The Press.
London, England, 1856-04-12 00:00:00

354

" me, men," and his voice in the deadly
struggle was heard again as he leaped the
parapet and chased the retreating enemy
down the ravine. In another minute his
raised sword, as if pointing on high, was seen
by the light of the struggling moon, and the
last words that came from the gallant fellow's
lips were, "This way, 97th." He fell where
the foes were thick around him, and he died
not unaveuged. His death was brilliantly
brave, and talked of as gallant men would
desire.

But this little volume commemorates
chiefly the religious phases of his cha-
racter, and it is his piety, and not his
heroism, which has carried the work into so
many religious homes. Hedley Vicars was, as
we have said, a pietist; the human phases of
our Lord's Atonement, and the Mercy vouch-
safed by Grace, took powerful possession of
his feelings. His religion was entirely of the
heart, and, to judge by his letters, it does not
seem to have been of a highly intellectual cast,
for he made no pretensions to be a deep
thinker What is most praiseworthy in his
religious manifestations was, that he carefully
avoided offending the feelings of others, and
that he was free from that bitterness which, as
Bishop Burnet has shrewdly observed, too
often is seen in some religious people. The
memoir commences :

Hedley Shafto Johnstone Vicars was born in the Manri-
t ins, on the 7th of December, 1826. His father, an officer
in the Royal Engineers, was the representative of the
family of Don Vicam, a Spanish cavalier who came to
England in the suite of Katharine of Arragon, and settled
in Ireland early in the sixteenth century, on the marriage
of his eldest grandson with the heiress of the Lalor family.
The family estate was Levalley, in Queen's County.
There was little to distinguish the early days of Hedley
Vicars from those of other healthy, high-spirited boys.
Active and fearless, he was foremost among his playfellows
wherever fun or frolic was to be found. Openhearted and
generous, quick to resent an injury, but ready to forgive,
he was a universal favorite with them, whilst his sweetness
of temper, and kind, unselfish nature, especially endeared
him to his family at home. His faults were those of an
energetic and wayward disposition, and those legends
which are wont to be preserved in families, record occa-
sional instances of his odd and amusing perversity. When
the children were gathered around their mother to repeat
texts of Scripture in turn, Hedley. refusing to enter into
the spirit of the little circle, would contribute nothing but
' Remember Lot's wife."

The Protestants of Ireland, considered eth-
nologically, are about the most mixed race in
the empire, and Vicars probably derived some
of his perfervidum ingenium from his blood.
He entered the army in 1813, but what the
biographer calls " the awakening" did not
show itself until 184$, when Vicars was at
Maroon Town, in Jamaica. This is the first
sign of it :

I see it all now. It is I that have ceased your illness,
my darling mother. Ever since the receipt of your last
letter, I have been in a dreadful state of mind. I feel that
I deserve God's severest punishment tor my undutiful
conduct towards the fondest of mothers, but the excruci-
ating thought had never before occurred to me, that He
might think fit to remove her from me. Oh, what agony I
have endured ! what sleepless nights I have passed since
the perusal of that letter ! The review of my past life,
especially the retrospect of the last two years, has at last
quite startled me, and at the same time disgusted me.
You will now see the surest sign of repentance in my
future conduct; and believe me, that never, as far as in me
lies, shall another moment's anxiety be caused you by your
dutiful and now repentant son.
The memoir then proceeds :

The remorse, which he thus affectingly expresses, was
caused by his having incurred debt, to no great amount.
but such as he knew would become a burden to a widowed
mother. During his residence in one of the Meiliterra•
nean isles, he had become acquainted with a family who
had shown him great hospitality, and in maintaining
social intercourse with them, and sharing their pleasures,
he had involved himself beyond his means. It was the
first and the last time that his unselfish nature thus
transgressed.

Some parts of his letters are deeply affecting,
and in many a hamlet letters of a similar
strain, from other brave spirits passed away,
are carefully preserved by the fondness of
affection. He writes :

Ify darling mother,—l do love you. and that fondly,
although I have often (and may God forgive me !) rebelled
against your wishes.
Mother, I ask your forgiveness for what has passed.
Yon know not what real anguish some of your letters have
caused me ; and alihough I have tried to drown the voice
of conscience. after reading them, a still small voice has
always been whispering in my ear, and kept me froal com•
mitting many a sin.

And again to his sister :
I am no eoward, but the thought of death is solemn,
sad Um idea of dying far away from keine, intik no font