The reader may naturally expect in conclusion a summary of Mr. Marsden's character. In attempting this, we are by no means insensible to the difficulty of the undertaking. Indiscriminate eulogy, and the arrogance which affects to blame in order to establish its own claim to superior wisdom, are both alike impertinent and unbecoming. Yet it is not easy to speak of one whose motives were so high, whose labours so constant and self-denying, and whose triumphs so remarkable, without enthusiasm. While, on the other hand, those infirmities which may generally be detected even in the best men, and which truth requires to be impartially noted down, did not much affect his public life; and we have felt all along as we have written with the disadvantage of having known him only by the report of others. Still, however, something should be attempted. The character of Mr. Marsden is too instructive to be lost; perhaps few great men ever lived whose example was more calculated for general usefulness,--for the simple reason that he displayed no gigantic powers, no splendid genius; he had only a solid, well ordered, mind, with which to work,--no other endowments than those which thousands of his fellow men possess. It was in the _use of his materials_ that his greatness lay. Mr. Marsden was a man of a masculine understanding, of great decision of character, and an energy which nothing could subdue. He naturally possessed such directness and honesty of purpose, that his intentions could never be mistaken; and he seemed incapable of attempting to gain his purpose by those dexterous shifts and manoeuvres which often pass current, even amongst professing Christians, as the proper, if not laudable, resources of a good diplomatist, or a thorough man of business. When he had an object in view, it was always worthy of his strenuous pursuit, and nothing stopped him in his efforts to obtain it, except the impossibility of proceeding further. Had his mind been less capacious such firmness would often have degenerated into mere obstinacy; had it been less benevolent and less under the influence of religion, it would have led him, as he pressed rudely onwards, to trample upon the feelings, perhaps upon the rights, of other men. But he seems, whenever he was not boldly confronting vice, to have been of the gentlest nature. In opposing sin, especially when it showed itself with effrontery in the persons of magistrates and men in power, he gave no quarter and asked for none. There was a quaintness and originality about him, which enabled him to say and do things which were impossible to other men. There was a firmness and inflexibility, combined with earnest zeal, which in the days of the reformers would have placed him in their foremost rank. None could be long in his society without observing that he was a man of another mould than those around him. There was an air of unconscious independence in all he did which, mixed with his other