a dozen of folio volumes. It had cost him better than seven years to compose them, he said, and he flattered himself, I well recollect his words, that he had made use of some strong and original arguments, which infidelity would not readily answer. What answer infidelity would have given in writing I know not, but I am sure it would not have been bold enough to have answered him by word of mouth. Good man! he offered me the reading of them, but his writing was so cramp and illegible, that they would have been unintelligible to me. Besides, I did not stand in need of his strong and original arguments. I had no more doubt of the truth of Christianity, than that the sun was made to give light by day, and the moon by night; the bright star of Christian knowledge had shone on my cradle, and I rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

My kindly friend, like Milton, had been a a schoolmaster in early life, and, though not so poetical, was to the full as learned and abstemious as he. He was by far the best classical scholar I ever knew, and Euripides was only less familiar to him than the Bible; he scarcely ever tasted ale, wine, or spirits, and his only relaxation was the tea-table, and hearing his daughter play on the piano-forte. Willing, very likely, to pay court to him, I one evening requested the young lady to

favour me with, "I know that my Redeemer liveth;" and while she played, the happy father sat with clasped hands and eyes upraised to Heaven. Being thus successful in my first essay, I was proceeding to call on her further, but he would not allow her to proceed. "Have done, child," said he; "after those heavenly sounds, the piano must not be profaned with any unhallowed tune." Scarcely have I ever been at an oratorio that this good man did not rise to my mind, and I could not help thinking how shocked he would be, were he living, and to hear sacred and profane music jumbled together, like the gods and mortals in Homer's Iliad, and "Tubal's Lyre," following the "Death of Nelson," and brought up by "Sweet Bird."

He had indeed a too sensitive delicacy, which, though no one dared smile at in his presence, was oftentimes smiled at behind his back. He reformed his daughter's musicbooks in a manner which, as he was less conversant with songs than sermons, was in truth not a little ridiculous. Solicitous to preserve her mind in the most uncontaminated purity, he struck out every expression and word, which, even by inference, could be thought to sully it, and sometimes he was not very happy in his substitutions. But my heart smites me as I write of these things; happy are they

whose only failings, as his were, are on the side of virtue.

This

This excellent man did not die in Strabane, which he loved. Unable, from the scantiness of his income, to put his children properly forward in the world, he was indebted for this and many other acts of kindness, to a sister of his wife's who lived with him. lady was a native of a different part of the kingdom, where she was desirous they should reside; and though poor, Mr. Crawford long resisted, he at length reluctantly complied. The sorrow with which he took leave of a congregation, by whom he was so much loved and honoured, could only be less than that with which we take leave of life. Tears choaked his utterance, as in vain he strove to address them, nor was there I believe a dry eye in the meeting-house. "My sister," said he, as well as he could articulate, "tells me that my removal will add years to her life, and I *shall comply were it even to take years from mine."

That his removal did take years from his life, it would be presumptuous to say, but it is certain, they were afterwards few only and full of trouble. He died when he was sixty years old,

"And, to add greater honours to his age

Than man could give him, he died fearing God."

Well for him it was that he was thus summoned, for he would only have lived to see his family forsaken almost of every earthly good. The daughter for whose happiness, here and hereafter, he was so solicitous, is now with her husband and children a cheerless wanderer in America, nearly destitute I fear of the necessaries of life. A son sailed for the West Indies,. but as the vessel was never heard of, it must have foundered at sea. His wife died of the most excruciating tortures from a cancer, which corroded even to the heart's blood. And the sister, the benefactress, the haughty lady, looked up to, uncontradicted, admired; lived to witness all these sad changes, to survive all her friends as well as comforts, and by a strange vicissitude in her affairs, with the cause of which I am unacquainted, to want the assistance which she had so often given, and to die, if not in poverty, at least in dependence.

Nor has fortune, which proved thus unkind to the good man's family, spared even the roof under which he dwelt. His house is now a barrack, his study a guard-room, and the windows which so often I have seen fragrant with the rose and geranium, I yesterday saw shattered and broken, hung with belts and pouches, and soldiers' coarse shirts. It is only part of a large mansion, which often in times past put me in mind of Buckingham

House, or rather Buckingham House put me in mind of it. The other part has lately been fitted up as a private dwelling, and the mob bled house only looks the more hideous for this. It may be compared, as the ill-fated land to which it belongs not unaptly has been, to a beautiful woman well-dressed to the middle, but her limbs shrunk in poverty, and covered with rags.

This noble pile, as once it was, was built by a gentleman of large fortune, but was never inhabited by him; for it is still a tale that is told, that his proud and vain-glorious wife would not sleep a single night in the mean hovel, as she scornfully termed it. It deserves well to be told, that she lived to suffer the punishment of her folly, in the person of her favourite son. Still more thoughtless and extravagant than herself, he wasted his great possessions, and he, whose mother this magnificent house would not satisfy, passed the latter years of his life in a confined and narrow chamber, on the debtors' side of Omagh gaol.

"You see we are not all alone unhappy.
This wide and universal theatre

Presents more woeful pageants than the scene
Wherein we play."

I shall tell you one story more, and then be done. I shall compress it too, for it is