shall find Thee, and everything shall have His attribute to sing!

And having tuned the lute, he played and sang some of the verses from the following poem:

'SUNDAY.

'O day most calm, most bright,
The fruit of this, the next world's bud,
Its indorsement of supreme delight,
Writ by a friend, and with his blood;
The couch of time; care's balm and bay;
The week were dark, but for thy light-
Thy torch doth show the way.

'The other days and thou

Make up one man, whose face thou art, Knocking at heaven with thy brow.

The worky days are the back part;
The burden of the week lies there,
Making the whole to stoop and bow
Till thy release appear.

'Man had straightforward gone
To endless death; but Thou dost pull
And turn us round to look on One,
Whom, if we were not very dull,
We could not choose but look on still,
Since there is no place so alone
The which He doth not fill.

'Sundays the pillars are,

On which heav'n's palace arched lies.
The other days fill up the spare

And hollow room with vanities.
They are the fruitful beds and borders
In God's rich garden: that is bare
Which parts their ranks and orders.

'The Sundays of man's life,
Threaded together on time's string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the eternal glorious King.
On Sunday heaven's gate stands ope;
Blessings are plentiful and rife,
More plentiful than hope.

'This day my Saviour rose,
And did inclose this light for His :
That, as each beast his manger knows,
Man might not of his fodder miss.
Christ hath took in this piece of ground,
And made a garden there for those
Who want herbs for their wound.

'The rest of our creation

Our great Redeemer did remove With the same shake, which at His passion Did th' earth and all things with it move. As Samson bore the doors away,

Christ's hands, though nail'd, wrought our salvation,

And did unhinge that day.

'The brightness of that day
We sullied by our foul offence;
Wherefore that robe we cast away,
Having a new at His expense,
Whose drops of blood paid the full price
That was required to make us gay,
And fit for Paradise.

Thou art a day of mirth :

And where the week-days trail on ground, Thy flight is higher, as thy birth:

Oh, let me take thee at the bound, Leaping with thee from sev'n to sev'n,

Till that we both, being toss'd from earth, Fly hand in hand to heaven.'

George Herbert.

The father of Dr. Isaac Watts was a Nonconformist, and was imprisoned in Southampton Gaol for the sake of his convictions. The old prison remains very nearly the same as when the young mother sat with her child looking up to the barred windows of the room where her husband was confined. It stands upon what was then the beach of the fair Southampton Water, which at that time rolled much further in, and almost washed the prison doors. From the tower of this prison a lovely

scene opens to the view-charming hills on the left, the 'sweet fields beyond the swelling flood' on the opposite shore. It was this view across Southampton Water which in afteryears suggested the beautiful hymn to the prisoner's son, Dr. Isaac Watts:

'There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain.

'Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood
Stand drest in living green;
So to the Jews old Canaan stood
While Jordan roll'd between.

'But tim'rous mortals start and shrink
To cross the narrow sea,
And linger shivering on the brink,
And fear to launch away.

'Oh, could we make our doubts remove,
Those gloomy doubts that rise,
And see the Canaan that we love
With unbeclouded eyes;

'Could we but climb where Moses stood, And view the landscape o'er,

Not Jordan's stream nor death's cold flood
Could fright us from the shore.'

Wilberforce, while walking through one of the busy London streets, was heard by one who passed him to be repeating aloud Cowper's hymn :

'Far from the world, O Lord, I flee,
From strife and tumult far;
From scenes where Satan wages still
His most successful war.

'The calm retreat, the silent shade,
With pray'r and praise agree;
And seem, by Thy sweet bounty, made
For those who follow Thee.

'There, if Thy Spirit touch the soul,
And grace her mean abode,

Oh! with what peace, and joy, and love
She communes with her God!

'There, like the nightingale, she pours
Her solitary lays ;

Nor asks a witness of her song,
Nor thirsts for human praise.

'Author and Guardian of my life,
Sweet source of light Divine,
And (all harmonious names in one)
My Saviour, Thou art mine!

'What thanks I owe Thee, and what love!
A boundless, endless store

Shall echo through the realms above

When time shall be no more!'