happened to mention that when lately in Glasgow I had gone to hear the
Rev. Robert Montgomery, the author of "Satan," and other poems. It was
this "Satan Montgomery" whom Macaulay had scalped with merciless
criticism in the _Edinburgh Review_. The mention of his name aroused the
old poet's ire. "Would you believe it?" he exclaimed, indignantly, "they
attribute some of that fellow's performances to me, and lately a lady
wrote to me in reference to one of his most pompous poems, and said "it
was the _best that I had ever written!_" I do not wonder at my venerable
friend's vexation, for there was a world-wide contrast between his own
chaste simplicity and the stilted pomposity of his Glasgow namesake.
Montgomery, though born a Moravian and educated at a Moravian school,
was a constant worshipper at St. George's Episcopal Church, in
Sheffield. The people of the town were very proud of their celebrated
townsman, and after his death gave him a public funeral, and erected a
bronze statue to his memory. While he was the author of several volumes
of poetry, his enduring fame rests on his hymns, some of which will be
sung in all lands through coming generations. Four hundred own his
parentage and one hundred at least are in common use throughout
Christendom. He produced a single verse that has hardly been surpassed
in all hymnology:

"Here in the body pent
Absent from Him I roam.
Yet nightly pitch my moving-tent,
A day's march nearer home."

Hymnology has known no denominational barriers. While Toplady was an
Episcopalian, Wesley a Methodist. Newman and Faber Roman Catholics,
Montgomery a Moravian, and Bonar a Presbyterian, the magnificent hymn,