which is not always impartial in dispensing praise, will from generation to generation transmit the memory of the moral excellencies which distinguished the royal personage of whom we have lately been bereaved. It will commend him where the justice of commendation is unlikely to be controverted by the blind zeal of party or the fastidious refinements of historical criticism. In the conflict of opinion upon the deserts of sovereigns, fortitude to some may appear rashness, and sagacity may be resolved into dark and crooked cunning. But parental tenderness, but conjugal fidelity, but strict sobriety, but well-intended and well-preserved decency are qualities which no observer is likely to mistake, and no partizan can be under any temptation to depreciate.

Panegyrics we know have often been profusely bestowed upon reigning monarchs for excellencies of which no vestiges could be traced in their passage from the cradle to the grave. Their real faults have been dissembled or explained away. Their real merits, if few, have been multiplied, and if slight, have been exaggerated. The claim of kings to the gratitude of posterity, has in some cases been founded upon the protection which they have given to sculpture, to painting, and to all the elegant arts which adorn civilized society; at other times they have been holden up to the admiration of succeeding ages as profound politicians, as valiant warriors, and as mighty conquerors. And here surely the religionist will often hesitate in yielding his assent to the most eloquent encomiums, when he doubts whether the cause in which

statesmen planned and heroes executed was founded upon strict justice,-when he remembers that of the praise which ought to be given to the wisest counsels in the cabinet, and military feats in the field, a part is due to subordinate coadjutors,—and above all when he recollects, that they who lay province to province, and they who succeed in battle after battle, have inflicted upon thousands and tens of thousands of their unoffending fellow-creatures the severest woe, that amidst the tumults and outrages of war the finest works of art have been effaced, and the most useful productions of nature have been destroyed, and that while Paans were resounding for the glory of the victor, the hoary-headed father, the affectionate widow, and the helpless orphan are weeping in silent sorrow for the loss of their beloved protectors. No such considerations however will tarnish the lustre of those amiable qualities which we ascribe to our lamented monarch.

His private virtues were entirely his own. They borrowed no part of their brightness or their utility from the suggestions or the aid of other men. They sprung up not from the motives which impel the ambitious to look for fame from victory. They found their reward in the calm and serious self-approbation of the sovereign himself. They stood almost in opposition to the ordinary practices of kings, who, bred in the lap of luxury, allured by temptations to voluptuousness from every side, and fancying themselves privileged to indulge their grosser passions with impunity, lose sight of the veneration and obedience which they owe to their Al

mighty Creator, plunge without a blush and without a pang into excesses which would disgrace the meanest of their subjects; and either are callous whether or no their wicked example spread infection through the community, or, what is worse, feel an increase of security and self-importance by averting invidious comparisons between themselves and their inferiors, by lessening the number of the virtuous, or by encouraging the audacity of the vicious. But from this heinous and aggravated guilt, which too often belongs to the character of kings, the personage whose loss we deplore was wholly exempt. Among the supporters and the opponents of his royal power, in his own country and in foreign lands, both distant and near, in the present and through many future generations, the name of George the Third will in bright and indelible characters be recorded as the champion of genuine virtue and the protector of true religion.

Historians have taught us to associate the names of kings with brilliant epithets. We read of an Alexander, a Charlemagne, and Frederick the Great, of Titus the Roman Emperor, the love and delight of the human race, of Antiochus the first king of Syria, the preserver; of Ptolemy the second, the lover of his brethren; of Ptolemy the fourth, the lover of his father; of Louis the first emperor of Germany, the pious; of Louis the twelfth, king of France, the just, and father of his people; of Solomon the wise; and of King David, the man after God's own heart; and to this catalogue of regal worthies, many an Englishman and many a Christian may be inclined

exultingly to add the name of George the temperate, the benevolent, and the devout.

Though his lips cannot again be opened in the cabinet or in the senate, and though his remains mouldering into dust, be concealed from our sight in the dark shadow of death, yet to potentates contemporary, and to potentates future, to his immediate successor, and to a long extended line of descendants, his actions seem to utter this warning voice-hear O ye kings, ye that rule and glory in the multitude of nations; for ye, beyond all other human beings, are responsible unto God and unto man. Give ear to the admonitions of one who, from peculiarly long experience in times peculiarly eventful, had peculiar opportunities for knowing your duty and his own; of one who, amidst the pestilential influence of undisguised impiety and unblushing profligacy, not only upon scattered individuals, but upon warriors, legislators, and apostate priests; of one who, amidst the sudden and tumultuous triumph of spurious philosophy over common sense, and during innovation over established laws; of one who amidst the hideous convulsions, or total overthrow of surrounding governments, retained the love, and the respect, and the confidence, and the obedience of his subjects. There was and there could be no misconceptions upon facts, when he shunned, and taught others to shun what is contemptible in manners and odious in vice. Beware then how you idly scoff with the profane, or riot with the licentious. For the sake of yourselves, your descendants, and your respective subjects, seek

the wisdom which is from above, for her ways are ways of pleasantness, and in her paths every prince and every people will eventually find peace.

Such, my brethren, is the salutary and permanent force of righteousness, when practised in the very highest station of life. If, therefore, as we read in an ancient moralist, the world emulously as it were conforms itself to the example of a king; if, as we are told by another ancient moralist, every crime becomes more conspicuous in proportion as the criminal himself is more exalted in rank; if, as we learn from holy writ, a city that is built upon an hill cannot be hid, and if men be accustomed to place a candle, not under a bushel, but on high, that it may be visible and useful to all that are in the house, then surely a prince may be as a light to the world-a light to guide his successors and all other sovereigns to piety and virtue. And let wicked princes remember, a light with the pure and glaring effulgence of which generations yet unborn will compare the dark and dreary aspect of vice and infidelity when they pollute the sceptre, the diadem, and other gorgeous ensigns of royalty. Let such princes remember, that in the world to come, the syren voice of flatterers, and of convulsive laughter of buffoons, will be no longer heard-that the prophets who prophesied falsely, the priests who loved rule by chanting smooth things, and the people who loved to have it so, will stand speechless and appalled at the dread tribunal of the Almighty-that no artifice can then shelter the sins of sovereigns, under all their deformities and with all their aggravations