I cannot better conclude this paper than by extracting he following beautiful passage from a discourse preached upon the occasion of my father's death by Mr Johns, the amiable and talented Minister of the Unitarian chapel, Crediton.

"I should not, my brethren, have brought these recollections before you, had it not again become my unwelcome duty to say a few words over another leaf, that has fallen from the human life-tree, and rested upon the grave. A distinguished individual, a stranger but not an alien, will henceforth exist only as a distinguished name. One who has always been an object of attachment to the few, and who by a strange involution of hostilities has been battling with the many, while he was contending for mankind, has been laid at length in the peaceful resting-place, where they shall not learn war any more.' Brief and sincere may the requiem be, which a stranger breathes over a stranger's grave :-He is gone to his rest, and let it not be broken.-In an age, when the general diffusion of knowledge has made it no easy matter for one man to rise greatly above the educated thousands around him, he has been one of those who have achieved the difficult undertaking, and whose thoughts have

sparkled upon the topmost waves of the world. He felt it a proud distinction-perhaps he felt it too proudly-to be the owner of a luminous and vigorous mind. He could not be reproached with suffering the ploughshare to rust in the generous soil. It was rather his glorious but disastrous error, to suffer that soil too rarely to lie fallow. There was a mean, which he did not, or would not discover; and Study may add his name to her long list of martyrs.-But the name of Hazlitt is associated with far nobler recollections. Whatever might be his speculative, whatever his practical errors, he was the fearless, the eloquent, and disinterested advocate of the rights and liberties of man, in every cause and in every clime. His opinions were such as to make him one of a party, whom the brilliant and influential Administration, under which he commenced his career, honoured with no small portion of political and personal hatred. And they did not want either means or instruments to make the effects of that hatred felt, even by those, who were too haughty to show any pain, when the sword had pierced through their souls.' As far as I am acquainted with his personal history, he escaped the harsher measures, which involved so many of his political allies. He was neither prosecuted,

But these were the

fined, nor incarcerated. lightest and briefest of the evils which they experienced, though to the common eye, they might appear the heaviest and the worst. The most active prosecution, which the Government could excite against them, was far less lastingly prejudicial and painful, than the cloud of silent obloquy, in which it found means to involve their opinions and their leaders, and from the effects of which no time or change could redeem them. A whisper went forth against them, which was, in its effects, more appalling than the thunder. Calumny (I cite the verses for the sake of the powerful contrast), 'seeing the multitudes, went up into a mountain, and when she was set, her disciples came unto her; and she opened her mouth, and taught them, saying,'-These men are the enemies of the peace and happiness of mankind. They speak of liberty; but they think of licence: they prate of the rights and wrongs of man, while they are undermining the foundations of social justice and order. They have no true regard for the prosperity of the people, for the sanctity of the altar, or the majesty of the throne. They are impatient of all restraints upon their turbulent aspirings; and would turn the world upside down,' in order to see how the pyramid

would stand upon its head. Beware, therefore, how you join these friends of sedition and blasphemy, these enemies of peace and piety, whereever they are found. Listen not to the subtle voice of the serpent. Read not their writings, nor mix in their society; but rather unite with the true friends of your country, in banishing all such, by a silent ostracism, from the dwellings of the pious, the prudent, and the peaceful.

These assertions and insinuations, enforced by the speaking-trumpet of an ascendant faction, made it once a dangerous and a daring thing for any man to avow himself the partizan of liberty and reform. Now, my brethren, the case is widely altered. The hearts of nations have been touched-their minds have been enlightened — their voices have been lifted and heard. But there was a time, when he, who dared to advocate those principles, was overwhelmed with a foaming deluge of obloquy and opprobrium. The step was, of itself, almost enough to blast his public hopes, and his private fame. Detraction followed him-Derision went with him--and Persecution lay in ambush before him. Let us therefore, my brethren, look back with honour upon the few, who once lifted the sacred standard of Liberty, amid the fiery darts of the wicked' and of the world.

Praise

to their living names, and peace to their solemn graves! Whatever else they may have done, or left undone, for this, at

gratitude of their kind.

least, they deserve the That gratitude, indeed,

must soon be lost in oblivion. Those names, now bright as the sunset cloud, will grow darker and darker as the evening draws on, and be lost at length in the majesty of night. Posterity cannot remember the names of its benefactors; but that which is the misfortune of after ages, would be the crime of the present. It is ours, my brethren, -our duty and our prerogative, to hang a fading wreath, or to breathe a passing requiem, over the memories of those, who, in evil times, advocated a perilous but glorious cause; who bore the colours in the infant ranks of Freedom; and who, wherever they rest, should rest in our imaginations, with those colours wrapped round them, under which they fell."