garden, as time and leisure served, quietly and orderly. As a captain in the Wars would he, in his harangues, cote whole paffages therefrom in a clear and round voice, thus enforcing them, as was accustomed in the army ere that notable statute 34 and 35 of the Great Defender of our Faith, King Henry VIII.

And for a tender, compaffionate vein. At whofe charges, pray, was Edmund Spencer buried in S. Peter's, Weftminster, if not at my Lord's? Not furely at Sir Walter Ralegh's. 'Tis another matter, look you, to be patron of a living genius, than to pay the costs of a dead poet. By those Irish rebels wantonly cast out of his unhappy dwelling, defpoiled of his pelting goods, cruelly fcorned, the Bard o' Mulla had come back to England poorer than he left it. And now that he died, his hearfe was carried by Poets, and mournful verses thrown into his tomb!

Vainly had he gotten him into a folitary place, far from the bufy haunt of men, the hum of cities, and domestical ftirs! Hopelessly hoped he to have leifure and room for meditation, study, and the Muses' vifits! Oh! who is the

Eremite hath found peace in his fecluded cell?

Tell me, O

retired one! where you have heard no jars? Bid me to the

Antres vaft of fome idle defart; there fhall the Eternal buzz of infect life swarm me to madness! Begone, then, to the very Poles; howling winds and crashing mountains forbid a filence! In the foreft, I fhall hear the roaring beast; in the swamp, the croaking frog. On the wild fea, perpetual motion fhuts out all tranquillity. In very peace, difquiet! Oh, fond, phrenzied Poet! Oh, prepofterous fhepheard! There is no reft below the Welkin. Go from thy miserable lodging in a defolate old ruin—from thy uncharitable and lonely home! Go to the noisy, hurlyburly crowd of thy fellow-creatures, where thou fhalt haply find less disturbance! There, at least, shalt thou die untroubled, gentle spirit! Near old Father Chaucer lay thy honoured bones, where the ethereal duft of kindred genius shall, to all time, hallow thy quiet grave!

But to the matter in hand. Now Effex lay fick in the Countess of Leicester's house, at Wanstead, whither he had been carried on a litter. There is none to a mother's bofom for a fon's forrows! My Lord, who would rather mend than cover his faults, believing 'twas as eafy to do the one as attempt the other, was ill pleased with himself touching many matters, especially in the cafe of his "fairest B.," and it was

not to his wife that, as yet, his stomach would let on the cause of his diftemperature. You'd hardly bring him to that shrift yet! ""Tis a strange thing," faith a great Philosopher -"a ftrange thing that nature will counsel us to lament our most persisted deeds." And the reason: 'Tis for "by penitence wrath's appeased." Without repentance, what is man?

"Ambition is like choler, which is a humour that maketh men active, earnest, full of alacrity and stirring, if it be not stopped. But if it cannot have its way, it becometh aduft, and thereby malign and venomous." Affuredly Master Francis had his eye on Earl Robert now, for it had been the very fame with Earl Walter. Though he died of a flux, as you have heard, 'twas not without aduftion of choler, the physicians faid; and as the countenance, fo the conditions o' the body, especially in thofe of high lineage, be often hereditary, either through the evil influences of those celestial bodies which prefide over our natures being then again operant when we are born, or by fome other more fecret law, who knoweth? Certain it is, that the noble family of Devereux for three generations were of the fame complexion, and thirty-fix years of age the uttermost fcope to which any of them attained.

Now Effex was of fuch temper that, had he not to do what would roufe and bufy his faculties to their full bent,

making him, as it were, fweat at the prefent labour of his

.

affairs, he would anon become overcaft and discontent, looking upon men and matters with an evil eye. Call it what you will, his fpleen was i' the fault. Thefe cloudy vapours to dispel, this bad afpect to avert, would he play violently Tennis one while, Ballon another, Goff, Quoits, or fuch like: ay, till the heat of his blood fhould flake itself in its own mood. But in the field fervice, on the great horse-nay, in a fea-fight-in batterings o' walls, stormings of citadels, captures of cities, i' the imminent deadly breach, in contests of troups, and encounters hand to hand, in adventures, in exploits, where was risk and glory, honour and peril; nay, even at the barriers and in joufts, where but shouts and childish triumphings rewarded him, there his courage gat vent and fcope, and his chivalrous and fiery fpirit took vantage ground. Effex was himself again! None but himself could be his paragon, for in fuch who was fo capable, fo patient, fo refpective? 'Twas then his whole being might be witnefsed in its fit element: to wit, glorious ftrife and emulation, "Aut Cafar,

aut Nullus!" And thus ruled his generous heart that

religion which gave life to his every act.

There was Love

and Duty, and as little felf as might be. Here was a true hero.

But now reverse the cafe. Let my Lord be reftiff. He is vexed, who knoweth him? He eateth his meat grudgingly: as who should fay, ""Tis overdone and indigeftible," or, ""Tis undressed, and therefore naught-away!" Then would he make four faces at his best friends: be filent, or, if he spake, foreboding, complaining, exceptious. 'Tis but a stuffed and engroffed intestine which gives this tawny hue to his mind. And presently the melancholy of his spirit shall play upon the heavinefs of his body. You shall find him then hearkening to fome painful wailings o' the Genevan Shades, his throbbing temples vifioning their dark and horrid fymbols, his whole foul, as it were, steeped to the very throat in the Acheron of their dire forebodings. The Chirurgeons fay my Lord aileth. The Presbytery have it, the convict finner is a convertite !

Another while (still fick) would the Earl be lashed into an irafcible madness; his phrenzied nerves fhaking the very wits out of him.