New Jersey, then sitting at Burlington, sent a deputation to invite him to preach before them, which he did. At Philadelphia he stayed fifteen months, and besides preaching occasionally at various places of worship there, he delivered during the winter, in the college, a course of lectures on the evidences of Christianity, which were exceedingly well received. From Philadelphia he went to preach, by invitation, to a congregation at Boston; but a report of his heterodox principles arriving before him, prevented a settlement amongst them. Mr Hazlitt's visit to this town was not however in vain ; for in a short time he was chiefly instrumental in forming the first Unitarian church at Boston. Here the University offered to confer on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity, which he declined. He also published various tracts in support of Unitarian principles; and having remained in America two years, preparing the way for the subsequent exertions of Dr Priestley, whose acquaintance he enjoyed, he returned with his family to England, and became pastor of the Presbyterian congregation at Wem, in Shropshire. In this place he resided upwards of twenty-six years, and published three volumes of sermons, which had a rapid and extensive sale. In 1813 he retired from the Ministry,

and lived some time at Addlestone, in Surrey, afterwards at Bath, and finally at Crediton, where, in 1820, he died."

I

Immediately after settling at Wem, as stated in the above sketch, my grandfather proceeded to the task of educating his son William, now nearly six years of age: a task which the docility and vivid comprehension of the pupil rendered not merely easy, but delightful. have a miniature portrait of my father painted at about this time by his brother John: the mild intelligence of the countenance bears a marked resemblance to those of the children in some of Correggio's pictures, and was a faithful indication of the mind within. I shall here do myself the pleasure of extracting from an article in the Monthly Repository,'* a passage bearing on this part of my subject, and which appears to me extremely beautiful. follows:

It is as

"The most pure and perfect state of human existence, the most etherial in mind, being fresh from the creative hand; the most enthusiastic and benevolent of heart, being yet uncontaminated by the outer world and all its bitter disappointments, the sweetest and yet the

By the author of the Exposition of the False Medium,' &c.

most pathetic, were it only from the extreme sense of beauty, is the early youth of genius. Alone in the acuteness of its general sensibility-unsympathised with in its peculiar view of nature; its heart without utterance, and its intellect a mine penetrated by the warmth of the dawning sun, but unopened by its meridian beams, the child of genius wanders forth into the fields and woods, an embodied imagination; an elemental being yearning for operation, but knowing not its mission. A powerful destiny heaves for development in its bosom; it feels the prophetic waves surging to and fro; but all is indistinct and vast: caverned, spellbound, aimless and rife with sighs. It has little retrospection, and that little of no importance; its heart and soul are in the future, a glorified dream. Memory, with all its melancholy pleasures and countless pains, is for the old, and chiefly for the prematurely old; but youth is a vision of the islands of the blest; it tells its own fairy-tale to itself, and is at once the hero and inventor. It revels in the radiance of years to come, nor ever dreams that the little daisy on the lawn, so smilingly beheld, or so tenderly gathered from its green bed, shall make the whole heart ache with all the past, when it meets the eye some years

hence. If this be more or less the case with youth in general, it is so in a pre-eminent degree with the youth of genius. At this early period of the life of such a being, impressions of moral and physical beauty exist in ecstatic sensation rather than in sentiment: a practical feeling and instinct, not a theory or rule of right. Conscious Conscious only of its everworking sensibility, and dim aspirations, boundless as dim,-utterly unconscious of its talent, powers, or means of realizing its feelings, the child of genius yearns with a deep sense of the divinity of imperishable creation, with hopes that sweep high over the dull earth and all its revolving graves; and lost in beatific abstraction, it has a positive foretaste of immortality.

"Such we may affirm-if the reader will add that intensity of comprehension which pierces beneath the deepest roots of the heart, and to which all words are but the earth-like signs, the finger-marks of mortality pointing to the profound elements of human nature, - such was the early youth of William Hazlitt."

In 1787 the future teacher of mankind was put to a day-school in Wem, of his proceedings at which I shall leave him to speak for himself in the following letter to his brother

in London, written early in the next year, and which appears to me a very characteristic and delightful one. I only regret that I have so few of his letters, but his own correspondence was at all times very limited, and the exceptions to his throwing the letters he received into the fire as soon as read, were very rare:

"DEAR BROTHER,

"Wem, Saturday morning, "March 1788.

"I received your letter this morning. We were all glad to hear that you were well, and that you have so much business to do. We cannot be happy without being employed. I want you to tell me whether you go to the Academy or not and what pictures you intend for the exhibition. Tell the exhibitioners to finish the exhibition soon that you may soon come and see us. You must send your picture to us directly. You want to know what I do. I am a busybody, and do many silly things; I drew eyes and noses till about a fortnight ago. I have drawn a little boy since a man's face and a little boy's front face,

My uncle John had recently established himself in London, in Great Russell street, as a portrait-painter, in which profession he very rapidly attained considerable eminence and an extensive practice.