their pilgrim fathers, God forgive me if I find myself sometimes sighing for deliverance. I am quite without companionship, and feel it hard to reconcile myself to the providence, by which one is taken and the other left. The Psalmist knew all about it, when he had become like a pelican in the wilderness and like an owl that is in the desert, when he had watched and was even as it were a sparrow that sitteth alone upon the house top. **If you knew the daily expectations with which I have gone to the office, for the last fortnight, and the daily disappointment with which I have turned away, you would drop me some token for good, from your land of abundant promise; you would I am sure give me something in the shape of a man's hand,' to refresh me, in the midst of this barren and dry land, where no water is.

*

My friends, do they now and then send

A wish or a thought after me;

Ah tell me, I yet have a friend,

Though a friend, I am never to see.

* I regret that I did not know of your invitation to be in Hartford, as I should have made shift to get to you at some rate or other. The summons of Paul to the elders of Ephesus to meet him at Miletus** would hardly have moved me more mightily. **I trust we shall meet soon, here or in your Diocese, some sweet, however short foretaste of a blessed meeting hereafter." Then after some details of Church news he writes, "I shall not have room for my verses, if I go on at this rate, so stand aside, matters of fact, and make room for the muses.

I miss thee at the morning tide,
The glorious hour of Prime;
I miss thee when the day has died,
At blessed evening time;
As pass the weary hours away,
Still art thou unforgot;

Sleeping or waking, night and day,

When do I miss thee not?

I miss thee, at thy once thronged door,
Where every favourite room

Thy presence made so bright before,

Is loneliness and gloom.

Each place where most we loved to be,

Thy home, thy House of Prayer,

Seem yearning for thy company:

I miss thee, everywhere.

Mrs. B **** and a host of good people send their best love to you. You are our theme in the house, and by the way, and we sigh together for the days that are past. My harp you

struggled, with the timidity which more than half concealed her catholicity, as well as, against the inherited tyranny of the "consciences," with which the children of the Puritans worshipped their grandfathers.

perceive might as well be on the willows, as singing such songs as this."

Passing over a long interval of occasional visits and frequent communications, he writes so pleasant a letter, in April 1839, from New Haven, that I must transcribe part of it, for the evidence of the free and loving familiarity, which time and distance have not chilled. Its reference to the character of the Diocesan Conventions, is instructive too. They were always attractive. Their dignity and propriety in times of peace, and when war came, the courage of their leader and the faithful and united rallying of his soldiers, made them always attractive to the members and to visitors.

"May it please your Grace,

I did not intend to return to Boston without paying my respects to your Grace at Holy Rood; but news is all abroad that you are making a stir in the back settlements of *Maryland, and that you will pass at once, to the Southern visitation of New Jersey. Dr. Wainwright proposed to accompany me to Riverside. * * I have advised him, if he would see the Church and State in all their united glory, to attend your Convention and take lessons against the time when he may be required to preside, with like dignity and consistency, in a similar body. As long as a love of Zion conspires with the attractions of the vernal season, and your own proverbial hospitality, to make Burlington so interesting, your Convention can never fail to be frequented by visitors from without, both far and near. The Convention of two years since is one of the greenest spots in my remembrance, amid the dusty deserts of our ecclesiastical annals. ** I would to God that I were a minister somewhere near your Grace's court, for I think I might be humbly instrumental in doing the Church some better service, than I can Write to me at Boston and believe me to the last Yours faithfully,

here.

gasp,

W. CROSWELL."+

He hastened to Riverside, in November 1834, when his friend was first stricken by a very severe illness; and his welcome presence inspired the following sonnet from my Father:

PERENNIS ET FRAGRANS.

William, my brother and my bosom friend!
For thrice ten years the sun, this blessed day,
Has lighted thee along life's checkered way,

*My Father at this time had charge of this then vacant Diocese. He made friends there that were his, through all events, till death. The published correspondence will testify to his pleasure in his Maryland work, and to their cordial appreciation of his labours.

↑ My Father's part of this correspondence will be found among his letters.

VOL. I.-7

Serene and placid towards thy journey's end.
One third the distance we have trod together,
Hand grasping hand, and heart enclosed in heart,
Each of the other's life, breath, being, part,
Breasting, as one, time's rough and rugged weather.
Poet and Priest, as in thy face I look,

book :

So full of thought, so tranquil, so benign,
With pride of soul to hail thee friend of mine,
I greet thee with the legend of this
"Fragrant and lasting," be thy memory here,
And then a fadeless crown through Heaven's immortal year!

G. W. D.

Later letters there are, but as every thing changed about each of them, there were fewer subjects in common. When they did write or meet, there was the same cordial and natural intimacy. And of the many griefs that mingled in his cup of life, few were more bitter than the death of Dr. Croswell. His own words at the time, his beautiful verses, and his notice of him in Dr. Sprague's Annals of the American Pulpit, are the most beautiful veil that could be drawn, over this portion of his life.

It was in 1826 that our intimate relations commenced; and man has never been in closer bonds with man, than he with me, for five-andtwenty years. A letter from him to a mutual friend, the witness and the sharer of our earliest years of happiness, brings down the token of his unreserving confidence and perfect love, within the latest fortnight of his life. I do not hesitate to speak thus personally, because your invitation to me, to preach here, is predicated mainly on these intimate relations; and, only for their dear sake, could I have left my duties to be with you.

He came to Hartford, where I was then Professor in Washington (now Trinity) College, at Bishop Brownell's instance, to be associated with me in the direction of the Episcopal Watchman. I remember, as if it were but yesterday, our earliest meeting at a hearth as bright and blessed as was ever kindled by the glow of Christian hospitality; and never was a happier circle gathered than met there, almost nightly, for years. Our intercourse was intimate at once, and we had never a feeling or a thought to part us. His poetical contributions to the Episcopal Watchman were numerous, in addition to his invaluable services as editor; and they won for him, a high and honourable place among the very few, to whom the name of Poet can be given. Every thing that he ever wrote in verse was strictly occasional. It was so much of his heart-life set to music. He lived it, every line. And it was all inspired at the hearth-side, or at the altar-foot. It was domestic often, always sacred. He fulfilled, in every verse, that beautiful suggestion of the sky-lark to the mind of Wordsworth,—

Type of the wise, who soar but never roam,
True to the kindred points of heaven and home.

* Coleridge's poems.

In that incomparable modesty, which set off, in its mild, opal light, his virtues and his graces, he thought very poorly of these admirable productions, and has half suggested the idea, that they remain fugitive. But this must not be suffered. They are part and parcel of his nature, and of his office. As he lived them, so he preaches in them, and will, while the Gospel shall be preached.

I had come to Boston in 1828, and in 1829 he came here,* to Christ Church, as successor to the Rev. Dr. Eaton; who, spared in providential love to wend his patriarchal way among the children's children of his first parishioners, was strangely called to commend the parting spirit of his son and brother in the faith and ministry of Christ, into the hands of Him who gave it. He was ordained a Priest, and instituted Rector of Christ Church, on Saint John Baptist's Day, 1829, by the venerable Bishop Griswold. How he loved the very dust that generations had gathered upon that sacred edifice; how faithfully he did his Master's work there, for eleven years; how much he attached to him the affectionate confidence of his parishioners; how many feet he gathered within the fold; how many souls he knit into the faith of Jesus Christ, there are those here, who know and can bear witness. He was emphatically "a man of loves." His heart was large enough to take in all the world. His generosity was unbounded. When he first heard of the undertaking to relieve the Institutions of the Church, at Burlington, from their indebtedness, and to secure their perpetuity, he walked the floor for very nervousness of joy, and said that he had never so desired a private fortune, that he might give it all.

If he excelled in any one relation, after his service to Christ's poor, it was in all the acts and offices of friendship. He was a perfect friend. So delicate, so thoughtful, so candid, so loving, so constant. "More than my brother," for a quarter of a century, I dare not trust myself to speak of what he was to me; of what I know I was to him. I never heard words spoken with sincerer pleasure, than when, the other day, his old heroic father-who might well declare with aged Ormond, that "he would not exchange his dead son, for any living son, in Christendom "said to the coachman who had driven us out to weep together by his grave, This is the Bishop of New Jersey; the best friend that my son ever had, on earth.' I would not covet for my child a richer earthly treasure, or a higher human praise, than to be William Croswell's best and dearest friend."

Of this sermon and the subject of it, he spoke to his Convention in such words as these:

On Sunday, Dec. 7, (Second in Advent) in the Church of the Advent, in the city of Boston, at the request of the Wardens and Vestry, I preached a sermon, commemorative of the late Rector, the Rev. William Croswell, D. D. As the sermon has been published, I need

* A mutual friend, who knew him thoroughly and loved him even more, reminds me that my first remark after being established here, was, "Now we must have Croswell !" On his first appearance in Christ Church, another of the three who were to me as Noah, Daniel, and Job, said to him, "How do you like Mr. Doane's friend?" Ah," was his prompt reply, "he looks as amiable as Dr. Watts !"

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not dwell upon his beautiful and blessed memory. He was the closest friend I ever had; and half my life went, with him, to the grave. In all the relations of a man, and all the offices of the ministry, he was most exemplary in excellence; but, in that, which is most Christ-like, the preaching of the Gospel, to the poor, he could not be excelled. They wept, by hundreds, at his bier; and hold the remembrance of him, in their heart of hearts, as of a ministering angel.

Of my Father's labours, in connection with the Church newspapers, much must be said, or very little. I must rather choose the latter. He had given a Churchly tone to the Villager, as we have seen. But the full application of his principles to this sort of work began in Hartford, with the Episcopal Watchman. Though not the first Church newspaper, it was among the most fearless and the truest to its principles; which were then by no means the prevailing views, either in the Diocese of its publication, or in the country generally. It was undertaken in March (26) 1827, on the suspension of the "Churchman's Magazine," and the "Gospel Advocate," to disseminate "pure and undefiled religion," in "what is believed to be the scriptural and most effectual way," "the elucidation and defence of the doctrines, discipline and worship of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America." The straightforward, honest avowal of this unpopular truth, "the perfectness of the Gospel only in the Church" pervades the whole publication. Its statement in the opening Address of the Editors, my Father and the Rev. Dr. Croswell, is the one melody, on which all the varied harmonies were played, in Editorials, Reviews, verses, and communications. I give but part

of it.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ, then, is our standard; and its great truths; the fall and corruption of our nature, alienating us from God, and incapacitating us for serving Him acceptably; the mediation, sacrifice, and intercession of His Son Jesus Christ, reconciling us to His favour, by procuring the pardon of our sins, calling us from the darkness of this world into His marvellous light, and enabling us, by the assistances of the Divine Spirit, thus obtained for us, to walk as children of light; the necessity of true repentance, lively faith, and sincere obedience, to secure the blessings of that salvation which Christ has effected for His Church, and assured to all, who, united to it in its appointed ordinances by a living faith, shall walk before him in righteousness and true holiness,―are, in our interpretation of it, the leading principles of that plan of salvation which it unfolds; and to disseminate them more widely, and so to inculcate them upon the heart, that, by the blessing of Him, who giveth the increase, they may become active and dominant in the life, are the results to which our labours aspire.

Taught by the Word of God, thus to look to Jesus Christ as the Author, and, by the "preventing" and assisting graces of His Holy Spirit, the Finisher of our faith, we also learn, from the same inspired