nobleman, who was accused of being over-partial to it. In the third Essay, on Parochial Psalmody, he gives the preference to Merrick's weak and affected version over the two other translations that are used in our churches. The late Bishop Horsley, in his Commentary on the Psalms, was, I believe, the first who was hardy enough to claim that palm for Sternhold, to which, with all its awkwardness, his rude vigour entitles him. When he comes to speak of _Christianizing_ our hymns, the apprehension which he expresses of deviating from the present practice of our establishment, seems to have restrained him from saying something which he would otherwise have said. The question surely is not so much, what the practice of our present establishment is, as what that of the first Christians was. There is, perhaps, no alteration in our service that could be made with better effect than this, provided it were made with as great caution as its importance demands. His death, which was at last sudden, was caused by a hurt on his shin, that happened when he was stepping out of his carriage. On the Sunday (two days after) he felt so little inconvenience from the accident, as to officiate in his church at Aston. But on the next Wednesday, the 7th of April, 1797, a rapid mortification brought him to his grave. His monument, of which Bacon was the sculptor, is placed in Westminster Abbey, near that of Gray, with the following inscription:-- Optimo Viro Gulielmo Mason, A.M. Poetae, Si quis alius Culto, Casto, Pio Sacrum. Ob. 7. Apr. 1797. Aet. 72. Mason is reported to have been ugly in his person. His portrait by Reynolds gives to features, ill-formed and gross, an expression of intelligence and benignity. In the latter part of life, his character appears to have undergone a greater change, from its primitive openness and good nature, than mere time and experience of the world should have wrought in it. Perhaps this was nothing more than a slight perversion which he had contracted in the school of Warburton. What was a coarse arrogance in the master himself, assumed the form of nicety and superciliousness in the less confident and better regulated tempers of Mason and Hurd. His harmless vanity cleaved to him longer. As a proof of this, it is related that, several years after the publication of Isis, when he was travelling through Oxford, and happened to pass over Magdalen Bridge at a late hour of the evening, he turned round to a friend who was riding with him, and remarked that it was luckily grown dusk, for they should enter the University unobserved. When his friend, with some surprise inquired into the reason of this caution: What, (said he) do you not remember my Isis?