seven o'clock she died. I shall never forget his face when he came
to my store-room, in accordance with his duty, to correct some
inaccuracy in the diet-roll. He seemed utterly bewildered with sorrow;
and Miss S----, who had also occasion to speak to him, said she never
saw grief so strongly marked in a human face. He insisted on following
her remains to the grave as chief mourner, and wearied himself with
carrying the coffin. No one interfered with him; for all seemed to
think he had acquired the right, by his unmistakeable affection, to
perform these sad offices; and the lady superintendent, moved by his
sorrow, allowed him to retain a ring of some small value which the
deceased had been accustomed to wear.'

_June 14, 1856._

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{1} _Ismeer, or Smyrna and its British Hospital in 1855._ By a
Lady. London: James Madder, 8, Leadenhall Street.

THE POETS OF THE CHURCH.

It is not uninteresting to mark the rise and progress of certain branches
of poetry and the _belles lettres_ in their connection with sects and
Churches. They form tests by which at least the taste and literary
standing of these bodies can be determined; and the degree of success
with which they are cultivated within the same Church, in different
ages, throws at times very striking lights on its condition and
history. One wholly unacquainted with the recorded annals of the Church
of Scotland might safely infer, from its literature alone, that it fared
much more hardly in the seventeenth century, during which the literature
of England rose to its highest pitch of grandeur, than in the previous
sixteenth, in which its Knoxes, Buchanans, and Andrew Melvilles
flourished; and further, that its eighteenth century was, on the whole, a
quiet and tranquil time, in which even mediocrity had leisure afforded it
to develope itself in its full proportions. Literature is not the
proper business of Churches; but it is a means, though not an end. And
it will be found that all the better Churches have been as literary as
they could; and that, if at any time the literature has been defective,
it has been rather their circumstances that were unpropitious, than
themselves that were in fault. Their enemies have delighted to
represent the case differently. Our readers must remember the famous
instance in _Old Mortality_, so happily exposed by the elder M'Crie, in
which Sir Walter, when he makes his Sergeant Bothwell a writer of verses,
introduces Burley