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36
JAMES THOMASON

tures blocked up the Collegiate buildings and rendered the main street continuously narrow. But if the town was much less beautiful than it is now, the green space extending from the Colleges to the Cam with the avenues and groups of trees, must have had the same varieties of sylvan splendour as those which now astonish the spectator every spring and every autumn. The avenue of trees stretching from the Fellows' Building of King's College to the river, — down which Simeon looked from his windows — no longer exists. The Holy Trinity Church, in which James Thomason attended his first service at Cambridge, must have been then much as it is now; except that the interior is better cared for, and the old-fashioned pews have been altered. But the fine old oaken pulpit, from which Simeon preached many potent discourses, has been removed.

While Simeon was pressing upon all around him the awful importance of earnest and sincere religion, and by passionate efforts striving to make men feel the truth as well as accept it, he assuredly did not fail to inculcate the same principles upon James Thomason, for whose guidance he had made himself responsible. He was the greatest educator of that time. He was a devoted member of the Church of England. He had already preached his sermons before the University on the excellence of the Liturgy. These must have been in the hands of the young James. In his preface to the 'Horae Homileticae' he declares anxiety to 'give to every portion of the Word of