But such delineations as these might be pursued to a great length, and we have scarcely dwelt at all upon that aspect of his public teaching which the last quotation instantly suggests, its eminent practical character; his discourses on “Christian Morality,” his beautiful discourse on “Humility,” for which he received the hearty thanks of the Bishop of London; his “Caveat against Infidelity,” his “Guide to Prayer;” summarily, it may be said, he touched everything with an exquisite delicacy of conscience, and with the elevation of a saint. His mind cannot be summed in one attribute, neither his piety, nor his genius can be said to find an adequate illustration in one work; he was one of a race of men of whom, indeed, the history of the literature of those times furnishes many illustrations, whose learning and labours were alike vast; they must have caught the earliest daybeam, and trimmed the lamp far beyond the hours of midnight, pursuing their industrious toil, devouring libraries. Their works formed a library; they had not the necessities of our times to call them away, nor was it the age of magazines and reviews, and the lighter shallops of literature. The age immediately preceding that of Watts, and his own age, present to us the forms of many men, who in some sheltered nook passed a life unprofitable—ought we to say inglorious?—satisfied with the spoils of learning, they lived a life of barrenness; they sought wisdom for her own sake, neither for the use it enabled them to confer on others, or the fame it conferred on themselves; or, if they published, it was not so much from the benevolent idea of the transfusion of knowledge, but really from their interest only in their own idea. These were the men and those the times which may be best described in the words of Milton: Whose lamp at midnight hour Is seen in some high lonely tower, Where he may oft outwatch the Bear With thrice great Hermes, or unsphere The spirit of Plato, to unfold What worlds or what vast regions hold The immortal mind that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook.