useful; "for," said he, "you can do nothing for me." All that could be done was to fan him with paper, and frequently to give him lemonade to alleviate his intense thirst. He was in great pain, and expressed much anxiety for the event of the action, which now began to declare itself. As often as a ship struck, the crew of the Victory hurraed; and at every hurra, a visible expression of joy gleamed in the eyes, and marked the countenance of the dying hero. But he became impatient to see Hardy; and as that officer, though often sent for, could not leave the deck, Nelson feared that some fatal cause prevented him, and repeatedly cried: "Will no one bring Hardy to me? he must be killed! he is surely dead!" An hour and ten minutes elapsed from the time when Nelson received his wound, before Hardy could come to him. They shook hands in silence: Hardy in vain struggling to suppress the feelings of that most painful and yet sublimest moment. Well, Hardy," said Nelson, "how goes the day with us?" "Very well,” replied Hardy; "ten ships have struck, but five of the van have tacked, and show an intention to bear down upon the Victory. I have called two or three of our fresh ships round, and have no doubt of giving them a drubbing." "I hope," said Nelson, “none of our ships have struck." Hardy answered, "there was no fear of that." Then, and not till then, Nelson spoke of himself. "I am a dead man, Hardy," said he; "I am going fast: it will be all over with me soon. Come nearer to me. Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair, and all other things belonging to me." Hardy observed, that he hoped Mr Beatty could yet hold out some prospect of life. "Oh! no," he replied; "it is impossible. My back is shot through. Beatty will tell you so." Hardy then, once more, shook hands with him, and with a heart almost bursting, hastened upon deck.

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By this time all feeling below the breast was gone; and Nelson, having made the surgeon ascertain this, said to him: "You know I am gone. I know it. I feel something rising in my breast," putting his hand on his left side," which tells me so." And upon Beatty's inquiring whether his pain was very great, he replied, great, that he wished he was dead. Yet," said he, in a lower voice, one would like to live a little longer too!" And after a few minutes, in the same under-tone, he added: "What would become of poor Lady Hamilton, if she knew my situation!" Next to his country she occupied his thoughts. Captain Hardy, some fifty minutes after he had left the cockpit, returned; and, again taking the hand of his dying friend and commander, congratulated him on having gained a complete victory. How many of the enemy were taken he did not know, as it was impossible to perceive them distinctly; but fourteen or fifteen at least. "That's well," cried Nelson, “but I bargained for twenty." And then, in a stronger voice, he said: "Anchor, Hardy; anchor." Hardy, upon this, hinted that Admiral Collingwood would take upon himself the direction of affairs. "Not while I live, Hardy," said the dying

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FINAL DEPARTURE OF NELSON FROM ENGLAND, ETC. Nelson, ineffectually endeavouring to raise himself from the bed: "do you anchor." His previous orders for preparing to anchor had shown how clearly he foresaw the necessity of this. Presently, calling Hardy back, he said to him in a low voice, “Don't throw me overboard;" and he desired that he might be buried by his parents, unless it should please the king to order otherwise. Then reverting to private feelings: "Take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy take care of poor Lady Hamilton. Kiss me, Hardy," said he. Hardy knelt down and kissed his cheek; and Nelson said, "Now I am satisfied. Thank God I have done my duty!" Hardy stood over him in silence for a moment or two, then knelt again and kissed his forehead. "Who is that?" said Nelson; and being informed, he replied, "God bless you, Hardy." And Hardy then left him-for ever. Nelson now desired to be turned upon his right side, and said, "I wish I had not left the deck; for I shall soon be gone." Death was, indeed, rapidly approaching. He said to the chaplain, "Doctor, I have not been a great sinner;" and after a short pause, "Remember that I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter Horatia as a legacy to my country." His articulation now became difficult; but he was distinctly heard to say, "Thank God, I have done my duty!" These words he repeatedly pronounced; and they were the last words which he uttered. He expired at thirty minutes after four,-three hours and a quarter after he had received his wound.

The death of Nelson was felt in England as something more than a public calamity: men started at the intelligence, and turned pale, as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend. An object of our admiration and affection, of our pride and of our hopes, was suddenly taken from us; and it seemed as if we had never till then known how deeply we loved and reverenced him. What the country had lost in its great naval hero-the greatest of our own and of all former times was scarcely taken into the account of grief. So perfectly, indeed, had he performed his part, that the maritime war, after the battle of Trafalgar, was considered at an end. The fleets of the enemy were not merely defeated, but destroyed; new navies must be built, and a new race of seamen reared for them, before the possibility of their invading our shores could again be contemplated. It was not, therefore, from any selfish reflection upon the magnitude of our loss that we mourned for him: the general sorrow was of a higher character. The people of England grieved that funeral ceremonies, and public monuments, and posthumous rewards, were all which they could now bestow upon him whom the king, the legislature, and the nation would have alike delighted to honour; whom every tongue would have blessed; whose presence in every village through which he might have passed would have wakened the church-bells, have given schoolboys a holiday, have drawn children from their sports to gaze upon him, and "old men from the chimneycorner "to look upon Nelson ere they died. The victory of Trafalgar was celebrated, indeed, with the usual forms of rejoicing, but

they were without joy; for such already was the glory of the British navy, through Nelson's surpassing genius, that it scarcely seemed to receive any addition from the most signal victory that ever was achieved upon the seas; and the destruction of this mighty fleet, by which all the maritime schemes of France were totally frustrated, hardly appeared to add to our security or strength; for, while Nelson was living to watch the combined squadrons of the enemy, we felt ourselves as secure as now, when they were no longer in existence.

There was reason to suppose, from the appearances upon opening his body, that in the course of nature he might have attained, like his father, to a good old age. Yet he cannot be said to have fallen prematurely whose work was done; nor ought he to be lamented, who died so full of honours, and at the height of human fame. The most triumphant death is that of the martyr; the most awful, that of the martyred patriot; the most splendid, that of the hero in the hour of victory; and if the chariot and the horses of fire had been vouchsafed for Nelson's translation, he could scarcely have departed in a brighter blaze of glory. He has left us, not indeed his mantle of inspiration, but a name and an example which are at this hour inspiring thousands of the youth of England-a name which is our pride, and an example which will continue to be our shield and our strength. Thus it is that the spirits of the great and the wise continue to live and to act after them.

XII. DR CHALMERS.

THOMAS CHALMERS was born in 1780 at Anstruther, a small fishingtown on the coast of Fife. At an early age he was sent to the University of St Andrews, where he went through the usual curriculum of study; and, though under the age at which licence was ordinarily conferred, a special exemption was made in his case, as he was (to use his own words) "a lad of pregnant pairts." He was at this time enthusiastically devoted to the study of mathematics and the physical sciences; and after prosecuting his favourite study in Edinburgh, he became assistant to the Professor of Mathematics in St Andrews. He was also appointed pastor of Kilmany, a small parish near the university, and discharged his clerical duties with characteristic vigour, though other pursuits evidently lay nearer his heart. He lectured on chemistry, served in the volunteers, speculated in political economy, and published an "Enquiry into the National Resources." In 1809 a dangerous illness led him to think more seriously of the responsibilities of his solemn office, and his energies were from that time forward unceasingly devoted to his official duties. His growing reputation as a pulpit orator led to his removal in 1815 to a more important sphere of labour in Glasgow, where his eloquence attracted round him crowds from all quarters, and where his untiring zeal for the amelioration of the poor found a wide scope for exercise. In 1823

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he removed to St Andrews where he had been appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy; and in 1828 he was transferred to the Chair of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh. This post he continued to hold till the secession of the Free Church party, who appointed him to the same office in their Theological College. He was found dead in bed May 31, 1847. The works of Dr Chalmers are very numerous : the chief are" Natural Theology" (one of the Bridgewater Treatises); "Christian Evidences;" "Astronomical Sermons ;""Lectures on the Romans;" "Commercial Discourses;" various volumes of sermons and works on " Parochial Economy,' "Church Extension," &c. Since his death, "Sunday Readings" and "Daily Scripture Readings have also appeared. His works are on the whole valuable rather to the general reader than to the theological student; they are remarkable not so much for their profoundness or originality, as for their vigour of thought, force of language, and variety of illustration. What, however, most commends him to the reader is the sincerity of his religious convictions, and that broad catholic spirit and ardent desire for the benefit of his fellow-men which will long perpetuate his name in Scotland.

1. THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF VISIBLE THINGS.

Even those objects which men are most apt to count upon as imperishable, because, without any sensible decay, they have stood the lapse of many ages, will not weather the lapse of eternity. This earth will be burnt up. The light of yonder sun will be extinguished. These stars will cease from their twinkling. The heavens will pass away as a scroll: and as to those solid and enormous masses which, like the firm world we tread upon, roll in mighty circuit through the immensity around us, it seems the solemn language of revelation, of one and of all of them, that from the face of Him who sitteth on the throne, the earth and the heavens will fly away, and there will be found no place for them.

Even apart from the Bible, the eye of observation can witness in some of the hardest and firmest materials of the present system the evidence of its approaching dissolution. What more striking, for example, than the natural changes which take place on the surface of the world, and which prove that the strongest of Nature's elements must at last yield to the operation of time and of decay,-that yonder towering mountain, though propped by the rocky battlements which surround it, must at last sink under the power of corruption, that every year brings it nearer to its end, that, at this moment, it is wasting silently away, and letting itself down from the lofty eminence it now occupies, that the torrent which falls from its side never ceases to consume its substance, and to carry it off in the form of sediment to the ocean,-that the frost which assails it in winter loosens the solid rock, detaches it in pieces from the main precipice, and makes it fall in fragments to its base,—that the power of the weather scales off the most flinty materials, and that the wind of heaven scatters them in dust over the surrounding country,—that

even though not anticipated by the sudden and awful convulsions of the day of God's wrath, nature contains within itself the rudiments of decay, that every hill must be levelled with the plains, and every plain be swept away by the constant operation of the rivers which run through it,-and that, unless renewed by the hand of the Almighty, the earth on which we are now treading must disappear in the mighty roll of ages and of centuries? We cannot take our flight to other worlds, or have a near view of the changes to which they are liable. But surely if this world, which, with its mighty apparatus of continents and islands, looks so healthful and so firm after the wear of many centuries, is posting visibly to its end, we may be prepared to believe that the principles of destruction are also at work in other provinces of the visible creation-and that though of old God laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of His hands, yet they shall perish; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment, and as a vesture shall He change them, and they shall be changed.

But there is another way in which the objects that are seen are temporal. The object may not merely be removed from us, but we may be removed from the object. The disappearance of this earth, and of these heavens from us, we look upon through the dimness of a far-placed futurity. It is an event, therefore, which may regale our imagination; which may lift our mind by its sublimity; which may disengage us, in the calm hour of meditation, from the littleness of life, and of its cares; and which may even throw a clearness and a solemnity over our intercourse with God. But such an event as this does not come home upon our hearts with the urgency of a personal interest. It does not carry along with it the excitement which lies in the nearness of an immediate concern. It does not fall with such vivacity upon our conceptions, as practically to tell on our pursuits or any of our purposes. It may elevate and solemnize us; but this effect is perfectly consistent with its having as little influence on the walk of the living, and the moving, and the acting man, as a dream of poetry. The preacher may think that he has done great things with his eloquence, and the hearers may think that great things have been done upon them; for they felt a fine glow of emotion when they heard of God sitting in the majesty of His high counsels over the progress and the destiny of created things. But the truth is, that all this kindling of devotion which is felt upon the contemplation of His greatness may exist in the same bosom with an utter distaste for the holiness of His character; with an entire alienation of the heart and of the habits from the obedience of His law; and above all, with a most nauseous and invincible contempt for the spiritualities of that revelation, in which He has actually made known His will and His ways to us. The devotion of mere taste is one thing, the devotion of principle is another. And as surely as a man may weep over the elegant sufferings of poetry, yet add to the real sufferings of life by peevishness in his family and insolence among his neighbours; so