coming dissolution.  In his own words, to ’contemplate, hymn, love, joy, obey,’ was the tranquil task which chiefly remained for him on earth.  But they were congenial in their whole tone of thought.  Their views on the disputed questions of the day very nearly coincided.  Nelson, as might be expected of a layman who throughout his life had seen much of good men of all opinions, was the more tolerant; but both were kindly and charitable towards those from whom they most differed, and both were attached with such deep loyalty of love to the Church in whose bosom they had been nurtured that they desired nothing more than to see what they believed to be its genuine principles fully carried out, and could neither sympathise with nor understand religious feelings which looked elsewhere for satisfaction.  Both were unaffectedly devout, without the least tinge of moroseness or gloom.  Nelson specially delighted in Ken’s morning, evening, and midnight hymns.  He entreated his readers to charge their memory with them.  ’The daily repeating of them will make you perfect in them, and the good fruit of them will abide with you all your days.’[9] He subjoined them to his ’Practice of True Devotion;’ and Samuel Wesley tells us that he personally knew how much he delighted in them.  It was with these that—­

    He oft, when night with holy hymns was worn,
    Prevented prime and wak’d the rising morn.[10]

He has made use of many of Ken’s prayers, together with some from Taylor, Kettlewell, and Hickes, in his ’Companion for the Festivals and Fasts.’  There is an intensity and effusion of spirit in them, in which his own more studied compositions are somewhat wanting.

Among the other Nonjuring bishops Nelson was acquainted with, but not very intimately, were Bancroft and Frampton.  The former he loved and admired; and spoke very highly of his learning and wisdom, his prudent zeal for the honour of God, his piety and self-denying integrity.[11] The little weaknesses and gentle intolerances of the good old man were not such as he would censure, nor would he be altogether out of sympathy with them.  Bishop Frampton was in a manner an hereditary friend.  He had gone out to Aleppo as a young man, half a century before, in capacity of chaplain of the Levant Company, at the urgent recommendation of John Nelson, father of Robert,[12] who had the highest opinion of his merits.  From his cottage at Standish in Gloucestershire, where he had retired after his deprivation, he occasionally wrote to Robert Nelson, and must have often heard of him from John Kettlewell, the intimate and very valued friend of both.  He was a man who could not fail to be esteemed[13] and loved by all who had the privilege of his acquaintance.  He had been a preacher of great fame, whom people crowded to hear.  Pepys said of him that ’he preached most like an apostle that he ever heard man;’[14] and Evelyn, noting in his diary that he had been to hear him, calls him ’a pious and holy man, excellent