66 thoughts and reflections, exerted himself on this occasion in the best manner he could to animate his penitent in the course of life she was entering upon, and wear out of her mind those groundless fears and apprehensions which had taken possession of it; concluding with a promise to her, that he would from time to time continue his admonitions when she should have taken upon her the holy veil. 'The rules of our respective orders," says he, "will not permit that I should see you, but you may assure yourself not only of having a place in my prayers, but of receiving such frequent instructions as I can convey to you by letters. Go on cheerfully in the glorious course you have undertaken, and you will quickly find such a peace and satisfaction in your mind which it is not in the power of the world to give." Constantia's heart was so elevated with the discourse of Father Francis, that the very next day she entered upon her vow. As soon as the solemnities of her reception were over, she retired as is usual with the abbess in her own apartment. The abbess had been informed the night before of all that had passed between her noviciate and Father Francis: from whom she now delivered to her the following letter: "As the first fruits of those joys and consolations which you may expect from the life you are now engaged in, I must acquaint you that Theodosius, whose death sits so heavy upon your thoughts, is still alive; and that the father, to whom you have confessed yourself, was once that Theodosius whom you so much lament. The love which we have had for one another will make us more happy in its disappointment than it could have done in its success. Providence has disposed of us for our advantage, though not according to our wishes. Consider your Theodosius still as dead, but assure yourself of one who will not cease to pray for you in Father 66 FRANCIS." Constantia saw that the handwriting agreed with the contents of the letter: and upon reflecting on the voice of the person, the behaviour, and above all the extreme sorrow of the father during her confession, she discovered Theodosius in every particular. After having wept with tears of joy. "It is enough," says she, "Theodosius is still in being: I shall live with comfort, and die in peace." The letters which the father sent her afterwards are yet extant in the nunnery where she resided; and are often read to the young religious, in order to inspire them with good resolutions and sentiments of virtue. It so happened that after Constantia had lived about ten years in the cloister, a violent fever broke out in that place, which swept away great multitudes, and among others Theo dosius. Upon his death-bed he sent his benediction in a very moving manner to Constantia, who at that time was herself so far gone in the same fatal distemper, that she lay delirious. Upon the interval which generally precedes death in sicknesses of this nature, the abbess, finding that the physicians had given her over, told her that Theodosius was just gone before her, and that he had sent her his benediction in his last moments. Constantia received it with pleasure. "And now," says she, "if I do not ask anything improper, let me be buried by Theodosius. My vow reaches no farther than the grave. What I ask is, I hope, no violation of it.” She died soon after, and was interred according to her request. Their tombs are still to be seen with a short Latin inscription over them to the following purpose,— "Here lie the bodies of Father Francis and Sister Constance. They were lovely in their lives, and in their deaths they were not divided." I HAVE often wished, that as in our constitution there are several persons whose business is to watch over our laws, our liberties, and commerce, certain men might be set apart as superintendents of our language, to hinder any words of a foreign coin from passing among us; and in particular to prohibit any French phrases from becoming current in this kingdom, when those of our own stamp are altogether as valuable. The present war has so adulterated our tongue with strange words, that it would be impossible for one of our great grandfathers to know what his posterity have been doing, were he to read their exploits in a modern newspaper. Our warriors are very industrious in propagating the French language, at the same time that they are so gloriously successful in beating down their power. Our soldiers are men of strong heads for action, and perform such feats as they are not able to express. They want words in their own tongue to tell us what it is they achieve, and therefore send us over accounts of their performances in a jargon of phrases, which they learn among their conquered enemies. They ought however to be provided with secretaries, and assisted by our foreign ministers, to tell their story for them in plain English, and to let us know in our mother-tongue what it is our brave countrymen are about. The French would indeed be in the right to publish the news of the present war in English phrases, and to make their campaigns unintelligible. Their people might flatter themselves that things are not so bad as they really are, were they thus palliated with foreign terms, and thrown into shades and obscurity; but the English cannot be too clear in their narrative of those actions, which have raised their country to a higher pitch of glory than it ever yet arrived at, and which will be still more admired the better they are explained. For my part, by that time a siege is carried on two or three days, I am altogether lost and bewildered in it, and meet with so many inexplicable difficulties, that I scarce know which side has the better of it, until I am informed by the Tower guns that the place is surrendered. I do indeed make some allowances for this part of the war, fortifications having been foreign inventions, and upon that account abounding in foreign terms. But when we have won battles which may be described in our own language, why are our papers filled with so many unintelligible exploits, and the French obliged to lend us a part of their tongue before we can know how they are conquered? They must be made accessary to their own disgrace, as the Britons were formerly so artificially wrought in the curtain of the Roman theatre, that they seemned to draw it up in order to give the spectators an opportunity of seeing their own defeat celebrated upon the stage for so Mr. Dryden has translated that verse in Virgil: "Purpurea intexti tollunt auloa Britanni." GEORG. iii. 25. "Which interwoven Britons seem to raise, The histories of all our former wars are transmitted to us in our vernacular idiom, to use the phrase of a great modern critic.* I do not find in any of our chronicles, that Edward the Third ever reconnoitred the enemy, though he often discovered the posture of the French, and as often vanquished them in battle. The black Prince passed many a river without the help of pontoons, and filled a ditch with faggots as successfully as the generals of our times do The Rev. Dr. Richard Bentley. it with fascines. Our commanders lose half their praise, and our people half their joy, by means of those hard words and dark expressions in which our newspapers do so much abound. I have seen many a prudent citizen, after having read every article, inquire of his next neighbour what news the mail had brought. I remember, in that remarkable year when our country was delivered from the greatest fears and apprehensions, and raised to the greatest height of gladness it had ever felt since it was a nation, I mean the year of Blenheim,* I had the copy of a letter sent me out of the country, which was written from a young gentleman in the army to his father, a man of good estate and plain sense. As the letter was very modishly chequered with this modern military eloquence, I shall present my reader with a copy of it. 66 "SIR, Upon the junction of the French and Bavarian armies they took post behind a great morass which they thought impracticable. Our general the next day sent a party of horse to 'reconnoitre them from a little hauteur,' at about a quarter of an hour's distance from the army, who returned again to the camp unobserved through several 'defiles,' in one of which they met with a party of French that had been marauding,' and made them all prisoners at discretion. The day after a Drum arrived at our camp, with a message which he would communicate to none but the general; he was followed by a Trumpet, who they say behaved himself very saucily, with a message from the duke of Bavaria. The next morning our army being divided into two corps,' made a movement towards the enemy. You will hear in the public prints how we treated them, with the other circumstances of that glorious day. I had the good fortune to be in that regiment that pushed the 'gens d'armes.' Several French battalions, who some say were a 'corps de reserve,' made a show of resistance; but it only proved a gasconade,' for, upon our preparing to fill up a little fosse,' in order to attack them, they beat the chamade,' and sent us carte blanche.' Their commandant,' with a great many other general officers, and troops without number, are made prisoners of war, and will I believe give you a visit in England, the .' cartel' not being yet settled. Not questioning but these particulars will be very welcome to you, I congratulate you upon them, and am your most dutiful son, &c." * The battle of Blenheim, fought August 2, 1704, between the Confederates, under Prince Eugene and the duke of Marlborough, and the French and Bavarians, under the elector of Bavaria and Marshal Tallard. The marshal, and 13,000 men, were made prisoners, and near 20,000 were killed, wounded, or drowned in the Danube. The allies lost 15,000 men. The father of the young gentleman upon the perusal of the letter found it contained great news, but could not guess what it was. He immediately communicated it to the curate of the parish, who upon the reading of it, being vexed to see anything he could not understand, fell into a kind of a passion, and told him that his son had sent him a letter that was neither fish, flesh, nor good redherring. "I wish," says he, "the captain may be compos mentis,' he talks of a saucy Trumpet, and a Drum that carries messages; then who is this carte blanche?' He must either banter us, or he is out of his senses." The father, who always looked upon the curate as a learned man, began to fret inwardly at his son's usage, and producing a letter which he had written to him about three posts before. "You see here," says he, "when he writes for money he knows how to speak intelligibly enough; there is no man in England can express himself clearer, when he wants a new furniture for his horse." In short, the old man was so puzzled upon the point, that it might have fared ill with his son, had he not seen all the prints about three days after filled with the same terms of art, and that Charles only writ like other men. ARISTOTLE tells us, that the world is a copy or transcript of those ideas which are in the mind of the first Being, and that those ideas which are in the mind of man are a transcript of the world. To this we may add, that words are the transcript of those ideas which are in the mind of man, and that writing or printing are the transcript of words. As the Supreme Being has expressed, and as it were printed his ideas in the creation, men express their ideas in books, which by this great invention of these latter ages may last as long as the sun and moon, and perish only in the general wreck of nature, Thus Cowley in his poem on the Resurrection, mentioning the destruction of the universe, has those admirable lines |