rightly applied, are the wings and sails of the mind, that speed its passage to perfection, and are of particular and remarkable use in the offices of devotion. For devotion consists in an ascent of the mind towards God, attended with holy breathings of soul, and a divine exercise of all the passions and powers of the mind. These passions the melody of sounds serves only to guide and elevate towards their proper object: these it first calls forth and encourages, and then gradually raises and inflames. This it does to all of them, as the matter of the hymns sung gives an occasion for the employing them; but the power of it is chiefly seen in advancing that most heavenly passion of love, which reigns always in pious breasts, and is the surest and most inseparable mark of true devotion; which recommends what we do in virtue of it to God, and makes it relishing to ourselves; and without which, all our spiritual offerings, our prayers and our praises, are both insipid and unacceptable. At this our religion begins, and at this it ends; it is the sweetest companion and improvement of it here upon earth, and the very earnest and foretaste of heaven; of the pleasure of which nothing further is revealed to us, than that they consist in the practice of holy music, and holy love; the joint enjoyment of which (we are told) is to be the happy lot of all pious souls to endless ages. And observable therefore it is, that that apostle, in whose breast this divine quality seems most to have abounded, has also spoken the most advantageously of vocal and instrumental harmony, and afforded us the best argument for the lawful use of it for such I account the description, which he has given us of the devotions of angels and blessed spirits performed by harps and hymns in the Apocalypse. A description which, whether real or metaphorical, yet, belonging to the evangelical state, certainly implies thus much, that whatever is there said to be made use of, may now, under the Gospel, be warrantably and laudably employed.

And in his steps trod the holy martyr Ignatius, who probably saw Saint John in the flesh, and learnt that lesson of Divine love from him, which, after his example, he inculcated everywhere in his epistles; and together with it instils into the churches he writes to a love of holy harmony, by frequent allusions and comparisons drawn from that science, which recur oftener in his writings than in those of any other ancient whatever, and seem to intimate to us that the devotions of

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the church were set off with some kind of melody, even in those early times, notwithstanding we usually place the rise of the institution much lower.

Would we then have love at these assemblies?

Would we

have our spirit softened and enlarged, and made fit for the illapses of the Divine Spirit? Let us, as often as we can, call into our aid the assistances of music, to work us up into this heavenly temper. All selfishness and narrowness of mind, all rancour and peevishness, vanish from the heart, where the love of divine harmony dwells; as the evil spirit of Saul retired before the harp of David. The devotional, as well as the active part of religion is (we know) founded in good nature; and one of the best signs and causes of good nature is, I am sure, to delight in such pious entertainments.

(From Sermon on the Usefulness of Church Music.)

TO HIS DAUGHTER, THEN IN A DYING STATE, AND ABOUT TO JOURNEY TO SEE HIM

MONTPELIER, 3rd September 1729.

MY DEAR HEART,-I have so much to say to you, that I can hardly say anything to you till see you. My heart is full; but it is in vain to begin upon paper what I can never end. I have a thousand desires to see you, which are checked by a thousand fears lest any ill accident should happen to you in the journey. God preserve you in every step of it, and send you safe hither! And I will endeavour, by his blessing and assistance, to send you well back again, and to accompany you in the journey, as far as the law of England will suffer me. I stay here only to receive and take care of you (for no other view should have hindered my coming into the North of France this autumn); and I live only to help towards lengthening your life, and rendering it, if I can, more agreeable unto you: for I see not of what use I am, or can be, in other respects. I shall be impatient till I hear you are safely landed, and as impatient after that till you are safely arrived in your winter quarters. God, I hope, will favour you with good weather, and all manner of good accidents on the way and I will take care, my dear love, to make you as easy and happy as I can at the end of your journey.

I have written to Mr. Morice about everything I can think of relating to your accommodation on the road, and shall not therefore repeat any part of it in this letter, which is intended only to acknowledge a mistake under which I find myself. I thought I loved you before as much as I could possibly. But I feel such new degrees of tenderness arising in me upon this terrible long journey, as I was never before acquainted with. God will reward you, I hope, for your piety to me, which had, I doubt not, its share in producing this resolution, and will in rewarding you, reward me also; that being the chief thing I have to beg of Him.

Adieu, my dear heart, till I see you! and till then satisfy yourself, that, whatever uneasiness your journey may give you, my expectation of you, and concern for you, will give me more. I am got to another page, and must do violence to myself to stop here-But I will-and abruptly bid you, my dear heart, adieu, till I bid you welcome to Montpelier.

A line, under your own hand, pray, by the post that first sets out after you land at Bourdeaux.

FR. ROFFEN.

RICHARD STEELE

[Richard Steele, the son of an Irish attorney of the same name, was born in Dublin in March 1672, N.S. He was educated at the Charterhouse, and at Christ Church, Oxford. In 1691 he was made a postmaster of Merton. In 1694 he suddenly quitted the university to enter the army as a cadet in the second troop of Life Guards. The dedication of a poem on the death of Queen Mary to John, Lord Cutts, Colonel of the Coldstream Guards, procured him a standard in that regiment, and he subsequently became a captain in Lucas's regiment of Foot. While still a soldier, he wrote a devotional manual called The Christian Hero, 1701. This he followed up, rather inconsequently, by a series of three comedies, beginning with The Funeral; or, Grief a-la-Mode, which was produced at Drury Lane at the close of 1701. In 1707 he was appointed Gazetteer, a post which he held for some years; and in 1709 he began the tri-weekly paper entitled The Tatler. This was succeeded by several similar efforts, of which The Spectator and The Guardian are the chief. In all of those named he had the assistance of his friend and schoolfellow Addison. While engaged on The Guardian he became involved in politics. He began to publish pamphlets in the Whig interest; entered Parliament; was expelled from it under Anne for alleged sedition; re-entered it at the accession of George I.; was knighted; became patentee of Drury Lane Theatre; wrote another comedy (The Conscious Lovers, 1722); busied himself in various ways, and finally died at Carmarthen, 1st September 1729, and was buried in St. Peter's Church.]

FOR purposes of classification, the prose writings of Steele may be roughly divided into two groups, his pamphlets and his essays. Under the former head come the series of political tracts, beginning with The Englishman's Thanks to the Duke of Marlborough (written when, in December 1711, the Duke was deprived of all his offices), and ending with The Crisis of Property which with its sequel, A Nation a Family, was issued about ten years before his death. To the latter division belong the essays or occasional papers which he contributed to the Tatler, Spectator, Guardian, and their more or less abortive successors, the last of which, the Theatre, was