This was not the only case in which the humbler members of the Church were a comfort to me. Often my heart was cheered by communications made by them, touching spiritual life. Such communications were perfectly artless, and arose from the absence of that reserve which, in the upper class, is the result of educational refinement. This circumstance often prevents a free revelation of what cultured people think and feel on the subject of religion. I have frequently noticed it, and never inferred, from delicacy touching soul secrets, any want of that which rises to the surface, and overflows in ready words, when uneducated people speak of their Christian experience. I cannot omit a reference to the Gurney family, with some of whom I came into pleasant connection during my Kensington residence. As a boy, I had some knowledge of their ancestral relatives; and now I came into close friendship with Mr. Bell, brother to Mrs. John Gurney, who was mother to Samuel Gurney, the renowned London Quaker, and also to Joseph John Gurney, of Earlham, near Norwich—an equally renowned banker, and also a _Public Friend_, as preachers of that denomination then were wont to be called. Mr. Bell had become one of my hearers and a communicant, much to his spiritual benefit, as he and his family informed me. He was a chatty old gentleman, and used to talk of his sister, Priscilla Wakefield, of Miss Schemmelpenninck, and of Samuel Taylor Coleridge—whom he met at the house of his friend Gilman, resident in Highgate. Through frequent vivid references to these celebrities, whom I knew by their writings and by report, I came to have a sort of personal acquaintance with them. Thus they became, more than ever, living realities. Besides this, I came to have a slight personal knowledge of Mr. Samuel Gurney, just mentioned, the well-known bill-broker, and also of Mrs. Fry, his sister, who did so much good as a prison visitor. Mr. Gurney was a stately person, with a benign countenance, and a musical voice rich in persuasive tones. The mental anxiety he felt during money panics, not only on his own account, but also from sympathy with others, was such, that he was known to spend sleepless nights pacing his chamber. Mrs. Fry was as dignified as her brother, and I now in imagination see her in her becoming Quaker garb, as she talked to me about her nephew Bell, and spoke gratefully of the benefit he had derived from my ministry. The younger Mr. Samuel Gurney came to live at Prince’s Gate, Kensington, and used to worship with us occasionally. At his table I met with the Bunsens, and other remarkable friends and relatives of his. He told me that at any time when I needed, in Christian work, pecuniary help, I might apply to him without hesitation. The crash on “Black Friday” was a terrible trial, as it made him, after being one of the richest of London citizens, dependent on his relatives. I wrote to him words of condolence, to which he beautifully