all.”’?”

Another family, less known to fame, was Mrs. Bergne, of Brompton Row, and her two sons.  The eldest of them was John Bergne, for fifty years clerk in the Foreign Office, and during the latter part of the time superintendent of the French department,—an office which brought him into association with many foreign and home celebrities.  A man of high culture, great conversational power and exuberant wit, he was nevertheless decidedly religious, and remained steadfast in his nonconformity to the end of life.  He was a most attentive hearer, and wrote down many of his pastor’s sermons, chiefly from memory.  He carefully preserved two quarto volumes filled with a course of lectures on “The Acts,” which I read when I was young, and they gave me a good idea of the preaching then heard at Hornton Street.  A younger son, Samuel, entered the ministry during Dr. Vaughan’s pastorate, and with him, as well as his brother John, I enjoyed a lifelong friendship most intimate, most endeared.  He became well known as pastor of the Poultry Chapel, and as Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society.  The family lived at Brompton, but year after year made their way morning and evening to Kensington Chapel; and with them I may couple the family of the Gainsfords, who resided in Piccadilly.  Such circumstances show the distances which in those days people walked to the house of God.  It is remarkable how many branches of old Nonconformist families included in our history have since risen to eminence.  Here I may mention Dr. Bruce, the learned archæologist in Newcastle, who married Miss Gainsford; also their son, the present Recorder of Bradford.

Another family may also be mentioned, though not I believe members of the Church, as were most of those whom I have just recorded:—

“Amongst the attendants on his ministry (says Mr. John Leifchild, speaking of his father) were Lord and Lady Molesworth.  They had derived benefit from his pulpit instruction, and became his attached friends.  He often referred in particular to the mother, Lady Molesworth, a truly pious elderly lady, who had apartments in Kensington Palace.  She had two strong reasons for her attachment to my father’s ministry: one being the benefit which she herself had obtained from it; and the other being the influence which it had exercised on a favourite son—Lord Molesworth.  Lord Molesworth, her younger son, had heard Mr. Leifchild at Hornton Street Chapel, and though very wild and thoughtless at that time, was so affected by what he heard as to alter his mode of life.  Another, and the elder son, was then in India, where, being laid on a sick bed, he remembered the psalms which his father, Viscount Molesworth, had read and expounded when he was a child at home, showing their reference to the Messiah, and thus confirming the truth of Scripture.  I believe he came home, and it was then that he also attended the ministry at Hornton Street Chapel.  He now became devoted and useful; and having obtained an appointment in Ceylon, he repaired thither, and there continued his usefulness by distributing religious publications.  His father dying, he succeeded to the title, and having acquired property in Ceylon, he determined to return home, assist at the chapel, and spend the remainder of his days with his aged mother.  He notified to his mother the time of his embarkation, and she, calculating the length of the voyage, expected at a certain day to enfold her son in her embrace.  She was disappointed, and the reason soon appeared in the reception of the melancholy intelligence that the vessel in which he had trusted himself, his wife, and all his acquisitions, had gone down at sea, and every life had been lost.  ‘I feared,’ says my father, ‘on hearing the sad news, to call upon her; but on doing so I found her calm.  And with erect and majestic figure, looking at me, she said: “Dear pastor, God sustains me.  I utter not a murmuring word.  The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord.”’”

When I first went to Kensington, I was requested to visit an old member of the Church, a shoemaker by trade, who I learnt had been converted under the ministry of Dr. Leifchild.  I went and found him bedridden.  He was a remarkable man, with a handsome face, but a cripple.  In very humble circumstances, and uneducated, except in things pertaining to the kingdom of God, he had a good deal of that natural politeness which appeared all the more striking from its humble surroundings.  He won my affections; and I delighted to sit by the good man’s bed when he would describe, in emphatic language and with strong emotion, his strange life-story.  Good-tempered from a boy, ready for fun and frolic, and of a daring spirit, he plunged one day, if I remember right, into the thick of the traffic in the high road, and was so crushed under a cart wheel, that it was a wonder he survived the accident.  He had mixed with dissolute company, and been accustomed, as he loitered about the end of an alley opposite the church, to insult those who passed by on the way to worship.  His habits did not improve when he became a married man, and his notoriety for evil was a village scandal.  But two of his children went to the Sunday school, and they persuaded their father to come to chapel.  Dr. Leifchild preached from the words of St. Jude: “Preserved in Jesus Christ, and called,” and spoke of the remarkable preservation of sinful people before they were called and converted.  He happened to relate an anecdote of Mr. Cecil, who, previously to his becoming decidedly religious, narrowly escaped with his life, when thrown by his horse across the track of a wagon, which in passing only crushed his hat.  The incident struck the listener.  It resembled his own experience, and rivetted his attention.  When the preacher followed up the illustration with a characteristic appeal, addressed to such as were still unconverted after signal providential deliverances, the cripple trembled from head to foot.  Greatly impressed, he went to chapel again and again, till he found himself another man, “a new creature in Christ Jesus.”  He would weep as he told the story, and go on to speak of his subsequent spiritual joy.  “I am a wonder unto many,” he would say, and then sing:—

“Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,
   That saved a wretch like me;
I once was lost, but now am found;
   Was blind, but now I see.”

Before I knew him a chair was made, in which he was wheeled from place to place, and was conveyed to the chapel where God’s grace touched his heart.  He loved the memory of the minister who had led him to Christ; and that minister relates: “Whenever he heard that I was about to re-visit the town, which I had subsequently left for another sphere of labour, he caused his little carriage to be wheeled out to meet me.  I saw his eyes glistening with emotion, and the tears rolling down his cheeks, as I approached him, and then he invariably exclaimed aloud, ‘I am a wonder to many, sir; but God is my strong refuge.’” [47]

This remarkable conversion came to be common talk, and reached the ears of the Vicar, the Rev. Thomas Kennell.

“Shortly afterwards (says Dr. Leifchild) the Vicar called upon me and entered into familiar conversation with me on the great truths of the Gospel, evidently as the result of the impression which the