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cate of religious liberty, which he considered to be intimately allied in this country with the cause of nonconformity. As a member, and for many years the father, of the general body of London Dissenting Ministers, he was amongst the foremost supporters of every liberal measure, and the steady and inflexible assertor of their religious privileges. The freedom he claimed for himself he willingly conceded to others. He lived on terms of cordial intimacy with religious professors of various communions; and could number among his most valued friends churchmen of high rank and distinguished eminence. His own theology he was wont to describe as the moderate scheme, lying between the extremes of opinion that prevail in the present day. Owning no human authority in religion, he yet avowed that he subscribed for the most part to the creed of the late Dr. Price; who believed the preexistence of Christ, though he denied the doctrine of his essential divinity.

In his politics, he was a Whig upon principle; but though firmly attached to the cause of civil and religious liberty, he was a decided enemy to faction, and never engaged in the contentions of parties.

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He was an active member of all the principal charitable trusts in his own religious denomination. He was a manager of the Presbyterian Fund for about sixty years, and during nearly fifty years of that period, discharged the duties of secretary to that important institution with essential benefit to the various objects contemplated by its benevolent founders and supporters. Dr. Daniel Williams's Trust reaped also, for a long series of years, great advantage from his talents for business, which he devoted to the direction of its concerns with zeal and assiduity. There are many other dissenting trusts, which it is unnecessary now to name, having the disposal of funds for charitable purposes, in which he acted a leading and influential part. In all these situations, it was with him a point of conscience to be always at his post.

Dr. Rees was the principal distributor, under His Majesty's government, of the annual parliamentary bounty to indigent

dissenting ministers; -" and if," says Mr. Aspland, (in a funeral sermon preached in the Old Jewry Chapel, in Jewinstreet, on Sunday, June 19, 1825,) "I were called upon to point out the most prominent excellence in his character, I should name his conscientious discharge of this delicate trust, in the administration of which he preserved on the one hand his independence, and on the other his affability and kind

ness."

To his native country, Wales, he was a great benefactor. From funds in the distribution of which he shared, and from large sums placed annually at his disposal by opulent individuals, who made him the channel of their unostentatious beneficence, he contributed a considerable proportion to relieve the pressing exigencies of Welsh ministers (without respect to their peculiar theological sentiments), whom he thought to be deserving of encouragement in their works of piety in their respective churches. When those worthy men were removed by the hand of death, he extended his almost paternal care to their bereaved families; and thus caused the heart of many a mourning widow to sing for joy. There never was an individual who effected so much good in this way.

It does not always happen that men of the highest intellectual powers and attainments, are remarkable for the display of those virtues and graces which are most attractive in the intercourse of private life; habits of literary abstraction sometimes operate as hindrances to their cultivation of the social dispositions, and unfit them for relishing the pleasures of the social and domestic circles. But this was not the case with Dr. Rees. He shone as much in his private as in his public character. No man was ever more alive to the domestic affections, or acted upon them in a more exemplary manner in the various relations of son and brother, husband and father. By the acknowledged excellence of his character, and the urbanity of his manners, he drew around him a large number of friends, with whom it was his delight to associate; and his almost unrivalled powers of conversation gave increased interest and animation to every social scene in which

he appeared. No one who ever partook, will forget his cheerful, cordial hospitality.

In his occasional intercourse, as one of the representatives of the body of dissenting ministers, with His Majesty's court and government, Dr. Rees was courteous, dignified, firm, and upright. He was honoured twice with being deputed by the dissenting ministers of the three denominations of Protestants, to present their address of congratulation to King George III. and to King George IV., a fact which, perhaps, never before happened to the same man. In the former case, Lord Halifax, the lord in waiting, expressed a regret that Dr. Rees did not belong to the right church, as then his loyalty might have been personally rewarded.

The character of Dr. Rees's mind was that of a sober

thinker, and logical reasoner. He possessed equal powers of comprehension and discrimination. His eyes betokened his sagacity. He was quick in discerning men's foibles, and he sometimes laid them under tribute for the promotion of the objects of religious charity that lay near his heart. "I do not represent him," continues Mr. Aspland, "much as I revered him living, sincerely as I mourn him dead, and lasting as will be my remembrance of his talents and his virtue -I do not represent him as a perfect man. He had doubtless his infirmities, but they were mere infirmities — and they were as few as I ever saw (for here I must speak my own opinion) in a man of the same natural robustness of mind, the same resolution, the same zeal, and the same anxiety for the great purposes to which his life, and heart, and soul, and strength were devoted. The bodily weaknesses that were the consequences of extreme age, were no part of himself, and cannot be brought into the estimate of his character. His heart was always right. His Christian principles never forsook him. They had been the guide of his youth, and the distinction of his mature life, and they were the stay of his old age!"

In 1798, Dr. Rees suffered a severe loss by the death of

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his son, Mr. Philip Lewis Rees, in a consumption, at the age of twenty-two.

For several months before his death, Dr. Rees's health had been visibly on the decline; but his life insensibly waned to its close without much bodily suffering; and on the 9th of June, 1825, in the eighty-second year of his age, he sank, with the hope and patience of a Christian, into the repose of death, without a struggle. He died as he lived, respected and beloved by all who had opportunities of appreciating the various excellencies of his character: and his memory will be long cherished and revered by a large circle of friends, who have either benefited by his public religious instructions, or enjoyed the pleasure of his interesting conversation in the more intimate and familiar intercourse of social life.

"Semper honos, nomenque tuum, laudesque manebunt." His body was interred on the 18th of June in Bunhill Fields.

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The foregoing memoir and character of Dr. Rees are derived from his Funeral Sermon, by the Rev. Thomas Apsland; from an Address delivered over the body previously to its interment, by Dr. Thomas Rees; from the Public Characters; from the Imperial and Gentleman's Magazines; and from the Literary Gazette.

291

No. XI.

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

FREDERIC HOWARD, EARL OF CARLISLE;

VISCOUNT HOWARD, OF MORPETH; BARON DACRES, OF

GILLES

LAND; AND A KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER.

THE

HE family of this distinguished nobleman was ennobled towards the middle of the seventeenth century, soon after the close of the civil war; the first patent being dated April 20,

1661.

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The late earl was the eldest son of Henry, fourth Earl of Carlisle, by his second wife Isabella, daughter of William, fourth Lord Byron. He was born May 28, 1748; and on the death of his father, Sept. 3, 1758, succeeded to the family title and estates. His lordship was sent early to that celebrated seminary erected by the "ill-fated Henry," where so many of our noble youths have been educated. At Eton College he was the contemporary of many men who afterwards attained either high rank or great celebrity; of Hare, whose verses were appended to the school-room on account of their excellence; of Charles James Fox, whom he was fated to admire, "ere yet in manhood's bloom,” to differ from at a riper age, and again to support; and of the late Duke of Leinster, with whom he always lived in habits of familiarity. It was here too that his lordship formed an intimacy with the late Mr. Storer,† the son of an eminent

Eton College was founded by Henry VI. in 1440.

"Let softer strains ill-fated Henry mourn,

And palms eternal flourish round his urn."

+ Mr. Storer, on his death, became the benefactor of the seminary which he had adorned while living; bequeathing to it his superb collection of books and paintings.

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