irksome to him, for his removal, in the beginning of 1809, to the rectory of Redmarshall, a rustic village with a small population, is pronounced to have been an acceptable change, as introducing him to a place certainly better adapted to a student like himself, than the larger sphere of action which he quitted. During his incumbency of this place he gave a striking proof, for the age in which he lived, of his honourable freedom from that grasping desire for accumulated Church patronage, which was the disgrace of his time. Bishop Barrington requested Lord Eldon to give him the adjoining benefice of Great Stainton, that he might hold the two livings together; the Chancellor readily consented, and the Bishop wrote to congratulate Mr. Faber on this addition to his income. The offer was, however, graciously declined, at the risk, as his friends thought, of offending his patron. In this, however, they were mistaken, for within a year the Bishop presented him to the rectory of Long Newton, which he held for the long time of twenty-one years, and from whence most of his literary productions emanated. That the act of refusing to be a pluralist was in those days considered a superhuman exercise of self-denial we have the following evidence, from one of much local acquaintance with the clergy:

When this anecdote was first told in the presence of the late Mr. Surtees, of Mainsforth, he rose, and with much gravity announced his intention of ordering his horse instantly. "Why," said a friend, in astonishment, "where can you be going at this time of night?" "Going?" said he; "why to take a look at a clergyman who has refused to hold two livings, to be sure." This joke was characteristic enough of the speaker; but Mr. Surtees did not forget the story when he published the History of Durham.'-Ibid. p. xvi.

This favourable opinion on the part of Mr Surtees, appears to have been maintained by Mr. Faber's subsequent reputation, judging from another passage in his history, to which allusion is made in the following extract. The memoirist has premised, quoting Wordsworth's beautiful lines

'Where holy ground begins, unhallow'd ends,
Is mark'd by no distinguishable sign,'

that at the rectory of Long Newton there was in former times no partition between the churchyard and the shrubbery :

'An incumbent, long before Mr. Faber's time, had built a wall across the lawn; and this he did, as a parish record informs us, because the people of the village were accustomed to inspect the facta and listen to the dicta of the inmates of the Rectory. "The wall," Mr. Surtees goes on to say, "is now pulled down, and the cemetery and pleasure ground are again in one; but the dicta et facta of the present tenant of the manse need not shrink from audience or inspection.'—Ibid. p. xvii.

An inspection indeed of Mr. Faber's proceedings would have entailed great watchfulness, for his daily labours commenced in

his study about six o'clock, and often before; his love of working must almost have amounted to a restless, nervous activity. He was the sole instructor of his two sons, and he was never assisted in his parish by a curate; yet his literary occupations were incessant, for besides his numerous publications, all needing much study, he maintained an extensive correspondence with many distinguished members of the learned world.

Thus tranquilly did Mr. Faber pursue that active and studious life which so well accorded with his tastes, till 1830, when at last he became a dignitary. Bishop Burgess gave him a pre bendal stall in Salisbury Cathedral; and in 1832 he received, from Bishop Van Mildert, a still more important piece of preferment, that of Sherburn Hospital; at which place he resided for the remainder of his life. His nephew thus speaks of this change in his fortunes:

To a man of his pursuits and habits nothing could be better adapted; for, by giving him complete command over his own time, it enabled him, without any scruple of conscience, to devote himself as much as he pleased to the labours of the closet. It was, in short, one of those sanctuaries, which the piety of olden times provided as a retreat for the learned and the good; and which the spirit of modern progress, as it is called, would gladly sweep away. To Mr. Faber it was even more than this, for it was given him as a reward for the services of many years. It was his "patent of nobility," by which he showed to his clerical brethren that he had "approved himself in the office to which he had been called." There were other circumstances, too, which tended to increase the pleasure of his residence at this place: it is in the immediate neighbourhood of Durham, and amongst the clergy of the Cathedral and the University he had many valued friends. If ever an affirmative answer to the old question, An locus conveniat locato? could be given, it might surely have been given here.'-Ibid. p. xxxi.

Sherburn Hospital was originally founded, for the exclusive accommodation of lepers, by Bishop Pudsey, in the twelfth century; but in the time of Queen Elizabeth it was devoted to the maintenance of thirty brethren, natives of the Diocese of Durham, only half of whom reside within the walls of the Hospital. The institution also possessed a chaplain, so that no very onerous labours can have fallen on the master. At the present moment the foundation is in abeyance, waiting the ungentle verdict of a ruthless Charity commission. In former times the situation of the Hospital was that of 'pleasant pastoral seclusion,' cheered by the bells of Durham Cathedral. Its character, however, is much altered by the substitution of coal-pits for sheep-folds, and of tall, gaunt, slate-coloured men issuing forth from the nether regions of earth, and stumping along on its surface with large wooden clogs, in place of those pretty Arcadian figures, which shepherds, of all times and countries, are supposed more or less to resemble. These external invasions, however, of the picturesque were compensated for, by

the erection, on Mr. Faber's appointment, of a far more com modious house, than Dr. Bell, of educational notoriety, his: immediate predecessor, had enjoyed. The Hospital, under Mr. Faber's reign, is thus described:

'To the spacious and convenient mansion which arose upon the ruins of the ancient dwelling Mr. Faber finally removed, in the summer of 1834, and here he constantly resided during the remainder of his life; still following the avocations of a student, but entering freely into the hospitalities of the neighbourhood, though he was at all times better inclined to see his friends at home, than to quit his own fireside. His partner, too, loved well to fill her house with her friends, and delightfully she played the part of hostess; infusing into everything that she undertook, a spirit of vivacity and cheerfulness which was certain to be reflected back from others, and throwing over all, the exquisite charm which arises from genuine benevolence of heart. With such a mistress, it is not to be wondered at that both young and old found Sherburn House a favourite place of resort. It was seldom without company, the guests being not unfrequently persons of literary celebrity; and the residence of the Superior mutatis mutandis, promised to be as renowned a "Xenodochium" as the Hospital over which he presided.'—Ibid. p. xxxii.

One great charm of Mr. Faber's society consisted in his store of anecdotes, with which he was ever willing to entertain his guests. The present generation are not much given to that style of conversation which is understood by the expression, 'full of anecdote.' We are very intolerant of being bored with long stories; and impatient of any prolonged attention being exacted by the discourse of one individual. We all want to join, and therefore promote the short repartee style of conversation, in preference to the steady listening, which our forefathers were content to sit under, so long as they had good cheer before them, and a spokesman of creditable powers. We do not question the general improvement which has, within the last generation, come over the intercourse of intelligent people; no doubt there is more acuteness and readiness in the tone of ordinary conversation, more diffused information, and a more equal distribution of sensible talk, than in society fifty years ago; but this very improvement in the mass, is at the sacrifice of great individual talkers, whose pleasant rehearsals used, no doubt, to afford great satisfaction to many listeners. A little egotism, and the entire occupation of a whole company by one speaker, used to be willingly endured, if that speaker was pronounced deserving of attention; and therefore, the art of telling stories or anecdotes was studiously fostered by any one who had a gift that way; whereas, in these days, the necessity of compression, and of rapidity in the details of any communication which passes in general society, and the fear of being prosy, act as a discouragement to any rising ambition at assuming the character of a man full of anecdote.' In the

case of young men, we are stringently severe on the slightest attempt to subjugate our listening powers, or to claim any large share of mental attention; but with those who have derived their habits from a former generation-who enjoy the privilege of age we are still tolerant, partly no doubt from the respect which they claim from us, but also from the fact that they can tell stories and anecdotes more neatly and pleasantly, with more point and facility of expression, than we are accustomed to meet with in juniors. Mr. Faber would seem to have enjoyed this art, and to have had great pleasure in the exercise of it: from him a decided lead in the conversation would come as a natural right, and be acceptable to all who were enjoying the hospitality of the Hospital. The following picture is suggestive and interesting:

In these pleasant reunions, which many will remember now with sorrowful pleasure, the master played his part well in the entertainment of the inmates; and a stranger might have been surprised to notice that a scholar like himself could "touch life at so many points." His conversation, like his reading, was various and discursive, full of entertainment and instruction, and he had a rich store of racy anecdotes, always borrowing much of their effect from the manner of the narrator. This was especially the case when his stories were descriptive of provincial life and manners, for he kept up to the last his familiarity with his native dialect of Yorkshire. There were indeed few topics upon which he did not know something, so miscellaneous had been the nature of his reading, whenever abstruser studies were laid aside. He used to call himself a perfect helluo librorum; and it may amuse the reader to hear that he applied this epithet when detected in engaging in what he called "a course of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances." Ibid. p. xxxiii.

Cards the Master of Sherburn abjured, partly on principle, but chiefly, his nephew rather implies, because they interfered with conversation, that divine talk,' which he rightly held ought to be the staple amusement of intelligent beings. In order to maintain his conversational powers, he was a great devourer of all contemporaneous literature, especially romances; although, at the same time, he was so unwilling to forget anything which had ever formed part of his mental store, that a friend, one day, found him sedulously reading the whole of the plays of Euripides: on which occasion he quietly replied to some expression of astonishment, 'It is true that I shall want these things no more, 'for my boys are done with; but it is always unpleasant to 'diminish any faculty which one once possessed; and as I am 'a tolerably good Grecian now, I should like to continue so.' One of his special literary tastes was for the supernatural romance of the East. Arabian Magic or Hindoo Mythology were his delight. Oriental lore and tales of enchantment, as 'Thalaba,' and 'Kehama,' were most favourite studies. The history of the appearance of Samuel to the witch of Endor, is dwelt on at great length in the course of the book now before

us; while mysterious prophecies and visions, occurring in Scriptures, are everywhere shown to have been his favourite objects of investigation. This hardly arose from his love of mystery, as such; but rather from the pleasure of exercising his ingenuity in unravelling the mysterious element before him, and displaying to view a plain tangible result or fact. Real and acute appreciation of character as drawn by the humourist, or the depicter of common life, does not seem to have engaged his interest to that extent which we associate with the mind of a deep observer of mankind. In truth, Mr. Faber was so actively engaged in a never-ceasing round of self-occupation, that he never enjoyed those periods of reflective contemplation, which may perhaps seem at the time to be only the indulgence of an indolent mind, but which are yet productive, in some persons, of much thought and deep-seated knowledge of practical life. It was symptomatic of Mr. Faber's turn of mind, that he much preferred the romance of Southey, to the humour and the descriptive powers of Sir Walter Scott. This last author he seems wholly to have failed in appreciating. Again, of the plays of Shakspeare, he preferred the Tempest and Midsummer Night's Dream, to those which contain a more solid study of character. He abhorred Byron, except Manfred; and delighted much in Bulwer's King Arthur.' This love of the imaginative, is stated by his nephew not to have applied to theological writers, but to have been changed in their case into a liking for a more homely style. Jeremy Taylor he was not fond of, and professed to be wearied by his exuberance of imagery; indeed, strange to say, he did not possess a copy of his works. Hooker he ranked preeminently first of English divines, and Barrow next; but the Anglican Chrysostom he placed nowhere. We are not disposed to quarrel with any one's right to assert an individual taste in this matter: much as we admire Jeremy Taylor, it is undoubtedly the case, that style sometimes carries him away into a stream of volubility which, interspersed as it is with most terrible formations of Anglo-latin phraseology, may be allowed to have its wearisome feature. Yet in spite of this we feel that not to admire Jeremy Taylor suggests the suspicion of a certain deficiency in appreciating poetical language, and especially in a person whose own style is somewhat remarkable for abrupt and broken statements, and for the want of that flow and rhythm which prose may possess as well as verse. The framework of Mr. Faber's writing is generally somewhat exposed, and his compositions are therefore open to a charge of dryness, which is not perhaps deserved when the matter and thought, used in their cause, are recognised. His syllogisms and logical machinery of a sentence, together with