head; he wore no borrowed crown: his was gold without glitter, and he enjoyed a kinghood of his own. Moreover, we shall find as we proceed, that "few men on record have had a more merciful, tenderly affectionate nature than old Samuel "*-aye, when young or when older, when poor or when richer, when learning or when learned: he was always the same, loving and beloved.

CHAPTER II.

EARLY RELIGIOUS LIFE.

DR. JOHNSON seems to have been blessed with strong impressions of religion at a very early time of life: and these impressions certainly biassed the tone of his religious feeling-one of fear rather than of love— during the periods of manhood and old age. He himself said, that he remembered distinctly having had the first notice of heaven, "a place to which good people went," and hell, "a place to which bad people went," communicated to him by his mother, when a little child, in bed with her. When he was as yet in petticoats, she put the Book of Common Prayer into his hands, and he learned the collect for the day with wonderful quickness. But she did not always train his young mind with judicious care. 'Sunday," he says, was a heavy day to me when I was a boy. My mother confined me on that day, and made me read the 'Whole Duty of Man,' from a great part of which I could derive no satisfaction ;" and he gives an instance in proof of this feeling. Soon he fell into an indifference about religion-talked flippantly about it-found great reluctance to enter a Church-and not until he resided in college at Oxford, and took up "Law's Serious Call

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to a Holy Life," did he recover from this supineness in the most important business of life. How often do we find our joyous Christian Sunday invested with notions of gloom, through false and injudicious teaching, even in the minds of adult scholars, and its present use, as well as its type of the future, entirely perverted! In after life, we find him holding rational and benevolent ideas respecting the proper observance of the Christian Sabbath.

Here we may be permitted to observe the usefulness of parental education. How many children, before escaping from the nursery, have learned lessons of virtue from a mother or a father, that have never been forgotten-never been driven out of the mind. and heart by the largest additions of subsequent knowledge! Of all maternal patterns, the mother of St. Augustine ranks the first. From parental instruction, such minds as those of Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, Sanderson, &c. &c., derived inestimable benefit. The mother of Adam Clarke, like Johnson's mother, was a stern, yet useful instructor in the ways of religion: for with what horror young Adam heard the croak of the raven after she had referred him, on some case of disobedience, to that verse of Scripture, which told him that the ravens would pick out the eyes

*The Rev. Richard Cecil writes: "I was much indebted to my MOTHER for her truly wise and judicious conduct towards me, when I first turned from my vanity and sin." And of his other parent: "In all my companions-NO FATHER! In all my conversations, none like him! In all my doubts-no oracle like him! In all my fears and anxieties—no refuge like his generosity! I feel HIS LOSS, though surrounded with the prodigality of liberality and kindness."

of the mocking child! (Prov. xxx. 17;) and, he says, "my mother's reproofs and terrors never left me." It was the mother of Byron who led him among the grander scenes of nature, and formed within him that gifted portion of his mind which imagined noble poetry. And thus inanimate things affect us also. The "church bells of our home," the "fragrance of our old paternal fields," dwell in our remembrance : and influence us to good, to the latest hour of our lives.* A case to the contrary, such as Wordsworth's "Michael," may occur; but who is there that can say that his earliest lessons have not continued to be the best, and most freshly remembered, during the hours of reflection and repose? Things that we reason upon are not those which have greatest hold upon our actions—the simple offices of veneration, obedience, and thankfulness, are those that form the happy and dutiful life.

Dr. Johnson ever thought tenderly of his mother. "You frighted me," he writes to Miss Porter, "with your black wafers, for I had forgot you were in mourning, and was afraid your letter had brought me ill news of my mother, whose death is one of the few calamities on which I think with terror." His letters to his beloved mother, just previous to her decease, are the most affecting specimens of filial love that could possibly be written and his thankfulness to all those who waited on her is expressed in the most touching terms of gratitude and regard. After her decease, be sure that his thoughts were identical with

we may

:

*Hugh James Rose.

those addressed some years previously to his friend (Mr. Elphinston) on the loss of a mother, where he says, "I cannot forbear to mention, that neither reason nor revelation denies you to hope that you may increase her happiness by obeying her precepts; and that she may, in her present state, look with pleasure upon every act of virtue to which her instructions or example have contributed." He holds this to be a pleasing, though not important opinion, to those who are acting under the immediate eye of God, which, of course, is the supreme idea that should influence our conduct and who can tell in what degree this hope of maternal cognisance may not have guided her son, not only in that great work (his Dictionary) of which it is recorded, "that he has quoted no author whose writings had a tendency to hurt sound religion and morality," but also in his numerous other writings wherein the talent displayed is not their chiefest excellence.

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Well is it when we have religious parents, and are enabled to obey them: but not less blessed is he who can conduct himself without frowardness to the less virtuous. That is a beautiful passage in one of the letters of Pliny the younger, wherein he speaks of Pompeius Quinctianus in these admirable terms: "How open was his countenance-how modest his conversation-how equally did he temper gravity with gaiety-how fond was he of learning-how judicious his sentiments-how dutiful to a father of a very different character-and how happily did he reconcile filial piety to inflexible virtue; continuing a good son,