protect his family and himself. But the intelligence of his intended departure fell with a melancholy gloom upon every heart at Hodnet. His farewell sermon, preached on Sunday, April 20th, 1823, was tender and affecting in the highest degree. One personal passage may be quoted:

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My ministerial labours among you must have an end. I must give over into other hands the task of watching over your spiritual welfare; and many, very many of those with whom I have grown up from childhood, in whose society I have passed my happiest days, and to whom it has been, during more than fifteen years, my duty and my delight (with such ability as God has given me) to preach the Gospel of Christ, must, in all probability, see my face in the flesh no more. Under such circumstances, and connected with many who now hear me by the dearest ties of blood, of friendship, and of gratitude, some mixture of regret is excusable, some degree of sorrow is holy. I cannot, without some anxiety for the future, forsake, for an untried and arduous field of duty, the quiet scenes where, during so much of my past life, I have enjoyed a more than usual share of earthly comfort and prosperity; I cannot bid adieu to those, with whose idea almost every recollection of happiness is connected, without many earnest wishes for their welfare, and (I will confess it) without some severe selfreproach that, while it was in my power, I have done so much less than I ought to have done, to render that welfare eternal. There are, indeed, those here who know, and there is ONE, above all, who knows better than any of you, how earnestly I have desired the peace and the holiness of His church, how truly I have loved the people of this place, and how warmly I have hoped to be the means, in His hand, of bringing many among you to glory. But I am at this moment but too painfully sensible that in many things, yea in all, my performance has fallen short of my principles; that neither privately nor publicly have I taught you with so much diligence as now

seems necessary in my eyes; nor has my example set forth the doctrines in which I have, however imperfectly, instructed you; yet if my zeal has failed in steadiness, it never has been wanting in sincerity. I have expressed no conviction which I have not deeply felt; have preached no doctrine which I have not steadfastly believed. However inconsistent my life, its leading object has been your welfare; and I have hoped, and studied, and sorrowed, and prayed, for your instruction, and that you might be saved. For my labours, such as they were, I have been indeed most richly rewarded, in the uniform affection and respect which I have received from my parishioners, in their regular and increasing attendance in this holy place, and at the table of the Lord; in the welcome which I have never failed to meet in the houses both of rich and poor; in the regret (beyond my deserts, and beyond my fullest expectations) with which my announced departure has been received by you; in your expressed and repeated wishes for my welfare and my return; in the munificent token of your regard with which I have been this morning honoured; in your numerous attendance upon the present occasion; and in those marks of emotion which I witness around me, and in which I am myself well nigh constrained to join. For all these, accept such thanks as I can pay; accept my best wishes; accept my affectionate regrets; accept the continuance of the prayers which I have hitherto offered up for you daily, and in which, whatever and wherever my sphere of duty may ultimately be, my congregation of Hodnet shall (believe it!) never be forgotten."

After dwelling with his accustomed earnestness upon the duties of men to their brethren, he concluded in a strain of pathetic exhortation, which must have filled the eyes of his hearers with sadder tears than they had hitherto shed, by beseeching them, as the last request he should ever make, "to love one another, to forgive one another, even as God, for Christ's sake," had loved and

forgiven them. With this tender injunction, he bade farewell to his weeping parishioners; and turning back, from a range of high grounds near Newport, to "catch a last view of his beloved Hodnet," the prophetic exclamation, that “he should return to it no more!" is said to have broken from his lips. Embarking on board the Thomas Grenville, he anchored in Saugor Roads, upon the 3rd of October, and arrived at Calcutta on the 10th of the same month.

On the 15th of June, the bishop commenced a visitation through the upper provinces, accompanied by his domestic chaplain, Mr. Stowe. The ill health of Mrs. Heber occasioned him much regret; and he lamented that the excursion to which he had looked forward with such lively anticipations of pleasure, was become a "dreary banishment." The most trivial circumstance recalled England to his memory; and the song of some Indian boys, and the manner in which they asked for charity, brought an exclamation to his lips of,-"Dear, dear England! there is now less danger than ever of my forgetting her, since I now, in fact, first feel the bitterness of banishment. In my wife and children I still carried with me an atmosphere of home; but here everything reminds me that I am a wanderer."

In the loveliest scenes, this solitude was felt the most; and in the beautiful Hindoo village at Bogwangola, he felt that the chain of domestic happiness was for a while broken:

I spread my books, my pencil try,

The lingering noon to cheer;
But miss thy kind approving eye,

Thy meek attentive ear.

But when at morn and eve the star

Beholds me on my knee,

I feel, though thou art distant far,

Thy prayers ascend for me.

It was during this journey that he composed the Evening Walk in Bengal, of all his poems the most touching and beautiful:

Our task is done! on Gunga's breast,
The Sun is sinking down to rest;

And, moored beneath the tamarind bough,
Our bark has found its harbour now.
With furled sail and painted side,
Behold the tiny frigate ride:

Upon her deck, 'mid charcoal gleams,
The Moslem's savoury supper steams,
While all apart, beneath the wood,
The Hindoo cooks his simpler food.
Come walk with me the jungle through:
If yonder hunter told us true,

Far off, in desert dark and rude,
The tiger holds his solitude;

Nor (taught by recent harm to shun
The thunder of the English gun,)
A dreadful guest, but rarely seen,
Returns to scare the village green.
Come boldly on! no venomed snake
Can shelter in so cool a brake;
Child of the sun, she loves to lie,
'Mid Nature's embers, parched and dry,
Where, o'er some tower, in ruin laid,
The peepul spreads its haunted shade;
Or round a tomb its scales to wreathe,
Fit warder in the gate of death.
Come on! yet pause! behold us now
Beneath the bamboo's arched bough,
Where, gemming oft that sacred gloom,
Glows the geranium's scarlet bloom,
And winds our path through many a bower
Of fragrant tree and giant flower;
The ceiba's crimson pomp displayed
O'er the broad plantain's humble shade,

And dusk anana's prickly blade;
While o'er the brake so wild and fair
The betel waves his crest in air.
With pendent train and rushing wings
Aloft the gorgeous peacock springs.

And he, the bird of hundred dyes,
Whose plumes the dames of Ava prize.
So rich a shade, so green a sod,
Our English fairies never trod;

Yet who in India's bower has stood,

But thought on England's "good green wood!"
And blessed, beneath the palmy shade,

Her hazel and her hawthorn glade,

And breathed a prayer (how oft in vain!)
To gaze upon her oaks again.

A truce to thought! the jackal's cry.
Resounds like sylvan revelry;

And through the trees, yon failing ray
Will scantly serve to guide our way.
Yet mark! as fade the upper skies,
Each thicket opes ten thousand eyes-
Before, beside us, and above,
The fire-fly lights his lamp of love,
Retreating, chasing, sinking, soaring,
The darkness of the copse exploring;
While to this cooler air confest
The broad dhatura bares her breast,
Of fragrant scent, and virgin white,
A pearl around the locks of night!
Still as we pass, in softened hum,
Along the breezy alleys come,
The village song, the horn, the drum.
Still as we pass, from bush and briar,
The shrill cigala strikes his lyre.
And, what is she whose liquid strain
Thrills through yon copse of sugar-cane!
I know that soul-entrancing swell!

It is it must be-Philomel!

Enough, enough, the rustling trees
Announce a shower upon the breeze;
The flashes of the summer sky
Assume a deeper, ruddier dye;

Yon lamp, that trembles on the stream,
From forth our cabin sheds its beam;
And we must early sleep, to find
Betimes the morning's healthy wind.

VOL. II.

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