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prevent Harrow from sinking into the lowest contempt. believed, also, it was Sumner's wish that he should be chosen. Every boy in the school signed a petition in his favor, but in vain. The reason of his ill success, as he afterwards asserted, was the vote he had given for Wilkes; and a suspicion that his independent spirit would lead him to govern the school according to his own notions. The consequence was, that Parr indignantly resigned his place as assistant. The scholars shared in his feelings, and more than forty of them abruptly quitted Harrow; and when their former assistant established a rival school at Stanmore, they joined it.

This disappointment is considered by Parr's biographers as the crisis of his fate. He was deprived of a situation which would have yielded him a revenue adequate to all his reasonable wishes, and wherein his extraordinary stock of erudition and his ardent thirst for learning might have been fully displayed. He was placed in a situation in which he long felt the miseries of dependence, and in which his vast accumulations of knowledge were rendered comparatively useless. Yet he found in these disheartening circumstances friends who cheered him with their sympathy, and discharged offices of more substantial advantage. From the relatives of the late principal he received large accommodations of money. From the heavy expenses he was obliged to incur in the establishment of his school, this aid was peculiarly welcome.

At Stanmore the number of his pupils was not large, never exceeding sixty. Among them, however, were several names which subsequently became eminent in the state or in literature. Yet his situation was by no means enviable. The school at Harrow was too near, and the influence in its favor too mighty to allow the rival establishment to meet with an extensive patronage. He fell into a quarrel with the rector of the parish, who, when Parr came to Stanmore, was one of the warmest of his friends. The quarrel grew from a slight coolness, produced by an assumption of superiority on the part of the rector, which such a spirit as Parr's was not at all inclined to brook, into a total interruption of intercourse. The rector was a man of great abilities, and had been brought up at Litchfield with Johnson and Garrick; and being possessed of wit, which he was wont to display with little regard to the feelings of his friends, the rupture between him and Parr ceases to be wonderful. Irritated by this circumstance, and by the disappointment he had met

with at Harrow, and provoked and chagrined by the decline of his school, in the spring of 1777 he forsook Stanmore and took up his residence at Colchester.

Every one who has heard of Parr has heard of his inveterate habit of smoking. The best likeness we have seen of him represents him seated in his arm chair, enveloped in his study gown, with pipe in hand. Robert Hall, who, when settled at Cambridge, was somewhat in his society, according to his own statement, was obliged to take up smoking in self-defence. "To smoke, talk Greek, and talk politics," were his three favorite amusements. The most valuable gift which Mr. Fox thought he could offer him was a superb Turkish tobacco-pipe, six feet in length. He began the practice of smoking at Harrow, but the contentment of his mind and his constant employment gave him little time for such an indulgence. What time he could then spare from his school was devoted to reading and the preparation of sermons; but, at Stanmore, he abandoned himself to the practice without restraint. His favorite beverage was port wine and water; and one of his friends testifies a testimony which we should think ought to have been entirely superfluous, considering the clerical character of Parrthat he never knew him to transgress the bounds of the strictest sobriety. He brought upon himself the ridicule of the people of Stanmore by frequently riding through the streets in high prelatical pomp, on a black saddle, bearing in his hand a long cane which was meant to resemble a bishop's crosier: at other times he would inconsistently suffer himself to walk through the same streets in a dirty striped morning gown.

Parr, as we have said, went to reside at Colchester, in the spring of 1777. He was received with open arms by his friend Dr. Nathanael Forster, and "that exquisite scholar, the Rev. Thomas Twining." Here he resumed his intention of taking priest's orders, in which he had been frustrated at the time he left Harrow, in consequence of an unfounded report of his having stimulated the scholars to rebel at the election of Dr. Heath. He was now ordained by Bishop Lowth. His curacies were the two churches in Colchester where his friend Dr. Forster was the incumbent. Though his efforts to establish a school were not very successful, his residence in Colchester was in many respects advantageous to him. It established his reputation as an instructor, and above all confirmed the friendship of the two eminent men whose names have just been mentioned. The latter

of these is well known to scholars by his translation of Aristotle's Poetics. The conversation of Dr. Forster was peculiarly agreeable to Parr, from the depth and clearness of his views on metaphysical subjects; nor was their friendship ever disturbed by their opposite political sentiments; Parr being as hostile to Lord North's administration and as friendly to the Americans, as Forster was inimical to the Americans and in favor of Lord North; though Forster was a fearless speaker of his thoughts, and Parr certainly was not less so.

Parr always reverted to his residence at Colchester, as to a time when he enjoyed much, in spite of many circumstances that conspired to embitter his happiness. Here he had a considerable addition to the number of his scholars; and being at a greater distance from Harrow, his spirits were revived and refreshed by better hopes and fairer prospects. His friends had the highest ideas of his learning and taste and manner of teaching. "I have never met with such a man yet," says one of the most acute and accomplished of these, "in the shape of a schoolmaster. How he is in point of discipline and severity, I cannot pretend to say: I have been told that he flogs too much; but I doubt those from whom I heard it think any use of punishment too much. conversing with him, I have heard him disapprove of beating children. I have heard him say, that words were his worst rod : that what all his boys most dreaded was his talking to them and shaming them before the whole school." His society was highly prized. "I heartily wished for you last Friday," says Mr. Twining, "when Mr. Parr and the Forsters were here. The day passed most pleasantly. The party was well assorted, and Mr. Parr in high evva, as he himself said, and full of that social and convivial spirit, that is so charming a thing to me, when it animates a cultivated and well-stocked mind, and sets sense, fancy, and knowledge a flowing; and so melancholy a thing when it produces nothing but barren jollity and laughter without humor; when it makes no other difference in a man, but that his talk is louder and his face redder than at another time."

As usual, it was not long ere Parr was in a quarrel. His foes were the Trustees of the school, and the subject of dispute was a lease. He drew up a pamphlet which he was dissuaded from publishing. The advice that Sir William Jones gave him, on this occasion, deserves to be quoted. "Oh, my friend! remember and emulate Newton, who once entered into a philosophical

contest, but soon found, he said, that he was parting with his peace of mind for a shadow. Surely the elegance of ancient Poetry and Rhetoric, the contemplation of God's works and God's ways, the respectable task of making boys learned and men virtuous, may employ the forty or fifty years you have to live, more serenely, more laudably, and more profitably than the vain warfare of controversial divinity, or the dark mines and countermines of uncertain metaphysics." This pamphlet was marked, to an amusing degree, by all the peculiarities of its author's style; its frequent antitheses and copious illustrations and splendid imagery; all in most ludicrous contrast with the frivolous nature of the occasion. Don Quixotte himself could not have declaimed more magniloquently. "When I first entered the lists against these hardy combatants, I determined to throw away the scabbard; and firmly as I confided in the strength of my cause, I imagined that my antagonists would not yield me the dulcem sine pulvere palmam, that they would dispute every inch of ground with me, and at least save their credit by retreating with their weapons in their hands. But my expectations were disappointed; instead of the fury of a contest we had not even the mockery of a skirmish; not one threat was denounced, not one argument was produced, nor was any allusion dropped upon the offensive topic of the agreement."

The head-mastership of the Norwich school became vacant in

Parr had many agreeable connexions in Norfolk. Robert, the brother of Francis Parr, resided in Norwich, to whom he was fervently attached. He was induced to become a candidate for the vacant situation. He succeeded in being elected, and removed thither in January 1779. He was indebted for his success to the recommendation of Dr. Johnson. The corporation of Norwich applied to Johnson to point out to them a proper master, and he suggested to them the name of Parr.

The next year he appeared, for the first time, before the public as an author. He had intended, it seems, when at Colchester, to publish a sermon which he preached there; but he had never done it. Jones begs him to send the manuscript to him. "You may rely," he says, "on my sincerity, as well as on my attention; but in the name of the muses, let it be written in a legible hand; for to speak plainly with you, your English and Latin characters are so ill-formed, that I have infinite difficulty to read your letters, and have abandoned all hopes of deciphering many of them. I will speak wi h the sincerity which you like; either

you can write better or you cannot; if you can, you ought to write better; if not, you ought to learn." This was not the only rebuke nor the severest, which Parr received, for his abominable penmanship. "My dear and respected friend," said Lord Tamworth to him, "pray do make some one write for you; for I really cannot decipher your Greek characters. You told me that you was only, only once flogged for bad writing; how often have you not deserved it?" "I know you are a great casuist," Archdale livelily said to him. "Do tell me which is the worse of the two, he who never writes, or he who writes so as never to be read." Jeremy Bentham besought him to employ some hand other than his own, if he wished whatever he wrote to be read by any body; otherwise, what he wrote might as well be in the language of the moon, as in what seemed to him to be English. Mr. Bentham's advice would have been appropriate to his own works, but for a greater reason. "If the handwriting on the wall was like yours," Twining said to him," Daniel was a clever fellow. I thought myself a tolerable adept in the art of scoteinography, but I give you the wall." The rebukes and the jests of his friends were, however, useless. His chirography remained a perfect scrawl.

We have been drawn a great way aside. We resume our narration. Parr was invited by the mayor of Norwich, in his official capacity, to publish two sermons which he had pronounced in that city. The first of these sermons is from Paul's words: But when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son. We are tempted to give our readers a somewhat lengthened account of this sermon, as one of the best of Parr's pulpit performances.

In the introduction it is observed, that in an age in which the authority of prescription is openly disavowed, and inquiry carried on with a spirit of incredulity which may be called rigorous to excess, it is to be expected, that Christianity should attract the attention of speculative men. But as the abilities displayed in the defence of the Gospel, bear no dishonorable proportion to the exertions of those by whom it has been secretly undermined or openly assaulted, the most pious ought not to be alarmed. Among the topics which are now very commonly discussed, may be placed the late appearance of Christianity, its partial propagation, and its imperfect efficacy.

The validity of the principles, by which objections drawn from these topics, may be shown to be unphilosophical as well