That velvet which, when I remember it, had lost the bloom of its complexion, will hardly have been preserved till now even by the dyer's renovating aid: and its embroidery has long since passed through the goldsmith's crucible. _Sic transit_ excites a more melancholy feeling in me when a recollection like this arises in my mind, than even the “forlorn _hic jacet_” of a neglected tombstone. Indeed such is the softening effect of time upon those who have not been rendered obdurate and insensible by the world and the world's law, that I do not now call to mind without some emotion even that pulpit, to which I certainly bore no good will in early life, when it was my fortune to hear from it so many somniferous discourses; and to bear away from it, upon pain of displeasure in those whose displeasure to me was painful, so many texts, chapter and verse, few or none of which had been improved to my advantage. “Public sermons”—(hear! hear! for Martin Luther speaketh!) “public sermons do very little edify children, who observe and learn but little thereby. It is more needful that they be taught and well instructed with diligence in schools; and at home that they be orderly heard and examined in what they have learned. This way profiteth much; it is indeed very wearisome, but it is very necessary.” May I not then confess that no turn of expression however felicitous,—no collocation of words however emphatic and beautiful—no other sentences whatsoever, although rounded, or pointed for effect with the most consummate skill, have ever given me so much delight, as those dear phrases which are employed in winding up a sermon, when it is brought to its long-wished-for close. It is not always, nor necessarily thus; nor ever would be so if these things were ordered as they might and ought to be. Hugh Latimer, Bishop Taylor, Robert South, John Wesley, Robert Hall, Bishop Jebb, Bishop Heber, Christopher Benson, your hearers felt no such tedium! when you reached that period it was to them like the cessation of a strain of music, which while it lasted had rendered them insensible to the lapse of time. “I would not,” said Luther, “have preachers torment their hearers and detain them with long and tedious preaching.” CHAPTER XLVII. DONCASTRIANA. GUY'S DEATH. SEARCH FOR HIS TOMB-STONE IN INGLETON CHURCH-YARD. Go to the dull church-yard and see Those hillocks of mortality, Where proudest man is only found By a small hillock in the ground. TIXALL POETRY.