of his friends troublesome. Till then he had lived alone; but when his health failed, a niece devoted herself to him, to supply that watchful care which his sinking powers required, but were unable to ask for. He was buried agreeably to his own wish in Hornsey Churchyard, in the same grave with his unmarried brother and sister.

After his death his valuable works of art, pictures, drawings, engravings, vases, sculpture, coins, and books were sold by auction, at a sale which lasted twenty-two days, and produced a large sum, making the property that he left behind him, about what he used to wish it to be, not much more or less than what he inherited. But the proportions into which it was divided, were very remarkable; the house and its contents produced a sum equal to three times that portion of his property which had brought him an income.

In religion and politics, Mr. Rogers ended life. with nearly the same opinions that he began with; opinions which in his youth were frowned upon by the worldly and the timid, and which shut out their owners from many social advantages, but were less unpopular in his later life. When a young man he had followed Charles Grey in signing an address to the nation, in favour of a Reform in Parliament; and when an old man he congratulated the same statesman, in a copy of verses, on his services to the cause of liberty, when that great measure became law. When young he had given his help to Allen and Fox, the benevolent Quakers, in establishing the Borough Road School, for the education of the poor of every

sect; and in after life he joined in the establishment of London University College, for the education of those who felt the oaths at Oxford and Cambridge, a bar to entering those Universities. He had been brought up as a hearer of the Arian Dr. Price, and a friend of the Unitarian Dr. Priestley; and in 1844, when the Unitarians were in danger of being turned out of their places of worship by the orthodox Dissenters, he signed the petition in favour of the Dissenters' Chapel Bill, as a trustee to the old Meeting House on Newington Green. He continued through life unshaken in his disapproval of requiring a belief in fixed creeds and articles of religion, and in his disbelief of the orthodox doctrines of the Atonement and Trinity; though after the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, he did not refuse to take the Sacrament from clergymen of the Church of England.

These unfashionable opinions Mr. Rogers took no pains to conceal. He did not thrust them forward; but an anecdote or two will show that they were generally known to his friends. Once when walking in York Minster with Mr. Wordsworth, and praising the religious solemnity of the building, Mr. Wordsworth would not allow that Mr. Rogers could possibly admire it equally with himself, because of his Presbyterian education. When walking along George Street, Hanover Square, with his witty friend Mr. Luttrell, he complained, as many had done before, of the inconvenience of being thrust off the pavement by the projecting steps of St. George's Church; That,' said Mr. Luttrell, 'is one of your dissenting prejudices.' When

the petition in favour of the Dissenters' Chapel Bill from the descendants of Philip Henry, was taken to Mr. Macaulay to be presented to the House of Commons, Mr. Macaulay asked; 'Has my friend Rogers signed it?' And when dining with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and sitting next to the son of an old school-fellow, then a County Member and a Churchman, Mr. Rogers startled him with the remark, 'You 'and I are probably the only Dissenters here.'

Every poet, indeed every author who writes on human nature and the feelings and doings of his fellow-creatures, leaves his heart and character laid open before the reader; and thus in Mr. Rogers's poems, we find

'his mind unfolded in his page.'

In the Preface to the 'Pleasures of Memory,' he tells us that his aim was to

'Enlighten climes, and mould a future age—
'Dispense the treasures of exalted thought,
"To virtue wake the pulses of the heart,
'And bid the tear of emulation start;

and that he should rest satisfied if his lines

'Revive but once a generous wish supprest,
'Chase but a sigh, or charm a care to rest;
'In one good deed a fleeting hour employ,
'Or flush one faded cheek with honest joy.'

Such was his aim at the age of thirty when he wrote these lines; and every reader of his poems will

at once grant, that when he laid down his pen at the age of ninety, he might justly feel satisfied, that he had used the gift of Poetry throughout his long life in the honest endeavour to make the world the happier 'and better for his having lived in it.'

THE

PLEASURES OF MEMORY.

IN TWO PARTS.

1792.

Hoc est

Vivere bis, vitâ posse priore frui.

MART.