y by such domestic sorrow as might be
fitly termed gentle chastening. The death of his next brother, Thomas,
who had acted as his curate, was a severe loss to him; and in the desire
to make every affliction a stepping-stone in Christian progress, he
began, from that date, a custom of composing a short collect-like prayer,
veiled in Latin, on every marked occurrence in his life. The next
occasion was, after several years of marriage, the birth of a little
daughter, whom (in his own words) "he had the pleasure of seeing and
caressing for six months," ere she faded away, and died just before the
Christmas of 1817. He never could speak of her without tears, and (his
wife tells us) ever after added to his private prayers a petition to be
worthy to rejoin his "sinless child." His grief and his faith further
found voice in the hymn, each verse of which begins with "Thou art gone
to the grave, but we will not deplore thee," and which finishes--

"Thou art gone to the grave, but we will not deplore thee,
Whose God was thy ransom, thy Guardian and Guide.
He gave thee, He took thee, and He will restore thee,
And death has no sting, for the Saviour has died."

Such had been the training of Reginald Heber, through the pleasant paths
of successful scholarship and literature, and of well-beneficed country
pastorship; a life perilous to spirituality and earnestness, but which he
kept full of the salt of piety, charity and unwearied activity as parish
priest, and as one of the voices of the Church. Such had been his life
up to 1822, when, on the tidings of the death of Dr. Middleton, Bishop of
Calcutta, his friend Charles Williams Wynn, President of the Board of
Commissioners for the affairs of India, offered him the appointment.

To a man of his present position, talents, and prospects at home, the
preferment was not advantageous: the income, with the heavy attendant
expenses, would very little increase his means; the promotion threw him
out of the chances of the like at home; and the labour and toil of the
half-constituted and enormous diocese, the needful struggles with English
irreligion and native heathenism, and the perils of climate, offered a
trying exchange for all that had made life delightful at Hodnet Rectory.
A second little daughter too, whom he could not of course look to
educating in India, rendered the decision more trying. But in his own
peculiarly calm and simple way, he wrote: "I really shoul