the day of rest ended. He had always by him, during Sunday morning, some devotional book. Heber's Hymns, and Jeremy Taylor's Life, were great favourites; and he had read, again and again, "Rennell's Narrative of the Conversion of Count Struensee." Up to the hour mentioned (6, P.M.), he declined discussing any topic connected with business. How the remainder of the day was spent would be a matter of painful inquiry. At church his

demeanour was decorous and devout. If the claims of charity were there brought before him he gave, not handsomely and liberally, but largely. Whether this was the result of some generous impulse; or whether he regarded alms as a set-off against a criminal mode of life; whether by these "free-will offerings" he hoped to propitiate the Divine favour, is best known to the Searcher of Hearts. Certainly to no charitable appeal did he give reluctantly or niggardly; and in matters of business my connexion found him "tenacious in the extreme as a proprietor, but liberal and indulgent as a donor." In his habits he was unvaryingly temperate; drunkenness he abhorred as brutal, and had rare command of temper.

During an intercourse of many months, and occasionally under trying circumstances, my informant told me that he had never once seen him ruffled, or had heard an impatient or angry expression issue from his lips. Soon after the adjustment of the negotiation, his health began to fail, and he sank somewhat rapidly into the grave. He was much depressed towards the close of life: "not," as he himself strangely phrased it, "about my own conduct individually; for whatever I have realised, I have realised by allowable means. What causes me uneasiness, is the idea that my career and success have been, and may continue to be, the ruin of many."

He left all he possessed to no relative, but to a child, for whom, in his last illness, he had formed a passionate attachment, but from whom it passed irrevocably to a public charity, whenever it "could be proved that the said Philip had ever, at any period, or under any circumstances, lost at any one time five shillings or upwards at a game of chance."

May this sentence be construed as the gamester's dying protest against his iniquitous calling?

But it has still followers. The "Hell". appropriate name!-is yet frequented; and the stakes there are-human happiness and human souls. What a national reproach to us that such dens of iniquity should be permitted to exist! Yet so it will be till sounder feelings take possession of the masses-till the requirements of Scripture are recognised as the rules of human conduct-till there is less of political economy, and more of the Bible amongst us till we act, and legislate, and punish, and reward as a nation of Christians!

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CRIMINAL CAREFULLY CLOAKED IN RELIGIOUS

PROFESSIONS.

James Blomfield Rush.

"Men may have the Scriptures by heart; and yet the Scriptures may be far enough from their hearts, and their hearts farther from the Scriptures."

CECIL.

'Tis at best but a loathsome spectacle which a deceitful man must present to an Omniscient Observer.

One who is Truth itself; who abhors all approach to deception; who has forbidden it in the sternest terms, and annexed to it the heaviest penalties; who can penetrate every disguise; read at a glance the heart; separate unerringly the real from the ostensible reason of every action; who is privy to the master secret of every bosom; whose gaze nothing can escape, and nothing baffle-to HIM the doubledealer of every class must be abhorrent!

But the religious double-dealer he who

trades solemn truths-he whose weapons upon are no less than the mighty words of Inspiration-who enfolds himself in a carefully-woven garment of spiritual professions-how must he appear to THE GREAT AUTHOR OF TRUTH? Such was RUSH.

Into the details of his criminal career it were idle to enter. These are notorious. But his peculiar tenets are less known, and his last hours afford a singular, and, happily, somewhat rare spectacle of a deliberate and successful self-deceiver.

And first,-place for the letter of the Chaplain, Mr. Browne, whose unwearied attentions to the wretched criminal were in perfect keeping with the whole tenor of his useful life :

"I should be very glad, if I could, to give you information respecting Rush, that might be useful to you; but he was of so anomalous a character, that it would be unsafe to found any theory upon it, or to use it for the confirmation of one already established.

"I have been chaplain of the gaol of this county for nearly a quarter of a century, and of course have seen much of crime and of criminals of every grade; but I have never seen one that could be, in any way, compared with Rush. He may be said to have been a culprit, sui generis;' and depraved as