[A composite volume : containing The ballads and songs of Ayrshire ...

WHAT BIKD IN BEAUTY, FLIGHT, OR SONG.
him during his residence in Ireland or in England. When he was
;
about six yeai's old, he was taken to England and placed at the sendnary
of the United Brethren, where he attended for ten years.
During
that period, his parents had received a call from God to go and
preach the gospel to the degraded slaves in the West Indies.
Both of
his parents had laid down their lives in the service of God, the one in
the island of Tobago, and the other in Barbadoes. When he was
about twenty-two years of age, through certain circumstances, he became
the proprietor of a newspaper, at a time when the evil and good
powers of men were warring with each other ; the good striving to
overcome the evil, which the revolutionary war had brought so pi'ominently
abroad in this country.
For thirty years he had continued in
\
that situation, as conductor of the newspaper ; and, so far as his
public life was concerned, he was not conscious that, during that
whole period, he had ever written or spoken against the peace and
quiet of the country, or of the town in which he resided. On his retirement,
every class in the town of Sheffield united in giving him a
public dinner, as a testimony that, however much they might have
differed from him in opinion, there was amongst all of them but one
feeling of good will towards him, and but one opinion as to the integrity
with which he had endeavoured to discharge his arduous duties
as an editor. Some of his more religious friends, who were absent
from the dinner, and many of the better sex who could not attend,
afterwards presented him with a sum of 200 guineas, to be applied to
the revival of a mission v/hich his father had begun in Tobago, but
which had been suspended for about thirty years. This mission it
was the wish of the Brethren to renew.
The proprietor of the estate
on which it was situated, was also desirous for its success, and had invited
his father to establish it ; and, in his will, he bequeathed £1000,
contingent on the renewal of the mission. This gentleman, whose
name showed him to be a Scotchman, was anxious that his people
should have the benefit of religious instruction. The 200 guineas
given him were to be added to the sum left by Mr Hamilton ; and
the gift was accompanied by the delicate request, that the renewed
mission should be distinguished by the name of his father, the labourer
who had first broken the ground ; and therefore Montgomery would be
the name, he hoped, to the end of the world.
118