Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/349

309 AND JAMES NISBE T. 309 partner, died, earning a character for high probity and sincere and unaffected piety. Like his father he had been a governor in many charitable institutions. " Such a man," says the author of his obituary notice, " cannot go unwept to the grave ; and the writer of this article, after a friendly intercourse of sixty years, is not ashamed to say that at this moment his eyes are moister than his pen " a quaint but sincere tribute. He had married Miss M. Elhill, sister of an eminent lead merchant, and four of his sons sur- vived him. In 1827 George and Francis, sons of Charles, joined the firm ; and in 1831, Charles, the younger of the two original brothers, was found dead on the floor of his dressing-room. In social life he was distin- guished by the mildness and complacence of his temper; and his conversation was invariably enlivened with anecdotes and memories of the literary men and clergymen with whom he had come in contact. The firm now, therefore, consisted of John, the son of the elder, and Francis and George, two sons of the younger brother. We shall see, in the following memoirs of the Parkers, how marvellously religious life was quick- ened at Oxford by the publication of Keble's " Christian Year." This feeling, intense in its inner nature as any of the revivals, culminated or fulminated in the publication of the " Tracts for the Times " the most important work, perhaps, with which the Rivingtons have ever been connected ; and worthy, therefore, of the scanty notice for which we can afford space here. The " Tracts for the Times " were com- menced in 1833, at a time, according to the writers, "when irreligious principles and false doctrines had