the practice of his profession. It seems, however, not to have been suited to his taste; for about this time he writes: "Until now I have been my own master, and I now resign my independence for a service I dislike." His assiduity was, nevertheless, unremitted, and was attended with satisfactory success; indicative, in the opinion of his friends, of ultimate professional eminence.

In October, 1813, he married Matilda Robley, of Stoke Newington, a pupil of Mrs. Barbauld; who, in a letter to a friend, thus wrote concerning her:-"She is by far one of the most charming women I have ever known. Young, beautiful, amiable, and accomplished; with a fine fortune. She is going to be married to a Mr. Grahame, a young Scotch barrister. I have the greatest reluctance to part with this precious treasure, and can only hope that Mr. Grahame is worthy of so much happiness."

All the anticipations justified by Mrs. Barbauld's exalted estimate of this lady were realized by Mr. Grahame. He found in this connection a stimulus and a reward for his professional exertions. "Love and ambition," he writes to his friend Herschel, soon after his marriage, "unite to incite my industry. My reputation and success rapidly increase, and I see clearly that only perseverance is wanting to possess me of all the bar can afford." And again, at a somewhat later period:-"You can hardly fancy the delight I felt the other day, on hearing the Lord President declare that one of my printed pleadings was most excellent. Yet, although you were more ambitious than I am, you could not taste the full enjoyment of professional success, without a wife to heighten your pleasure, by sympathizing in it."

Soon after Mr. Grahame's marriage, the religious principle took predominating possession of his mind. Its depth and influence were early indicated in his correspondence. As the impression had been sudden, his friends anticipated it would be temporary. But it proved otherwise. From the bent which his mind now received it never afterwards swerved. His general religious views coincided with those professed by the early Puritans and the Scotch Covenanters; but they were sober, elevated, expansive, and free from narrowness and bigotry. Though his tem

perament was naturally ardent and excitable, he was exempt from all tendency to extravagance or intolerance. His religious sensibilities were probably quickened by an opinion, which the feebleness of his physical constitution led him early to entertain, that his life was destined to be of short duration. In a letter to Herschel, about this period, he writes:-"I have a horror of deferring labor; and also such fancies or presentiments of a short life, that I often feel I cannot afford to trust fate for a day. I know of no other mode of creating time, if the expression be allowable, than to make the most of every moment."

Mr. Grahame's mind, naturally active and discursive, could not be circumscribed within the sphere of professional avocations. It was early engaged on topics of general literature. He began, in 1814, to write for the Reviews, and his labors in this field indicate a mind thoughtful, fixed, and comprehensive, uniting great assiduity in research with an invincible spirit of independence. In 1816, he sharply assailed Malthus, on the subject of "population, poverty, and the poor-laws," in a pamphlet which was well received by the public, and passed through two editions. In this pamphlet he evinces his knowledge of American affairs by frequently alluding to them and by quoting from the works of Dr. Franklin. Mr. Grahame was one of the few to whom Malthus condescended to reply, and a controversy ensued between them in the periodical publications of the day. In the year 1817, his religious prepossessions were manifested in an animated "Defence of the Scottish Presbyterians and Covenanters against the author of The Tales of my Landlord' " these productions being regarded by him "as an attempt to hold up to contempt and ridicule those Scotchmen, who, under a galling temporal tyranny and spiritual persecution, fled from their homes and comforts, to worship, in the secrecy of deserts and wastes, their God, according to the dictates of their conscience; the genius of the author being thus exerted to falsify history and confound moral distinctions."

Mr. Grahame also published, anonymously, several pamphlets on topics of local interest; "all," it is said, "distinguished for elegance and learning." In mature life,

when time and the habit of composition had chastened his taste and improved his judgment,- his opinions, also, on some topics having changed, he was accustomed to look back on these literary productions with little complacency, and the severity with which he applied self-criticism led him to express a hope that all memory of his early writings might be obliterated. Although some of them, perhaps, are not favorable specimens of his matured powers, they are far from meriting the oblivion to which he would have consigned them.

In the course of this year (1817), Mr. Grahame's eldest daughter died, -an event so deeply afflictive to him, as to induce an illness which endangered his life. In the year ensuing, he was subjected to the severest of all bereavements in the death of his wife, who had been the object of his unlimited confidence and affection. The effect produced on Mr. Grahame's mind by this succession of afflictions is thus noticed by his son-in-law, John Stewart, Esq.:-"Hereafter the chief characteristic of his journal is deep religious feeling pervading it throughout. It is full of religious meditations, tempering the natural ardor of his disposition; presenting curious and instructive records, at the same time showing that these convictions did not prevent him from mingling as heretofore in general society. It also evidences that all he there sees, the events passing around him, the most ordinary occurrences of his own life, are subjected to another test, — are constantly referred to a religious standard, and weighed by Scripture principles. The severe application of these to himself, -to self-examination, - is as remarkable as his charitable application of them in his estimate of others."

To alleviate the distress consequent on his domestic bereavements, Mr. Grahame extended the range of his intellectual pursuits. In 1819, he writes, "I have been for several weeks engaged in the study of Hebrew; and having mastered the first difficulties, the language will be my own in a few months. I am satisfied with what I have done. No exercise of the mind is wholly lost, even when not prosecuted to the end originally contemplated."

For several years succeeding the death of his wife, his

literary and professional labors were much obstructed by precarious health and depressed spirits. His diary during this period indicates an excited moral watchfulness, and a mind agitated by deep and solemn impressions. Thus, in April, 1821, he remarks:-"In writing a law-pleading today, I was struck with what I have often before reflected on, the subtle and dangerous temptations that our profession presents to us of varnishing and disguising the conduct and views of our clients, of mending the natural complexion of a case, filling up its gaps and rounding its sharp corners." And in October following: -"Why is it that the creatures so often disappoint us, and that the fruition of them is sometimes attended with satiety? We try to make them more to us than God has fitted them to be. Such attempts must ever be in vain. We do not enjoy them as the gifts and refreshments afforded us by God, and in subordination to his will and purpose in giving. If we did so, our use would be humble, grateful, moderate, and happy. The good that God puts in them is bounded; but when that is drawn off, their highest sweetness and best use may be found in the testimony they afford of his exhaustless love and goodness." And again, in February, 1822:-"We are all travelling to the grave, but in very different attitudes; some feasting and jesting, some fasting and praying; some eagerly and anxiously struggling for things temporal, some humbly seeking things eternal."

An excursion into the Low Countries, undertaken for the benefit of his health, in 1823, enabled Mr. Grahame to gratify his "strong desire to become acquainted with extrema vestigia of the ancient Dutch habits and manners." In this journey he enjoyed the hospitalities, at Lisle, of its governor, Marshal Cambronne, and formed an intimacy with that noble veteran, which, through the correspondence of their sympathies and principles, ripened into a friendship that terminated only with their respective lives.

About this period he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and soon after began seriously to contemplate writing the history of the United States of North America. Early education, religious principle, and a native earnestness in the cause of civil liberty con

He

curred to incline his mind to this undertaking. was reared, as we have seen, under the immediate eye of a father who had been an early and uniform advocate of the principles which led to American independence. In 1810, while yet but on the threshold of manhood, his admiration of the illustrious men who were distinguished in the American Revolution was evinced by the familiarity with which he spoke of their characters or quoted from their writings. The names of Washington and Franklin were ever on his lips, and his chief source of delight was in American history.* This interest was intensely increased by the fact, that religious views, in many respects coinciding with his own, had been the chief moving cause of one of the earliest and most successful of the emigrations to North America, and had exerted a material effect on the structure of the political institutions of the United States. These united influences elevated his feelings to a state of enthusiasm on the subject of American history, and led him to regard it as "the noblest in dignity, the most comprehensive in utility, and the most interesting in progress and event, of all the subjects of thought and investigation." In June, 1824, he remarks in his journal:-"I have had some thoughts of writing the history of North America, from the period of its colonization from Europe till the Revolution and the establishment of the republic. The subject seems to me grand and noble. It was not a thirst of gold or of conquest, but piety and virtue, that laid the foundation of those settlements. The soil was not made by its planters a scene of vice and crime, but of manly enterprise, patient industry, good morals, and happiness deserving universal sympathy. The Revolution was not promoted by infidelity, nor stained by cruelty, as in France; nor was the fair cause of Freedom betrayed and abandoned, as in both France and England. The share that religious men had in accomplishing the American Revolution is a matter well deserving inquiry, but leading, I fear, into very difficult discussion."

Although his predilections for the task were strong, it is apparent that he engaged in it with many doubts, and