CHAP. XXXVI.

THE BISHOP'S LATTER DAYS.

THE old age of Bishop Burgess was the serene and gentle sunset of a life directed to the noblest objects, and influenced by high and holy motives. The vigour of his intellect, and the energy of his application, were very little abated after he had reached that period of life, the usual characteristics of which, to use the forcible words of the Psalmist, are

labour and sorrow." His temperate habits, the placidity of his disposition, and his habitual admixture of active with sedentary pursuits, contributed in no small degree to this immunity from the usual infirmities of advanced age. On his library table, to the close of his life, were sure to be found the newest and most accredited works on Theology and Biblical Criticism, both English and Latin, with the contents of which, in spite of his defect of vision, he made himself master to the full extent required by his own special objects of pursuit and research. Occasionally he was aided in this respect by his Chaplain, Dr. Radcliffe. Treatises of practical piety and devotion were no less sure to be within his reach; and in some of these his written notes

He

attested the care and interest with which they had been perused. Poetry, which had been one of the delights of his youth, lost none of its charms for him after he grew old. To store his memory with its choicest beauties was a practice that never forsook him. Even as late as 1830, when he was in his seventy-second year, he made himself master in this way of the finest sonnets of Milton, and would challenge his niece, whom he had induced to do the same, to a frequent repetition of them. also committed to memory at the same age whole chapters of the Bible. Among the characteristics of his mind, cheerfulness and hope continued predominant, for they were nourished by principles which maintained their vigour and freshness to the last. What was it to him that the shadows of evening were gathering round him, and the day of his mortal pilgrimage hastening to its close? "He knew in whom he had believed," and " his hope was full of immortality." He was fully aware of his advancing infirmities, and of the gradual decay of his physical powers; but the principal regret these changes caused him was the consequent abridgment of his powers of active usefulness, and his increasing disqualification for discharging his Episcopal functions in the spirit of his more vigorous days. The "Comforts of Old Age," written by his friend (the friend, too, of every benevolent object) Sir Thomas Bernard, was a book in which he took much pleasure; and it will be seen by the following