"once more," shall shake not earth only, but also heaven. High destiny! but not his whose portrait we have now drawn.

We have tried to draw his mental, but not his physical likeness. And yet it has all along been blended with our thoughts, like the figure of one known from childhood, like the figure of our own beloved and long-lost father. We see the venerable old man, newly returned from a botanical excursion, laden with flowers and weeds (for no one knew better than he that every weed is a flower-it is the secret of his poetry), with his high narrow forehead, his grey locks, his glancing shoe-buckles, his clean dress somewhat ruffled in the woods, his mild countenance, his simple abstracted air. We, too, become abstracted as we gaze, following in thought the outline of his history-his early struggles-his love-his adventures in London-his journal, where, on the brink of starvation, he wrote the affecting words "O Sally for you”—his rescue by Burkehis taking orders-his return to his native place-his mounting the pulpit stairs, not caring what his old enemies thought of him or his sermon-his marriage—the entry, more melancholy by far than the other, made years after in reference to it, "yet happiness was denied"—the publication of his different works-the various charges he occupied his child-like surprise at getting so much money for the "Tales of the Hall"-his visit to Scotland-his mistaking the Highland chiefs for foreigners, and bespeaking them in bad French-his figure as he went, dogged by the caddie through the lanes of the auld town of Edinburgh, which he preferred infinitely to the new-the "aul' fule" he made of himself in pursuit of a second wife, &c. &c. ; so absent do we become in thinking over all this, that it disturbs his abstraction; he starts, stares, asks us in to his parsonage, and we are about to accept the offer, when we awake, and, lo! it is a dream.

JOHN FOSTER.

THERE are two classes of character of whom the biography is likely to be peculiarly interesting. One includes those whose lives have been passed in the glare of publicity— who have bulked largely in public estimation, and who have mingled much with the leading characters of the age. The life of such includes in it, in fact, a multitude of lives, and turns out to be, not a solitary picture, but an entire gallery of interesting portraits. The other class comprises those of whom the world knows little, but is eager to know much—who, passing their lives in severe seclusion, have, nevertheless, given such assurance of their manhood as to excite in the public mind an intense curiosity to know more of their habits, feelings, and history. Such an one was John Foster. While his works were widely circulated, and produced a profound impression upon the thinking minds of the country, himself was to the majority only Few could tell what he was, or where he livedwhat were the particulars of his outward history, or what had been the course of his mental training. He published little, he seldom appeared at public meetings, his name was never in the newspapers-when he wrote, it was generally in periodicals of limited circulation and sectarian character, and when he preached, it was to small audiences and in obscure villages. There thus hung about him a certain shade of mystery, shaping itself to the colossal estimate of his genius, which prevailed. He appeared a great man under hiding; and while some of his ardent admirers found or forced their way into his grisly den, and ascertained the prominent features of his character and facts in his life, more were left in the darkness of mystification and conjecture. For twenty years, for instance, we ourselves have

a name.

G

been enthusiasts in reference to this writer's genius, and yet, till recently, we never so much as saw his portrait.

The veil has at length been removed. In the interesting volumes before us we find, and principally in his own words, a full and faithful register of the leading events in his life, and of the more interesting movements in his spiritual history. The book is arranged on a plan somewhat similar to that adopted in Carlyle's work on Cromwell. The biography constitutes an intermitting chain between the numerous letters, and is executed in a modest and intelligent manner. Besides his correspondence, there are large and valuable excerpts from his journals, and to the whole are appended interesting though slight notices of his character, from the pen of Mr Sheppard.

Throughout the whole of these volumes we have been impressed with the idea of a mind imperfectly reconciled and indifferently adjusted to the state of society of which it was a part-to the creed to which it had declared its adherence to the very system of things which surrounded it. This is true of many independent and powerful spirits; but in Foster's mind the antagonism has this peculiarity-it is united to deep reverence and to sincere belief. It is not the fruit of any captious or malignant disposition-it does not spring from any sinister motive. The guilty wish is never, with him, the parent of the gloomy thought. The tremendous doubts which oppress him have forced themselves into the sphere of his soul, and hang there as if sustained by the power of some dark enchantment. You see his mind labouring under an eclipse which will not pass away. In contemplation of the mysteries of earth and time, he stands helpless. Indeed, such gloomy cogitations formed so large a part of his mental scenery, and had so long rivetted his gaze, that you can almost conceive him disappointed had they suddenly disappeared. Like the prisoner of Chillon, who, habituated to the gloom of his dungeon, and having made friends with his dismal com

panions, at last "regained his freedom with a sigh," Foster would have stared strangely, and almost unhappily, though it had been at the apparition of the "new heavens and the new earth" arising in room of the present, which his melancholy fancy had so dreadfully discoloured. The causes of this habitual gloom seem to have been complex. In the first place, he was naturally a man of a morbid disposition. His mind fastened and clung to the dark side of every question-to the more rugged horn of each great dilemma―to the shadows, and not to the lights, of every picture. To do this was with him an instinct, which, instead of repressing, he nursed into a savage luxury. Secondly, He was for a large portion of his life a solitary, struggling, and disappointed man-preaching to people who did not understand him, struggling with straitened circumstances, and unsustained, till middle-age, by the sympathy of any female friend. Had a man of his temperament met sooner with the breeze of general and generous appreciation; and, above all, had he found in youth such a kindred and congenial spirit as afterwards, in his accomplished and gifted wife, he had lived a much happier and more useful existence, and taken a kindlier, and, we trust, a truer view of the world and of mankind. Thirdly, As an eloquent writer elsewhere observes, Foster never gave himself a real scientific education, and although possessed of keenest sagacity, never rose into the sphere of a great and a trained philosopher. He was to this what a brave bandit is to a regular soldier. Scientific culture is sure to beget scientific calm. The philosopher is taught to take a wide, comprehensive, dispassionate, and rounded view of things, which never frets his heart, if it often fails to satisfy his intellect. Foster's glimpses of truth, on the contrary, are intense and vivid, but comparatively narrow, and are tantalising in exact proportion to their vividness and intensity. He sees his points in a light so brilliant that it deepens the surrounding darkness. His minute mode of

insight, too, contributed to his melancholy. He looks at objects so narrowly that, as to a microscope, they present nothing but naked and enlarged ugliness. His eye strips away all those fine illusions of distance which are, after all, as real as the nearer and narrower view. This is the curse which blasts him-to see too clearly, and the lens through which he looks becomes truly a "terrible crystal." Like Cassandra, he might well wail for his fatal gift. It is a dowry she got in wrath, and has faithfully transmitted to many besides Foster, who may with her exclaim—

nature.

"O ill to me the lot awarded,

Thou evil Pythian god."

From man, thus too utterly bare before him, he turns away, with a deep pensive joy, to Nature, feeling that she is true, were all else untrue-that she is beautiful, were all else deformed-that she stands innocent and erect, though her tenant has fallen—and, like a child in her mother's arms, does he repose, regaining old illusions, and recalling long-departed dreams of joy. There is something to us peculiarly tender and pathetic in Foster's love of It is not so much an admiration as it is a passionate and perpetual longing. It is not a worship, but a love. He throws his being into nature. It is as if he felt his heart budding in the spring trees, his pulse beating high in the midnight tempest and in the ocean billow, his soul shooting up, like living fire, into Snowdon, as he gazes upon it; or we might almost imagine him the divorced spirit of some lovely scene, yearning and panting after renewed communion, "gazing himself away" into the bosom of nature again, while the murmuring of streams, and the song of breezes, and the waving of pines, were singing of these strange nuptials, the soft epithalamium. He engages in mystic converse with the creation. He seeks for meanings in her mighty countenance, which are not always revealed to him. He asks her awful and unanswered questions. He seems to cry out to the river, "What meanest thou,