the highest next the old altar or table in the chancel, on which her daughter had caused a very fair, rich, large marble stone to be laid twenty years before. The fair, rich marble stone was broken in the Fire of London. The church was in ruins when Mrs. Baxter was buried there. The present edifice was rising to its completion when, in 1691, the laborious minister of Christ was buried beside his wife. Richard Baxter was one of the most earnest workers that the world ever saw. Many an old church in London echoed with his earnest preaching. Many an old house could bear witness to his earnest pastoral visitations. Many a quiet study—for the good man had often to change his abode, in those troublous times-saw his earnest reading, writing, watching, and praying. Many a printing press was occupied in the production of the books he wrote; which, as we number the reprints on our shelves, and think of those which have never reached a modern edition, make us feel that it would fill any man's life with hard work to write out all those pages for the printers' hands. And many a MS. in Dr. Williams' library, never published, affords additional evidence, as we can testify from personal examination, of Baxter's almost unparalleled industry.

To notice one memorial of Baxter of another kind. In the British Museum is preserved a large stone resembling the kidney in shape, extracted after his death, the symbol of his intense sufferings. The catalogue he gives of his diseases is quite appalling. He seems to have had centred in his frail body all the ills that flesh is heir to. It is wonderful to think of his afflictions,-of what deep waters he had to wade through,—what terrible billows he breasted, and how the floods rose higher as life advanced-how the sharpest trials were the last. Richard Baxter's life would be to us an utterly hopeless mystery, did we not believe in Him who has brought life and immortality to light by the gospel, and who, by the discipline of pain as well as of labour, prepared him for the restful services of

another and a higher existence. Some are fitted for heaven by toil alone or chiefly; others by tears alone or chiefly. Baxter underwent both kinds of meetening for the inheritance of the saints, and in almost equal degrees. Now he is where they serve but do not suffer; where they work, but do not weep; where the cessation of pain is experienced, and the discipline of pain is ended, and the mystery of pain is fully and for ever solved.

III. ISAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS.

PERHAPS a scene of greater bustle, compressed in a space so narrow, could hardly anywhere be found, than may be daily witnessed about noon, and for some hours afterwards, in the immediate vicinity of Temple Bar. What a host of jostling wayfarers on the pavement-like motes in a sunbeam-pressing on, as if heedless of one another's presence, exhibiting very plainly curious specimens of mental abstraction, and affording inexhaustible materials for speculation on their thoughts and schemes. How the crowd stops, swells, gurgles, at the corner of Chancerylane, like a dammed-up mill-stream,-while some gigantic waggon or awkward omnibus impedes the passage, and leaves eager walkers on both sides like people on the shores of a river waiting for a ferry-boat. Then, how confused is the assemblage of vehicles in the middle of Fleet-street, rattling with noisy earnestness and terrific speed, till, like a huge mass of machinery, it overdoes itself, a piece gets out of order, and the whole is stopped. And now what perplexity and impatience! Omnibuses, carts, carriages, cabs, coaches, barrows, locomotive advertisers, and other indescribable things, become locked-anything but lovingly-in each other's embrace; some elegant chariot striving to get free from

the arms of a brewer's dray, or some aristocratic "Clarence" tearing itself from the rude clasp of a plebeian "Hansom." A little opening made, and no leaders of a forlorn hope ever more boldly rush into the breach, than do barristers with wigs, and attorneys with blue bags, and bankers' clerks with leather cases full of bills, plunge into the vacant space, and thread their way through its perilous windings.

Are there any shadows of bygone times and men departed, bringing up memorials of the solemn, romantic, picturesque, and tender, meeting us amidst this scene of bustle? Indeed there are. If there be no spot more strikingly expressive of the present, there is not one in London more richly and variously redolent of the past. Here we are in the midst of the old inns of court, which arose in the infancy of the legal profession in England, and which were in the full bloom of their quaint dramatic splendour in the reign of James I. Under the narrow gateway, nearly opposite Chancery-lane, you enter the Temple, now the home of lawyers, once the abode of knights, who, in coats of mail and cross-decked mantles, reined their steeds in gaudy procession along this thoroughfare; or bowed their knees on the pavement of the famous round church, whose architecture places us in the very midst of the thirteenth century. Yonder house, with some traces of antiquity lingering on it still, was once, as the inscription on it imports, the palace of Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey; and one sees bluff Harry and the cardinal issuing forth from long since vanished portals on their way to the setting of the city watch on Midsummer eve. And is not Temple Bar-not the original Temple Bar, it is true, but yet a building carrying us back to 1670, the work of Sir Christopher Wren,-associated with many city scenes since then, full of the antique spirit; especially that oft-repeated one, when the kings and queens of England and their marshals have paused there, and knocked for entrance, asking for admission from

my lord' mayor? It tells of rebellions and of cruel punishments, when spiked heads were the grim adornments of the gate; and leads us to thank Almighty God for the more peaceful and humane habits of the present day.

But it is not our intention to call back the shades of knights templars, or great lawyers, or city functionaries; nor yet to walk and talk with the spirits of the famous wits, from Ben Jonson to Addison, who frequented the house now turned into Child's bank; nor yet to step in and look at Goldsmith, in his lodgings within Brick-court, or Johnson, at No. 1, Middle Templelane that we may do some future day. Our thoughts are now fixed on one who was far removed in habit from men of the sword, gentlemen of the bar, and civic officials, but who, though neither a professed poet or philosopher, had in him some elements of both. We are thinking of old Isaak Walton, the immortal angler.

This seems hardly the place for meeting him. We associate his name with silvery rivers and green meadows, trout streams and shady banks. How distinctly does his form, in the costume of the seventeenth century, appear before us, and how smilingly does his open countenance, with flowing hair, give us friendly greeting as we ramble alongside of the Lea, near Hoddesdon. And then in Dovedale-the romantic Dovedale-as we once wandered through its rock-girt and tree-crested avenues, and sat down and watched the stream,-and the floating of dead leaves we threw into the water-did we not see Isaak himself, with rod and line and basket; and, as evening drew on, and the hills became a dark blue, and a deep shade gathered over the dale, did we not seem to hear him bidding good night to the scene of his day's sport, saying, "Go thy way, little Dove; thou art the prettiest of rivers, and the fullest of fish, that I ever saw ?" But, after all, with the neighbourhood of Temple Bar, Isaak Walton had more to do than with either the Lea or the Dove. It was here he

lived. We have no traces of his house remaining now, but we can identify the site. There lies before us an old print of part of Fleet-street, showing the end of Chancery-lane. It reminds us more of a street in old Paris, or Frankfort, or some Flemish city, than of anything to be found in the vicinity now. There is a tall narrow house of five stories at the corner, with bay windows carved and adorned in front, the edges of the stories supported by oddlooking corbels like caryatides, and the old dwelling crowned with a thatch roof. The second, a narrower strip of building, is a little modern; then comes the third, lower and broader than the first, with windows along the whole front. Here lived Isaak Walton.

Sir John Hawkins found an old deed, dated 1624, in which this house is described as abutting on a house bearing the sign of the "Harrow," and as being in the joint occupation of Isaak Walton and John Mason, hosier; whence he concludes that half a shop was sufficient for the business of Walton. This makes some critical antiquaries rather angry. They consider Isaak was a man of more worldly importance than this would indicate. He was a Hamburgh merchant, say they, not needing much frontage, but letting a part of it off to a hosier, while he retained the whole dwelling-house. Be it so; it appears not unlikely that Walton was above a little shopkeeper, since he had alliances and friendship with the great and wealthy. Walton took this house, we may imagine, in consequence of his intending to get married, for in 1623 he began, he says, a happy affinity with the family of his first wife, Rachael Floud, a descendant of Archbishop Cranmer, to whom he was married in 1626.

Walton was born at Stafford, on the 9th of August, 1593, and it is conjectured that he served his apprenticeship, as a hosier, to a relation of his of the same name in Whitechapel. Shadows of the boy Walton-belonging to a time when London apprentices