abstain from renewing my old school-boy's wish, in a copy of verses to the same effect:

"Well then; I now do plainly see

This busy world and I shall ne'er agree," &c.

And I never then proposed to myself any other advantage from his majesty's happy restoration, but the getting into some moderately convenient retreat in the country; which I thought, in that case, I might easily have compassed, as well as some others, who, with no greater probabilities or pretences, have arrived to extraordinary fortunes. However, by the failing of the forces which I had expected, I did not quit the design which I had resolved on; I cast myself into it a corps perdu, without making capitulations, or taking counsel of fortune. But God laughs at a man who says to his soul, "Take thy ease:" I met presently not only with many little encumbrances and impediments, but with so much sickness (a new misfortune to me) as would have spoiled the happiness of an emperor as well as mine: yet I do neither repent, or alter my course. "Non ego perfidum dixi sacramentum;" nothing shall separate me from a mistress which I have loved so long, and have now at last married; though she neither has brought me a rich portion, nor lived yet so quietly with me as I hoped from her :

Nec vos, dulcissima mundi

Nomina, vos, Musæ, Libertas, Otia, Libri,
Hortique Silvæque, animâ remanente, relinquam.

G

Nor by me e'er shall you,

You, of all names the sweetest and the best,
You, Muses, books, and liberty, and rest;
You, gardens, fields, and woods, forsaken be
As long as life itself forsakes not me.

But this is a very pretty ejaculation! Because I have concluded all the other chapters with a copy of verses, I will maintain the humour to the last.Essays: Of Myself.

THOMAS V. BARTHOLIN.

1619-1680.

Without books, God is silent, justice dormant, natural science at a stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb, and all things involved in Cimmerian darkness.-Dissertationes de libris legendis. Copenhague,

1672.

FRANCIS CHARPENTIER.

1620-1702.

I could not help laughing at the expression, though I agree in the sentiment of Heinsius, who with a simple frankness, very natural to a Dutchman, declares, that on reading Plato, he felt so much delight and enthusiasm, that one page of that philosopher's work operated upon him like the intoxication produced by swallowing ten bumpers of wine. I have read some bacchanalian passage very similar to this in Scaliger the Elder: "Herodotus is so charming an author," says he, "that I have as much pain to quit him as I feel in leaving my bottle."-Carpenteriana.

HENRY VAUGHAN. 1621-1695.

To His Books.

Bright books! the perspectives to our weak sights,
The clear projections of discerning lights,

Burning and shining thoughts, man's posthume day,
The track of fee'd souls, and their milkie way;
The dead alive and busie, the still voice

Of enlarged spirits, kind Heaven's white decoys!
Who lives with you lives like those knowing flowers,
Which in commerce with light spend all their hours;
Which shut to clouds, and shadows nicely shun,
But with glad haste unveil to kiss the Sun.
Beneath you all is dark and a dead night,
Which whoso lives in wants both health and right.

By sucking you the wise, like bees, do grow
Healing and rich, though this they do most slow,
Because most choicely; for as great a store
Have we of Books as bees of herbs, or more;
And the great task to try, then know, the good,
To discern weeds, and judge of wholesome food,
Is a rare scant performance. For man dyes
Oft ere 'tis done, while the bee feeds and flyes.
But you were all choice flowers; all set and dressed
By old sage florists, who well knew the best;
And I amidst you all am turned to weed,
Not wanting knowledge, but for want of heed.
Then thank thyself, wild fool, that would'st not be
Content to know,—what was too much for thee.

Silex Scintillans: Sacred Poems & Private
Ejaculations. Part iii. Thalia Redi-
viva. 1650-5. New Edition, with
Memoir, by H. F. Lyte. 1847.

We see seldome Learning and Wisdom concurre, because the former is got sub umbra, but business doth winnow observations, and the better acquaintance with breathing volumes of men; it teacheth us both better to read them, and to apply what we have read.

Health ought to be nicely respected by a Student.

How can a Spirit actuate when she is caged in a lump of fainting flesh? Unseasonable times of study are very obnoxious, as after meales, when Nature is wholy retired to concoction; or at night times, when she begins to droope for want of rest. I have heard it spoken of one of the greatest Ambulatory Pieces of learning at this day, that he would redeeme (if possible) his health with the losse of halfe his Learning.

Some Studies would be hug'd as imployments, others only dandled as sports; the one ought not to trespasse on the other; for to be employed in needlesse things is halfe to be idle.—Hora Vacivæ, 1646.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE. 1628-1698. This admirable writer, in discoursing on Ancient and Modern Learning-its encouragements and hindrances-points out two great obstacles to its advancement in proportion to what might have been expected from the revival of letters, viz., the absorption of the highest intellects of the time in disputes and contests about religion, and the perpetual succession of foreign and civil wars resulting therefrom :

Since those accidents which contributed to the restoration of learning, almost extinguished in the western parts of Europe, have been observed, it will be just to mention some that may have hindered the advancement of it, in proportion to what might have been expected from the mighty growth and progress made in the first age after its recovery. One great

reason may have been, that, very soon after the entry of learning upon the scene of Christendom, another was made, by many of the new-learned men, into the inquiries and contests about matters of religion-the manners, and maxims, and institutions introduced by the clergy for seven or eight centuries past; the authority of Scripture and tradition; of popes and of councils; of the ancient fathers, and of the latter schoolmen and casuists; of ecclesiastical and civil power. The humour of travelling into all these mystical or entangled matters, mingling with the interests and passions of princes and of parties, and thereby heightened or inflamed, produced infinite disputes, raised violent heats throughout all parts of Christendom, and soon ended in many defections or reformations from the Roman church, and in several new institutions, both ecclesiastical and civil, in divers countries, which have been since rooted and established in almost all the north-west parts. The endless disputes and litigious quarrels upon all these subjects, favoured and encouraged by the interests of the several princes engaged in them, either took up wholly, or generally employed, the thoughts, the studies, the applications, the endeavours of all or most of the finest wits, the deepest scholars, and the most learned