Mtnoms`eirDU. WA`tPS. xY 'sion. In this family he found an asylum fromthe anxiëties öfdeperidanne, and that stillmore endeared by the perception of reciprocal benefits. Here heexperienced all the tenderness and care that the languishing state of his health required. Whatever riches and munificence could supply, or respect and affection suggest to alleviate these painful vicissitudes, heenjoyed to thefull extent of his wishes, and , to the happy event of his introduction into this benevolent family may be ascribed the prolongation of a lifetho.value of which may be 'estimated by the many excellent works which he published, during his long residence with them. The saine respect and friendship shewn him by Sir Thomas Abney were perpetuated by his lady and their slaughter 'till his days were numbered and finished. Lady Abney died about a year after him. She was endowed with every virtue essential toan illustrious example. The following anecdote, communicated to the late Mr. Toplady by the Countess of Huntingdon, will serve toconfirmwhat is said of the happytens upon which lie lived with this house. The Countess beingon a visit to Dr. Watts at Stoke-Newington, was thus accosted by him : Your ladyshipis come to see me, on a very remarkable day. " Why is this day so remarkable ?" answered the Countess. " This very day thirty years," replied the Doctor, " I came to the house ofmy good friend Sir Thomas Abney, intending tospend but a single week under his friendly roof : and I have extendedmy visit to the length of thirty years : " Lady Abney who was present, immediately said, Sir what you t rhi a long thirty years visit I consider as the shortest visit my family ever redeived. His gratitude, in the review 'of his obligationsduring a thirty-sixyears residencewith her ladyship,, is strongly marked in apassage of Isis will, where he speaks of the generous and tender care sheave himby her ladyship and her family in his long illness, many years ago whenhe was capable of no service, and alsoher eminent friendship and goodness during his continuance in the family ever since. The various stories circulated of his strange nervous affections, or ra- ther it should besaid, ofhis intellectual derangement, appear tohave been the fabrications of the designing,and only tohave obtained belief with the credu-, lous. " I take upon me, and feel myself happy," says his biographer and friend, Dr. Gibbons, "-to aver, thatthese reports wereutterly false, and I do this froinmy own knowledge of him for several years, and some of them the years of his decay ; from the express declaration ofhis amanuensis, who was ever with him, and above all from that of Mrs. Elizabeth Abney,who livedin the same family with him thirty-six years." But his constitution was broken, and his nervous system considerably disordered and debilitated, by the frequent and heavy strokes of illness, and his intense exertions of mind, especially in Lis yoyrth*. Hewas for several * What he says in one of bis sermons chews towhat the corporeal afflic- tions of his later days maybe ascribed : Midnight studies are prejudicial to nature, and painful experience calls me to repent of the faults of myy younger years, and there are many beforeme have hadthe saine callto repent- ance. Wearing out the lightsome hours in sleep is an unnatural wasteof sun- beanms.. There is ao light as friendly to animal nature as that Of the Sun. Serrn. $x.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=