and mercy. She had also now begun the study of Hebrew with her friend Mrs. Richard Smith, and henceforth this Divine language, as she loved to call it, became one of her chief delights. Its ideal character exactly met her mind, as the light it afforded in her studies of the word of God met her conscience.

The first fruit of Mrs. Schimmel Penninck's Hebrew studies appeared in 1821, in a little work entitled "Biblical Fragments," to which a second volume was added as a supplement in the succeeding year.

Amongst Mrs. Schimmel Penninck's tracts appeared a very interesting notice of the late Emperor Alexander. It was in part a translation from the French, and contained many facts not generally known to the English public. This little book excited great interest.

The year 1818 was marked by her reception into the Moravian Church, into which her scruples with regard to the use of the "Lot" had, as we have seen, hitherto prevented her from being received as a member. In her letter to Dr. Okely, in which she applies for fellowship, when tracing the course of her mind on this subject, she thus expresses her ultimate conviction: "I had, indeed, long believed in Jesus, but, like Martha, I had too often been busied about many things, though all, as I thought, relating to His service. I now began to feel that I most needed, like Mary, to sit quietly at His feet, and my heart yearned after companions who, in common with other Christian brethren, feed on the Bread of Life, but eat it unmixed with the chaff of human speculation. During this period, too, I had seen much of the so-called religious

world, and all I saw without, as well as all I had experienced within, convinced me more and more of man's utter emptiness and of our Saviour's all-sufficient fulness, and made me long to flee to some asylum among brethren who should have experienced, like myself, that men are nothing and that Christ is all in all.' I resolved then to search the Scriptures on the subject of the Lot,' and accordingly I found it was used under the old covenant to fix the habitation of the children of Israel, and to appoint the order in which the priests should offer incense in the temple, and on various other occasions; and I found that the very earliest act of the Apostolic Christian Church was to establish an appeal to the Lot' in the choice of ministers under the new covenant; and, lest we should imagine this a temporary privilege, the grounds of its establishment are given, and these grounds are evidently of a permanent Proverbs xviii. 18, The lot causeth contentions to cease, and parteth between the mighty.' And again, Proverbs xvi. 33, The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.' Such were the steps by which our Saviour led me, and I found myself a Sister at heart before I was aware of it."

nature.

CHAP. VIII.

1819-1826.

"No receipt openeth the heart but a true friend to whom you may impart griefs, joys, hopes, fears, suspicions, counsels, or whatever lieth on the heart to oppress it."-BACON.

IN the years 1824, 1825, and 1826, Mrs. Schimmel Penninck derived very great pleasure and refreshment from visits which she paid to her valued friends and relations at Falmouth. In these visits Mr. Schimmel Penninck accompanied her. Nor was the happy intercourse she enjoyed there confined to that of her cousins; she became intimately acquainted with other members of this large circle, especially with the revered head of the family, the late Mrs. Fox, whom the subject of this Memoir regarded with peculiar love and admiration. Mrs. Schimmel Penninck often applied to her for advice, alike in spiritual and temporal concerns, and she always found a blessing in following it. Mrs. Fox was a plain Friend in principle and practice, and Mrs. Schimmel Penninck's early association with Friends, and her matured conviction that among them are and have been numbered some of the excellent of the earth, served but as an additional bond. A close and true

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friendship was formed between them, which lasted without interruption till Mrs. Fox, this "mother in Israel," was removed to her eternal home.

Mrs. Schimmel Penninck gave a lively description of these happy visits in a series of letters to a mutual friend. The letters are full of interest and characteristic traits of the writer's mind.

"It is almost impossible," she says, "to convey to you an idea how interesting, and yet how unlike any other place, is this remarkable country. The only bad thing I have seen is the roads, and they are just like many ultraevangelical persons, very sound in the main, but of such bad and grating tempers that you are tormented at every step you take with them. This is, however, the only inconvenience. Everything else is delightful.

In the first place, the people look so good: Friends dresses, orthodox bonnets, brown gowns, caps white as driven snow, meet your eye in every quarter. In the poorest cottages you see not only Bibles and expensive biblical commentaries, such as Scott's or Henry's, with Cruden's Concordance, but books on geology, astronomy, or mathematics.

Alfred Fox told me, he conceived the Cornish character to be formed by their circumstances. There are in Cornwall one hundred and sixty mines, some of which, such as the great mines of Dolcooth, Botallack, and Huel Abraham, are two hundred and forty fathoms deep -- a prodigious depth; and many masters have in their employ fourteen hundred men. A great part, then, of the Cornish population are miners, or immediately connected with them.

This is an occupation full of risk; the falling of one stone behind him immures the miner in a living grave. The explosion of fire damp, the gush of subterranean springs, accidents from blasting, and a hundred other things, occasion him, and the family dependent on him, to go from day to day as with their lives in their hands. It is, then, natural that their religion should partake of this. The Cornish man who seeks religion seeks it not to occupy the applause of a Bible meeting, or to be a great man at a class meeting, he seeks it not to inspire him in conversation, but to support him in adversity, in accidents of the most appalling nature, and at the hour of death. Hence the Cornish man's religion is a religion not of cant, but o spirit and truth.

"Again, the miner is paid by the piece, and the same quantity of work is done with a different degree of labour, according to the rock he has to penetrate. He is thus led to exercise his mind to gain a knowledge both of mineralogy and mechanics, to form a probable idea of the rocks he will have to encounter, their mode of succeeding each other, &c. Hence they become acute, discerning, and well-informed. They generally work in the mine six hours at a time; they put on a flannel dress, in which they work, and when they come up again to grass' as they call it, they strip it off, bathe, and put on a clean suit. And I can hardly tell you how nice the Cornish villages look. They are mostly situated in some glen or ravine, watered by lovely brooks, wildly rushing over their beds of granite or serpentine, and their banks luxuriant with trees and flowers, Portugal laurel, tamarisks, arbutus, growing like timber

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