rubbers, too (goloshes, as we should call them here), and his hat in his hand, just as if he had been called in for a few moments from the street. No pulpit-gown, no beadle, no ceremony, in this land of liberty and equality. Beecher deposits his hat in the corner, takes off his rubbers in presence of the whole congregation, seats himself at ease in the chair, and, taking the hymn-book from the little table beside him, begins to turn over the leaves. At half-past ten, sharp on the minute, the organ begins. In front of it, seated in the orchestra gallery, just above Beecher, is the choir-a row of twenty or thirty young ladies and gentlemen, whose heads alone are visible behind the low crimson screen. They are not a paid choir; they belong to the congregation. As soon as the voluntary is ended, Beecher rises, takes off his overcoat, and, stepping forward to the desk, says, "Let us invoke the blessing of God." He does so in a few solemn words, ending with, "Through Christ, our Redeemer, Amen." Then he opens the Bible and begins to read a chapter-the sixth of Paul to the Ephesians. is to deliver a lecture somewhere or other on "Shall women vote?" The prayer-meeting is to be shifted this week from Wednesday to Saturday, as there is to be a children's concert on Wednesday, "at which," says Beecher, "the eminent singer, Parepa Rosa, will perform, unless a providential interference shall prevent her." Another intimation is to the effect that Captain D--, of this church, will, on such a night, repeat his lecture on the East. Beecher looks at the paper a second time, and says, with a merry twinkle in his eye-"His great lecture,' he calls it." This excites a chuckle all over the church at the expense of the captain, who is pointed out to us sitting in his seat in view of the whole congregation, and who evidently intends, from his look (he and Beecher are always bantering one another), to pay his pastor back in his own coin at the earliest possible date. There is another hymn, and then Beecher comes forward and gives out the text. It is in Eph. vi. 7: "With goodwill doing service, as to the Lord and not to men.' He pauses for several moments, looking up into the gallery with that peculiar smile upon his face, as if he knew there was some one there afraid of him, and begging him mutely not to begin with him. He lets him alone and opens quietly, showing how Paul is urging men to the fulfilment of their duties-children to parents, parents to children. He stands erect with a brave look, one foot planted a pace forward, His white collar is turned over a black tie; his long hair, turning grey now, is brushed back behind his ears. His large grey light-floating eye is full of sunny light; and about his whole face, especially about his mouth and chin, that singular expression of "We come next," he says, "to slaves." At smiling defiance. Altogether he has the look of that word, the key-note of so many fierce cona brave, strong man, exulting in his strength-flicts, there is the first flash of fire. the look of one who is going to fight you, and knows that he will win, but means to let you off without much punishment. "I have heard it alleged," says the preacher (warming up), "that these passages justified the sin of slavery! But mark well the apostle's The people are still crowding in at all doors, word. When he speaks to children, he says, choking the passages. After a hymn comes the prayer. There is a solemn stillness; Beecher's voice, wonderful in its pathos and power, filling the whole place, and rising up with its pleadings to the throne of grace. He prays for the poor and those left in ignorance for Sunday-schools, colleges, and universities. "Behold," he cries with emotion, "how many there are to be lifted up!" He prays that more men may come forward to make sacrifices for the truth. Then, with kindling voice, "O that Thou wouldst make men more heroic for God! Lord Jesus, Thou who hast beheld the heels of tyrants bathed in the blood of those they have crushed-oh, wilt Thou not come in Thy shining armour and set the people free?" Then, with a pause and sudden revulsion of feeling, be says-his voice broken down with sadness-"The darkness is very thick. Life walks with weary feet." The depth of feeling that trembles in Beecher's voice when his heart is full, it is almost impossible to describe. After another hymn come the intimations, some of which are rather odd. Miss Lucy Stone 'Obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.' But when he comes to the slaves, he says, 'Serve your masters'-not your masters in the Lord-but your masters 'according to the flesh,' those that happen to be your masters according to the ways of the world-serve them with energy and sincerity of purpose. And then he jumps the master, as though the slave had no motive for service that could be derived from him, and says, 'Do it as unto Christ.' I cannot do it for my master's sake; there is no consideration growing out of this relationship that will be a just and proper motive for me to give him a slave's obedience; but Christ says, 'Do it for me."" Beecher's voice has been kindling through all the paragraph. He looks up now with flaming eye. "This distinction," he cries with a voice of thunder, "this implication is a prodigious argument against slavery!" That is his introduction. He launches out now upon his subject-showing that this is a principle of universal application-that we all have duties to perform that are disagreeable or painful, and that we should help ourselves to their discharge by looking beyond them to the thusiasm still in his face that has been kindling in it through his last appeal. The closing exercises are brief but solemn, and the vast congregation begins to disperse. Lord-doing the service loyally as to Him. He shows how God, to receive this service, connects Himself with all persons and all events. "Here," he cries, "springs up the doctrine of Christian Pantheism-the doctrine of a personal God clothed with affection, who has so joined Himself to men and events that there is not one thing that is not united in some way with God, as in a family where, if a child is sick or hurt, it goes back at once to the heart of its parents." He shows how all men work more easily when acting from the higher than from the lower motives; how, therefore, when a man trains himself to work from this highest motive of all, doing service as to the Lord, the yoke becomes to laugh and get good, than to sleep and get easy and the burden light. This is the central idea of his discourse, which he illustrates in a hundred different ways, and sends home with amazing power. His manner is peculiar. His manuscript is on the desk, but he does not stay much beside it. He reads a few sentences at first; but as soon as the thought seizes him, he moves back and begins to "orate" and gesticulate all round the platform, till the idea is exhausted: then he goes back. He looks like a man going for lance after lance to his armoury, brandishing one awhile in the air, hurling it suddenly at the enemy, and, as soon as he has seen it strike, turning for another. People quote Beecher's funny sayings as they used to quote Spurgeon's, but these are the mere bubbles on the surface of the rushing stream. You may have laughed with the others at some odd illustration, but you leave the church a better man than when you entered it. You have got an impulse in the right direction: you go away with higher thoughts and purposes. This, after all, is the test of a good serOf the two extremes, it is perhaps better mon. none. men. Many of the peculiarities of Beecher's style spring from his peculiar training. His father gave him the very best education within his reach; but "Henry" left college with no thought of the Church, was rather a wild youth, and, with two companions, followed the pioneers to the backwoods to shoot, hunt, and fish. In the midst of this wild life he happened to hear a Methodist minister, and the truth struck home to his heart. The effect was instantaneous. Like Saul when he was struck down on his way to Damascus, his first question was "What wilt Thou have me to do?" Beecher's enthusiastic nature admitted of nothing else. He sold his rod and gun for a horse, and began to more from place to place, preaching to the backwoodsThis was the beginning of Beecher's ministry. At first he used to try and write his sermons, as he had seen his father do: with sometimes nothing but the end of a log or the lid of a pot to rest the paper on. But he found that a log-cabin full of children was not a place favourable to composition of this kind, and he gave it up. Thereafter his studying was done as he rode from one settlement to another, on the back of his old horse. This went on for three years, before he settled down in a regular charge. It was during these years that he acquired his power of homely and forcible illustration, and his habit, still so marked, of seizing everything from around him that can help to drive truth home to the heart. Without this he would never have succeeded amongst the rough backwoodsmen as he did. At last a con His wealth of illustration is boundless. In this he resembles Guthrie; but Guthrie draws more from nature, Beecher from human life. He seems to search the faces of his audience as he goes along, to see what manner of men they are, and what their thoughts are busied with in life, that he may know with what arguments and appeals to reach them. He hesitates at nothing. If he come on politics he dashes in, and says, without the slightest circumlocution, exactly what he means. He never calls a spade an agricultural implement, or alludes to a man's wife as the partner of his joys and sorrows. He comes for an instant to-day on the subject of political corruption. He declares that public offices are bought and sold in the United States like beef in the shambles. He tells his audience that he says nothing of New York, for New York is clean gone like Sodom and Gomorrah; nothing of Albany, for it is a hissing and a byword among the nations. He speaks of the country at large, and he declares that ninety-gregation was formed in Indiana, and Beecher, five out of every hundred offices are bought and sold like things in the market. The reference to the gone condition of New York excites a laugh, but it is over in an instant. Beecher is on with kindling face to something else, and in two minutes after you could hear a pin fall, as the audience listens to some simple story of the Saviour's love. Then he is off again, flaming with some new thought, but always sweeping on upon the same broad track, till suddenly he is done, and standing there with, the fire and en assisted by some of the farmers, got a little church put up. It was a rude affair, and he had to keep it in order himself. He swept the place every Sunday morning with his own hands. "I would have rung the bell too," said Beecher, "if there had been a bell to ring!" When he was called to Brooklyn, and examined prior to his settlement, some of the older and more rigid clergymen on the examining committee were horrified at his apparent ignorance of technical theology-and he a son of dastardly thing, Henry Ward Beecher will have his clutches on him next Sunday night, and hold him up in Plymouth Church to the execration of the whole country. But if Beecher is a terror to evil-doers, he is equally a praise to such as do well. He has a Lyman Beecher! Horace Bushnell stood up for him, said the right spirit was in this man, and he would soon work out for himself the details of theology. Some of the others were less satisfied. "I would protest against this settlement," said one, "were I not in hope that his theology will gradually be rectified by his wise and estim-large and generous heart. If he was one of the able brother," referring to Dr Edward Beecher. When this brother startled the orthodox with his "Contest of Ages," Beecher said to his old friend, "You see we are now getting our theology gradually rectified by that wise and estimable brother of mine!" One or two other stories of that examination are still current. Beecher was asked by a New England minister of the stricter sort, if he believed in the doctrine of the Perseverance of the Saints. "I used to believe in that doctrine," said Beecher; "but when I went out West, and saw how the New England saints behaved themselves when they got away there, I gave it up." He was not questioned further on that point. He was warned, however, by the presiding minister, against the indulgence of wit in the pulpit. "Ah, doctor," said Beecher, "if you knew how much I keep down as it is, you would say I did very well. Suppose, now," he added, "God had endowed you with any wit, would you not use it to His glory?" Beecher has wrought a perceptible change in the American pulpit. He has done so, speaking literally as well as figuratively, for he has helped to clear away the box pulpits and introduce the open platform. He carries the same idea into his preaching. He wants room, freedom, latitude. He must speak what he thinks and feels, no matter whether it make the people applaud, or laugh, or cry. All the faculties that God has given him he demands the liberty to use in His service-whether it be wit, logic, sarcasm, pathos, or humour. He is warring with the devil, and every arrow in his quiver must fly. The question with him is not "Which shaft is considered the most proper?" but "Which will fly straightest and strike deepest?" He must also be allowed to deal with any and every subject. If he thinks the interests of religion are bound up in any crisis with the ascendancy of the Republican party, he will preach Republican politics. It will be remembered how in the crisis of '64 he declared that he would preach Abraham Lincoln till the election was over. He follows his instincts-attacks the grog-shops, the slave-system, the Government, the State Legislature, the corrupt tribunals of New York -every person, institution, or practice in whom or in which he thinks the devil is dangerously entrenching himself. This makes his church a power in the land. Evil-doers are afraid of him. If a New York millionaire or a cabinet minister, no matter who he is, does any conspicuously wicked or first to inflame the war spirit of the North against slavery, he was also one of the first to preach magnanimity and mercy to the conquered South. His speech at Sumter, in '65, is an imperishable monument, not only to his nobleness of heart, but to his generosity and Christian statesmanship. Beecher's influence on the American pulpit may be summed up in a few words. He has lowered its level, but increased its power. He has made it stoop-to conquer. Conversing one day with Beecher on the subject of the war, he said, "Our triumph is producing a speedier effect upon you than upon ourselves. It will take time here. It has shown its influence in England already, in the Reform Bill. The first effect of that bill will be to revolutionise the educational system. I should also think, but I don't know, that it would affect the Church and the land tenure. The land question is vital. Now, we in America are invulnerable, unapproachable, because every one has property in the country. Immigration makes no difference. If all Europe came here we should not have people enough for the soil. The root of patriotism," he said, with emphasis, "is property in land." Speaking of American institutions, he said he had implicit faith in the good government of an educated people. I spoke of the misgovernment of New York. "New York," he said, "is an exception, because of the mass of foreign ignorance and vice that has accumulated in it. The Irish and German vote controls the election. But that mass will one day be educated and Americanised." He had been in Canada shortly before, spending the time there necessary to secure the copy. right of "Norwood." He said Canada was a fine country. He had no idea of it till he had seen it. He paid what evidently seemed to him the highest conceivable compliment when he added that it appeared not very different from the States. On another occasion, speaking of Charles Dickens and his visit to America, I asked if he thought his "American Notes" and "Chuzzlewit" would tell against him with the people. "No," said Beecher, "not now. There was a time when they would, but the feeling has cooled down. We were very sensitive at the time these books first came out. It was the difference between the young man of sixteen and the man of thirty. A young man of sixteen is very anxious about people's opinion of him. He doesn't know whether he is really a man or exclaimed Beecher. "They are little sections not. We have got past that stage now." of the people that step out of the line of the Speaking of Hepworth Dixon's book on "New nation's march, live a little time, and die. America," and the prominence he gives to Sha-New America!'-you might as well draw a kers, Mormons, and other exceptional communi- picture of a wart on a man's nose and call it the ties, What are these in this great nation?" New Man!" EVERYBODY knows, at least by name, the famous banking-house of Coutts & Co., in the Strand, London. Perhaps no firm of private bankers in the world can boast of a clientelage so aristocratic. The early history of the bank is interesting, and illustrates very favourably the success of Scottish enterprise in England. In the latter part of the sixteenth century William Coutts, a cadet of the Auchintoul family, was "provost" of Montrose. His grandson, Patrick Coutts, became a merchant in Edinburgh, and died there in 1704, leaving a wife and three children, and an estate of £2500 to be divided between them. Patrick's eldest son, John, succeeded to his father's business, and extended it greatly. His firm of John Coutts & Co., general merchants, was widely known and highly respected. In 1742 he was elected Lord Provost of Edinburgh, the highest municipal dignity that can be attained in Scotland. In his later years illhealth made it necessary for him to reside in Italy, and he died at Nola, near Naples, on March 23, 1750, at the age of fifty-one. Before leaving Scotland John Coutts had assumed as partners his eldest son Patrick and a Mr Trotter. The capital of the new firm was only £4000. They dealt in corn, acted as commission agents, and negotiated bills on the Continental Bourses. In the course of time their business on 'Change became so extensive that they ceased to act as general merchants and devoted themselves entirely to banking. 1773 Sir William Forbes, Sir James Hunter Blair, and Sir Robert Herries came to be the chief partners in the firm, and the bank was long known as "Sir W. Forbes, J. Hunter, and Co." In 1830 it became the Union Bank of Scotland, one of the greatest banks in the country.* In * It is stated in Notes and Queries (4th S. X., 398), that Mansfield's Bank, established in 1738, was the first private bank in Edinburgh, "except perhaps Coutts's, which is supposed to have had the precedence." Probably neither of them in the early part of their history limited its business to banking in the strict sense of the term. Both seem to have been at first mercantile houses, receiving deposits at interest, and dealing in bills of exchange at home and abroad. Lord Provost Coutts left four sons. James became a banker in St Mary Axe, in London, but subsequently joined his younger brother Thomas in establishing the banking-house of Coutts & Co. in the Strand. He was for some time M.P. for Edinburgh, and died in 1778. Thereupon Thomas Coutts became the sole manager of the bank in the Strand. In course of time the private account of King George was kept at Coutts's, and the principal members of the aristocracy soon followed the lead of the sovereign. It became fashionable to have an account there; and even yet there is a certain undefinable prestige in paying your bills by a cheque on "Coutts's." Prudence, economy, and punctuality soon made Thomas Coutts a millionaire. He married first Susan Starkie, who died in 1815, leaving three daughters-Susan, married in 1796 to the Earl of Guildford; Frances, married in 1800 to the first Marquis of Bute; and Sophia, married in 1793 to Sir Francis Burdett, Bart. The youngest daughter of Sir Francis by this marriage was Angela Georgina Burdett-now the Baroness Burdett-Coutts-the subject of the present memoir. Miss Burdett was not born heir to the princely fortune which afterwards fell to her lot, and of which she has made so noble a use. Soon after the death of his first wife, Thomas Coutts married, in 1815, Miss Harriet Mellon, an actress more celebrated for her beauty than for her professional talent; and at his death, which took place on February 22, 1822, she succeeded under his will to his entire property. In 1827 Mr Coutts's widow was married to William Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk, Duke of St Albans. She died on 6th August 1837, and left the whole of the fortune she had derived from the Coutts family to Miss Angela Georgina, the youngest and then the only unmarried daughter of Sir Francis Burdett, only subject to an annuity of £10,000 a year to her husband, the Duke of St Albans, and a liferent in his favour of her mansion in Piccadilly, and of her Highgate properties, including Holly Lodge. With many peculiarities, and perhaps not a few weaknesses, she was a generous and kind-hearted woman; and it is said that she disposed of her wealth in the way we have mentioned under the conviction that justice required that Mr Coutts's fortune should revert at her death to one of his own family. Sir Francis Burdett, the representative of an ancient Derbyshire family which had been raised to the baronetage in 1618, was born on the 25th January 1770, and educated at Westminster School and the University of Oxford. He lived in France during the revolutionary times, and was an eye-witness of many of the horrors that were then perpetrated. His Continental experience greatly liberalised his political opinions. His history is not yet forgotten. As a politician he was far in advance of his day; a reformer before the time of parliamentary reform; an energetic and effective advocate of those wise measures which have placed our country in the van of progress, and which made the British throne stable in the midst of the almost universal instability of European dynasties during the first portion of this century. Information and its metropolitan coadjutor, the Corresponding Society, one of whose most active members was Horne Tooke, had spread their branches over the whole country, and were acting as propaganda of Liberalism everywhere. Mr Burdett became a leader in these societies, advocating, both at their meetings and in public, measures which at that time were regarded as revolutionary, but most of which have since been adopted. In 1794 the famous trial of Hardy, Tooke, and others took place, and desperate efforts were made by the Government to get them found guilty of treason, and thereby to strike a death-blow at all Liberal political associations. As is well known, the arbitrary proceedings of the Crown officers recoiled upon themselves. Hardy and his associates were one by one triumphantly acquitted of the charge of "constructive" treason, and freedom of discussion and liberty of the press were established on a firmer basis than ever. Mr Burdett took strong ground on the Liberal side during these proceedings. Lord Campbell, speaking of a period seven years later, when Horne Tooke had retired to Wimbledon to spend the latter years of his life, gives a curious glimpse of the sort of society which Burdett frequented. "The ex-chancellor,' "* he says, "would likewise occasionally dine with the exparson,+ and joyously meet the motley company on one side of him, and Sir Francis Burdett on the other" ("Lives of the Chancellors," vii., 284, 4th edition, 1857). Long before young Burdett reached manhood, associations of various kinds for promoting parliamentary reform had begun to be formed in England. One of the earliest, if not the very first of these, was established in 1779 by the celebrated Major Cartwright, of whom Fox, in presenting to the House of Commons one of his petitions for the remedy of existing abuses, said, "Major Cartwright is one whose enlight-there assembled-Hardy, the shoemaker, sitting ened mind and profound constitutional knowledge place him in the highest rank of public characters, and whose purity of principle and consistency of conduct through life command the most respectful attention to his opinions." The society founded by him was called "The Society for Constitutional Information." first chairman was the Duke of Richmond, but that noble patriot, having received from Government the post of Master of the Ordnance, took an early opportunity of deserting his colleagues in the society, and was afterwards the bitterest opponent of all such political associations. Among the other members of Cartwright's society were the Duke of Norfolk, Lords Camden and Surrey, Earl Stanhope, Lord Mahon, Pitt, Fox, Erskine, and Sheridan, besides many other influential and celebrated men. Pitt and Fox, however, did not long remain members, neither did the Duke of Norfolk. Its After his university education had been completed, Burdett spent several years in travel. It was the period of the first French Revolution, and the young aspirant to parliamentary honours came home deeply impressed with the conviction that unless a rapid and radical change in the administration of English affairs should be effected, the streets of London and other English cities would ere long be scenes of horror and blood, as those of Paris had recently been. By this time the Society for Constitutional We have already said that Mr Burdett married Miss Sophia Coutts in 1793. In 1796 he was elected Member of Parliament for Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire, and in 1797 he succeeded his grandfather in the baronetcy. In the House of Commons he was a vigorous opponent of the Government, especially on the war question, and an ardent advocate of Roman Catholic emancipation, in favour of which he introduced bill after bill, struggling perseveringly against a large but constantly decreasing majority of the House. In 1802 he was a candidate for the representation of Middlesex, but he was afterwards unseated; and in 1806, when he again contested that constituency, he was unsuccessful. Next year he fought a duel with Mr James Paull, who had contested Westminster in the preceding year, and in 1807 he was elected Member of Parliament for Westminster, his colleague being Lord Cochrane. In 1810 he was imprisoned in the Tower under most memorable circumstances. In that year Parliament met on the 23d January, and Lord Porchester immediately moved for an inquiry by a committee into the policy and con |