Reginald Heber,--a graceful, fine-looking, rather pale young man of twenty,--with his younger brother Thomas beside him as prompter, stood in the rostrum, and commenced in a clear, beautiful, melancholy voice, with perfect declamation, which overcame all the stir and tumultuous restlessness of the audience by the power and sweetness of words and action: "Reft of thy sons, amid thy foes forlorn, Mourn, widow'd queen; forgotten Zion, mourn.
Is this thy place, sad city, this thy throne, Where the wild desert rears its craggy stone; While suns unblest their angry lustre fling, And wayworn pilgrims seek the scanty spring ?" On flowed the harmonious lines, looking back to the call of the Chosen, the victory of Joshua, the glory of Solomon, the hidden glory of the Greater than Solomon, the crime of crimes, the destruction, the renewal by the Empress Helena, the Crusades, and after a tribute (excusable at the time of excitement) to Sir Sidney Smith's defence of Acre, gradually rising to a magnificent description of the heavenly Jerusalem.
"Ten thousand harps attune the mystic throng, Ten thousand thousand saints the strain prolong.
'Worthy the Lamb, omnipotent to save! Who died, Who lives triumphant o'er the grave." The enthusiasm, the hush, the feeling, the acclamations have ever since been remembered at Oxford as unequalled.

Heber's parents were both present, and his mother, repairing at once in her joy to his rooms, found him kneeling by his bedside, laying the burthen of honour and success upon his God.

His father, recently recovered from illness, was so overcome and shaken by the pressure of the throng and the thunder of applause as never entirely to recover the fatigue, and he died eight months later, early in 1804.
The two youths who were in juxtaposition at the rostrum were not to meet again.

Daniel Wilson was ordained to the curacy of Chobham, under Mr.
Cecil, an excellent master for impressing hard study on his curates.

He writes: "What should a young minister do?
His office says, 'Go to your books, go to retirement, go to prayer.' 'No,' says the enthusiast, 'go to preach, go and be a witness.'" "'A witness of what ?' "'He don't know!'" While Wilson worked under Cecil, Heber, who was still too young for the family living of Hodnet, in Shropshire, after taking his bachelor's degree, obtaining a fellowship at All Souls College, and gaining the prize for the prose essay, accompanied John Thornton on a tour through northern and eastern Europe, the only portions then accessible to the traveller; and, returning in 1806, was welcomed at home by his brother's tenants with a banquet, for which three sheep were slaughtered, and at which he appeared in the red coat of the volunteer regiment in which he had taken an eager share during former years.
It was his last appearance in a military character, for in 1807 he was ordained, and entered on his duties as Rector of Hodnet.