ews arrived. There had been a battle close
to the very house of Bankton, and the king's soldiers had run away, and
the brave Colonel Gardiner would not run, but fought to the very last,
and alas for the Lady Frances!--he was stricken down and slain, scarce a
mile from his own mansion door.

JAMES HERVEY.

Near Northampton stands the little parish church of Weston Favel. Its
young minister was one of Doddridge's dearest friends. He was a tall and
spectral-looking man, dying daily; and, like so many in that district,
was a debtor to his distinguished neighbor. After he became minister of
his hereditary parish, and when he was preaching with more earnestness
than light, he was one day acting on a favorite medical prescription of
that period, and accompanying a ploughman along the furrow in order to
smell the fresh earth. The ploughman was a pious man, and attended the
Castle-Hill Meeting; and the young parish minister asked him, "What do
you think the hardest thing in religion?" The ploughman respectfully
returned the question, excusing himself, as an ignorant man; and the
minister said, "I think the hardest thing in religion is to deny sinful
self;" and, expatiating some time on its difficulties, asked if any
thing could be harder? "No, sir, except it be to deny righteous self."
At the moment the minister thought his parishioner a strange fellow, or
a fool; but he never forgot the answer, and was soon a convert to the
ploughman's creed. James Hervey had a mind of uncommon gorgeousness. His
thoughts all marched to a stately music, and were arrayed in the richest
superlatives. Nor was it affectation. It was the necessity of his ideal
nature, and was a merciful compensation for his scanty powers of outward
enjoyment. As he sat in his little parlor watching the saucepan, in
which his dinner of gruel was simmering, and filled up the moments with
his microscope, or a page of the Astro-Theology, in his tour of the
universe he soon forgot the pains and miseries of his corporeal
residence. To him "Nature was Christian;" and after his own soul had
drunk in all the joy of the Gospel, it became his favorite employment to
read in the fields and the firmament. One product of these researches
was his famous "Meditations." They were in fact a sort of Astro and
Physico-Evangelism, and, as their popularity was amazing, they must have
contributed extensively to the cause of Christianity. They were followed
by "Theron and Aspasio"--a seri