mons and works which he drew up and published during his long residence in this family. In a few years after his coming hither, Sir Thomas Abney dies; but his amiable consort survives, who shows the Doctor the same respect and friendship as before: and most happily for him, and great numbers besides, (for as her riches were great, her generosity and munificence were in full proportion,) her thread of life was drawn out to a great age, even beyond that of the Doctor's. And thus this excellent man, through her kindness, and that of her daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Abney, who in a like degree esteemed and honoured him, enjoyed all the benefits and felicities he experienced at his first entrance into this family, till his days were numbered and finished, and, like a shock of corn in its season, he ascended into the regions of perfect and immortal life and joy."

Thus was Mr. Watts adopted into a family which loved him for his personal qualities, admired him for his genius, and revered him for his piety. On their side there was no pride of patronage, on his there was no uneasy feeling of dependence. The bond between them was that of entire confidence and esteem; and their mutual regard was heightened on one part by the delight which they experienced in making him happy, on the other, by a full and grateful sense of their constant kindness. A happier situation for one who had made up his mind to celibacy could not be imagined; and such a determination in his case had, no doubt, been early formed, when he became aware, that by intemperance in his youthful studies his constitution had been irretrievably injured; that his life was rendered in consequence more than ordinarily precarious, and that at best he could never hope to be any thing better than a valetudinarian. He was exempt from all the ordinary cares of life, and enabled at perfect leisure to employ himself in the way which he deemed, as it was really, most useful, and which was most in conformity as well with his own inclinations as with his sense of duty.

Sir Thomas Abney had been bred up in dissenting principles. King William knighted him, and he served the office of lord mayor of London in 1700. It is related of him as an evidence of his piety, that on what may be called his own day, "he withdrew silently after supper from the public assembly at Guildhall, went to his own house, performed family worship there, and then returned to the company." His first wife was the daughter of Caryl, whose Commentary on Job it may be deemed a most unquestionable proof of patience in any person to have perused. Sir Thomas was well stricken in years when he married, in the year of his mayoralty, his second wife,-the sister of Mr. Gunston, to whose "dear memory," as a much-honoured friend, Watts had inscribed a poem. Their house at Theobalds adjoined the site of the palace which Burleigh erected for his own residence, and where he so often entertained Elizabeth and her court. Part of a wall was believed to be the only vestige remaining of that palace, where James received the homage of the lords of the council when he came to take possession of the kingdom, and from whence he was carried to his grave. It was demolished by the long parliament, in disregard of the opinion expressed by their own commissioners, that it was an "excellent building, in very good repair, by no means fit to be demolished;" but the materials were valued at more than 8,000Z.; and in the destructive spirit of revolutionary times, this was sufficient motive for its demolition. The gardens in the days of its splendour were of great extent; their labyrinths and fountains had disappeared, and the "nine knots artificially and exquisitely made, one of which was set forth in likeness of the king's arms." But there remained a long moss-walk, overshadowed by two rows of elm-trees; and within a few yards of the entrance of that walk there stood, in Sir Thomas Abney's garden, a summer-house, which fifty years after Watts's death was shown as the place in which he had composed many of his works. The win

dows of that summer-house looked to Theobalds' park. over a large fish-pond, which probably had been made in Burleigh's time. During Watts's life even Stoke Newington had more of a rural than suburban character; but Theobalds was completely a country retirement. London had not travelled in that direction beyond Shoreditch church; it now extends far beyond Cheshunt, on the road to Ware; and the angler who should take Izaak Walton for his guide, would find every thing as much altered,and as little for the better,-as the hostesses who knew so well then how to dress a chub after Piscator's receipt, and the milk-maids whose memories were stored with such choice of good old songs.

"Mr. Watts's usefulness among his flock was in no degree diminished by his residence at Theobalds. It was easy for him, when his health permitted, to officiate in London. There was a carriage at his command, and the family with which he was domesticated being of his own persuasion, were as much interested in this point as himself. If he was disabled by indisposition, there was no cause for uneasiness on that account; his colleague, with whom he always maintained the most uninterrupted friendship, was on the spot to supply his place. When he was incapable of public labour, he refused to receive his salary, and at all times a third part of his income was devoted to charitable uses. In this there was no sacrifice, seeing that all his wants were provided for; but it was proof of a disposition which would have made any sacrifice from the same motives of love towards God and his fellow-creatures.

Perhaps the peculiar position in which he was placed increased both the respect and the affection with which his. congregation regarded him. It made him independent of them; and they looked upon him not in the light of a dependent, upon the wealthy family with which he was domesticated, nor as a humble friend, but, as what in reality he was, one of its members, adopted into it by the special

friendship of one of the wealthiest and most considerable persons attached to the dissenting cause. Indeed, if Sir Thomas Abney appeared to them in the same light as he did to Mr. Watts, they must have thought him not only one of the best, but also one of the greatest men in the nation.

"He had the universal respect due to goodness," says his eulogist, "long before he was made great: and when his fellow-citizens voted him into power and honour, he surveyed the province with a just reluctance, and shrunk away from grandeur: nor could any thing overcome his sincere aversion, but a sense of duty and hopes of public service. He passed through the chief offices of the city, and left a lustre upon them by the practice of such virtue and such piety as the chair of honour has seldom known. Those who have attended that court since the year of his magistracy search the register backwards for twenty annual successions, and confess he has had no rival. While he stood in that eminence, he surveyed the whole nation, took a just view of its wants and its dangers; and by the divine blessing which his daily retirements engaged on his side, he secured the nation's best interest, the exclusion of a child of Rome from the throne of England, and the succession of a protestant government.

"At the appointed season he resigned with pleasure the fatigues of power, the tiresome hours of state, and the tedious train of pomp and equipage; but he daily fulfils the duties of subordinate authority, to the terror of vice, to the support of the good, and to the reformation of a sinful land. He vindicates the poor with courage against the oppression of the mighty, and sends gay criminals to the place of correction. He puts the rich offenders to public shame, as well as the poor, and he doth it with a noble security of soul: so spotless a character fears no recrimination.

"When the days of public show and procession return, he hides himself often at his country seat, and makes every

trifling obstacle a sufficient excuse for his absence from honours, scarlet and gold. But none so zealous and constant in their attendance on the hours of business; and at the honourable board there is no seat empty so seldom as his. Neither gain nor diversion can tempt him aside when the duty of his post requires his presence, and the public weal demands his counsels. His health, his ease, and his estate, are at the call of his country; his life lies ready too for the same service; but his nation gives thanks to Providence, that has not demanded the precious sacrifice."

There is a great want of taste in this high-swoln panegyric; but it presents Sir Thomas Abney in the light in which the author and that fraction of the community which constituted his public, beheld him, without literally believing that the protestant succession was established by him, when lord mayor of London. He was a person whose character supported the respect which his station and wealth obtained for him: and some part of that respect was reflected upon Mr. Watts. Moreover, the congregation felt, that in continuing his services to them as far as his feeble health would permit, he conferred upon them a favour and a kindness which could not be imputed to any motive of interest, or even of his own convenience, but proceeded from his sense of duty, his zeal in the dissenting cause, and his attachment to them: they prized them, therefore, as they ought, the more highly. And they were proud of his growing reputation, for he was then the best preacher among the dissenters, and one of the best of those times. Not that his sermons can be placed in the first, or eveu second rank of such compositions; but they were well adapted to the great purpose of present effect; and they had all the advantages that could be given them by an impressive elocution, and a manner of delivery which with curious felicity seems to have been at the same time elaborately studied, yet earnestly sincere.

"I hate," said he, "the thoughts of making any thing

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