for themselves. And let us not be herein like unto gentlewomen, who care not to keep the inside of the orange, but candy and preserve only the outside. Tombs are the clothes of the dead. A grave is but a plain suit, and a rich monument is one embroidered.

The Good Yoeman.-From The Holy State.

The good yeoman is a gentleman in ore, whom the next age may see refined, and is the wax capable of a genteel impression, when the prince shall stamp it. Wise Solon, who accounted Tellus the Athenian the most happy man, for living privately on his own lands, would surely have pronounced the English yeomanry a fortunate condition,' living in the temperate zone between greatness and want, an estate of people almost peculiar to England. France and Italy are like a die which hath no points between cinque and ace, nobility and peasantry. Their walls, though high, inust needs be hollow, wanting filling-stones. Indeed, Germany hath her boors, like our yeomen; but by a tyrannical appropriation of nobility to some few ancient families, their yeomen are excluded from ever rising higher to clarify their bloods. In England. the temple of honour is bolted against none who have passed through the temple of virtue; nor is a capacity to be genteel denied to our yeoman who thas behaves himself. He wears russet clothes, but makes golden payment, having tin in his buttons and silver in his pocket. If he chance to appear in clothes above his rank, it is to grace some great men with his service, and then he blusheth at his own bravery. Otherwise, he is the surest landmark whence foreigners may take aim of the ancient English customs; the gentry more floating after foreign fashions. In his house he is bountiful both to strangers and poor people. Some hold, when hospitality died in England, she gave her last groan amongst the yeomen of Kent. Aud still, at our yeoman's table, you shall have as many joints as dishes; no meat disguised with strange sauces; no straggling joint of a sheep in the midst of a pasture of grass, beset with salads on every side, but solid, substantial food. No servitors (more nimble with their hands than the guests with their teeth) take away meat before stomachs are taken away. Here you have that which in itself is good, made better by the stor of it, and best by the welcome to it. He improveth his land to a double value by his good husbandry. Some grounds that wept with water, or frowned with thorns, by draining the one and clearing the other, he makes both to laugh and sing with corn. By marl and limestones burned he bettereth his ground, and his industry worketh miracles, by turning stones into bread.

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Of Fuller's style of narrative in his Worthies' we subjoin two short specimens:

Declension of Great Families.

It happened in the reign of King James, when Henry Earl of Huntingdon was lieutenant of Leicestershire, that a labourer's son in that country was pressed into the wars-as I take it, to go over with Count Mansfield. The old man at Leicester requested his son might be discharged, as being the only staff of his age, who by his industry maintained him and his mother. The earl demanded his name, which the man for a long time was loath to tell-as suspecting it a fault for so poor a man to tell the truth; at last he told his name was Hastings. 'Cousin Hastings,' said the earl, we cannot all be top branches of the tree, though we all spring from the same root, your son, my kinsman, shall not be pressed.' So good was the meeting of modesty in a poor, with courtesy in an honourable person, and gentry I believe in both. And I have reason to believe, that some who justly own the surnames and blood of Bohuns, Mortimers, and Plantagenets-though ignorant of their own extraction are hid in the heap of common people, where they find that under a thatched cottage which some of their ancestors could not enjoy in a leaded castle-contentment, with quiet and security.

Henry de Essex, Standard-bearer to Henry II.

It happened in the reign of this king there was a fierce battle fought in Flintshire, in Coleshall, between the English and Welsh, wherein this Henry de Essex animum et signum simul abjecit-betwixt traitor and coward, cast away both his courage and banner together, occasioning a great overthrow of English. But he that had the base

ness to do, had the boldness to deny the doing of so foul a fact; until he was challenged in combat by Robert de Monford, a knight, eye-witness thereof, and by him overcome in a duel. Whereupon his large inheritance was confiscated to the king, and he himself, partly thrust, partly going, into a convent, hid his head in a cowl; under which, betwixt shame and sanctity, he blushed out the remainder of his life. The latter passage has elicited an admirable critical note from Charles Lamb, which is well worth transcription:

The fine imagination of Fuller has done what might have been pronounced impossible. It has given an interest and a holy character to coward infamy. Nothing can be more beautiful than the concluding account of the last days and expiatory retirement of poor Henry de Essex. The address with which the whole of this little story is told is most consummate: the charm of it seems to consist in a perpetual balance of antithesis not too violently opposed, and the consequent activity of mind in which the reader is kept: Betwixt traitor and coward baseness to do, boldness to deny partly thrust, partly going, into a convent-betwixt shame and sanctity. The reader by this artifice is taken into a kind of partnership with the writer; his judgment is exercised in settling the preponderance; he feels as if he were consulted as to the issue. But the modern historian flings at once the deadweight of his own judgment into the scale, and settles the matter.

We may add that the phrase, not noticed by Lamb, of 'hid his head in a cowl,' is also figuratively striking, and seems to have been remembered by Sheridan, who used a similar expression-to hide his head in a coronet.'

JEREMY TAYLOR.

The English church at this time was honoured by the services of many able and profound theologians; men who had both studied and thought deeply, and possessed a vigorous and original character of intellect. The most eloquent and imaginative of all her divines was, however, JEREMY TAYLOR (1613–1667), who has been styled by some the Shakspeare,' and by others the 'Spenser,' of our theological literature. He seems to be closely allied, in the complexion of his taste and genius, to the poet of the Faery Queen.' He has not the unity and energy, or the profound mental philosophy, of the great dramatist; while he strongly resembles Spenser in his prolific fancy and diction, in a certain musical arrangement and sweetness of expression, in prolonged description, and in delicious musings and reveries, suggested by some favourite image or metaphor, on which he dwells with the fondness and enthusiasm of a young poet. In these passages, he is also apt to run into excess; epithet is heaped upon epithet, and figure upon figure; all the quaint conceits of his fancy and the curious stores of his learning are dragged in, till both precision and propriety are sometimes lost. He writes like an orator, and produces his effect by reiterated strokes and multiplied impressions. His picture of the Resurrection, in one of his sermons, is in the highest style of poetry, but generally he deals with the gentle and familiar; and his allusions to natural objects—as trees, birds, and flowers, the rising or setting sun, the charms of youthful innocence and beauty, and the helplessness of infancy and childhood-possess an almost angelic purity of feeling and delicacy of fancy. When presenting rules for morning medita

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'Sometimes,'

tion and prayer, he stops to indulge his love of nature. he says, 'be curious to see the preparation which the sun makes when he is coming forth from his chambers of the east.' He compares a young man to a dancing bubble, 'empty and gay, and shining like a dove's neck, or the image of a rainbow, which hath no substance, and whose very imagery and colours are fantastical.' The fulfilment of our duties he calls presenting a rosary or chaplet of good works to our Maker;' and he dresses even the grave with the flowers of fancy. This freshness of feeling and imagination remained with him till the last, amidst all the strife and violence of the Civil War-in which he was an anxious participator and sufferer-and the still more deadening effects of polemical controversy and systems of casuistry and metaphysics. The stormy vicissitudes of his life seem only to have taught him greater gentleness, resignation, toleration for human failings, and a more ardent love of humankind.

Jeremy Taylor was a native of Cambridge-baptized on the 15th of August 1613-and descended of gentle, and even heroic blood. He was the lineal representative of Dr. Rowland Taylor, who suf fered martyrdom in the reign of Queen Mary; and his family had been one of some distinction in the county of Gloucester. The Taylors, however, had fallen into the portion of weeds and outworn faces,' to use an expression of their most illustrious member, and Jeremy's father followed the humble occupation of a barber in Cam-· bridge. He put his son to college, as a sizar, in his thirteenth year, having himself previously taught him the rudiments of grammar and mathematics, and given him the advantages of the Free Grammarschool. In 1630, Jeremy Taylor took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in Caius College, and in 1634 having taken his degree of M.A. was ordained. He then removed to London, to deliver some lectures for a college friend in St. Paul's Cathedral. His eloquent discourses, aided by what a contemporary calls his florid and youthful beauty, and pleasant air,' entranced all hearers, and procured him the patronage of Archbishop Laud, the friend of learning, if not of liberty. By Laud's assistance, Taylor obtained a fellowship in All Souls College, Oxford, which he enjoyed but for two years, after which he was vicar of Uppingham, in Rutlandshire. In 1639, he married Phoebe Langdale, a female of whom we know nothing but her musical name, and that she bore three sons to her accomplished husband, and died three years after her marriage. The sons of Taylor also died before their father, clouding with melancholy and regret his late and troubled years.

The turmoil of the Civil War now agitated the country, and Jeremy Taylor embarked his fortunes in the fate of the royalists. By virtue of the king's mandate, he was made a doctor of divinity; and at the command of Charles, he wrote a defence of Episcopacy, to which he was by principle and profession strongly attached. In 1644, while accompanying the royal army as chaplain, Jeremy Taylor was taken

prisoner by the Parliamentary forces, in the battle fought before the castle of Cardigan, in Wales. He was soon released, but the tide of war had turned against the royalists, and in the wreck of the church, Taylor resolved to continue in Wales, and, in conjunction with two learned and ecclesiastical friends, to establish a school at Newtonhall, county of Caermarthen. He appears to have been twice imprisoned by the dominant party, but treated with no marked severity. In the great storm,' he says, which dashed the vessel of the church all in pieces, I had been cast on the coast of Wales, and, in a little boat, thought to have enjoyed that rest and quietness which in England, in a far greater, I could not hope for. Here I cast anchor, and thinking to ride safely, the storm followed me with so impetuous violence, that it broke a cable, and I lost my anchor, and here again I was exposed to the mercy of the sea, and the gentleness of an element that could neither distinguish things nor persons: and, but that He that stilleth the raging of the sea, and the noise of his waves, and the madness of his people, had provided a plank for me, I had been lost to all the opportunities of content or study; but I know not whether I have been more preserved by the courtesies of my friends, or the gentleness and mercies of a noble enemy.'

This fine passage is in the dedication to Taylor's 'Liberty of Prophesying, a discourse published in 1647, shewing the Unreasonableness of prescribing to other men's faith, and the Iniquity of persecuting Differing Opinions.' By 'prophesying,' he means preaching or expounding. The work has been justly described as 'perhaps, of all Taylor's writings, that which shews him furthest in advance of the age in which he lived, and of the ecclesiastical system iu which he had been reared-as the first distinct and avowed defence of toleration which had been ventured on in England, perhaps in Christendom.' He builds the right of private judgment upon the difficulty of expounding Scripture-the insufficiency and uncertainty of tradition-the fallibility of councils, the pope, ecclesiastical writers, and the church as a body, as arbiters of controverted points--and the consequent necessity of letting every man choose his own guide or judge of the meaning of Scripture for himself; since, says he, 'any man may be better trusted for himself, than any man can be for another for in this case his own interest is most concerned, and ability is not so necessary as honesty, which certainly every man will best preserve in his own case, and to himself-and if he does not, it's he that must smart for it; and it is not required of us not to be in error, but that we endeavour to avoid it.'

Milton, in his scheme of toleration, excludes all Roman Catholics -a trait of the persecuting character of his times; and Jeremy Taylor, to establish some standard of truth, and prevent anarchy, as be alleges, proposes the confession of the Apostles' Creed as the test of orthodoxy and the condition of union among Christians The principles he advocates go to destroy this limitation, and are applicable

to universal toleration, which he dared hardly then avow, even if he had entertained such a desire or conviction. The style of his masterly ‘Discourse' is more argumentive and less ornate than that of his sermons and devotional treatises; but his enlightened zeal often breaks forth in striking condemnation of those who are curiously busy about trifles and impertinences, while they reject those glorious precepts of Christianity and holy life which are the glories of our religion, and would enable us to gain a happy eternity.' He closes the work in the second edition with the following interesting and instructive apologue, which he had found, he says, in the Jews' books:

When Abraham sat at his tent-door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man stopping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man ate and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God; at which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was. He replied: "I thrust him away because he did not worship thee." God answered him: "I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonoured me; and couldst thou not endure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble?" Upon this, saith the story, Abraham fetched him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction. Go thou and do likewise, and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.'

In Wales, Jeremy Taylor was married to Mrs. Joanna Bridges, said to have been a natural daughter of Charles I. and mistress of an estate in the county of Caermarthen. He was thus relieved from the irksome duties of a school-master; but the fines and sequestrations imposed by the Parliamentary party on the property of the royalists, are supposed to have dilapidated his wife's fortune.It is known that he received a pension from the patriotic and excellent John Evelyn, and the literary labours of Taylor were never relaxed. Soon after the publication of the 'Liberty of Prophesying,' he wrote in his Welsh retreat an Apology for Authorised and Set Forms of Liturgy ;' and in 1650, The Life of Christ, or the Great Exemplar,' a valuable and highly popular work. These were followed by his treatises of Holy Living' and 'Holy Dying,' 'Twenty-seven Sermons for the Summer Half-year,' and other minor productions. He wrote also an excellent little manual of devotion, entitled the Golden Grove,' so called after the mansion of his neighbor and patron the Earl of Carbery, in whose family he had spent many of his happiest leisure hours. In the preface to this work, Taylor had reflected on the ruling powers in church and state, for which he was, for a short time, committed to prison in Chepstow Castle. He next completed his 'Course of Sermons for the Year,' and published some controversial tracts on the doctrine of 'Original Sin,' respecting which his opinions were rather latitudinarian, inclining to the Pelagian heresy. He was attacked both by High Churchmen and Calvinists, but defended him