1 841-1846.] 



RETROSPECT. 



95 



poor than the rich : and have far more pleasure in their 

 society, because I can always converse with them on im- 

 portant subjects, without the restraints of formality which 

 make visiting among great people a tax of duty rather than 

 a pleasure to me. You must excuse so much about myself 

 and my views. I am always glad to hear how they strike 

 others, and feel the difficulties of the knowledge of duty quite 

 enough to make me wish for advice from all quarters. " 



After leaving Stand, he wrote to his friend the Rev. Arthur 

 Dean, to whose care he had entrusted engravings of his father 

 and of the monument to him : " I am extremely glad to find 

 that they were acceptable to the congregation. It will be a 

 source of real pleasure to me to think that they can look at 

 those memorials of one so truly good, so heavenly in his 

 spirit, as my father. And if they connect the name with the 

 remembrance of his son, I cannot but feel pleased with the 

 remembrance, though the connexion is humbling to me. If 

 the people have found anything to admire in my conduct, they 

 know not what a faint imitation it is of the example under 

 which I lived ; and if they knew me better than any of them 

 do, they would see how unworthy I am of the office which 

 I hold, and the name I bear. While others have praised me, 

 the praise has cut to my heart as the most stinging censure. 

 . . . You seek to cheer me by the faith that no good effort 

 is ever lost ; I assure you it is to me a living faith. I feel quite 

 able to commit to God everything I do in His service. But 

 then the mourning is that so little is done in His service. I am 

 humbled and surprised at the proofs of affection among my 

 late people. Considering the numerous ways in which I have 

 crossed their wishes, offended their prejudices, grazed their 

 wounds, lashed their sloth, held them up to public censure, and 

 in some instances been faithful in private reproof, it is amazing 

 to me that they have borne so much * and loved so much. I 



* " My plan," he wrote* "has always been to have everything out at the 

 time, at any expense of pride or uncomfortableness, and I have always 

 found it work well ; so that I think I have made fewer enemies here than 

 was to be expected, considering my mode of conduct. " 



