ve
heard this great doctor of the Church fling back a witticism in the
court of an angry magistrate, he would probably have felt more
doubtful than ever concerning the status of the early Fathers. It
is a relief to turn from the letters of Martyn, with their aloofness
from the cheerful currents of earth, to the letters of Bishop Heber,
who, albeit a missionary and a keen one, had always a laugh for the
absurdities which beset his wandering life. He could even tell with
relish the story of the drunken pedlar whom he met in Wales, and who
confided to him that, having sold all his wares, he was trying to
drink up the proceeds before he got home, lest his wife should take
the money away from him. Heber, using the argument which he felt would
be of most avail, tried to frighten the man into soberness by
picturing his wife's wrath; whereupon the adroit scamp replied that
he knew what _that_ would be, and had taken the precaution to have
his hair cut short, so that she could not get a grip on it. Martyn
could no more have chuckled over this depravity than he could have
chuckled over the fallen angels; but Saint Teresa could have laughed
outright, her wonderful, merry, infectious laugh; and have then
proceeded to plead, to scold, to threaten, to persuade, until a
chastened and repentant pedlar, money in hand, and some dim
promptings to goodness tugging at his heart, would have tramped
bravely and soberly home.

It is so much the custom to obliterate from religious memoirs all
vigorous human traits, all incidents which do not tend to edification,
and all contemporary criticism which cannot be smoothed into praise,
that what is left seems to the disheartened reader only a pale shadow
of life. It is hard to make any biography illustrate a theme, or prove
an argument; and the process by which such results are obtained is
so artificial as to be open to the charge of untruth. Because General
Havelock was a good Baptist as well as a good soldier, because he
expressed a belief in the efficacy of prayer (like Cromwell's "Trust
in God, and keep your powder dry "), and because he wrote to his wife,
when sent to the relief of Lucknow, "May God give me wisdom and
strength for the work!"--which, after all, was a natural enough thing
for any man to say,--he was made the subject of a memoir determinedly
and depressingly devout, in which his family letters were annotated
as though they were the epistles of Saint Paul. Yet this was the man
who