taxed with pride and ingratitude, as seeming to neglect their old friends, when they only associate with them with that reserve, and under those restraints, which their sacred profession enjoins.  If, on the other hand, they fall into unrestrained familiarity with the associates of their earlier life and boyish days, how injurious to their ministry such intercourse would be, must flash upon every man’s mind whose thoughts have turned for a moment to the subject.  Allow me to add a word upon the all-important matter of testimonials.  The case of the Rector of ——­ and of ——­ presses it closely upon my mind.  Had the individuals who signed those documents been fitly impressed with the awfullness of the act they were about to engage in, they could not have undertaken it....  Would it not be a good plan for bishops to exclude testimonials from relatives and near connections?  It is painful to notice what a tendency there is in men’s minds to allow even a slight call of private regard to outweigh a very strong claim of duty to the public, and not less in sacred concerns than in civil.

Your hands, my dear friend, have failed, as well as my eyes, so that we are neither of us in very flourishing trim for active correspondence:  be assured, however, I participate the feelings you express.  Last year has robbed me of Coleridge, of Charles Lamb, James Losh, Rudd, of Trinity, Fleming, just gone, and other schoolfellows and contemporaries.  I cannot forget that Shakspeare, who scarcely survived fifty (I am now near the close of my sixty-fifth year), wrote,

’In me that time of life thou dost behold,
When yellow leaves, or few, or none, do hang
Upon the bough.’

How much more reason have we to break out into such a strain!  Let me hear from you from time to time; I shall feel a lively interest in all that concerns you.  I remain faithfully yours,

W.W.[150]

[150] Memoirs, ii. 292-4.

96. Of ‘The Omnipresence of the Deity,’ &c.

LETTER TO THE REV.  ROBERT MONTGOMERY.

Feb. 1835.

MY DEAR SIR,

On my return home, after an absence of some length, I have had the pleasure of receiving your two volumes.

* * * * *

With your ’Omnipresence of the Deity’[151] I was acquainted long ago, having read it and other parts of your writings with much pleasure, though with some abatement, such as you yourself seem sufficiently aware of, and which, in the works of so young a writer, were by me gently judged, and in many instances regarded, though in themselves faults, as indications of future excellence.  In your letter, for which also I thank you, you allude to your Preface, and desire to know if my opinion concurs with yours on the subject of sacred poetry.  That Preface has been read to me, and I can answer in the affirmative; but at the same time allow me frankly to tell you that what most pleased me in that able composition is to be found in the few concluding paragraphs, beginning ‘It is now seven years since,’ &c.