aspirations, and to create or strengthen repugnance to whatever is low, sensual, or false; and, last of all, it is a blessing and an advantage, utterly incalculable, to have for a mother a woman of sense, superiority, and goodness, with force of character, with talents and cleverness; of solid information, with tact, temper, patience, and skill, fitted to train and mould the mind, to implant principles and awaken a lofty and laudable ambition: and all this presided over and purified by religious faith, deep piety, and earnest devotion. These are the mothers that the church and the world alike want."

Such a mother had Samuel Morley; and as was the mother, so was the father. He was, as we have seen, a man of unblemished character, of cultivated mind, intensely in sympathy with everything that interested his children, and never weary in his endeavours to make home the most attractive place in the world to them.

The foundation of the home was laid in love-love to God, love to man, and love to one another. The influence of the parents was all-prevailing. They instilled into the minds of their children high principles; they set before them, in all things, good examples, and they directed their studies, their amusements, and their very thoughts. One who knew what that home was like writes: "I always love what is said about his (Samuel Morley's) early home, and thank God that I remember it-before the

Mrs. Kalley, daughter of Samuel Morley's eldest sister, Mrs. Wilson.

809-1825.]

GOES TO BUSINESS.

17

old house at Hackney was altered, and while all lived together there. Though it is a child's memory, it is very sweet. Surely there never were such roses as in the 'long walk' of the old garden-nor such an atmosphere of warm genial love as in the old home where father and mother were really and manifestly the enthroned king and queen.'

The piety of the home was very beautiful. In the creed of the parents there was none of the cold, hard, dry theology which was unfortunately so rife in those days. The children were taught to look upon God as their heavenly Father, in whose love they might rest with perfect confidence. God was "speaking

unto them as unto children."

Thus they grew up into the belief that He was in their home as really as their earthly father was, and so it came to pass that very early in life their hearts inclined towards Him.

At the age of sixteen, Samuel Morley, having made satisfactory progress in his studies, and given promise of distinction in private life, left school and went 'straight into his father's business in Wood Street.

CHAPTER II.

1825-1832.

Goes to Business-Wood Street-" Poor Susan "-Home Attractions-Mr. John Morley, Senior-A Nonconformist and a Liberal-Musical Evenings-Early Habits-Dr. John Pye Smith-Rev. John Clayton-Dr. Burder-Rev. James Parsons-A Memorable Sunday.

THERE was nothing more natural than that Samuel Morley should wish to follow in his father's prosperous footsteps. At a very early age he had shown business. capacity, and, as Mr. John Morley thought that young men not designed for professions had better finish their education in the school of experience, Samuel, soon after he had turned sixteen, made his start in Wood Street.

Everybody who knows the City of London knows Wood Street. At the Cheapside end of it, there stands a venerable and beautiful plane-tree, marking the site of the Church of St. Peter in Chepe, destroyed in the great fire of 1666. The houses adjacent are only two storeys high, the terms of their leases forbidding the erection of an additional storey, lest injury should be done to the tree.

When Samuel first went to Wood Street there were rooks in its branches, and as late as 1845 they built

1825-1832.]

WOOD STREET.

19

two fresh nests, one of which remained for a long time after the birds had retired from city life, and resigned their vested interests in the tree to pert sparrows. Not long before Samuel Morley went there, Wordsworth had immortalized Wood Street and its famous tree in his charming little poem, "The Reverie of Poor Susan." It runs thus:

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
There's a thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years;
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard

In the silence of morning the song of the bird.

'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees

A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;

Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale
Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The only one dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her heart is in heaven; but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade;
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all passed away from her eyes.

Had Samuel been a youth of a less practical turn of mind there were plenty of associations in Wood Street to have fired his fancy. Traditions gather round it thick as blackberries: one tells of the head of James IV. of Scotland, who fell at Flodden, having been buried in the Church of St. Michael,

which was rebuilt by Wren after the fire; and another, that Athelstane, the victorious Saxon king, had his palace at the end of the street.

But Samuel was not imaginative, and when he took his seat at a desk on the first floor of the limited Wood Street premises, opposite to his brother John, who had already been some years in the business, he only saw the work immediately before him, and at once addressed himself to its performance. He went straight into the counting-house, and in the countinghouse he remained for seven years.

We do not propose, in this place, to follow minutely the daily routine of those seven years, but rather to trace such other influences as, at this important period of his life, were tending to the formation of his character.

After Samuel had started in business life, he did not continue his studies systematically. There was not much opportunity for that. He was in the habit of walking with his father from Hackney, and arriving at Wood Street soon after nine. In a very short time he made himself so useful that his services were required until seven o'clock in the evening or later, according to circumstances. He and his brother dined with their father on the premises, and, when the day's work was done, they would make their way, as fast as they could, back to their rural home.

This home, as we know, had for all of them the greatest possible attractions; none of the family ever