nt creature, I protest to God, and I have a
most perfect affection and respect for her."

One of the last things he did at the close of the year, in the like
spirit, was to offer to describe the Ragged schools for the _Edinburgh
Review_. "I have told Napier," he wrote to me, "I will give a
description of them in a paper on education, if the _Review_ is not
afraid to take ground against the church catechism and other mere
formularies and subtleties, in reference to the education of the young
and ignorant. I fear it is extremely improbable it will consent to
commit itself so far." His fears were well-founded; but the statements
then made by him give me opportunity to add that it was his impatience
of differences on this point with clergymen of the Established Church
that had led him, for the past year or two, to take sittings in the
Little Portland-street Unitarian chapel; for whose officiating minister,
Mr. Edward Tagart, he had a friendly regard which continued long after
he had ceased to be a member of his congregation. That he did so quit
it, after two or three years, I can distinctly state; and of the
frequent agitation of his mind and thoughts in connection with this
all-important theme, there will be other occasions to speak. But upon
essential points he had never any sympathy so strong as with the leading
doctrine and discipline of the Church of England; to these, as time went
on, he found himself able to accommodate all minor differences; and the
unswerving faith in Christianity itself, apart from sects and schisms,
which had never failed him at any period of his life, found expression
at its close in the language of his will. Twelve months before his
death, these words were written. "I direct that my name be inscribed in
plain English letters on my tomb . . . I conjure my friends on no account
to make me the subject of any monument, memorial, or testimonial
whatever. I rest my claim to the remembrance of my country on my
published works, and to the remembrance of my friends upon their
experience of me in addition thereto. I commit my soul to the mercy of
God, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and I exhort my dear
children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teaching of the New
Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man's narrow
construction of its letter here or there."

Active as he had been in the now ending year, and great as were its
varieties of employment; his genius in it