ray of glory to brighten the scene of our "Ramblings,"
as the landscape borrows a golden tint from the lingering beams of the
sun that has set beneath the horizon.

As the brother of Elizabeth Fry, her fellow-worker in the field of
usefulness, and her companion in her memorable visits to the prisons of
England, Ireland, Scotland, and the Continent, his history could not have
failed to possess a deep interest, even apart from the individual
characteristics of his bright and beautiful home-life, and the lustre
shed upon his name by its familiar association with those of Clarkson,
Wilberforce, and Buxton, in the cause of slave emancipation.

The third son of John and Catherine Gurney, and sister of Priscilla
Wakefield, he was born at Earlham Hall, August 2d, 1788. It is a
singular fact connected with the name, that one of his ancestors, in
1653, was sent a prisoner to the Norwich gaol, for refusing to take the
oath, and that Waller Bacon, of Earlham, who committed him, resided at
the time in the very Hall which the descendants of the prisoner
afterwards occupied. When Joseph was only four years of age, the family
of eleven children lost the superintending care of their mother, and his
home education mainly devolved upon his three elder sisters, among whom
was Mrs. Fry. Their home was the scene of rich hospitality, dealt out by
their liberal-minded father; and the literary tastes, intellectual
pursuits, and elegant accomplishments, in which every member of the
social group delighted, drew around them a brilliant circle of the
choicest society, to which the late Duke of Gloucester was a frequent and
welcome addition.

The scholastic instruction of Joseph John was at first superintended by a
clergyman, and afterwards matured at Oxford, where he attended the
professor's lectures, and enjoyed many of the advantages of the
university, without becoming a member or subscribing to the thirty-nine
articles.

Such an education naturally tended to create some doubts as to the system
of Quakerism; but after much examination and consideration, his
preference became settled in favour of the views and profession of his
old "Friends;" and consistently with them he lived and died, by no means
finding in them any barrier to the fullest and freest association with
any other body of Christians, or to a personal friendship with the
ecclesiastical bishops of the diocese, with one of whom, Bishop Bathurst,
he was a frequent and esteemed g