be unpeopled in less than half an age." Then it proceeds to say that "to be convinc'd of the populousness of England, 'tis but computing its towns and cities;" so it tells the reader that there are twenty-eight cities (London probably containing "one million of souls"), six hundred and fifty market towns, "besides many good towns in which no market is kept, and an infinite number of villages." Slight help this to the reader; but all that could be offered to him in those days. The yearly rent of all the lands in England and Wales is computed at £10,000,000, and that of houses, not let with land, £2,000,000; besides "her prodigious wealth in jewels, plate, hoards of money, rich moveables, merchandize, &c."

To "a New and Exact Description of London" many pages are devoted. The metropolis is described as about eight miles long from east to west, and "not above two miles and a-half, even where it is broadest," from north to south. The dwellinghouses are reckoned at about 124,000. The progress of improvement is described as "matter of amazement;" sash windows instead of little windows, "with near as much lead as glass;" light staircases superseding "blind" ones; ceilings reported as now "universally used in England," whereby the dust from overhead is prevented; and "painted wainscot," introduced as an improvement upon damp walls. London is

commended as enjoying the advantage of being "sweetened on one side by the fresh air of the river [somewhat contrary to present experience], and on the other by that of the fields." For country walks the following places are particularly noticed :

"Moorfields, Islington, and Red Lyon Fields, Marybone, and Tuttle Fields;" while, "for persons of a genteel appearance, there are the noble gardens of the Inns of Court, some of the Companies Halls, and the Charter-house Garden." Much is made of the Penny Post, for London and its neighbourhood, under a "Comptroller with £200 a-year." It carried small parcels as well as letters. The late Twopenny Post must have been a retrograde measure.

There is a chapter on "the English way of Living," &c. The English are described as "great flesh-eaters, and that without kitchen sophistry." "Pastry work and puddings" are described as popular; and bread, of which till of late but little had been eaten, was now taking its place at meals. The common wear of men was 'plain cloth and drugget;" as for ladies, "the best able wore the richest silks, of £8 or £10 a-yard, with all the set-offs that art can possibly invent." The cost of the silk, as here stated, must surely be a misprint, £ for s. The trade of England has its chapter.

The home productions are enumerated as follows:-" Wool, of which vast quantities of cloth and stuffs are made, computed

at the sum of two millions sterling per annum; tin, lead, copper, pit-coal, great guns, bombs, carcasses, &c., one million. Moreover she exports abundance of corn, red herrings, smoak'd pilchards, and salmon, besides abundance of leather and saffron. Many of her manufactures are also in great request, particularly her sattin, damask, velvet, plush, locks, pendulums, and watches; barometers, thermometers, spectacles, prospective glasses, telescopes, microscopes, and all sorts of mathematical instruments, &c., great quantities of which are exported to foreign countries, upon account of their superior accuracy and curiosity."

Besides these native products, raw or manufactured, England spared, from "her vast countries in the New World," to other parts of Europe, "sugar, indigo, cocoa-nuts, tobacco, &c., to the sum of half a million a year.'

On travelling and the General Post Office there is a chapter as entertaining to us as it must have been gratifying, and an evidence of progress, to those who lived in the former half of the last century. Travelling was commonly on horseback, often by post-horses," shifted at every post-stage, for 3d. a-mile, besides the same allowance to the post-boy for conducting the person, and carrying back the horses." But there were also stage coaches, some of which "will measure sixty miles in a summer day." The roads are reported as being less infested with highwaymen than they had been, in consequence of the high rewards offered for their apprehension; besides, "they never take away one's life, but in case of resistance, when their own lies at stake."

The Post-Office arrangements are evidently the pride and delight of the patriotic editor. A single postage, the distance being less than eighty miles, was threepence, over that distance it was fourpence to all parts of England. In five or six days an answer might be expected from a place 300 miles away. The post left London on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and returned on the intervening week days, "except in the winter time, when the roads are often flooded." To Wales and Ireland letters were sent twice a week; and twice a week they were transmitted by 'packet boats to certain continental ports for most parts of Europe.

There is much more information which might fill several pages, such as many would like to read; but I hasten to that part of the contents of the volume which has induced me to offer these few pages for admission into the Christian Observer. Appended to the "Accurate and impartial Account of these famous islands," are "Lists of the present officers in Church and State." Much that is curious, and much also that is now devoid of interest, is recorded concerning the army and navy, and various other departments of the state. The courts of law

also supply many details, the first germs of a Law List. But what held my attention and set me musing were the lists of the archbishops and bishops, of the deans of the cathedrals, and of the various prebends in the gift of His Majesty, with the names of the present holders of those dignities. There were other lists, partly repeating those which I first lighted on. Such were those of the deans and chapters of St. Paul's and Westminster, of the clergy of the Chapel Royal, and of the king's chaplains in ordinary. As my eye ran down these strings of names, and surveyed them again and again, I fell into a reverie. Things strike us very differently at different times. That which we can read with complacency and perhaps indifference at one time, may be deeply affecting to us at another. So it was, however, that this dry uninteresting list of names set me thinking, and chiefly because it was so dry and so uninteresting. I was only confirmed in the same train of thought by turning to some subsequent pages devoted to Ireland, and containing similar lists of the names of the principal clergy in that island, the archbishops, bishops, and deans, and the chief authorities in the distinguished university of Dublin.

The thing that struck me, and impressed me so forcibly, was that only here and there did I discover the name of a person of whom I had ever read anything good or bad, or even whose name was known to me.

The total number of the names may have been about 250. Surely these were, or included amongst them, the eminent men of their day, men talked of, and followed, and admired. Yet, with a few exceptions, they are wholly forgotten, not merely obscured, but unknown. There are, indeed, the names of archbishop Potter and bishop Gibson, still regarded as authorities in ecclesiastical law; Waterland, eminent in controversy; Sherlock, distinguished in his day as an able defender of the faith; bishop Berkeley, a man of science and literature; Secker, the plain, sensible, forcible preacher; and the devout bishop Wilson of Sodor and Man. There is also Hoadley, who earned an unenviable reputation by his heterodoxy; and dean Swift, for whom and for the church it would have been better if he had never taken holy orders. Two or three others might possibly be added as known to have been men of note in their day, such as Herring and Benson. The rest are to us as if they had never existed. Of these it is probable that Secker and Wilson alone are known to have been faithful and devoted ministers of the Word. But in these lists of the choice men of their day (even though it was not a day eminent for faith and love amongst clergy or people), there may have been many bright examples, lights shining in a dark place; there may have been preachers who spoke to men's hearts, and whose glowing words kindled many a flame of devotion and zeal

amongst their parishioners, and to whom belongs the bright reward which the Lord has promised to those who turn many to righteousness. Others of them may have been eminently successful in private counsel, and in intercourse with individual minds, being blessed in their efforts to comfort the feebleminded and to support the weak, and effecting much good by being patient towards all men.

But of these and other services no remembrance has come down to us, no public record survives. Of some there may be private memorials and family pictures, and there are the lists in this old book, and in other forgotten works of the day. There is their handwriting in the parish registers, and the entry of their burial. There may be a gravestone, but perhaps even that has sunk out of sight into the grave which received them, or is overgrown with moss, or is crumbling away. Their memory is faded; they are forgotten as well as dead. We cannot discern between the faithful and the unfaithful stewards amongst them, between those who will render up their account with joy, and those who trampled on their vows with ungodly feet.

I say nothing of their influence, for that may be felt to this day. Influence is one of the marvellous things in human life, the operations of which we cannot realise in any just degree without much reflection. You and I may be feeling the influence exercised by these unknown men to this day. Was your mother one who feared God, and who loved the Lord Jesus Christ? The human channel which the Spirit selected for winning her heart to the Lord may have owed more than she ever suspected to one of these men of the past.

But whether their influence were for good or evil, and whether it be still felt or have died away, nearly all of these men, once holding high office in the Church, are forgotten-utterly forgotten. No one would even care to hear of them. And we shall be forgotten too. In a little more than a century our names, like theirs, will be but as so many letters of the alphabet, with no history attached to them. There lies before me our thick Clergy List, with perhaps 20,000 names in it. Will they not be as obscure, after the like lapse of time, as these in my old volume,-if, indeed, the Lord's coming be delayed so long? Authorship may preserve a few-a very few-from oblivion. To have taken part in any important public measures may secure some kind of remembrance for others. But those whose only distinction is the most important of all, that of being faithful ministers of the New Testament, will have passed out of recollection. The seed will still be fructifying, but the hands which sowed it will be no longer recognised. The now popular preacher and speaker, on whose lips crowds hang with eager interest, will have lost his fame; not even the echo of it

will be heard. Not only is many a flower born to blush unseen, but many which have been seen in the brightest bloom, which have been admired and prized, and which have diffused their sweet fragrance far and wide around them, wither away, vanish, and moulder into dust, and soon no one knows how sweet they were, no, not even that they grew, and budded, and blossomed. Other flowers will bloom when those of this year have departed; other stars shine when these have faded from sight.

All this would be melancholy and depressing if there were not a record on high. There would be sadness in the thought that after being known and loved, after knowing and loving others, for a short season, the common lot were to be that of being utterly forgotten in two or three generations, and so that our life on earth would become, to those who come after us, as though we had not lived it.

But for the Christian heart, whether dedicated to the service of Christ in the ministry of His word, or occupying any other walk in life, there is a most blessed consciousness that there is one mighty Mind to which it will always be known. There is a record kept, of which no page will ever be lost. God's book of remembrance contains the names of all who, from the creation downwards, have feared the Lord and thought upon His name ; and they will, every one of them, be acknowledged as His, in the day when He makes up His jewels. Here they are strangers and pilgrims. The wayside inn takes little heed of the passers by. But there is a home beyond,-a city whose foundations cannot decay; and there will be found an assembly of friends from whom there will be no future separation, and amongst whom there will be no passing on of generations into forgetfulness. There, the men now unknown to us, and whose names are strange to us when we meet with them in a book of the last century (so many of them as were men with whom Christ made his abode on earth), will find that a holy fame, though soon lost on earth, is never lost in His presence. They that are in Christ, joined to Him by a living faith, will receive from His hands a crown of glory that fadeth not away. Their names are not written on the sand, nor their track vainly noted in the air, nor their waymarks entrusted to the ever-changing ocean; but their names are written in heaven, in records that will endure for ever.

A STRANGER IN THE LAND.