My acquaintance with Kirke White commenced in the lecture-room of St. John's, towards the end of the October Term of 1805. His constitutional deafness, and the distance at which he sat from the lecturer, rendered a neighbour with sharper ears of some benefit to him; and there was an air of humility and patience in his countenance, which never failed to interest a stranger. An acquaintance thus casually begun, ripened into a friendship, which I enjoyed only long enough to deplore with a deeper sorrow its abrupt and melancholy termination. The first morning I called upon him is now fresh in my remembrance. He kept, as you know, in the corner of the further court of St. John's; and I never pass the spot, even after a lapse of thirty years, without a melancholy reflection upon his fate. He came to meet me with an open letter in his hand. The tears were in his eyes, and grasping my hand with great earnestness, he said, "I have just heard from my mother, and all the recollections of home and home-scenes are thronging into mind. Alas! it will be long before I take root in this place. my The first morning I awoke, I seemed My eyes involuntarily turned to little book-stand used to hang, to be in a dream. the spot where my I and that table on which I wrote so many of my early poems, during the few hours of my release from the drudgery of an attorney's office. listened for the sounds which were wont to greet my ears; the lingering step at the chamber-door; the creeping of feet, interrupted by frequent pauses, to my bed-side; the partial unfolding of a shutter, and then the anxious and half-doubting scrutiny, while I perchance lay in feigned slumber with arm across my eyes, pleased with bewildering love for a minute. my SEYMOUR. "It is pleasant to reflect that, with very few exceptions, the domestic feelings have exercised the greatest influence on those men at whose feet we should be most anxious to receive instruction.Literature is not degraded by many Sternes. Gray's Epitaph on his Mother is more affecting than anything in his poetry. How the heart rejoices with the mother of Richard Hooker, when the schoolmaster came to tell his parents of the genius and virtues of their son, and to urge them to abandon their intention of apprenticing him to a trade. How sincerely we fall upon our knees with her, making hourly prayers for the sick student at Oxford; and set out with him, on his recovery, to visit his paternal home in Exeter, a poor pilgrim, on foot! and who can refrain from joining in his beautiful and touching prayer, that he might never live to occasion any sorrow to so good a mother, whom,' he would often say, he loved so dearly, that he would endeavour to be good as much for her sake as his own.' Such feelings reflect a lustre upon the works of a man, and even the Ecclesiastical Polity seems to brighten in the recollection. After all, there is no eloquence like this visible rhetoric *. "Sanderson, also, in after-life was fond of remembering the early instruction of his father, whose praiseworthy practice it was to season his pleasant stories with short and virtuous apothegms-teaching and amusing at the same time. It was of this amiable prelate that Charles the First observed'I carry my ears to hear other preachers, but I carry my heart to hear Sanderson, and act accordingly."" WHITE. “An interesting essay might be composed upon the home-feelings of eminent men. Addison would * A phrase of Hooker. A similar sentiment occurs in Bishop Taylor's Great Exemplar (Considerations upon the preaching of John): "For the good example of the preacher is always the most prevailing homily: his life is his best sermon." have written it delightfully. Think of Herbert's visits to his mother at Chelsea, respecting the church he was desirous of repairing; and his humble hope that, at the age of thirty-three, she would suffer him to become a disobedient son. It was a consolation to the departing spirit of Donne, that in the hour of depression and decay he had been able to nousirh and protect her who had watched over his own helplessness. Our future life often takes its colour from the instructions we gather at a mother's knees. The mother of Sir Henry Wotton was his first tutor; so I believe was Sir Philip Sidney's. To the diligence and care of his parent, Lorenzo de Medici probably owed that taste for poetry and learning, which obtained for him the title of the Magnificent; and the mother of Dante, by promoting the growth of her child's genius, assisted in realizing the vision in which she beheld him nourished by the fruit of the laurel, and quenching his thirst in the fountains of song. The philosopher Bacon, and the poet Thomson, imbibed wisdom and poetry from this guide. I have embodied my feelings of affection towards a mother (to whose love I am indeed beyond measure indebted), in a sonnet, which I fear has nothing but truth to recommend it. AND canst thou, Mother, for a moment think That we, thy children, when old age shall shed Could from our best of duties ever shrink? Sooner the sun from his high sphere should sink, Or shun thee tottering on the grave's cold brink. O'er smiling plains, or wastes without a tree, SEYMOUR. "From our mother often flows to us the love of reading, that better and sweeter milk which nourishes our minds. I remember, as though it were yesterday, the hours I have sat at my mother's feet, listening with an almost breathless delight to some story of human suffering and trial, ever and anon rising from my little stool to peep under the leaves, and count the pages that remained. What an affliction the interruption of a visitor was then regarded, and how I lamented that the charm should ever be broken. I dwell upon these remembrances with peculiar satisfac |