dred and fifty guineas. Her parents, dying in 1767, within a short period of each other, expressed towards her the greatest tenderness, and augmented her fortune, which proved they were fully satisfied with the result of that conviction which in its growth had given them so much pain.

But we must not linger over this part of her life, but proceed to her removal from Leytonstone, and settlement in Yorkshire, at a place called Crosshall, in the West Riding.

Mrs. Ryan died shortly after the removal; but before the final step was taken, and when, the house at Leytonstone being too small, with no land attached to it, the two friends were consulting together as to what course they should pursue, Mrs. Ryan thus addressed Miss Bosanquet :

66 6

My dear, I hardly know how to rejoice in the prospect of death, because I see no way for you. I shall leave you in the hands of enemies, but God will stand by you.' I said, 'My dear love, can you think of any way for me? It is sometimes presented to my mind that I should be called to marry Mr. Fletcher.'* She replied, I like him the best of any man, if ever you do take that step. But unless he should be of a very tender disposition towards you, you would not be happy: but God will direct you.'”

From this time we occasionally, through the course of long years, meet with observations about "Mr. Fletcher ;" and though a certain Mr. in Yorkshire, formed for her a most romantic attachment, and, as she quaintly observes, "made me an offer of his hand, his heart, and his purse," she would not listen to his suit. We must give a curious anecdote about this affair; it seems that the gentleman, who had lost a wife whom he tenderly loved, had heard of Miss Bosanquet, and thought that perhaps she "was brought to Yorkshire by the Providence of God to repair his loss." But he was personally unacquainted with her, till

"One day, as I was returning from a little journey where I had been to meet some people, we called at an inn to bait the horse. Mr. - was standing at a window of that inn. I came out, and stood some time at the block waiting for my horse. A thought struck his mind, I should like that woman for a wife;' -but instantly he corrected it with that reflection, I know not whether she be a converted or an unconverted person; a married or a single woman. Just then Mr. Taylor came up with the horse. The gentleman knew him, and, coming out to speak to him, was much struck to find it was me."

*The pious reader will not be displeased to see that such an impression was made on such a mind, preceding the union of that admirable couple. The impression was mutual. In a letter from Mr. Fletcher to Mr. Charles Wesley (see Mr. Fletcher's Works, vol. vii.) we find the following sentiments. 'You ask me a very singular question,-I shall answer it with a smile, as I suppose you asked it. You might have remarked that for some days before I set off for Madeley I considered matrimony with a different eye to what I had done: and the person who then presented herself to my imagination was Miss Bosanquet. Her image pursued me for some hours the last day, and that so warmly, that I should, perhaps, have lost my peace, if a suspicion of the truth of Juvenal's proverb, Veniunt a dote sagittæ ("The arrows come from the potion," rather than from the lady), had not made me blush, fight, and flee to Jesus, who delivered me at the same moment from her image, and the idea of marriage.' There will be some regret, perhaps, felt, that a long and suffering time should intervene before that union. But it was all ordered for the good of both,-for an eternal union,- for the marriage of the Lamb!'"-Note to Memoir.

This is one of the many indications, scattered through the memoir, that Miss Bosanquet possessed remarkable power of personal fascination. She certainly was not a beautiful woman-her portrait marks the reverse—but something tender and genial must have beamed in her countenance, which won men, women, and children alike.

On she went, farming, teaching, preaching, praying, and, when she got into trouble, falling back on the memory of Mr. Fletcher, whom she had not seen for fifteen years, and who seems, in their mutual youth, to have been deterred by her superior wealth from offering marriage. How deeply this celebrated man had impressed her imagination may be seen by an extract from her diary in 1773:

His

"Nov. 6th, Monday.—I have received some upbraiding letters, asking me if I yet believed I should see those words fulfilled, I will restore to you the ears the locusts have eaten'? In the midst of my trials it is sometimes presented to my mind, Perhaps the Lord will draw me out of all this by marriage. Opportunities of this kind occur frequently; but no sooner do I hear the offer, but a clear light seems to shine on my mind, as with this voice, 'You will neither be holier nor happier with this man.' But I find Mr. Fletcher sometimes brought before me, and the same conviction does not intervene. eminent piety, and the remembrance of some little acts of friendship in our first acquaintance, look to me sometimes like a pointing of the finger of Providence. And yet I fear lest it should be a trick of Satan to hurt my mind. I know not even that we shall see each other on this side eternity. Lord, let me not be drawn into a snare! Well, this I resolve on, to strive against the thought, and never to do the least thing towards a renewal of our correspondence. No, I will fix my eye on the hundred forty and four thousand:' praying only to live and die to God alone."

But

"In the month of August, 1777, going into a friend's house, who was just come from the Conference, he said, 'Do you know that Mr. Fletcher, of Madeley, is dying? Indeed, I know not but he is dead. If he hold out a little longer, he is to go abroad; but it is a pity, for he will die by the way, being in the last stage of a consumption.' I heard the account with the utmost calmness. For some days I bore his burden before the Lord, and constantly offered him up to the will of God. A few days after, another of my acquaintance wrote word—Mr. Fletcher is very bad; spits blood profusely, and perspires profusely every night. Some have great hope that prayer will raise him up; but for my part, I believe he is a dying man, as sure as he is now a living one.' As I was one day in prayer, offering him up to the Lord, these words passed my mind, The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.' I said, "Lord, I dare not ask it; I leave it to thy sacred will: thy will be done!'

"The following thoughts occurred to my mind,-If the Lord should raise him up, and bring him in safety back to England, and he should propose such a step, could I doubt its being of God, after such an answer to prayer? Yet fearing a deception, I cried to the Lord to keep me in his narrow way, whatever I might suffer, and felt an unaccountable liberty to ask the following signs, if it really were of him. 1. That Mr. Fletcher might be raised up. 2. That he might be brought back to England. 3. That he would write to me on the subject, before he saw me, though we had been so many years asunder, without so much as a message passing on any subject. 4. That he would in that letter tell me,—It had been the object of his thoughts and prayers for some years. It came to my mind further, that, should this occur in the end of the year 1781, it would be a still greater confirmation, as Providence seemed to point me to that season as a time of hope."

VOL. I.

D

The rest of the story, coincidences and all, must likewise be told in her own words :

:

"The 7th of June, 1781, as I before observed, was the day that began my fourteenth year in Yorkshire. On that day I took a particular view of my whole situation, and saw difficulties as mountains rise all around me. Faith was hard put to it. The promise seemed to stand sure, and I thought the season was come; yet the waters were deeper than ever. I thought also, how shall I now hold fast that word so powerfully given to me, 'The Almighty shall be thy defence, and thou shalt have plenty of silver'?

"At length the cloud arose as a man's hand.' The very next day, June the 8th, I received a letter from Mr. Fletcher, in which he told me, That he had for twenty-five years found a regard for me, which was still as sincere as ever; and though it might appear odd he should write on such a subject when but just returned from abroad, and more so without seeing me first, he could only say that his mind was so strongly drawn to do it, he believed it to be the order of Providence.

"In reading this letter I was much struck. So many circumstances all uniting,-1. The season it came in. 2. His writing on the subject before we had met, after an absence of fifteen years; and without his having the most distant suspicion of my mind being inclined towards it. 3. His mentioning, That for twenty-five years he had had the thought. All these particulars answered to the marks which I had laid down. His unexpected recovery also, and safe return, so plainly pointed out the hand of Providence, that all ground of reasoning against it seemed removed. Yet, on the other hand, a strange fear possessed my mind, lest I should take any step out of the order of God: nor was Satan wanting to represent great trials before me, which he told me I should not have strength to stand in.

"We corresponded with openness and freedom till August the 1st, when he came to Cross Hall, and abode there a month, preaching in different places with much power; and having opened our hearts to each other, both on temporals and spirituals, we believed it to be the order of God we should become one, when he should make our way plain.

"He then returned to his parish, a hundred and twelve miles from the place where I lived; for we could not think of taking the step till my affairs were more clearly settled. So we took our leave of each other, committing all into his hand who does what he will with his own.'

"In about five weeks he returned; but still all seemed shut up; no way opened either for disposing of the farm, or of the family. Conversing one day with Mrs. Clapham, of Leeds, she said, 'What do you stick at? The Lord has done so much to convince you that this is to be your deliverance, how is it that you do not believe, and obey his order? I verily believe, if you would take the step in faith, your way would be made plain directly.'

So, after a few more pros and cons, Miss Bosanquet married the good man whom she had loved, and who had loved her, from her youth upwards; and "on Monday the 12th of November, 1781, in Batley Church, we covenanted in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, to bear each other's burdens,' and to become one for ever."

For three years and a half we now read in her diary the most joyful utterances of married happiness. John William de la Flechere, whose foreign birth was almost obliterated from memory by his long and arduous services in the English ministry, was a native of Nyon, in Switzerland. His father was of good family, and had been an officer in the French army. His son also in early youth adopted the profession of arms; but coming to England on a

visit while yet quite a young man, he fell into society which deepened the impressions of religion upon his ever reverent and sensitive mind, and entered the ministry as a clergyman of the Church of England, and was presently made Vicar of Madeley. The Methodists had not at that time separated from the Church, and Mr. Fletcher lived and died in the communion, though an intimate friend and disciple of John Wesley's. He was in all ways a remarkable man ; in person tall, dignified, and of great skill in manly exercises, owing to his youthful training. He was an accomplished classical scholar, and versed in polite literature; but in later life his whole being was given over to the service of Christianity. His political opinions were high Tory, and were so acceptable to George III., that that monarch desired to give him preferment. But Mr. Fletcher, who cared nothing for riches, and whose Toryism only sprang from his constitutionally loyal and somewhat romantic mind, made the characteristic answer that “he wanted nothing but more grace." The humble vicar of Madeley was a man whose endowments might have placed him on the eminence of a Fénélon, or a St. Vincent de Paul. But he chose to spend his life in comparative obscurity, among a sect who were then ridiculed as fanatics and despised as fools, and his name therefore is appreciated or disregarded in proportion as the great religious revival of the last century is held to be a glory or a reproach. But there are hundreds of thousands of the lower classes in England and America to whom the name of "Fletcher of Madeley" is a dear household word, and we know not what any man might more desire.

Such was the husband of whom Miss Bosanquet writes, "I have such a husband as is in everything suited to me. He bears with all my faults and failings, in a manner that continually reminds me of that word, 'Love your wives as Christ loved the Church.' His constant endeavour is to make me happy; his strongest desire, my spiritual growth."

Three years they lived together at Madeley, occupied in onerous parish duties; and then a fever, caught in visiting his people, struck him down. The details of that last illness are all told in a long letter written by Mrs. Fletcher to Mr. Wesley,-the terrible week of anguish in which every hour brought more certain doom, and the prayer which struggled with his failing breath, "Head of the Church, be head to my wife!" It is impossible, in the space of this paper, to do more than to indicate the outlines of a story which for public and for private interest exceeds to our mind almost any biography we know; linked as it is by the closest connection to the great measures of social amelioration which have marked this century. In all essential respects Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher were democratic, and the spirit of their exertions was immeasurably wider than their creed, and that was not bigoted, though devoutly orthodox. They adopted fellowship with

the great bulk of the Protestant communions;-and perhaps no pages in Mrs. Fletcher's memoirs are more characteristic than those descriptive of her intercourse with the Roman Catholic priest in Madeley, and with her husband's nephew, who was a Deist. For those who differed from her in controversy she had sweet courtesy and clear statements of her own views; for those who were of one faith with herself she had sympathy and tenderness unbounded ; for those who agreed with her neither in belief nor in practice she cherished hope and charity up to the farthest limits possible to one of her decided creed. After her husband's death she passed her long thirty years of widowhood in Madeley; and so great was the respect of the new vicar for Mrs. Fletcher, that, as he did not reside himself, he allowed her to recommend the curate, who was invariably appointed according to her recommendation. Infinitely characteristic were the last words she uttered, December 8th, 1815. Having failed, by reason of great age, for many days, she was closely tended by a female friend. The last night of her life she insisted on this lady going to bed, and then said, "That's right; now, if I can rest I will; but let our hearts be united in prayer, and the Lord bless both thee and me.' In the night she slept quietly away, and went to join him of whom, thirty-one years after his death, she had written, “It seems but yesterday, and he is near and dear as ever.”

IV. BRADSHAW THE BETRAYER.

BY AMELIA B. EDWARDS.

"Oh Doricles! your praises are too large."-WINTER'S TALE.

I AM a conscientious traveller, and I believe in Mr. Murray. I visit all the churches, climb all the mountains, admire all the pictures, and put up at all the inns which he recommends to my notice. When he predicts that "the traveller will behold with a shudder the boiling torrent which plunges beneath his feet to a depth of &c. &c.," I peep over the precipice and shudder accordingly. When he kindly observes that "the traveller will here leave the carriage, and, by ascending the bank at the bend of the road, be delighted with a most extensive and beautiful prospect," I get out, and am delighted on the spot. In short, Mr. Murray tells me what is proper to be done, and I do it; which saves a great deal of trouble, and secures me against anything like misplaced enthusiasm.

There was also a time when I believed in Mr. Bradshaw, and pinned my faith upon the 'Continental Railway Guide:' but that