therefore determined to withdraw from all public business, to spend the small remainder of existence with my little family, and amuse myself with the book and the pen.'

Hutton's nature was too vigorous to remain long under such morbid impressions, and though he continued to be suspected and distrusted as a Jacobin, neither his activity nor his enjoyment of life was seriously affected. He resigned his business as stationer to his son, but he could find little satisfaction away from the warehouse, and every morning, for many years, he walked from Bennett's Hill to town, and spent the day with the same assiduity as when making his fortune. He was a great pedestrian, and his feats, when an old man, were the surprise and alarm of his friends. In his seventy-seventh year, on the 4th July 1800, he set out on foot from Birmingham to make a survey of the Roman Wall. His daughter accompanied him as far as Penrith, riding on a pillion behind a servant, meeting her father in the evening at some appointed inn. He marched from the Solway along the line of the wall to Wallsend, and then back again from Newcastle to Carlisle, 'having,' he says, 'crossed the kingdom twice in one week and six hours, melted with a July sun, and without a drop of rain. By easy marches I arrived at Birmingham, 7th August, after a loss on my part of perhaps one stone weight by perspiration, a lapse of thirty-five days, and a walk of 601 miles.' His daughter describes his manner of walking as 'a steady saunter, by which he got over the ground at the rate of full two miles and a half in an hour. The pace he went did not even fatigue his shoes. He walked the whole 600 miles in one pair, and scarcely made a hole in his stockings.'

William Hutton closed his useful and, on the whole, happy life on the 20th September 1815, at the advanced age of ninety-two. He left an autobiography, giving minute particulars of his habits and career, and in many respects it is not unworthy of a place alongside Franklin's.

REV. GEORGE WHITEFIELD.

Whitefield was the most effective pulpit orator of last century, and perhaps of any century. He was thoroughly in earnest, and shrank from none of the toils and privations incident to what he thought his path of duty. His voice excelled both in melody and compass. He had a good figure and a fine countenance, and his gestures were always appropriate and full of grace. Franklin, who heard him frequently, learned to distinguish easily between his sermons newly composed, and those which he had often preached in the course of his travels. His delivery of the latter,' he 6 says, was so improved by frequent repetition, that every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of the voice was so perfectly well turned and well placed, that, without being interested in the subject, one could not help being well pleased with the discourse; a pleasure of much the same kind which one receives from an excellent piece of music.'

Whitefield was born in 1714, at the Bell Inn, in the city of Gloucester. He gave his boyhood a very bad character after the common practice of eminent pietists. His mother was early left a widow, and as soon as George was able, he assisted her in the public-house, and in the end 'put on his

REV. GEORGE WHITEFIELD.

blue apron and his snuffers [scoggers or sleeves], washed mops, cleaned rooms, and became a professed and common drawer.' This drudgery was a condition of necessity, not of choice. He had been at a grammar-school, his fine voice had been so praised that he had been tempted to try the stage, and his religious feelings impelled him to the service of the church. Hearing how cheaply a young man might live at Oxford as a servitor, he entered the university at the age of eighteen in that capacity. The students called Methodists, because they lived by rule and method, were then exciting great attention, and Whitefield's heart yearned towards them, and after a while he passed into their fellowship, and rivalled the most ardent in devotion and austerity. 'God only knows,' he writes, "how many nights I have lain upon my bed groaning under what I felt. Whole days and weeks have I spent in lying prostrate on the ground in silent or vocal prayer.' He chose the worst food, and affected mean apparel; he made himself remarkable by leaving off powder in his hair, when every one else was powdered, because he thought it unbecoming a penitent; and he wore woollen gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes, as visible signs of humility. He would kneel under the trees in Christ's Church, walk in silent prayer, shivering the while with cold, till the great bell summoned him to his college for the night. He kept Lent so strictly that, except on Saturdays and Sundays, his only food was coarse bread and sage-tea, without sugar. The end was, that before the termination of the forty days, he had scarcely strength enough left to creep up stairs, and was under a physician for many weeks.

He was ordained deacon in 1736, and after several engagements as curate, sailed for Georgia at the invitation of Wesley. At the end of a year he returned to England, to solicit subscriptions for an orphan-house he had established in Savannah, and which continued to be one of the chief cares of his life. His eloquence was in nothing more apparent than in the ease with which he drew money from the unwilling and indifferent. From a London audience he once took a thousand pounds, then considered a prodigious subscription. Prudence in the person of Franklin could not resist his persuasive appeals. Franklin disapproved of the orphan-house at Savannah, thinking Philadelphia the proper place for its erection, and he says: 'I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five pistoles in gold. As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the copper; another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that, and determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably, that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and all.'

Whitefield's life was spent as a travellingpreacher. He generally made a yearly round through England and Scotland, and went several times to Ireland. He repeatedly visited America, and traversed the whole extent of the British possessions there. Wherever he appeared, crowds flocked to listen to him. In London, he sometimes preached early in the morning, and in the dark and cold of winter the streets near the chapel used to be thronged with eager listeners bearing lanterns in their hands. When he took his departure from a place, he was usually followed by a troop of

REV. GEORGE WHITEFIELD.

A CONTEST FOR PRECEDENCE.

weeping disciples. In Bristol, especially, the feryour he awakened was extraordinary. There, the churches being closed against him, he commenced preaching in the fields to the savage colliers of Kingswood. His first open-air sermon was preached on the afternoon of Saturday, 17th February 1739, upon a mount, in a place called Rose Green, to an audience of about two hundred. He repeated the experiment, and enormous congregations grew around him. The deep silence of his rude auditors was the first proof that he had impressed them, and soon he saw white gutters made by the tears which plentifully fell down their black cheeksblack as they came out of their coal-pits. "The open firmament above me,' says he, 'the prospect of the adjacent fields, with the sight of thousands and thousands, some in coaches, some on horseback, and some in the trees, and at times all affected and drenched in tears together; to which sometimes was added the solemnity of the approaching evening, was almost too much for, and quite overcame

me.'

The triumphs of many popular preachers have been confined to the vulgar, but the cultivated, and even the sceptical, confessed Whitefield's power. Hume, Chesterfield, and Bolingbroke heard him with surprise and admiration; and the Countess of Huntingdon, who made him her chaplain, introduced him to the highest circles of rank and fashion. He cast his lot among the Methodists, but his aim was to preach the gospel, and not to build up a sect. With Wesley he differed on the question of freewill-Wesley being an Arminian, and Whitefield a Calvinist; but Whitefield, though steadfast in his opinions, was not disposed to waste his energy in wrangling with his able coadjutor. Whitefield by eminence was a preacher; Wesley was more than a preacher-he was a first-rate administrator, and the great religious organisation which bears his name is the attestation of his peculiar genius.

Like Wesley, Whitefield entertained some odd notions about marriage, which, as little in the one case as the other, contributed to happiness. While he was in America in the spring of 1740, he applied to two of his friends, a Mr D. and Mrs D., to ask if they would give him their daughter to wife, at the same time telling them, that they need not be afraid of sending him a refusal, for I bless God,' said he, if I know anything of my own heart, I am free from that foolish passion which the world calls love. I write, only because I believe it is the will of God, that I should alter my state; but your denial will fully convince me that your daughter is not the person appointed by God for me. But I have sometimes thought Miss E. would be my helpmate, for she has often been impressed upon my heart.' The proposal came to nothing, and the following year he was married in England to Mrs James of Abergavenny, a widow, who was between thirty and forty, and, by his own account, neither rich nor beautiful, but having once been gay, was now 'a despised follower of the Lamb. They had one child, who died in infancy, and their union was not full of pleasantness. They did not live happily together, and her death in 1768 set his mind much at rest.'

Whitefield died in America, at Newbury Port, near Boston, on Sunday morning, 30th September 1770, at the age of fifty-six.

A CONTEST FOR PRECEDENCE.

Sir John Finett, master of ceremonies to the two first monarchs of the Stuart dynasty that sat on the throne of England, wrote a curious work, entitled Choice Observations touching the Reception and Precedence of Foreign Ambassadors. This book, though to us, at the present day, merely an amusing account of court squabbles and pretensions to precedence, was a very important treatise in the ideas of its author; who, if he had lived a little earlier, might have passed as the prototype of Polonius. One great difficulty, never settled in Finett's lifetime, was the placing of the French and Spanish ambassadors, each claiming precedence of the other. James I., on some public festivals, solved the problem by inviting neither of them; but this could not always be done, and so, for many years, the principal courts of Europe were disturbed by unseemly broils between the representatives of France and Spain. At last, the long struggle came to a crisis, formal complaints and courtly protocols being supplemented by swords and pistols; and the battle, which settled the much-disputed point, was fought in the streets of London.

In September 1661, an ambassador from Sweden was expected to arrive at the court of Whitehall. The etiquette and custom then used on the arrival of an ambassador, was for the king's barge to meet him at Gravesend, and convey him up the river to Tower-wharf. He was then received in the king's carriage, his own carriage following next in order, and after that the carriages of the other ambassadors, according to their national precedence. On this occasion, the Marquis d'Estrade, the French ambassador, determined that his carriage should follow next to the Swede's, and the Baron de Batteville, the Spanish ambassador, having made an exactly similar determination, preparations were made for a contest. And, as the populace of London might readily be expected to take part in the fray, the ambassadors applied to King Charles, who, very complaisantly, issued a proclamation, forbidding any Englishman, under penalty of death, from interfering with the quarrel; the ambassadors promising, on their parts, that firearms should not be used.

The 30th of September, the day appointed for the Swedish envoy's reception, having arrived, Tower-hill was crowded with an immense number of the lower classes, anxious to witness the fight; while a strong body of horse and foot guards were posted in the same locality, to prevent any action on the part of the spectators. The hour appointed for the ambassador to land was three o'clock in the afternoon; but the Spanish carriage, guarded by fifty men, armed with swords, was on the wharf five hours earlier, thus obtaining an advantageous position. The French carriage, arriving a little fater than its Spanish rival, did not acquire so good a position; it was better guarded, however, being accompanied by one hundred men on foot, and fifty on horseback, most of the latter, in defiance of the arrangement made with the king, being armed with pistols and carabines. All was quiet, till the Swedish ambassador, having landed and been received in the king's carriage, was driven off, his own carriage following. A desperate struggle then commenced. The Spaniards forming across the road to bar the passage of the French, the latter fired a volley,

(DESCRIPTIVE.)

CTOBER

IT is now yellow autumn, no longer divided from summer by the plumy sheaf and lingering flowers, but with features of its own, marked with slow decay. There is a rich hectic red on its cheek, too beautiful to last long, and every wind that blows pales the crimson hue, or scatters its beauty on the empty air, for everywhere around us the leaves are falling. But

SPENSER.

through the openings autumn makes in the foliage, many new beauties are revealed-bits of landscape, which the long close-woven leaves had shut out, of far-away spots, that look like a new country, so strange do they appear when seen for the first time through the faded and torn curtains which have shaded summer. Hill and valley, spire and thatched grange, winding highways and brown bends, over the meadows-with stiles and hedges-shew fresh footpaths, which we have never walked along, and make us long to look at the unvisited places to which they lead. We see low clumps of evergreens, which the tall trees had hidden; nests in hedges, where we were before unable to find one;

and in the orchards a few hardy apples still hang, which only the frost can ripen. The fields seem to look larger, where we saw the grass mown and the corn reaped, for we can now see the bottoms of the hedges. The cherry-trees look as beautiful to the eye as they did when in blossom, such a rich scarlet dyes the leaves, mingled every here and there with golden touches. The elders are still covered with dark purple berries, especially the branches which overhang the water-courses, and are beyond the reach of the villagers. We see flags and rushes and water-plants rocking in the breeze, and reflected in the ripples which were hidden by the entangling grass that now lies matted together, and is beginning to decay. As evening approaches, the landscape seems to assume a sober hue, the colours of the foliage become subdued, and the low sighing of the wind, the call of the partridge, and the few notes uttered by the remaining birds, fall upon the ear with a sad sound at times, and produce a low feeling, which we are seldom sensible of at the change of any other season of the year.

There is still one out-of-door scene beautiful to look at and pleasant to walk through, and that is hop-picking the last ingathering of autumn that finds employment for the poor; nor are there many prettier English pictures to be seen than a well-managed hop-plantation. The smell of the hop is very delightful, so different from that of new hay and hawthorn-buds, yet quite as refreshing. What a beautiful motion there is in the light and shadow when the breeze stirs the vine-shaped leaves, and the golden coloured hops swaying the bine to and fro, and sharp quiverings in the open net-work where they cross each other, and all pervaded with a soothing aroma, that makes the blood stir like the smell of the rising sap in a forest at spring-time! Merry people, too, are the hop-pickers, whether at their work, or when going or returning from the hop-plantations. The little huts they run up to sleep in, their places of cooking, washing, and other domestic contrivances, tell that they belong to the race who have heralded the way into many a wilderness, lived there, and founded colonies, that are now springing up into great nations. We see them travelling to the hop-grounds with baby on back, and leading children by the hand, carrying cradle and bed, saucepan and kettle, and no doubt nearly everything their humble home contained. We look on and wonder how those tiny bare feet will ever tramp so far, yet while turning the head and watching them, we see them go pit-pat over the ground, three or four steps to the one or two longer strides of their parents, caring no more for the gravel than if they were shod with iron, and we are astonished to see what a way they have gone while we have been watching. Sometimes, in the hop-grounds, we have seen a cradle with the baby asleep in it, swinging between the tall hop-bines, and thought what a pretty picture it would make, if well painted! Often, in the neighbourhood of Farnham, the hop attains the height of from fourteen to sixteen feet, and excepting between a clear hazel-copse, when the leaves are yellowed by autumn, we know nothing more beautiful to walk among than these tall swaying bines. It flowers in June, and in favourable seasons is ripe in September, though many hops remain to be picked in the early part of the present month. There are

several varieties of hops grown, known as the redbind, green-bind, and white-bind; the first of which, though producing small cones, is a hardy plant, and resists the attacks of insects; while the second is very productive in a good season, and will flourish better in a poor soil than the white bind, which is the most difficult of all to grow, and realises the highest price of all the hops. Good practised growers fix upon the time for hop-picking when the cones throw out a strong peculiar scent, which they know the moment the air is filled with it, and they pay more regard to this powerful aroma than they do to the looks of the hops. Nor is it at hoppicking-time only that this beautiful plant gives employment to the poor, though that is the chief season, for in spring the ground has to be well stirred and drawn up about the young shoots; then the poles must be placed in the ground about the end of April, when the shoots are generally five or six inches high. And after all this is done, the shoots must be tied to the poles as they grow higher, and this must be done very lightly and carefully, for if fastened too tight, the shoot would decay, come off, and send out fresh ones from below, which would attain no height, be dwindled, and not bear a bunch of cones worth the gathering. The wild-hop, which may be seen romping about our hedges, is indigenous, and pretty it looks amid the other climbing-plants, many of which bear beautiful berries, nor is there any record of its having been cultivated before the reign of Henry VIII. It was, however, imported from the Low Countries, and used for brewing in England, as early as 1428.

To an observant eye, many little changes are presented, which shew how rapidly autumn is advancing. The flocks are now driven to the fold of an evening, for the nights are becoming too cold and damp for them to remain in the fields, and they will soon be enclosed in ground set apart for their winter-feeding. It is a pleasant sight to see them rush out of the fold of a morning after their confinement, then hurry on and break their closed ranks to feed here and there on the unpalatable and scanty pasturage. Turn wherever we may, we see the face of Nature changing; nowhere does it now wear its old summer-look, the very sound of the falling leaves causes us to feel thoughtful, and many a solemn passage of the Holy Bible passes through the mind, telling us that the time will come when we also 'shall fade as a leaf the wind has taken away. And all thou hast shall fall down as the leaf falleth from the vine.' shall soon be 'as oaks when they cast their leaves,' and at no other season of the year do these solemn truths strike us so forcibly as in autumn. As the fallen leaves career before us-crumbling ruins of summer's beautiful halls-we cannot help thinking of those who have perished-who have gone before us, blown forward to the grave by the icy blasts of Death. The scenery of spring awakens no such emotions, there is no sign of decay there, for all seems as if fresh springing into life, after the long sleep of winter. But now, even the sun seems to be growing older, he rises later and sets earlier, as if requiring more rest, instead of increasing in heat and brightness, as he did when the butter-cups looked up at him and flashed back gold for gold. Yet we know this natural decay is necessary to produce the life and beauty of a coming spring,

That we