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the porch of God's house, whereunto I am entered? God himself forbid, who was the supream mover. What service, then, do I propound to the Church? or what contentment to my own mind? First, for the point of conscience, I can now hold my place canonically, which I held before but dispensatively, and withal I can exercise an archidiaconal authority annexed thereunto, though of small extent, and no benefit, yet sometimes of pious and necessary use. I comfort myself also with this Christian hope, that gentlemen and knights' sons, who are trained up with us in a seminary of Churchmen, (which was the will of the holy Founder,) will by my example (without vanity be it spoken) not be ashamed, after the sight of courtly weeds, to put on a surplice. Lastly, I consider that this resolution which I have taken is not unsutable even to my civil employments abroad, of which for the most part religion was the subject; nor to my observations, which have been spent that way in discovery of the Roman arts and practices, whereof I hope to yield the world some account, though rather by my pen than by my voice. For though I must humbly confess that both my conceptions and expressions be weak, yet I do more trust my deliberation then my memory: or if your Majesty will give me leave to paint my self in higher terms, I think I shall be bolder against the faces of men. This I conceived to be a piece of my own character; so as my private study must be my theater, rather then a pulpit; and my books my auditours, as they are all my treasure. Howsoever, if I can produce nothing else for the use of Church and State, yet it shall be comfort enough to the little remnant of my life to compose some hymnes unto His endless glory, who hath called me, (for which His Name be ever blessed,) though late to His service, yet early to the knowledge of his truth and sense of his mercy. To which ever commending your Majesty and your royal action with most hearty and humble prayers, I rest,

"Your Majesty's most devoted poor servant.”

Sir Henry passed fifteen honourable, useful, and happy years as Provost of Eton. He designed several literary works, among which was a life of Luther, which, at the King's request, he laid aside in order to commence a history of England; but he made but little progress in this last-mentioned work. He also wrote some portions of an intended treatise on Education. Sir Henry was a physiogno

mist; and some of his observations as to the outward appearances and the habits of a child, which indicate genius, are as follows:

"The head of a child I wish great and round, which is the capablest figure, and the freest from all restraint or compression of the parts; for since, in the section of bodies, we find man of all sensible creatures to have the fullest brain to his proportion, and that so it was provided by the Supream Wisdom, for the lodging of the intellective faculties; it must needs be a silent character of hope, when in the economical providence of nature (as I may term it) there is good store of roomage and receipt where those powers are stowed: as commonly we may think husbanding men to foresee their own plenty, who prepare beforehand large barns and granaries. Yet Thucidides (anciently one of the excellentest wits in the learnedst part of the world) seems (if Marcellinus in his life have well described him) to have been somewhat taper-headed, as many of the Genouesers are at this day in common observation, who yet bee a people of singular sagacity; yea, I call here not impertinently to mind, that one of my time in Venice had wit enough to become the civil head of that grave republick, who yet, for the littleness of his own naturall head, was surnamed Il Donato Testolina. But the obtrusions of such particular instances as these are un-sufficient to disauthorize a note grounded upon the final intention of nature. The eye in children (which commonly let them rowle at pleasure) is of curious observation, especially in point of discovery; for it loveth or hateth before we can discern the heart it consenteth or denyeth before the tongue : it resolveth or runneth away before the feet: nay, we shall often mark in it a dulness or apprehensiveness, even before the understanding. In short, it betrayeth in a manner the whole state of the mind, and letteth out all our fancies and passions as it were by a window-I shall therefore require in that organ, without poetical conceits, (as far as may concern my purpose, bee the colour what it will,) only a settled vivacity, nor wandering, nor stupid: yet I must confess, I have known a number of dul-sighted, very sharp-witted men."

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There is, scattered among many quaint fancies, much practical good sense in Sir Henry's remarks on this subject. Witness the following passage:

"When I mark in children much solitude and silence I like it not, nor anything born before his time, as this must needs be in that sociable and exposed life as they are for the most part. When

"either alone or in company they sit still without doing of anything, I like it worse. For surely all disposition to idleness and vacancie, even before they grow habits, are dangerous; and there is commonly but little distance in time between doing of nothing and doing of ill."

There is a peculiar charm in Wotton's character and writings, which has made me extend this memoir to unusual length. My last quotation shall be a passage, preserved by Walton, in which Sir Henry truly and beautifully describes the reflections that are produced in the mind of him who, after long absence, revisits the place of his early education. A visit to Winchester was the immediate cause of Sir Henry's remarks; but they will come home to the feelings of many an old Etonian :

"He yearly went also to Oxford; but, the summer before his death, he changed that for a journey to Winchester Colledge, to which school he was first removed from Bocton. And as he returned from that towards Eton College, he said to a friend, his companion in that journey, 'How useful was that advice of a holy monk, who persuaded his friend to perform his customary devotions in a constant place, because in that place we usually meet with those thoughts which possessed us at our last being there. And I find it thus experimentally true, that at my now being at that school, the seeing that very place where I sate when a boy, occasioned me to remember those very thoughts of my youth, which then possessed me; sweet thoughts indeed, that promised my growing years numerous pleasures without mixture of cares, and those to be enjoyed when time (which I therefore thought slow-paced) had changed my youth into manhood. But age and experience have taught me that those were but empty hopes. And though my days have been many, and those mixed with more pleasures than the sons of men do usually enjoy, yet I have always found it true, as my Saviour did foretell, Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Nevertheless I saw there a succession of boys using the same recreations, and questionless possessed with the same thoughts. Thus one generation succeeds another, both in their lives, recreations, hopes, fears, and deaths."

Sir Henry Wotton died on the fifth of December, 1639. He was never married. Beside the works alluded to in this memoir, he was the author of a treatise on architecture, justly celebrated for the soundness of its principles and the grace of its style. He

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also wrote a view of the state of Christendom [about the year 1600]; a biography of the Duke of Buckingham, and several other small tracts. He composed a few short pieces of poetry, and, though brief and rare, they entitle him to a high rank among our "Poetæ Minores."

His fame, indeed, would be sufficiently established if it rested only on the following stanzas, which were written by him in praise of the Queen of Bohemia

"You meaner beauties of the night,

That poorly satisfy our eyes

More by your number than your light;
You common people of the skies,
What are you when the sun shall rise?

"Ye violets, that first appear,

By your pure purple mantles known,
Like the proud virgins of the year,
As if the spring were all your own,
What are ye when the rose is blown ?

"You curious chanters of the wood

That warble forth dame Nature's praise,
Thinking your passions understood

By your weak accents, where's your praise
When Philomel her voice shall raise ?

"So when my mistress shall be seen
In form and beauty of her mind,
By virtue first, then choice, a queen,
Tell me if she were not designed

The eclipse and glory of her kind?"

Of a still higher order is the following beautiful hymn, which was composed by Sir Henry during his last illness :

"Oh thou, Great Power, in whom I move,

For whom I live, to whom I die,
Behold me through thy beams of love,
Whilst on this couch of tears I lie ;
And cleanse my sordid soul within,
By thy Christ's blood, the bath of sin.

"No hallowed oils, no grains I need,

No rays of Saints, no purging fire;

One rosy drop from David's seed,

Was worlds of seas to quench thine ire.
Oh precious ransom! which once paid,
That Consummatum est was said,

"And said by Him that said no more,

But sealed it with his dying breath.

Thou then that hast dispunged my score,
And dying, wast the death of Death,
Be to me now, on Thee I call,

My life, my strength, my joy, my all."

Sir Henry was buried, according to his desire, in the chapel of the College; and the following inscription, also by his own direction, was placed over his tomb :

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They who read this, and remember the kindly tolerant character of Wotton while living, may well apply to him the beautiful line in which Sophocles after his death was described by Aristophanes. “ Ὁ δ ̓ εὔκολος μὲν ἐνθάδ' ἔυκολος δ' κε ῖ.

(Life of Walton.-Reliquiæ Wottonianæ.)

We approach now the troubled times of the Civil War between Charles and his Parliament; and the earliest, in point of date, of the Etonians, who figured prominently in this unhappy period, is one who was the first Generalissimo of the Parliamentarian forces.

EARL OF ESSEX.

A melancholy memoir must be that of ROBERT DEVEREUX, third Earl of Essex, whether it narrate the passages of his private or those of his public life. And yet he had every advantage of person, rank, wealth, and station; and not even his bitterest adversaries ever denied the goodness of his heart, his courage, or his integrity of purpose.

He was the only child of Queen Elizabeth's chivalrous but unhappy favourite, the second Earl of Essex. When the father was beheaded in 1601, the son was only nine years old. The little orphan was placed at Eton by his grandmother, in whose care he was left; and at Eton he received the rudiments of a learned education. His stay there, however, was a short one, as before the end of 1602, he was removed to Merton College, Oxford, where he was brought up under the immediate care of Mr. Savile, then warden of that college, and afterwards Sir Henry Savile, Provost of Eton. Savile had been an intimate friend of the late Earl's, and for his sake, "was exceedingly careful in seeing

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