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CHAPTER IL

FEW

BRITISH SCENERY.

men have greater facilities for making observations on the scenery of this globe, and the peculiarities of its inhabitants, than travelling preachers. Comparatively few of them, however, employ themselves in such observations. They have other work to do. Evangelizing the nations is the best of all work. Yet it must be allowed that intellectual recreation is no disparagement to a gospel minister, when rendered subservient to his main work. But in this department of literature, the well-educated missionary has a decided advantage over the " tarry-at-home traveller." Things seen and heard and said and done abroad, where climates, customs and manners, laws, religions and politics differ from our own, always please the novel-loving British vastly more than travels and adventures at home.

The elephants and serpents and tigers of Asia, the rhinoceroses and roaring lions of Africa, the savage bears and wild buffaloes of America, the almost innumerable living creatures of all sizes,

shapes and natural propensities in foreign lands, both hot and cold, have real charms in the way of exciting entertainment to which the history and anecdotes of living creatures at home, or in Europe at large, can make no pretensions. Abroad, also, there are oceans, seas and rivers, rocks, precipices and waterfalls, extensive plains and deserts, immense forests, stupendous mountains, terrific volcanoes, and ten thousand etceteras, of which, at home, we have either no specimens, or specimens in miniature only.

And as to the religious contemplation of the "manifold works of God," it must be confessed that in foreign lands conceptions of the Divine power and wisdom and goodness are more enlarged than at home. But still home should not be neglected. It has been and is now too much neglected. If we will only look about us, we may soon provide ourselves with unbounded sources of useful speculation and reflection in our own country. The lover of history and antiquities, the student in geology and botany, and the observer of other things impossible to be here enumerated, may find ample entertainment without personal inconvenience and endangering his life. At home, we do not expect to have our bones crushed by the folds of the anaconda or the boa constrictor, or to be bitten in two by the crocodile: the traveller does not fear to have his head snapped off by the panther or the lion, nor to encounter any of those manifold dangers which beset hardy adventurers in hot and foreign climates, or in the frozen regions

where travellers and whale catchers amuse themselves in fighting with polar bears. A word then about home. I have viewed with intense gratification that terrestrial paradise, the Isle of Wight. I have gazed with delighted emotions on the extensive and magnificent scenery of Herefordshire, and the neighbouring counties. I have admired the bold mountains of South Wales. I have witnessed, with high enjoyment, the sublime elevations and rocky precipices of Scotland. I have been delighted with the transcendant blending of the works of nature and of art in the grand city of Edinburgh. My imagination, though somewhat sluggish and dull, has luxuriated among the great mountains and lovely lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland. I might write a book about them, but books are written. "Guides to the Lakes" are common, and every tourist may possess one.

I am pleased that I have seen all these parts of my own country, and pleased to say so. It is a real enjoyment to an industrious writer to pen down his travels, and we think an evidence of good will to the nation to put them in print; and should the nation be of a different opinion we cannot help it. We acknowledge that we are short and superficial; ramblers, answering to their character, do not stay long in one place. They take wandering irregular excursions, not because they are idle and do not like the trouble of minute investigation either of places or subjects, but because human life is so short, that no man can know every place and every subject thoroughly. We write, not for profound

scholars, but for plain comfortable people, and long attached friends, who want to know where we have been and what we have been doing for many years past; and that they may see what there is in our way of life, different from the way of those who stay in one home through the whole or greater part of their mortal existence.

CHAPTER III.

THIS

THE ISLE OF WIGHT.

HIS charming little island, so deservedly celebrated for its natural beauties and loveliness,

was my first circuit. Here I enjoyed myself. Religion flourished among the Wesleyans. No connexional controversy existed. Ministers and people were of one heart and soul. I walked to the extremities of the island, in its length and breadth, nine times during the year, in fulfilling my preaching appointments. The Rev. Isaac Phenix was my superintendent; the Rev. William Hicks, my senior colleague. This good man was an amiable curiosity,-singular in his dress and conversation, but a faithful and efficient labourer. In the summer season he would often be attired in nankeen breeches and sky blue stockings, a quaker like coat and waistcoat, straight hair over his forehead, and his countenance betokening a singular mixture of gravity and jocoseness. His preaching was colloquial and somewhat humorous, but solidly instructive. English grammar and the niceties of pulpit diction he seemed to set at de

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