their road to Drumlanrig, the seat of the Duke of Queensberry, and are hospitably entreated by his Duchess, Prior's Kitty.' They visit Manchester, Chatsworth, the Peak, and Buxton; and so, by easy stages, return in the month of October to Wales and Brambleton House. The invention of the book never flags, but the latter pages are necessarily much occupied in clearing the ground for the marriages which bring it to a close.

Smollett scarcely takes rank as a poet, in spite of the Tears of Caledonia' or 'The storm that howls along the sky' in the ' Handbook of Quotations.' But towards the end of 'Humphry Clinker' he inserted one of the most pleasing specimens of his occasional efforts, the Ode to Leven Water,' on the very banks of which—' in ipsis Levinia ripis '—fifty-one years before, he had been born. At Renton, beside the Levennow, alas! no longer famed for its 'transparent wave'-rises the stately Tuscan column which Smollett of Bonhill erected to the memory of his gifted but combative cousin, who, like Fielding, found a last resting-place under alien skies. The long Latin inscription on this monument—the joint production of George Stewart and Ramsay of Ochtertyre-had the honour of being revised

by Johnson, who, we are told, ridiculed the suggestion of Lord Kames that English was preferable. It would be a disgrace to Dr. Smollett,' he said, using much the same argument as he employed two years later with regard to the epitaph of Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey; and Boswell, the compliant, followed suit by adding that Smollett's admirers would probably be equal to Latin, and that the inscription was not intended to be understood by Highland drovers. A passage in the Memoir of Thomas Bewick, the engraver, supplies an odd foot-note to Boswell. Making his way in 1776 up the Leven from Dumbarton to Loch Lomond, Bewick paused to puzzle out the words on the pedestal, as Smollett was an author whom he almost adored.' But he must have gone on his way unenlightened had it not been for the opportune scholarship of a passing Highlander.

THE PRISONERS' CHAPLAIN.

NE of the last of William Hogarth's works

ONE

was a medley entitled 'Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism.' Among others, it assailed the Methodists, and was consequently welcomed by the contemporary opponents of Wesley and Whitefield as an entirely justifiable satire. But by the dispassionate critics of our day, as well as by the more judicious admirers of the artist, the picture is considered a mistake; and it has also been held that in rebuking graphically what he -no doubt with perfect sincerity-regarded as profane enthusiasm, Hogarth has himself come perilously close to irreverence. In one of his designs of earlier date, there is, however, an unsolicited and possibly unintended tribute to Methodism which goes some way to condone the effect of his later and more ambitious effort. It occurs in the penultimate plate of the series called 'Industry and Idleness,' where is delineated the tragic ending to the graceless career of Thomas Idle. Of the wonderful crowd of debased and brutalized spectators which, with its

fringe of ruffianism of all sorts, went to make up the horrors of an 'Execution Day' under the sanguinary penal code of the Georges, it is not here necessary to speak. But of the more prominent of the dramatis persona, there are three, or rather four, which chiefly serve to rivet the attention. One is the tiny figure of the 'topsman,' or hangman, standing out against the outline of the Highgate Hills, and stolidly smoking a short pipe on the summit of the triple tree itself. Another is the smug Ordinary of Newgate, who, with the 'red-lettered face' that tells 'more of good living than of grace,' complacently surveys the crowd as he rolls slowly in his coach of office to his perfunctory ministrations. Next, in the cart itself, escorted by the mounted sheriff's officers, and lying back against his coffin in an agony of abject terror, is the miserable convict, holding mechanically before his face an open book which his eyes do not perceive; while beside him in the vehicle, conspicuous by the lank hair then held to be the outward and visible sign of Dissent, sits an itinerant preacher, who, with uplifted hand, vigorously but vainly exhorts his scarcelyconscious companion. The fervent gesticulation and terrible energy of the volunteer chaplain are in marked contrast to the sleek indifference of the

recognized functionary; and there is, in addition, a look of actuality about the former which excites curiosity. But with the Rev. Dr. Trusler, and the earlier commentators of the artist, even Wesley was nothing more than 'a leader of a sect called Methodists'; and no foot-note identifies this most humble of his camp-followers. Exactly one hundred and forty-seven years after date, however, we are enabled to supply, from a trustworthy source, the information so long withheld. The life of the preacher, written by himself, is still extant. His name was SILAS TOLD.

It is a queer Dickens-like name, almost farfetched enough to be fictitious. But even were its strict veracity not vouched for by Wesley himself, there is little appearance of fiction about the brief autobiography whose over-copious title is reproduced below.' Silas Told was born 'at the Lime-kilns, near the hot-wells' at Bristol in

1 An ACCOUNT of the LIFE, and DEALINGS of GOD with SILAS TOLD, late Preacher of the Gospel; wherein is set forth the wonderful Display of Divine Providence towards him when at Sea; his various Sufferings abroad; together with many Instances of the Sovereign Grace of God, in the conversion of several Malefactors under Sentence of Death, who were greatly blessed under his Ministry. Written by Himself. . . . London: Printed and sold by Gilbert and Plummer (No. 13) Cree-Church-Lane, Leaden

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