wavy melody of "Sicily" (or "Sicilian Hymn") sometimes carried the verses, but never with the same sympathetic unction. The sing-song movement and accent of old "Nettleton" made it the country favorite.

Robert Robinson, born in Norfolk, Eng., Sept. 27, 1735, was a poor boy, left fatherless at eight years of age, and apprenticed to a barber, but was converted by the preaching of Whitefield and studied till he obtained a good education, and was ordained to the Methodist ministry. He is supposed to have written his well-known hymn in 1758. A certain unsteadiness of mind, however, caused him to revise his religious beliefs too often for his spiritual health or enjoyment, and after preaching as a Methodist, a Baptist, and an Independent, he finally became a Socinian. On a stage-coach journey, when a lady fellow-passenger began singing "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing," to relieve the monotony of the ride, he said to her, "Madam, I am the unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago; and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, if I could feel as I felt then."

Robinson died June 9, 1790.

John Wyeth was born in Cambridge, Mass., 1792, and died at Harrisburg, Pa., 1858. He was a musician and publisher, and issued a Music Book, Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music.

"A POOR WAYFARING MAN OF GRIEF,"

Written by James Montgomery, Dec., 1826, was a hymn of tide and headway in George Coles' tune of "Duane St.," with a step that made every heart beat time. The four picturesque eight-line stanzas made a practical sermon in verse and song from Matt. 25:35, telling how

A poor wayfaring man of grief

Hath often crossed me on my way,
Who sued so humbly for relief

That I could never answer nay.
I had no power to ask his name,
Whither he went or whence he came,
Yet there was something in his eye

That won my love, I knew not why;

-and in the second and third stanzas the narrator relates how he entertained him, and this was the sequel

Then in a moment to my view

The strange started from disguise
The token in His ad: I knew;

My Saviour stood before my eyes.

When once that song was started, every tongue took it up, (and it was strange if every foot did not count the measure,) and the coldest kindled with gospel warmth as the story swept on.*

*Montgomery's poem, "The Stranger," has seven stanzas. The full dra matic effect of their connection could only be produced by a set piece.

Elder Jaber Swan was born in Stonington, Ct., Feb. 25, 1800, and Sed 1984. He was a tireless worker as a pastor Jong in New London, Ct.,' and a still harder toler in the fell as an evangelist and as a helper eagerly called for in revivals; and, through all, he was as happy as a bov in vacation. He was unlearned in the technics of the schools, but always eloquent and armed with ready wit; unpolished, but poetical as a Hebrew prophet and as terrible in his treatment of sin. Scoffers and "hoodlums" who interrupted him in his meetings never interrupted him but once.