sought help from above, are as certainly encompassed by its sacred radiance.

Of the happy blending of true piety with the love of literature, there is a pleasing instance in our friend's

verses:

TO THE MEMORY OF S. J. PRATT, ESQ.
Departed bard! In this lone spot I feel
The prejudice of frail humanity,

And seek thee in the mansions of the dead.
Pale tenant of the grave! where thou art laid
Supinely slumbering on thy dusty couch,

Boys play at marbles o'er thee, and well pleased
The youngster spins his top upon thy grave,
Trampling unconsciously a poet's dust.
'Twere hard to tell what strange mysterious ties
Unite the dead and living, but when e'er
Press'd by the little cares that trouble life,
The important bustle of this busy world
My hurried feet draw near thy last abode,

I steal a glance and syllable thy name.

Yes! when the clock has toll'd its dreariest sound,
And yawning watchman growled the midnight hour,
Here have I lingered-lonely brooding o'er
Thy desolate dominion-(for as yet

No blooming floweret breathes perfume around,
Nor graven stone stands sentry o'er thy bones).
They say the grave is silent-true! yet thine
Is resonant with morals, and harangues
With the resistless eloquence of death.
Death! what an awful and imperious sound.
The illimitable vapours of the brain
Within this little spot condensed fall;
The thin blown bubbles of poetic pride,
Ambition, fame, and immortality,

Burst when they come in contact with the tomb,
And all their glittering hues are known no more.

I, who so eagerly have drunk thy strains,
Marked thy susceptibility of praise
Thy keen conception of an earthly fame

Too dearly fostered-now could calmly bear
The voice of censure lavishly prolong'd,
And I could well endure, yea smile to see
Thy proudest efforts disregarded lie,
Covered with dust, consumed by the moth
By piecemeal dropping, might one little boon
Be granted me, that I might read thy name
In the fair volume of Eternal Life :-
For various ends we live-in different ways
We close the volume of mortality.

Briefly subdued by agonising pain

'Tis thine, alas! to slumber here—and mine
(A little longer wandering through the world)
To pour this tribute o'er thy mouldering bones:
So, when a rifted pine extended lies,

Some lowly lichen bending o'er the ruin

Twines a green leaf around its blasted boughs.

It had been the fault of the biographer were no instruction derivable from the delineation of a youth of literary tastes and benevolent affections rising to the maturity of life; but he esteems it the special happiness of his task that he has had to show how religious principle was developed and acquired strength, even in the morning of life, until it became dominant, and impressed its character on all besides. The portraiture of our friend now becomes that of a Christian man; having not only the form, but the power of godliness; relying entirely on the mediation of the Son of God for acceptance; receiving "the truth as it is in Jesus" as the means of sanctification; desiring to be changed into "his image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord ;" and looking for perfect happiness to seeing him "as he is."

CHAPTER VII.

MANHOOD.

There is a love! 'tis not the wandering fire
That must be fed on folly or expire.
Then joined and joined for ever, loving, loved,
Life's darkest hours are met, and met unmoved;
Hand linked in hand, the wedded pair pass on,
Through the world's changes still unchanging, one;
On earth, one heart, one hope, one joy, one gloom,
One closing hour, one undivided tomb.

MOGRIDGE.

ESCAPES FROM

MR. MOGRIDGE, A PARTNER WITH HIS BROTHER. HIS MARRIAGE.-A
MANUSCRIPT PERIODICAL. ARTISTIC ABILITY.
SERIOUS INJURY AND DEATH.-MR. MOGRIDGE'S FAMILY.-DEATH
OF MRS. MOGRIDGE. THE GRAVE.

THE eldest son of Mr. Matthias Mogridge had now been some years in business in Birmingham, as a wholesale dealer in japan ware; and about the year 1811, he took his brother George into partnership with him.

The product of his pen just employed as a motto, is one of many conveying the same sentiment. With a nature exquisitely sensitive, and affections of no ordinary strength, he could not have lived alone. Like Sydney Smith, he found all he sought in Miss Elizabeth Bloomer, a friend and school-fellow of his beloved sister Mary; but he was not in the condition of that

wit, who when engaged to Miss Pybus, ran into the room where she was, flung in her lap six small silver spoons, "the ghosts of their former selves," and said: "There Kate, you lucky girl, I give, you all my fortune;" for Mr. Mogridge was likely at that period to maintain his wife in all the comforts of competence. We think that Johnson was right when he said, "Every man is a worse man in proportion as he is unfit for marriage," and that Mr. Mogridge was specially qualified to wear the bonds which the apostle declares should be "honourable in all." The lady in question was entirely worthy of the affection she excited, and recalls the remark, that "marriage would be more frequently happy, if young ladies spent less time in making nets than in making cages." The marriage took place in the spring of 1812.

Literary feeling was strengthened rather than diminished by this new relation. The poet Campbell, when a young man, proposed to start a magazine, in alliance with a few of his old friends, of which he, the editor in fore, would not hesitate to undertake three-fourths of the letter-press, and the scheme was not carried out, because no publisher would risk his capital on its issue. Mr. Mogridge avoided this difficulty; and engaged to provide for his friends, a manuscript serial which he, single-handed, was to produce. Many of the parts of this work are now lying before us, which bears the following title: "The Local Miscellany, a

Collection of original unpublished Manuscripts, to be continued monthly." Its papers are characterised by great variety: poetry and prose; the sacred and the secular; incidents, descriptions of persons and scenes, appeals and reasonings are all here; discovering not only a strong sense of the importance of turning to account scraps of time, but no inconsiderable ingenuity and ability. With the interest and profit of others before him as one great object, Mr. Mogridge was evidently concerned for his own personal improvement, in any corrections of his opinions, or emendations of his style, as he earnestly sought the critical remarks of his friends among whom his "serial" was circulated. It is amusing to observe the kindly pertinacity with which he urges such observations upon them; and the penalty he inflicts in one instance. In the preface to the number referred to, he alludes to "the silence" of his readers, and adds: "We therefore beg respectfully to inscribe the three following pages to our correspondents as an abundant acknowledgment of all the remarks they have favoured us with, on the last number we issued." It is scarcely necessary to say that the three pages, though neatly ruled, contain not a single word.

The manuscript volume, already referred to,* was not a little curious as the production of the pen of Mr. Mogridge's great-grandfather, when he was twenty-six