for a compulsory levée-en-masse." Young Mr. Rigg's conversion had by no means extinguished his patriotism. Indeed, loyalty and patriotism constituted, through life, a part of his religion. Accordingly he joined the Westmoreland volunteers, was "enrolled, armed, and disciplined," and thus acquired that erect and soldierly carriage which afterwards distinguished him, and which, till within two years of his death, the advance of time seemed to have no power to touch; so that, in his sixty-eighth year, his figure was as young, and his step almost as light and firm, as forty years before. About this time, also, he had begun to act as his father's foreman, especially in the oversight of extensive buildings which were carried on at Lowther Castle, some miles distant from his home at Little-Strickland. He was accustomed, in this employment, to ride his own hackney,—a valuable animal, and one to which he was much attached. On the Sundays he and his horse found enough to do in fulfilling his appointments as a Local Preacher in the wide district, and within the wild and difficult country, included in the Brough Circuit. When stationed

afterwards in Circuits where a horse was kept for the use of the Preachers, he would always ride rather than drive, when it was possible to make the arrangement. And few physical enjoyments were to him so great as a rapid ride through a fine country. In this, as in most other things, he retained to the last his early tastes.

But these tastes of his were by no means associated with any predilection for what was rude or boisterous. Much as he loved the running "beek," the sequestered dell, the wooded steep, the wild and towering "fell," the sleeping or the rippled lake ensconced among its guardian hills, be loved better still his home. His spirits bounded bighest during the breezy ride; but yet his habitual and most congenial pleasure was with his books in his plain little bed-room. His elder sister tells how far into the night, often until long past midnight, he was accustomed at this time to pursue his studies; though his business required him always to be early astir in the mornings. He both read and wrote copiously, and began to be much thought of in the Circuit as a Preacher. As a consequence, he was soon spoken to on the subject of entering the regular ministry, and urged to offer himself for that work. For a long time he could not be brought to consent, and even at last he was (it may truly be said) "thrust out" by the influence and urgency of all around him. It was with great fear and trembling, and with much misgiving, that he brought himself to take so momentous a step. Up to his last breath, indeed, he uniformly felt and expressed the lowliest views of his own qualifications for this sacred and responsible work. A shrinking modesty was one of his special characteristics, in every stage of his course, and in every relation which devolved upon him: a modesty, however, which was happily united with a conscientious and unwavering firmness in the discharge of whatever he felt to be his duty. It was at the Conference of 1808, when he was twenty-two years of age, that Mr. Rigg was accepted as a candidate for the Christian ministry, having first passed through those examinations which, a few years prior to this, had been

VOL. V.-FIFTH SERIES.

C

partly instituted, and partly enforced more strictly than before, by the Wesleyan Conference.

Mr. Rigg's first appointment was the Ludlow Mission. He was placed under the general oversight of the late Rev. Jacob Stanley, the Superintendent of Stourport; with whom he contracted an intimate friendship. My father seldom lost a friend; and Mr. Stanley and he kept up an affectionate intimacy, and an occasional correspondence, until the death of the former in 1850. Ludlow being a Mission," Mr. Rigg was mainly supported out of the general Mission Fund, collected under the direction, and to a very large extent through the personal efforts, of Dr. Thomas Coke. His work was laborious, and his walks were very long; but his health was now good, and his vigorous and agile frame made light of a twenty miles' walk. He had, however, more serious hardships to bear, such as the pioneers of Methodism (especially in uncultured country districts) were all familiar with; and he encountered much opposition and persecution. He had, in truth, a somewhat rough introduction to the itinerant work; for he was sent to break up new ground. As this was his first appointment, so was he the first "Missionary," the first Methodist Minister, appointed to labour from Ludlow as a centre. Before this, it is presumed, Ludlow had been visited from Stourport. It was now constituted a Station. At the Conference of 1809 an additional Minister was taken on to the same ground, to be maintained by the Societies there. Ludlow thus ceased to be merely a Station, and became a Circuit. My father was still continued as "Missionary,” under the superintendency of William Pearson, jun., the newlyappointed Minister. The year following, Ludlow was transferred from the Birmingham to the Shrewsbury District.

In 1810 Mr. Rigg was appointed to Wednesbury. Here he lived in the house of his judicious Superintendent, the late excellent George Morley, with whom he had thus the opportunity of cementing a friendship never to be suspended. At the following Conference (1811) he removed to Dudley, where he had the pleasure of being again associated with Mr. Stanley, in whose house he lodged. His other colleague was the Rev. John Pipe.

This brought my father to the close of his ministerial probation. It was in many respects advantageous to him, that during the opening years of his ministry he was associated with senior brethren of so superior an order, and of a disposition so amiable and Christian. For three out of the four years Messrs. Stanley and Morley were his Superintendents and counsellors. They gave him advice as to reading, they assisted to form his habits and manners; and, as long as he lived, he was happy to confess how great had been his obligations to them. He was thus prepared to pass with credit his final examination at the Leeds Conference of 1812, where he was "received into full connexion" as an accredited Methodist Minister.

Whilst at Leeds, he heard of his father's death. This may be said to have been his first sorrow; and none but those who know the deep and tender affectionateness of his disposition can conceive how

keen and how bitter was his grief. As yet he had no home but the old Westmoreland home, which he so fondly loved. His father, too, was taken away in the strength of his years; and thus the loving dreams and hopes of a filial heart were broken at a stroke. Instead

of going, in his confirmed ministerial character, to revisit the home of his youth and cheer the hearts of his parents, Mr. Rigg was suddenly called to leave the Conference and hasten to his father's grave. Unfortunately, on the day that he was to journey northward, he was by some means thrown too late; and, when he arrived at the office, the coach had started. To wait for the next coach would be to lose the possibility of attending his father's body to its resting-place. He, therefore, exerting his strength and speed to the utmost, ran after the coach, which he overtook after several miles at the first place where they halted for any length of time. It would not have been surprising if this over-exertion, in the case of one who had some years before broken a blood-vessel, had proved fatal. As it was, it brought on a violent cold and an affection of the lungs, which laid him aside during a considerable part of the following year. His appointment was to Dudley, a second year; but, at the Conference of 1813, it was found expedient to remove him to the mild and southerly station of the Isle of Wight. There can be no doubt, humanly speaking, that this affliction shortened his life by a number of years. There would have been every reason to anticipate for him a green and hale old age, but for that bronchial affection which was so firmly fixed within his otherwise sound and healthy frame. From this time he was subject, for the rest of his life, to a deep and ominous winter-cough, which, in his latter years, became increasingly troublesome, and which indicated that, beneath all his general health and vigour, there lay concealed a rooted mischief, which might one day bring down the strength it had so long sapped and undermined.

In the Isle of Wight he was placed under the superintendency of the Rev. Josiah Goodwin, with whom he was already acquainted, as Mr. Goodwin had been stationed in Wednesbury and Wolverhampton during the two years Mr. Rigg had spent at Dudley. He passed a very happy year in this lovely island, which, as he once wrote to one of his sons, "seemed, at that time, to his young eyes, an earthly Paradise." Here, as in former appointments, he was fortunate in having an excellent colleague, of superior intelligence and information. His health was re-established; and, at the Conference of 1814, he was appointed to Macclesfield.

Macclesfield was then, as indeed it is still, one of the most important country Circuits in Methodism; and it commanded, from year to year, the services of an eminent class of Ministers. My father's colleagues were the Rev. James Townley, (better known as Dr. Townley,) and the Rev. John James, afterwards one of the General Missionary Secretaries. The application and discipline of the years spent in the ministry were now bearing their appropriate fruits. His "profiting" appeared to all. To this day the memory of his early labours has not passed away from Macclesfield-the town which he

chose for his place of retirement when his active work was done, and from whence he was taken to his final rest in heaven. Here he formed an attachment to Miss Sophia Clulow, daughter of John Clulow, Esq., the Town-Clerk of Macclesfield, who belonged to a family well-known for its legal connexion with Methodism, and especially with the "Poll-Deed." Mr. Clulow was an able man, He was

with sterling good qualities, but in some respects eccentric. not himself a Methodist, but he attended the Methodist chapel, and delighted to keep his house open for class-meetings and prayermeetings. His temper was violent; yet he honoured God with his substance and the first-fruits of his increase. At the Conference of 1815 it was necessary that Mr. Rigg, as a married man, should remove from Macclesfield. He was accordingly appointed to Bristol, where, for the first time, he became a housekeeper.

Here he was associated with men highly influential in their day, and of marked character,-John Barber, Joseph Taylor, and William Martin. The last of these was a popular and eminent Preacher: the first was a distinguished disciplinarian, and was twice elected President of the Conference, the first time at Liverpool, in 1807, the second time at Manchester, in 1815, the year in which he was my father's Superintendent. He died in the course of that year. My father's other colleague was the wise and faithful Joseph Taylor, of our own time, who became President at the London Conference of 1834, and died in 1845. Even modern Methodists will not have forgotten how he piloted the vessel of Methodism in stormy seas. My father's ministry at Bristol was, as I have been informed, more than acceptable. The sterling theology, the elegant style, and the beautiful illustrations, for which the most competent judges admired his sermons in his best days, were already their ordinary characteristics. But his stay at Bristol was cut short by a melancholy event. In May, 1816, Mrs. Rigg died, having taken cold soon after her confinement. She left behind her an infant son only a few weeks old, who was spared to grow up to manhood, and has for some years past filled an important position in connexion with the religious press of this country. The first Mrs. Rigg was a woman of no ordinary excellence. A Memoir of her, from the pen of Dr. Townley, appeared in the Methodist Magazine for 1818.-At the Conference of 1816 Mr. Rigg returned to the position of a single man, and was appointed as second Minister in the Warrington Circuit. Here he was within an easy distance of Macclesfield, where his late wife's father and sisters were living, and where his little son was placed under their care.

At Warrington my father remained three years; and here, in the summer of 1818, he married his second and surviving wife. She was the only child of the Rev. James M'Mullen, an Irish Methodist Minister, who volunteered to be the first Missionary to Gibraltar. There he and his wife both died in 1804 of yellow fever, within not many days after their arrival, leaving their only child a desolate orphan on the plague-stricken rock. She was at this time resident. near St. Helen's, in the family of the late John Morton, Esq., formerly

Regimental-Surgeon in the service of the East India Company. Miss M'Mullen was married from this kind family, and thence accompanied her husband to his humble home. He had requested of the Conference to be removed from Warrington, that he might obtain the position of a married Minister. But the Warrington people had invited him to remain a third year; his request was in some way overlooked; and he remained in that very anomalous position which, in recent times, Methodists have learned to describe by the paradoxical designation of "a single married man." The friends, however, were very kind, and did their best for him; after a time he got into a small house, and his third year in Warrington was a very happy one.

Mr. Rigg spent the next three years (1819-1822) at Newcastle-onTyne, as the second Minister of three. The late Rev. Edmund Grindrod, the well-known author of the " Compendium," was his Superintendent for the first year; and the late Rev. David M'Nicoll, for the remaining two years. With the latter Minister, especially, (of whose intellectual gifts, rich musical powers, and noble and lovely character, there is no need for me to speak,) my father contracted a friendship which was only broken by Mr. M'Nicoll's much-lamented death. The last time but one that I remember to have seen Mr. M'Nicoll was in my father's house in Earl-street, Westminster. He was spending the evening there, and was prevailed upon to sing us a psalm or two to fine old Scotch melodies. Ilis magnificent and thrilling voice-as richly sweet as it was powerful—was one which, if once heard, even by a youth, was not likely to be forgotten. It resounded clear across the street, and our opposite neighbours soon came out upon the drawing-room balcony, that they might take in more fully the melodious strains. My father's residence at Newcastle for the first two years was in Mr. Wesley's old Orphan-House, of which some account has recently been given to the readers of the "Christian Miscellany." The residences of the Preachers in this curious structure had been built above the chapel. What answered the purpose of a cellar was a sort of loft or recess at the very top of the building. Many a weary step had to be climbed from the street-level by the Preacher, on his return home, and by his often feeble and ailing wife, whenever she had had occasion to leave her lofty habitation. Here, in a very airy chamber, were born to Mr. Rigg three children; his eldest daughter, his second son, and another son, who died of convulsions at Bradford. Newcastle, in spite of such drawbacks as those to which allusion has been made, was a happy station to both my parents. Mr. Rigg's labours were highly valued. Among his papers I find a letter from a gentleman of Newcastle, dated July 24th, 1822, (accompanying a pecuniary enclosure,) in which the writer speaks of my father's "diligence and constant application to the work of the ministry;" of his "pious and profitable conversation," and "friendly visits," the character of which "proved that the glory of God and the salvation of men had been his only and constant aim;' and of "the edification of the church of Christ, and the sanctification