THEIR AUTHORS AKD ORIGIN. 341
has been pronounced one of the most industrious and remarkable pieces of religious biography that has issued from the press in modern times combining more information about the Calvinistic Methodists, within and without the Nation xl Church, than has ever been brought together. It was undertaken with the sanction of the only surviving daughter of the venerable Countess, the well-known Countess of Moira (great grandmother of the present Marquis of Hastings), a great political character, a woman of exquisite taste, of extensive literary acquirements, and the patroness of all the literary geniuses of her day. Her Ladyship took great interest in his labours, and afforded him most valuable and important information. The late venerable Dr. Haweis was the first who inspired him with the desire to embark in such an undertaking, and kindly expended to him every facility for acquir ing information. For more than thirty years he was engaged in collecting and arranging the numerous papers, documents, and voluminous correspondence, which he had easy and continued access to ; and he has succeeded in producing such a view of the life and times of the noble Countess, so clear and so simple, as to render superfluous all future or collateral efforts at illustration. Mr. Seymour is also the author of numerous contributions to the periodicals and papers, and his pen is still being wielded with vigour on behalf of Evangelical Christianity.
About sixteen years ago, his failing health rendered it necessary that he should seek a warmer climate, and he resided for many years at Naples, doing what was possible to hasten on those happier days of political and religious freedom which the once down-trodden people of that kingdom now at length enjoy. In 1839 he was chosen a member of the Italian Scientific and Literary Congress, whose meetings he attended in several of the Italian cities till its final dissolution in Venice, in 1847, occasioned by the breaking out of the revolution. Mr. Seymour is at present residing in Bristol ; he is an elder brother of the Kev. M. Hobart Seymour, of Bath, author of works on the Papacy.
The subject of this sketch has for many years taken a deep
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