I had not seen him for more than thirty years, having never, during all that time, revisited my native place in Yorkshire. Now I probably never shall; for the only other person, with whom I had maintained any communication, Mr. Fawcett (son of Dr. Fawcett, my old tutor), a friend of my youth, of about the same age, and a very valuable man, lately went the way of all the earth. The unlooked-for intelligence did cause me a very pensive feeling; it broke the last link of my connection with the scenes and society of my early life; all would be strange and foreign to me if I were to go thither now; very few persons alive with whom I was ever in any sense acquainted; perhaps not one with whom it would not be mutually a difficult effort to retrace any thing in person that either had ever seen before. The very localities, I am told by one who has rather lately been there, are strangely transformed-roads turned; woods cut down; free open tracts occupied and built upon; romantic glens, where I had so many solitary rambles along by their wild brooks, profaned, as I should then have called it, if I could have anticipated such a change, by manufactories, and the swarming, noisy activity of a population of a temperament infinitely alien from reflective, pensive, and imaginative musings.

"It is in vain to wonder-on supposition those scenes had not become changed, and that I were now to revisit them, and wander alone a number of hours in one or another of them-how I should feel now / in comparison (if I had remembrance enough to make the comparison) with the feelings of those times. But how emphatic would the consciousness be, that though they were the same, I was prodigiously changed! Though the feelings of the early time might have often been pensive, tinged with a degree of melancholy, still there was the vital substratum, so to call it, of youth and anticipation. An interval of more than forty years makes all the difference between the morning of life and its evening; the mind in the one position, occupied with imagination, conjecture, possibilities, resolutions, hopes;-in the other looking back to see that visionary speculation reduced to the humility of an experience and reality, in which there is much to regret and much for self-reproach; and looking forward to behold, in near approach, another future, of how different an aspect from that presented to the youthful spirit! Here, my friend, we stand, yourself at no great distance behind me. What a solemn and mighty difference it is, that whereas we then beheld LIFE before us, we now behold DEATH. Oh, what cause for earnest care, and strife, and supplication to heaven; that when the moment comes, which every moment is bringing nearer, that we shall have passed that portentous shade, and behold the amazing prospect beyond it opening upon us, it may present itself under the light of the divine mercy, beaming upon us from Him who has the keys of death and the invisible world."

We shall find no more appropriate place than this for the quotation of a very beautiful letter of Mr. Foster to his old and tried friend, Rev. Mr. Hughes. It was the last he ever wrote him.

SEPTEMBER 18, 1833.

"The thought of my dear and ever faithful friend, as now standing at the very verge of life, has repeatedly carried me back in memory to the period of our youth, when more than forty years we were brought into habitual society, and the cordial esteem and attachment which have survived undiminished through so long a lapse of time and so much separation. Then we sometimes conjectured, but in vain, what might be the course appointed us to run, and how long, and which might first come to the termination. Now the far greater part of that unknown appointment has been unfolded and accomplished. To me a little stage further remains under the darkness; you, my dear friend, have a clear sight almost to the concluding point. And while I feel the deepest pensiveness in beholding where you stand, with but a step between you and death, I cannot but emphatically congratulate you. I have often felt great complacency in your behalf, in thinking of the course through which Providence has led you,-complacency in regard to the great purpose of life, its improvement, its usefulness, and its discipline and preparation for a better world. You are, I am sure, grateful to the sovereign Disposer in the review of it. You have had the happiness of faithfully and zealously performing a great and good service, and can rejoice to think that your work is accomplished, with an humble confidence that the Master will say, 'Well done, good and faithful servant,' while you will gratefully exult in ascribing all to his own sovereign mercy in Jesus Christ.

"But oh! my dear friend, whither is it that you are going? Where is it that you will be a few short weeks or days hence? I have affecting cause to think and wonder concerning that unseen world; to desire, were it permitted to mortals, one glimpse of that mysterious economy, to ask innumerable questions to which there is no answer-what is the manner of existence,-of employment,-of society,-of remembrance, -of anticipation of all the surrounding revelations to our departed friends? How striking to think, that she, so long and so recently with me here, so beloved, but now so totally withdrawn and absent, that she experimentally knows all that I am in vain inquiring.

"And a little while hence you, my friend, will be an object of the same solemn meditations and wondering inquiries. It is most striking to consider to realize the idea-that you, to whom I am writing these lines, who continue yet among mortals, who are on this side of the awful and mysterious veil,-that you will be in the midst of these grand realities, beholding the marvellous manifestation, amazed and transported at your new and happy condition of existence, while your friends are feeling the pensiveness of your absolute and final absence, and thinking how, but just now, as it were, you were with them.

"But we must ourselves follow you to see what it is that the emancipated spirits who have obtained their triumph over death and all evil through the blood of the Lamb, find awaiting them in that nobler and happier realm of the great Master's empire; and I hope that your removal will be to your other friends and to me a strong additional excitement, under the influence of the divine Spirit, to apply ourselves with more earnest zeal to the grand business of our high calling.

"It is a delightful thing to be assured, on the authority of revelation,

of the perfect consciousness, the intensely awakened faculties, and all the capacities and causes of felicity of the faithful in that mysterious, separate state; and on the same evidence, together with every other rational probability, to be confident of the reunion of those who have loved one another and their Lord on earth. How gloomy beyond all expression were a contrary anticipation! My friend feels in this concluding day of his sojourn on earth the infinite value of that blessed faith which confides alone in the great Sacrifice for sin-the sole medium of pardon and reconcilement, and the ground of immortal hope; this has always been to you the very vitality of the Christian religion; and it is so-it is emphatically so—to me also.

"I trust you will be mercifully supported,―the heart serene, and if it may be, the bodily pain mitigated during the remaining hours, and the still sinking weakness of the mortal frame; and I would wish for you also, and in compassion to the feelings of your attendant relatives, that you may be favored so far as to have a gentle dismission; but as to this, you will humbly say, Thy will be done.'

"I know that I shall partake of your kindest wishes and remembrance in your prayers,-the few more prayers you have yet to offer before you go. When I may follow you, and, I earnestly hope, rejoin you in a far better world, must be left to a decision that cannot at the most be very remote for yesterday completed my sixty-third year. I deplore before God my not having lived more devotedly to the grand purpose; and do fervently desire the aid of the good Spirit, to make whatever of my life may remain much more effectually true to that purpose than all the preceding.

"But you, my friend, have accomplished your business-your Lord's business on earth. Go, then, willing and delighted, at his call.

"Here I conclude, with an affecting and solemn consciousness that I am speaking to you for the last time in this world. Adieu! then, my ever dear and faithful friend. Adieu-for a while! may I meet you ere long where we shall never more say farewell!"

From this time, the letters of Mr. Foster wear the solemn tinge derived from a searching retrospect of life and a near anticipation of eternity. The playful strain of some of his youthful correspondence is changed into expressions of regret for his former deficiencies, or into serious descriptions of the untried future and of death, as an event which, he was conscious, was now "at the doors." We feel, in perusing the volumes, that the vigor of the companion whom we have been admiring is past; and that we have come, in the society of this great man, to the shadows of evening, and the river of death. The sublimity of his genius, in this part of his correspondence, evidently appears to have passed away; and we gaze on him as if on more equal terms, in the weakness of old

age, as we gaze without pain on the sun when it is setting. The last scenes of his life were serene and pureoccasionally triumphant. His lungs had long been subject to disease; and after a short confinement, during which he endured his sufferings with exemplary patience and Christian resignation, he died on the Lord's day, October 15th, 1843, at the age of 73 years.

It would be gratifying to us to present still further extracts from these interesting volumes, illustrative of the character and services of this eminent man. His profound thought, his accurate discernment, his rich manner, his unfeigned simplicity, meekness and piety, have won our unqualified admiration. But we must forbear. It is an alleviation to the event of his death, that he had lived to put the finishing touch upon his most important works. He had passed the period of his utmost vigor; and if he had written more, his productions would have borne the evident tinge of life's evening. His mental powers, he himself was conscious, were gradually verging towards decay. He has the honor of having given some of its choicest specimens to the literature of the English language, which will go down with it to the latest times. And his contributions to literature are adorned and sanctified also by the spirit of evangelical religion. Their destiny is, at the same time to feed the intellect, to purify the taste, and to guide the reader to cultivation, to virtue and to heaven.

VOL. XI.-NO. XLIII.

40

ARTICLE IX.

LITERARY NOTICES.

1. An Elementary Grammar of the Greek Language, containing a series of Greek and English Exercises for Translation, with the requisite Vocabularies, and an Appendix on the Homeric Verse and Dialect. By Dr. Raphael Kühner. From the German, by SAMUEL H. TAYLOR, Principal of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. Andover: Allen, Morrill & Wardwell. pp. 355. 12mo. 1846.

2. A Grammar of the Greek Language, principally from the German of Kühner, with Selections from Matthiæ, Buttmann, Thiersch and Rost. By CHARLES ANTHON. New York. Harper & Brothers. 1846. 536 pp. 12mo.

These works excel most of the school Greek grammars which have appeared, for the simplicity and accuracy of their statements, the fulness of their details, and their general adaptation to impart to learners the information which they need. The Grammar of Kühner, constructed on the same plan with his Latin Grammar for beginners, is fitted to give the student an extremely thorough training, and to put him in a situation, from the commencement of his study, to use every successive item which he acquires. The plan of writing exercises, both Greek into English and English into Greek,-illustrating every principle stated in the Grammar, is eminently adapted to make the young scholar perfectly at home in all the forms and idioms of the language. The appendix on the Homeric dialect is a most acceptable help to young scholars, in their first reading of the Iliad or Odyssey. Anthon's Grammar is drawn, apparently with good judgment, from high authorities in the literary world. It is much more creditable than his editions of the classics with Notes, and will do the student good service. It is more adapted to scholars somewhat advanced, for the purpose of occasional reference, than for the teaching of beginners. For the latter purpose, Kühner is unrivalled.

3. A Universal and Critical Dictionary of the English Language. To which is added Walker's Key to the Pronunciation of Classical and Scripture Proper Names, much enlarged and improved, and a Pronouncing Vocabulary of Modern Geographical Names. By JOSEPH E. WORCESTER. Boston. Wilkins, Carter & Co. 1846. 956 pp. royal 8vo.

We are happy to welcome to the number of English Dictionaries this noble volume by Mr. Worcester. His employments for several years have eminently fitted him to undertake an original work of this description with success. His experience in preparing his own "Com