public soon vitiate the best-organized man, if he is deprived of that kind of living intercourse, with its corrective and disciplinary agencies, which such society fails to give. The constant tendency to magnify the importance of our favourite trains of thought; the fondling, caressing, maudlin ways, into which even robust minds are always liable to fall, where the solitude of the library is rigidly maintained; the absolute necessity, which exists by virtue of inward laws, for men to balance themselves one against another, and so learn both their weakness and strength; and, above all, that airing of the brain, which is never experienced away from this cordial and inspiriting companionship, are reasons why a high estimate should be put on this goodly fellowship, simply considered as a means of intellectual and moral training. No intellectual man can afford to dispense with this sort of society. Better far be without books than without it; for cultivated men and women always communicate enough to stimulate an appreciative spirit. and urge it forward in quest of something better. It is an insensible censorship, that seldom offends, and never disheartens; it steals upon the pride and selfishness of human nature, with so much bland politeness and gentle affection, that men are made humbler and stronger, without knowing the process by which it has been effected; it is a gymnasium, to which one resorts for amusement, and finds health and vigour in the midst of delight. There cannot be a doubt that this species of intellectual life in England has been of inestimable value to its thinkers and writers. For two centuries it has been their good fortune to enjoy this pleasure, and we apprehend that, if the gain to the world's stock of thought and resources of power, derived from the groves and porticoes of classical philosophy, were placed beside the enlargement of knowledge, and the augmentation of strength, which have sprung from this source, there would not be much cause for the fireside and the social board to be ashamed of the comparison. The highest praise of English literature is this presence of home sentiments among its largest and best class of writers, and the peculiar kind of culture, style of thought, and general attitude of mind, which such a social spirit has developed. We do not mean the introduction of domestic life into works of fiction-a department of writing in which the ideas and experience of the tender relations of human existence must necessarily have large play-but the effect on literary character of the activity and prominence of that sort of social intercourse which has been experienced in England. It does not appear so much in any special direction of intellect, as in the fine, delicate colouring, that runs through its productions.

English literature is characterized, above all other literature, by

these domestic pictures of exquisite enjoyment. From the time of Addison to the present day, English hearths have imparted warmth to books, that one keeps closely by him; and how many faces, that never depart from the image-chamber of the mind, have caught their familiar radiance from its serene glow! No other country has anything like this to show in its literature. Across the channel there have been brilliantly lighted saloons and picturesque chateaux, where intellect and beauty, the learning of savans, the accomplishments of courtiers, and the fantasies of wit, had their tournaments, and vainly strove to keep alive the romance that was relaxing its hold on the imaginations of men. But these strike only the eye; the heart answers to another call, when the songs that breathe forth from the rural homes of England, or the great works that are permanently associated with its sequestered lakes and beautiful hills, utter the inspiration which never descends upon man or woman, except amid the sacredness of their abode.

One would soon be sensible of the loss to his imagination if English literature were deprived of the multitude of images which it has gathered from English landscapes; and yet this would be insignificant, compared with the immense blank which would be left in it, were its household scenes to be obliterated. The language itself is a testimony to the strength and fulness of its domestic heart. What other language has so many vigorous and impressive terms, so many genuine, idiomatic expressions, to represent the home feelings? Wedded love, parental ties, fireside joys and griefs, the bliss of early marriage, the pathos of early sorrow, the old homestead amid still more venerable oaks, and the green graves of the churchyard; these have created words that have enriched the thoughts of the world, and brought the Anglo-Saxon language nearer to the standard of a perfect medium for the communication of Christianity, than any other tongue. Viewed in this aspect, English civilisation is entitled to a pre-eminence that cannot be disputed. If one will go through its literature, the literature especially that gives the best insight into England's best homes, he will find more to suggest ideas of domestic life, as narrated in the Bible, than in all the other literature of the world.

The period in which Sydney Smith lived, taken in all its aspects, will be remembered, in future days, as one of the most memorable in English history. If, indeed, its entire connexions and bearings be considered, we doubt whether any portion of time, extending through no more than three quarters of a century, is worthy of comparison with it. No age can show so much solid work, so substantially and thoroughly done; none so many abuses corrected, so many

obstacles in the pathway of progress removed; none can boast of such impulses applied to the popular mind, and such general action in behalf of humanity. Among those master-spirits that, by earnest thought and patient toil, laboured to redeem the age from slothfulness, and infuse a new spirit into the traditions and hopes of England, Sydney Smith will have his place; and, though we lay down this memoir, with a heart sad at the thought that he was not more signally useful in the highest and grandest sphere of Christian action, yet we rejoice to know that he has left a name which men will not "willingly let die."

ART. V.-EARLY METHODISM IN MARYLAND, ESPECIALLY IN BALTIMORE.

THE labours and trials of good men as seen in humble life, though often despised and neglected by the world, should always be cherished and held in grateful remembrance by the Church. At this time, when Methodism maintains so conspicuous a place in our country, it may be of some interest to the present generation to look back and trace its first introduction and consequent progress.

Those who were first in laying the foundations of our spiritual superstructure in this ancient commonwealth, were not of that class of instruments which the Church, in the ordinary exercise of her functions, would likely have chosen for so great a work. They had no out-going commission to preach the Gospel to every creature. They were not appointed and sent into this new world with instructions as to where they should labor and how they should act. They were not sent here, but came on their own account; they came here as others did at the time, poor and humble emigrants, to share the common toil and reap the common bounty of this promised land. But they were here as Christian men, to whom the honours and emoluments of this world were as nothing in comparison to the obligations and enjoyments of a better life. They were here as strangers, strangers in more than one sense; they were Methodists, a by-word and a hissing in the country from whence they came, and not less so in this. They were here like Joseph in Egypt, like Lot in Sodom, to be swallowed up by the engrossing artifices for getting money and the pleasures of spending it, or to confess that they were pilgrims on the earth, looking for a city which hath foundations,

whose maker and builder is God. By wisely choosing the latter, and keeping within the compass of their real interest, they were saved themselves, and made the means of saving others.

As true sons of Wesley, they were not afraid nor ashamed to own their paternity, but were always ready to give an answer to every one that asked them of the reason of the hope that was within, with meekness and fear; and enforcing by an upright walk and godly conversation, the simple story of their experiences, they were made the instruments of sowing the first seeds of Methodism in Maryland, which in their development produced that glorious harvest which we now see, and which we justly esteem as the most valuable of our possessions.

When we reflect what the Methodist Episcopal Church in Maryland now is, and how much of her present prosperity she owes to men of other times, it is somewhat reproachful to us that her history is still unwritten; that among so many able ministers and laymen, no one has considered it to be his duty to rescue from oblivion the facts connected with her early existence. To supply this want of forethought and guardianship, (now almost too late,) a few local ministers and laymen associated themselves together in October last as a Historical Society, calling to their aid as many of the itinerant ministers as it was thought would take an interest in collecting information in connexion with the rise and progress of Methodism within the bounds of the Baltimore Annual Conference, and elsewhere. With a view of enlisting the sympathies of our ministers generally, it was agreed that a discourse should be delivered at the first annual meeting of the society in the presence of the conference on some one of the topics embraced in the plan of operation. Through the kindness and partiality of the association that task devolved on the writer of this article; and though conscious of his inability to do justice to the subject, he could not feel altogether at liberty to decline the offer.

The theme of the address, which forms the substance of this paper, is the Rise and Progress of Methodism in Baltimore. A subject so entirely local, and necessarily connected with so much minute detail, can scarcely hope to excite more than a mere local interest. Historical and antiquarian researches differ essentially from works of taste and genius. In the latter, imagination and fancy may display their creative energies, but in the former, invention must be suspended, and the only hope of the toiling labourer is, that he may find amid heaps of rubbish which others had repeatedly sifted, some pearls and diamonds which they had overlooked; and even these, when examined by the hypercritical, may be pronounced of little worth, things to be gazed

at, but of no practical use. For of what importance, it may be asked, is it to any present interest to be groping through devious and dark passages, looking after the dead; to be gathering up for safe keeping the few and scanty memorials of "olden days," whose chief excellence consists in giving utterance to private friendships, or the recital of joys and sorrows now passed and covered by the waters of oblivion; thus subscribing to the remark of Goldsmith, "that volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious; but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a kingdom, are much better for immediate use; the former are often prized beyond their value and kept with care, while the latter seldom pass for more than their intrinsic worth." It is no purpose of mine to draw any invidious comparisons between our young antiquity and the present condition of Methodism, by running into the extremes here complained of by the immortal author of the Deserted Village. Nor does it necessarily follow by any means that men, though antique in their tastes and habits, may not form a correct estimate of what is in the present, valuable.

He that sets out, however, to collect the scattered fragments of the early annals of our forefathers, need not expect to meet with any general plaudits; it may seem too great an effort of mind for the generality of those who are "clothed in soft raiment, and dwell in kings' houses," to conceive of a state of things altogether different from that in which they live; to others it is too great an effort of humility to stoop to converse with their plain and unsophisticated ancestors, and hear the tale of other years. But as children are supposed to have a knowledge of their parentage, and may take pleasure in retracing the scenes of their early days, and in fond memory living them over again, so communities and Churches may reasonably desire to ascertain the rock whence they are hewn, and the hole of the pit whence they are digged.

This fair city of "monuments," the centre of so much social and religious enjoyment to many an annual gathering of the Baltimore Conference, which has now a population of two hundred thousand souls a little upward of a century ago was marked by a solitary hamlet, and known, in the language of the times, as the place where one "John Fleming now lives." On the first of December, 1729, Richard Gist, William Hamilton, Dr. Buchanan, and Dr. Walker, commissioners chosen for the purpose, purchased of Councillor Carroll sixty acres of land, to be paid for at forty shillings each in money, or in tobacco at one cent per pound, and on the twelfth day of the following month, assisted by Philip Jones, the county surveyor, the commissioners laid off Baltimore town. At the very time the lines