astern of us, like bees buzzing round a comb. The gale which has favoured us has been in their teeth, and they have had a sad tossing; they are nothing loath to turn and run with us before it. We are in the real danger zone now, and it gives us a strong feeling of satisfaction to see those little grey lances of destroyers, tossing in perpetual motion, on every hand. If a ship is torpedoed now, we at least have the comfort of knowing that the submarine will have a hot time of it, and that, if our ship sinks, we shall not be left to drown or starve unaided on the ocean. Before we met the destroyer escort we knew that might be our fate-for the convoy would have gone on like a herd of hunted buffaloes, leaving the wounded ship to the mercy of the hunter. Big ships may never stop to assist other torpedoed big ships, lest they themselves also become a victim. A British seaman must still all the dictates of humanity which impel him to help his sinking friend. The British Navy learned that lesson once for all in the early days of the war, when the three cruisers, Cressy, Hogue, and Aboukir, fell victims in one short half-hour to a single submarine. And so the big convoy moves on, zigzagging always while there is a gleam of light. The green mountains of Ireland are sighted and passed, the narrower waters of the Irish Sea are threaded, but the tension never for a second relaxes, for the nearer our destination, the greater the peril; and now the danger of mines is added to that of the nimble torpedo. Small silvery dirigibles come sailing out to meet us. Seaplanes and aircraft of all sorts come darting from behind projeoting headlands: they hover awhile ahead of the convoy, then disappear once more into the fathomless distance. Last but not least, that most useful of nautical spies, the kiteballoon, precedes us, towed by its fast-moving patrol craft, to which it is attached by a wellnigh invisible gossamer thread. But the last zigzag is done the convoy uncoils and straightens out, the pilots are got aboard, and we are steaming the last few miles, which a cloud of smoking trawlers have just seen swept clean of mines, and now roll their ungainly way up the muddy estuary. The factory chimneys and the smoke of a great town are near. To-night we shall sleep in peace: sleep none the less profound for perils past, and the fact that for the last three days and nights no captain has left his bridge. Now is the time for our Y.M.C.A. young man to give "Thanksgiving" service; but -alas for the frailty of human nature!-our Yankee friends can think now of nothing more spiritual than the sights of London town! There let us leave them, imbibing the intangible charm of "Blighty," of that old country which seems to them to be as much their home as ours, and which is calling to them from the back of a thousand years. RUPERT STANLEY. his A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PACIFIST. IMAGINE to yourself a thick quarto volume-plump if not olumsy, and filling the palm of the hand, bound as if for the use of posterity in the toughest of leather, and the pages coVered with writing in a trim Chancery hand. There you have in a glance the book of Justinian Pagitt's works and days wherein he wrote many odd things "for the ease of his memory," and without knowing it for the entertainment of our own. He was born in or about the year 1610 at the village of Tottenham, being the eldest son of James Pagitt, "whome," to use the words graven on his tomb, "his owne worth and Prince's favour lighted to the dignity of a Baron of His Majesty's Exchequer, in whome birth, merit, place made up the body of unblemished honour. He was the prudent husband of three wives, by the first the provident father of four sons, a secure master of himself and a sincere servant of God. His I. life was a well acted story of himselfe. His death a willing passage to Glorie. He died in the years of nature 57; Grace 1638." This good man belonged to the branch of the Pagitt family which for some two centuries had been settled at Cranford and Barton Seagrave in the county of Northampton,—a quiet race of men whose ambitions in life were satisfied as it seems with the begetting of male children and with the sending of the eldest with unfailing monotony to the law vid Christ Church and the Middle Temple, and the youngest through Magdalen to the oure of souls. Justinian, therefore, by the very choice of his name, by the custom of his house, and by the fact that his father was a judge and his mother a daughter of the Dean of the Arches, had but little choice in the destination of his life; born in gremio legis, he was devoted from the outset to the dusty purlieus of the law. Of his infancy and earlier youth the manuscript gives no account; we enjoy life too well at that age to burden it with notes. The beginning is at Christ Church, and even here the material is thin. There are some pages of scholastic notes and memoranda of leo II. tures heard which testify to his application-and one may guess from his after life that he was sober and painstaking to an unpopular degree. He never figures in a college fray. For his sole recreation he seems to have walked over to Magdalen Hall to hear Dr Henshaw preach, and then, returning to his rooms, to have bolted the door and written the sermon down. Perhaps he was a little unfortunate in following two kinsmen of very brilliant parts. The fame of Ephraim Pagitt was still fresh in the college memory, who while a student was able to speak in fifteen different tongues, and by his eleventh year had already translated and published Lavater's 'Sermons upon Ruth.' And there were some hoary-headed dons who could recall the angelic wisdom and grace of Eusebius Pagitt, his uncle, whose discourses in high philosophy earned him the name of "the golden sophister." It was a little trying for Justinian to be reminded of these two. A plodder can scarcely hope to vie with supermen. If college life proved uncongenial, he found some comfort, I think, and some outlet for his natural piety in the acquaintance of Dr Richard Corbett, successively student and Dean of Christ Church, and at that time Bishop of Oxford. One almost wonders at their knowing each other, for the Bishop, according to contemporary accounts, W88 "the delight of all ingenious men, and the most celebrated wit in the university." In his youth he had been the convivial friend of Ben Jonson, and boasted of having revelled and versified in all the taverns of London. It is doubtful if he ever emerged from his youth, for after becoming a doctor of divinity he donned a leather jerkin and sang ballads at Abingdon Cross. Nor did the cares of a diocese depress him. Aubrey says that after service in the Cathedral "he would sometimes take the key of his wine cellar, and he and his chaplain, Washington, would go and look themselves in and be merry. Then first he layes down his episcopal hat, There layes the doctor. Then he puts off the gowne- There lyes the bishop. Then 'twas Here's to thee Corbett and Here's to thee Washington." I wonder if the puritanical Pagitt knew of all this as he sat in the bishop's house adjoining the Folly bridge? Probably not, for they had quieter things in common. The bishop was a poet-the best, as some one has said, of all the bishops of England -and Justinian too was possessed of a juvenile muse. On one page of this book he has copied out some exquisitely tender lines composed by Corbett for the third birthday of Vincent, his only son : "What I shall leave thee none can tell, Yet all shall say I wish thee well. Boath bodily and goastly health; I wish thee, Vin, before all wealth Not too much meanes nor witt come to thee, Too much of either may undo thee. I wish thee learninge not for showe A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PACIFIST. IMAGINE to yourself a thick quarto volume-plump if not clumsy, and filling the palm of the hand, bound as if for the use of posterity in the toughest of leather, and the pages covered with writing in a trim Chancery hand. There you have in a glance the book of Justinian Pagitt's works and days wherein he wrote many odd things "for the ease of his memory," and without knowing it for the entertainment of our own. He was born in or about the year 1610 at the village of Tottenham, being the eldest son of James Pagitt, "whome," to use the words graven on his tomb, "his owne worth and Prince's favour lighted to the dignity of a Baron of His Majesty's Exchequer, in whome birth, merit, place made up the body of unblemished honour. He was the prudent husband of three wives, by the first the provident father of four sons, a secure master of himself and a sincere servant of God. His I. life was a well acted story of himselfe. His death a willing passage to Glorie. He died in the years of nature 57; Grace 1638." This good man belonged to the branch of the Pagitt family which for some two centuries had been settled at Cranford and Barton Seagrave in the county of Northampton, quiet race of men whose ambitions in life were satisfied as it seems with the begetting of male children and with the sending of the eldest with unfailing monotony to the law vid Christ Church and the Middle Temple, and the youngest through Magdalen to the cure of souls. Justinian, therefore, by the very choice of his name, by the custom of his house, and by the fact that his father was a judge and his mother daughter of the Dean of the Arches, had but little choice in the destination of his life; born in gremio legis, he was devoted from the outset to the dusty purlieus of the law. Of his infancy and earlier youth the manuscript gives no account; we enjoy life too well at that age to burden it with notes. The beginning is at Christ Church, and even here the material is thin. There are some pages of scholastic notes and memoranda of leo II. tures heard which testify to his application-and one may guess from his after life that he was sober and painstaking to an unpopular degree. He never figures in a college fray. For his sole recreation he seems to have walked over to Magdalen Hall to hear Dr Henshaw preach, and then, returning to his rooms, to have bolted the door and written the sermon down. Perhaps he was a little unfortunate in following two kinsmen of very brilliant parts. The fame of Ephraim Pagitt was still fresh in the college memory, who while a student was able to speak in fifteen different tongues, and by his eleventh year had already translated and published Lavater's 'Sermons upon Ruth.' And there were some hoary-headed dons who could recall the angelio wisdom and grace of Eusebius Pagitt, his uncle, whose discourses in high philosophy earned him the name of "the golden sophister." It was a little trying for Justinian to be reminded of these two. A plodder can scarcely hope to vie with supermen. If college life proved uncongenial, he found some comfort, I think, and some outlet for his natural piety in the acquaintance of Dr Richard Corbett, successively student and Dean of Christ Church, and at that time Bishop of Oxford. One almost wonders at their knowing each other, for the Bishop, according to contemporary accounts, was "the delight of all ingenious men, and the most celebrated wit in the university." In his youth he had been the convivial friend of Ben Jonson, and boasted of having revelled and versified in all the taverns of London. It is doubtful if he ever emerged from his youth, for after becoming a doctor of divinity he donned a leather jerkin and sang ballads at Abingdon Cross. Nor did the cares of a diocese depress him, Aubrey says that after service in the Cathedral "he would sometimes take the key of his wine cellar, and he and his chaplain, Washington, would go and look themselves in and be merry. Then first he layes down his episcopal hat, There layes the doctor. Then he puts off the gowne - There lyes the bishop. Then 'twas Here's to thee Corbett and Here's to thee Washington." I wonder if the puritanical Pagitt knew of all this as he sat in the bishop's house adjoining the Folly bridge? Probably not, for they had quieter things in common. The bishop was a poet-the best, as some one has said, of all the bishops of England -and Justinian too was possessed of a juvenile muse. one page of this book he has copied out some exquisitely tender lines composed by Corbett for the third birthday of Vincent, his only son : On "What I shall leave thee none can tell, Yet all shall say I wish thee well. I wish thee, Vin, before all wealth Boath bodily and goastly health; Not too much meanes nor witt come to thee, Too much of either may undo thee. But truly to instruct and knowe: I wish thee learninge not for showe I wish thee friends and one at Court |