Mr. Grimshawe has devoted the eighth chapter of his book to the subject of Legh Richmond's preaching. He was an effective preacher. The secret appears to lie in the nature of his theology, its simplicity and universal application. His sermons were so many variations on two key-notes. Man is guilty and may obtain forgiveness; he is immortal and must ripen here for endless woe or weal hereafter. He preached without notes. His first attempt in the little church of Yaverland was a total failure. He persevered, and did not fall into the mistake of trusting to one hour's peripatetic musing for the preparation of his sermon and to the impulse of the moment for its composition. His sermons were carefully prepared in his study and in his walks among the lovely scenes which surrounded him in his parish. He used to refer his friends,' writes his biographer, when conversing with him on the subject of preaching to the advice of his college tutor. Don't use terms of science. The people have no abstract ideas-they cannot understand comparisons and allusions remote from all their habits. Take words of Saxon derivation and not such as are derived from the Latin and Greek. Talk of riches, not affluence; of trust, not confidence. Present the same idea in a varied form and take care you understand the subject yourself; if you be intelligent you will be intelligible.' In Mrs. Roach's collection of papers relating to Legh Richmond is a printed sermon on the close of the year in Brading Church. At the close of it he states to his parishioners his intention of immediately establishing a Sunday school in the town of Brading. In this sermon there is a good deal of repetition, which justifies the criticism on some of his sermons by an intimate friend as reported by Mr. Grimshawe-Excellent sermons, but with too many various readings.' With all his zeal of preaching Mr. Richmond was not amenable to the charge of neglecting what, in the eyes of some persons, are only the preliminaries and the accompaniments of the sermon. 'The organ at Brading,' says Canon Venables, is a lasting memorial of Mr. Richmond's love of sacred music.' His efforts in that direction met with the usual fate of such attempts. He writes in his diary, 'The organ proposals negatived'; wisely adding, 'I feel the benefit of a momentary disappointment, it is physic to my soul.' In 1801 he formed a kind of mutual improvement society at Brading for the study of the Scriptures and Liturgy of the Church of England,' with himself as the director,' on the Wednesday evenings on which it met. After his departure from the Isle of Wight in 1805 he never returned to it till twenty years afterwards. Mr. Grimshawe in the fifteenth chapter of his book the last but one, gives extracts from Legh Richmond's own diary of this Isle of Wight tour. He preached at Brading on this occasion when the church was most crowded, and at Ryde 'many gave him the right hand of fellowship, Mr. and Lady Harriet W., Mr. Butterworth, &c.' At Cowes he found a friend in Lieut. Bailey, R.N. That was his last view of the Island he loved so well, and in whose scenery he so much delighted. After many years of unwearied exertion and extensive usefulness he died in perfect peace, May 8, 1827, aged fifty-five years, leaving a widow and eight surviving children, one of whom became the Rev. Legh Richmond of Rhode Island, U.S. The best men are but men at their best. In reading his life, as written by his admiring biographer, he appears to have been not only blameless but almost faultless. No instance can be found of his lips speaking unadvisedly, and he was a most affectionate husband and father with many friends. Walking with God as his living Lord and Saviour, he was full of brave endurance and consistent throughout. 'There was,' Mr. Grimshawe says, 'an excess of sensibility in his character,' but this can hardly be called a fault. Few can read the life of this good man without being the better for the example he sets them. Let him have his due meed of praise in the Isle of Wight, the scene of his first ministry, where he received, to use his own words, his first serious, and as I hope, saving impressions. September 15, 1888. HOW THEY WELCOMED A RUSSIAN THE following extract from an old Isle of Wight Magazine holds up to the light what was going on in this Island in the middle of the closing year of the last century. 'Newport, Isle of Wight, July 20th. On Monday the troops in barracks in Parkhurst Forest, consisting of the 79th and 85th regiments of foot, North Hants and Isle of Wight Militia, together with the Flintshire Militia of the Medina Mill Barracks, were drawn up in Parkhurst Forest by MajorGeneral Don, and fired feux de joie in honour of the glorious victory obtained by Marshall Suwarrow, after which the militia regiments were informed of Government's proposals, respecting enrolment of part in regular regiments, with the inducement of a bounty of ten guineas per man; and such is the spirit of the men, that more than the specified number volunteered for the service, and the officers are thus enabled to choose their men. 'On Tuesday morning that part of the South Devon Militia in the barracks at Sandown marched from thence to Cowes, in order to join their regiment at Exeter, arrived lately from Ireland; they were replaced by the Flintshire Militia from the Medina Barracks. July 21st, the Loyal Newport Volunteers, under the command of Captain Clarke, this day fired feux de joie in the forest of Parkhurst, in consequence of the victory obtained by Gen. Suwarrow; it is needless to add the cheerfulness and alacrity with which this respectable corps are always ready to attend their commander whenever called on. 'On Thursday, the 25th, the Carmarthenshire Militia marched into Parkhurst Barracks. They are just arrived from Ireland.' It is easy enough for professed jokers to have their fling at these marchings and counter-marchings, and any one who pleases may be sarcastic, after the manner of Mephistophiles in Faust, upon those who thus kept holiday, 'Each on his own small round intent, like sportive kitten with its tail.' But they who sit in the seat of the scorner do not arrive at truth. What was taking place at Newport and Parkhurst Barracks was also going on throughout Great Britain, proving what was the heart and mind of England and Scotland nearly ninety years ago. This was the spirit that carried our country safe through all the dangers of invasion, and Irish rebellion, and insurrection, during our war with France. Not the politicians, but the great English people holding itself to its own, carried us through these terrible years. The partisans of the French Revolution, and the age of reason' men would have cast the metal of the constitution, which it had taken a thousand years to form, into the fiery furnace until it had run itself out in the ash-pit. At that crisis stood forth a spare young man with iron features-William Pitt. He rallied round him all those whose deepest convictions led them to resist revolutionary politics in order to preserve national freedom. Napoleon was to carry out the revolutionary idea by destroying the barriers which divided. the nations of the world, make them all portions of one grand democracy, which should have a head and commander as the Roman democracy were wielded by Caesar. It was, he said, his destiny to be that general, and for some time the tide of events seemed to prove that it was so. Kingdoms and Empires stooped to him. The Prussian monarchy which Frederick the Great had raised was humbled at the feet of the French. The German Empire ceased. His armies swept over Spain and Portugal. At Tilsit Alexander and Napoleon were considering how the world might be divided between France and Russia. In 1799 matters in Europe had not arrived at this pass. Alexander, Czar of all the Russias, had not succeeded to the throne of his father, the crazy Emperor Paul. Not till 1801 did the Russian nobility determine on the deposition of Paul, and as there is one prison whose doors can never open to a deposed monarch, resolved, in conformity with their national precedents, to put him to death, and make his son Emperor in his stead. At the time to which the entry in the Isle of Wight Magazine refers Russia was in alliance with England. Her troops were occupying Naples and the Ionian islands, conjointly with the Turks and English. Russian fleets were in the Mediterranean and off the coast of Holland. Russian armies in Italy and Switzerland under Suwarrow, or, according to his real Russian name, Alexander Vassilivich, Rymnikski Suvorov, Count, and Prince Italinski, one of the most celebrated generals of the eighteenth century. This title of Italinski was given him in consequence of his brilliant victories of Piacenza, Novi, and Alexandria, and also for his activity in taking from the French all the towns of Upper Italy. It does not appear from the article in the magazine which of Suwarrow's great victories called forth the enthusiasm of the troops, Regulars, Militia, and Volunteers, in Parkhurst Forest, but we may infer that it was connected with his conspicuous success before Turin, when on the 27th of May that city, the great depôt of the French, was taken with 260 guns, besides immense stores; or with his subsequent action on the banks of the river Trebia. In this battle Suwarrow was pitted against the French under Macdonald, and after a contest of three successive days (night bringing no respite to the carnage) the French Army was finally defeated with great slaughter, not one of their general officers escaping without a wound; nor did they suffer much less in the pursuit that followed. There were several points in the character of this gallant old general (Suwarrow was in his seventieth year when he conducted this Italian campaign) which would ingratiate him with English soldiers. As his name, once a household word in Newport and its neighbourhood, has now almost passed away from recollection, it may not be amiss to say something about one of the few generals who never lost a battle. Suvorov was an extraordinary man. Though of a weak constitution, he preserved his youthful vigour to his old age, maintaining himself in good health by temperance, severe exercise and cold baths. He slept on a bed of straw or hay, under a light blanket, and his diet was the same as that of his soldiers. His wardrobe consisted merely of his uniform and a sheepskin. Like many great soldiers he was a devout man, very strict in performing all the duties prescribed by the Russian Church, and rigid in enforcing |