So

which is not impracticable, I think it would be very delightful if we could all settle for some years at Rome.”* unsuspectingly did he reckon on a future for his wife which was never to be realized! Her disease, affectionately as he had watched its progress, had secretly made a rapid stride; and it soon became apparent that the climate of Murieston was not nearly warm enough for so delicate a constitution as hers. The visit to London which he had meditated, was abandoned; and from being generally anxious, he became full of most distressing apprehensions. On the 25th of March, by the advice of the physicians, he conveyed his wife to Rothesay. "The weather was so calm," (he says,) that Rachel lay all the voyage on deck, on her mattress, which we carried with us." She seemed already so much better, that her husband, with that blindness for which love is proverbial, hoped he beheld "the beginning of a perfect recovery." But every distressing symptom which had driven them from Murieston, speedily reappeared: she sunk from day to day; and on the 15th of April, full of pure and humble faith, sustained by a most blessed hope, and overflowing with sweetest charity, she breathed away her gentle spirit in her husband's arms, murmuring the name of JESUS.

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*To Thomas Hog, Esq., 15th Jan. 1835.

1835.]

TYTLER A WIDOWER.

229

CHAPTER X.

(1835-1837.)

Tytler a widower-Repairs with his children to Hampstead-Campbell the sculptor-Removal to Wimpole Street-Disappointment-Life of Henry VIII. -The Persian princes-Record Commission-The Historical Society-Death of his Mother.

I WILL not linger over this epoch in Mr. Tytler's life. A certain document to which it would have been a melancholy pleasure to have had access, I do not find among his papers. He alludes more than once to a Diary of his wife's last illness, the perusal of which seems to have afforded him great comfort during the first few months of his desolation. All the earlier pages of his next Diary, (begun at Newliston, May 4th, 1835,) are filled with those passionate yearnings in which grief (always eloquent!) at first spends itself. But I will not transcribe any of them. Every page is a page of tears. I will but say that the perusal of what I find written about this time, conveys a very touching picture of the effect of Religion on a good heart. All his most sacred sympathies appear to have become intensely quickened by his recent familiarity with one of the severest forms of sorrow. The language of pious resignation ever swallows up the language of heart-broken grief. There had been so much of blessedness in his wife's departure, that he was never weary of expressing his gratitude. Her lofty piety was to him a constant song in the night.' Hence it happened, that his heart was not so much in his wife's grave, as with her in her mysterious bliss: but because it was with her, it was dead to the world. Constant prayer, large daily study

of the Bible, and the religious education of his little children became now his constant occupation, and his only joy. His wife also had left behind her, in writing, some private memorials on which he now fed incessantly. "Very edifying, altho' deeply affecting," he may well have found "the holy outpourings of that believing heart."

I shall perhaps find no better place than the present for alluding to Mr. Tytler's religious views up to this period of his life. He was, as a young man, the disciple of a severe school of devotional sentiment. The doctrines of assurance, and of conscious acceptance with GOD, combined with a very lofty kind of spiritual experience, seem to have been its characteristic features. Let me once for all state that I have withheld, as irrelevant, some score of passages in my friend's letters to that most admirable woman which reflect the views above alluded to. How entirely compatible they are with entire self-abasement, great personal humility, an awful apprehension of GoD's purity, these very letters would be sufficient to demonstrate. And I should be ashamed of myself were I capable of withholding the further admission that I know of no school of religious opinion, (though I do not hold it to be altogether a true or a healthy one,) which seems to be capable of producing a closer walk with GOD, a loftier apprehension of unseen things, a more unearthly experience. It ought to be sufficient to say, in a word, that it was the school of the incomparable Leighton.

My friend's children were now more than ever his companions. He delighted in their society to a far greater extent than most parents; and it was his constant endeavour to form in them those holy habits to which he owed his own purest happiness. His daughter has narrated to me many minute particulars of these early lessons. Thus, he taught them to give their last thoughts at night, their first waking thoughts in the morning, to GOD; and he used to call this

1835.]

HIS TRAINING OF HIS CHILDREN.

231

their little prayer.' He seldom failed, when taking a pleasant walk with them through a beautiful country, to lead their thoughts in gratitude up to the first Author of Beauty,'* whom he taught them to regard as a loving parent, ever near at hand. "At your happiest moments," (so he counselled them, and his very words at the end of many years have not been forgotten,) "lift up your whole heart to GOD, and thank Him, as you would a loving Father, for all you enjoy. You can do this without attracting attention, or being seen by others. You know it is the heart which GOD sees!"

The earliest thing they can call to mind of their Father was his own habit of constant prayer; the bent head and closed eyes, which, when they were in the fields with him, showed them how he was secretly engaged. Their first notion of reverence for holy places was obtained from observing the intensity of his devotion in church. But there was no austerity, much less gloom in his disposition. With him, Sunday was a festival. "There is but one word," (writes his daughter,) "that can express the whole method and extent of his teaching; so powerful, so winning, so lovely, to us his children. That word is Love."

For many years after their bereavement, at short intervals of time, it was his practice to show them their Mother's picture, (which he always kept veiled in his study,) and to discourse to them of her goodness, patience, beauty. "He would often ask us earnestly," (adds his daughter,) "if we remembered her; and, as we looked at the picture, would lead us on to make any little remarks or criticisms about it, as compared with our recollections of her, which showed that her image was clear in our minds: often recurring to little incidents or details of her last illness, repeating texts or pieces of poetry which she loved, and so connecting them

* Wisdom xiii. 3.

evermore with her,-(now, with him too!) It was seldom, I may say never, without tears that we listened to him. . . . From the very moment of our loss, our first experience of death, he seemed to wish every thing like gloom or dread banished from our thoughts of her. I feel this strongly when I look back upon these days of our first sorrow. Perhaps it was for this reason that we were not taken to look upon our Mother after death, that we might remember her still lovely, as we last saw her; and dwell on her smile, her blessing, and the sweet spring flowers (auriculas) she gave us on our last visit to her, rather than on the quiet gloom, which is inseparable from the chamber of Death."

That greatest sweetener of sorrow, the kindness and sympathy of near relatives, before whom the heart may pour out something of its suffocating fulness, my friend enjoyed at this season in no common degree. He passed the month of May at Newliston with his two admirable brothers-in-law, Mr. James and Mr. Thomas Hog: and though "full of thoughts and longings after his beloved Rachel, contrasting the sweetness of the season and the increasing verdure and beauty of the country with his own blighted and desolate feelings," (to quote the sorrowful language of his Diary,)—he was not insensible to the consolation which their congenial natures inspired. But many a pang is in store for those who sorrow as he sorrowed. It was necessary to make arrangements for his approaching departure: very bitter was the separation from Newliston and the lonely visit to his tenantless house in Melville Street, in order to pack up his books for England, when he found himself surrounded by all the familiar objects which was associated with his former happiness,-opened all his wounds afresh, and made him feel, as he says, "most desolate."

"After this severe affliction," writes Miss Ann Fraser Tytler, in the MS. already quoted, "my Brother with his