Wilberforce had entered the college at the age of seventeen, in the year 1776; and as he was rich, he soon attracted to himself the idle lads who in most colleges abound. After the first year he shook off these associates, and he then entered a more decorous circle. In that circle he found Thomas Gisborne, who was then reading for the mathematical distinctions which he afterwards gained; for in 1780 he went out as sixth wrangler. As Wilberforce was both amiable and hospitable, fond of discussion, and quick in repartee, and could entertain his guests both with good fare and exquisite drollery, he was universally popular. "There was no one," says Mr. Gisborne, "at all like him for powers of entertainment. My rooms and his were back to back; and often when I was raking out my fire at ten o'clock, I heard his melodious voice calling aloud to me to come and sit with him before I went to bed. It was a dangerous thing to do, for his amusing conversation was sure to keep me up so late that I was behindhand the next morning." After their college life, the two men, as often happens, drifted apart. They entered different lines of life. But though Mr. Gisborne's course was that of a retired pastor, far from London and public affairs, there was a subject in which he took intense interest-the guilt of the Slave Trade. This question touched his heart and roused his conscience. Great therefore was his delight when he found it brought forward, in 1789, with singular eloquence by his old college friend. Wilberforce's

speech on that occasion had called forth tributes of admiration; generous praise from Pitt and Fox, and a rare encomium from Edmund Burke. Mr. Gisborne sent him his congratulations, and offered to help him. He promised to employ "two or three hours a day in the service of the Africans and yourself." Soon after this he welcomed him to his own home, where he passed weeks of study in examining evidence; and after this time, till his marriage, Yoxall Lodge was one of his favourite retreats, where he could enjoy the leisure and the ease of a close friendship. There he wrote great part of his work on Practical Christianity. From this time letters of entire confidence passed between the two friends. Mr. Gisborne writes, "I have been as busy in town as a member of Parliament preparing himself to maintain the abolition of the Slave Trade, and no doubt much more usefully employed. I shall expect to read in the newspapers of your being carbonadoed by West Indian planters, barbecued by African merchants, and eaten by Guinea captains; but do not be daunted, for—I will write your epitaph."

In 1792, Wilberforce sends to him the result of the debate; and in answer to his appeal for "precise directions" as to getting up a county meeting, "for the success of each branch of the plan is matured, and you can give me your instructions in less than five minutes," he explains to him his views. Again, in the following year, we find them in correspondence on the same subject. Wilberforce confides to him his difficulties when he is struggling to open India to missions; and Gisborne cheers and encourages him. In the letters which pass between them, however hurried, the pen of Wilberforce touches always the great theme of Christian hope, whether he speaks (Life i. 338) with the benevolent longing to make this subject known to others, or whether he dwells with sorrowful regrets on Pitt's untimely end. (Corres. ii. 70.) Sometimes, indeed, using the charm which he had exercised at Cambridge, he drew the pastor from his forest-home into the busy circle which met at Broomfield and Kensington Gore. But though whenever he appeared he was cordially welcomed, and became for a time a partner in the councils of the active cabinet, he was a silent and somewhat embarrassed spectator of modes of life and activities from which he shrank with alarm. It was like taking the bird of the forest, which had lived with its mate and had sung its kindly song beside her nest in the shade, and hurling it into the glare of day by the sea shore, among clouds of eddying seafowl, that whitened the face of the cliff and filled the air with shrill loud screams. To the pastor, torn from his daily rounds and woodland walks, nothing seemed more perplexing or alarming than these whirling eddies of business, these revolving movements of eager men engaged in pushing forward their benevolent schemes in

the face of fierce opposition, now driven back by adverse forces, now swept out of their course by storms of attack, yet braced all the while and firmly advancing, their wits sharpened by collision, the ear and eye awake, still pressing forward to their projected end.

Stranger, perhaps, it seemed to the pastor, after he had entered these busy councils, and had watched a single day of his friend's perturbed and bustling life, to observe him harassed by crowds of visitors, driven hither and thither by conflicting influences, and forcing his way, from dawn to dusk, through an amount of toil and talk which it made one giddy to witness; yet all the while cheerful, and retaining, in the midst of stir and strife, a spirit as calm as if he roamed fancy-free, and trod in solitude. the woodland glades. Then to notice that, when the Sabbath came, and brought its welcome break to wearing toil, all care and stir and turmoil were laid aside, and the unburdened spirit, neither chafed nor worn, rose in its upward flight, and carolled, blithe as a lark, its joyous song under a cloudless sky. Moreover, he perceived that, after the bustling morning, when from crowds of claimants the statesman at last shook himself free, and snatched a short walk from the slopes of Kensington Gore to Hyde Park Corner, during this brief interval between the bustle he had left and the sea of business into which he was about to be plunged, his voice might be caught, as he strolled along, repeating to himself some verses of a favourite hymn, the minstrelsy of a Christian poet, or David's royal Psalms. Thus he realized, long before, the true picture drawn by our Christian poet :—

"There are in this loud stunning tide

Of human care and crime,

With whom the melodies abide

Of the everlasting chime:

Who carry music in their heart

Through dusky lane and wrangling mart,

Plying their daily task with busier feet,

Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat."

But Gisborne, unaccustomed to such a life, and unable to accommodate himself to it, liked it not; and he marvelled that his friend's temper, so tried, and crossed often in his best schemes by the interests and passions of selfish men, should remain as calm as his own spirit, which was nursed in solitude, and refreshed by the sights and sounds of nature. Yet it fell out that, when the holiday of leisure came, and the friends met again in country life, the same topics were found to retain their interest for both. They could tell of the same experiences, and point to the same springs of comfort. When the pastor led the statesman to his woodland walk, among oak and holly, and guided him to the cottages of the Forest, to which his own footsteps so often turned, and told him of the peasants' annals, the cares

and the hopes of rural life, he found an eager listener, and poured the simple story into a willing ear. Further, when he unfolded to him the wonders of nature, the habits of plants, the life of birds and insects, none was more eager to hear, nor did any join more fervently in notes of wonder and of praise. Thus the two friends walked together; starting together at College, they went on together through life, and carried to old age their close regards. Their course, indeed, was distinct; one on the crowded highway, the other by rural bye-ways; yet both with the same end in view, they walked, with buoyant steps, under the same reviving sunlight. In repute, indeed, they differed; the name of the one known to the wide world, leaving a broad mark on the world's annals; the other passed his life unnoticed, but he too left deep traces, where he sought to leave them, in peasants' hearts, in the souls which he had reclaimed; and he also, in the ingathering of the harvest, will be owned a faithful husbandman.

LIFE OF LIEUT.-GEN. "STONEWALL" JACKSON.

Life of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson (Stonewall Jackson). By Professor R. L. Dabney, D.D., of Richmond, Virginia. Edited by Rev. W. Chalmers, A.M., London. Vol. I. London: James Nisbet and Co., 21, Berners-street. 1864.

"For

THE question of the lawfulness of war would never have arisen had we been satisfied to take the Bible for our guide. There war stands in its proper light. It is one of God's judgments; and if so, we might as well reason upon the sinfulness of scarlatina or the plague as upon the sinfulness of war. thus saith the Lord God; ... I send my four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast." (Ezekiel xiv. 21.) Let the reader refer to the whole context; he will see that war, like famine, pestilence, and the noisome beast, is sent as God's chastisement upon a guilty land; it cannot be averted when the decree once goes forth. Its awful course of slaughter and devastation can only be stayed by Him who maketh wars to cease in all the earth. Man's part is here precisely what it is with regard to the other judgments of the Almighty: repentance may avert the stroke, or mitigate the severity of the scourge, or shorten the duration of the punishment. So, hardihood and contempt of God may render this pouring out of His wrath still more dreadful. War is the punishment of national sin, and such expressions as "glorious war," and the like, are utterly heathenish. For, to return to our illustration, a man might with as much reason boast of having some loathsome disease in his family, as a nation of being in a state of war,