There lay the Bristol Channel, that noble inlet to our
isle, by which the commerce of the world was even then finding its
peaceful way to the great mart of Bristol; and there sat the aged lady,
so long the presiding spirit of the place, with one hand, as it were,
gathering the lambs of the flock into green pastures among the distant
hills, that formed a beautiful feature in the landscape; with the other
vigorously repulsing the wolf from the field. If I could have
discovered, which I could not, a single trait of consciousness that she
was a distinguished being, exalted into eminence by public acclaim, I
must have conceived her to be dwelling upon this branch of her many
privileges, that she had been a Deborah where many a Barak shrunk from
the post of honor and skulked behind a woman. She took that lively
interest in the public, secular affairs of her country that Jeremiah and
Ezekiel did of old; and on the same plain ground--that where the state
professes to be modelled and the executive to act on principles of God's
instilling, with a view that peace and happiness, truth and justice,
religion and piety, may be established among us, nothing done by the
state can be indifferent to the church, or unworthy the anxious watchful
regard of Christians. To be called a carnal politician by those whose
minds, at least on religious subjects, could contain, but one idea, was
certainly a light affliction to balance against the joyous consciousness
of having materially aided in preserving those cavillers' homes from the
hand of the spoiler, and their Bibles from that of the Atheist.
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