this being delayed, he resigned in February. In delivering the commission to Lord Chief Justice Rainsford, who succeeded him, the Lord Chancellor (Finch, Earl of Nottingham) among other things observed:-" Onerosum est succedere bono principi,

Thirdly, That they do necessarily involve the party, whose office it is, in great dangers, difficulties, and calumnies.

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Fourthly, That they only serve for the meridian of this life, which is short and uncertain.

Fifthly, That though it be my duty faithfully to serve in them, while I am called to them, and till I am duly called from them, yet they are great consumers of that little time we have here; which, as it seems to me, might be better spent in a pious contemplative life, and a due provision for eternity. I do not know a better temporal employment than Martha had, in testifying her love and duty to our Saviour by making provision for him; yet our Lord tells her, that "though she was troubled about many things, there was only one thing necessary, and Mary had chosen the better part.”›

Hence the reader will see, that he continued in his station upon no other consideration, than that being set in it by the Providence of God, he judged he could not abandon it without preferring his own private inclination to the choice God had made for him; but now, that same Providence having by his distemper disengaged him from the obligation of holding a place, which he was no longer able to discharge, he resolved to resign it.

* This successor, falling into some melancholy," sent to Baxter for some advice, because Judge Hale desired him so to do!" What a compliment! and how well deserved! Laudari à laudato could never, perhaps, be more appropriately applied. Baxter, on the solicitation of their common friend Mr. Edward Stephens, the publisher of Hale's Contemplations,' drew up, the narrative of his short familiarity with him' (during the last nine years of the Judge's life) and closes his preface as follows: 66 Being half-dead already in those dearest friends who were half myself, I am much the more willing to leave this mole-hill and prison of earth, to be with that wise and blessed society, who being united to their Head in glory do not envy, hate, or persecute each other, nor forsake God, nor shall ever be forsaken by him,"

was the saying of him in the panegyric: and you will find it so too, that are to succeed such a Chief Justice, of so indefatigable an industry, so invincible a patience, so exemplary an integrity, and so magnanimous a contempt of worldly things, without which no man can be truly great; and to all this, a man that was so absolute a master of the science of the law, and even of the most abstruse and hidden parts of it, that one may truly say of his knowledge in the law, what St. Austin said of St. Hierome's knowledge in divinity, Quod Hieronymus nescivit, nullus mortalium unquam scivit. And therefore the King would not suffer himself to part with so great a man, till he had placed upon him all the marks of bounty and esteem, which his retired and weak condition was capable of."

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To this high character, in which the expressions not only well become the eloquence of him who pronounced them, but also exactly suit the subject to whom they were applied without the abatements frequently to be made for rhetorical exaggeration, should be added that part of the Lord Chief Justice's answer, in which he speaks of his predecessor: " a person, in whom his eminent, virtuous, and deep learning have long managed a contest for the superiority, which is not decided to this day; nor will it ever be determined, I suppose, which shall get the upper hand: a person, that has sat in this court these many years, of whose actions there I have been an eye and ear witness, that by the greatness of his learning always charmed his auditors to reverence and attention: a person, of whom I think I may boldly say, that as former times cannot show any superior to him, so I am confident succeeding and

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future times will never show any equal.' These considerations, heightened by what I have heard from your Lordship concerning him, made me anxious and doubtful, and put me to a stand, how I should succeed so able, so good, and so great a man. It doth very much trouble me, that I, who in compa rison of him am but like a candle lighted in the sun shine, or like a glow-worm at mid-day, should succeed so great a person, that is and will be so eminently famous to all posterity: and I must ever wear this motto in my breast to comfort me, and in my actions to excuse me :

"Sequitur, quamvis non passibus æquis."

As soon as he was discharged from his high office, he returned home with as much cheerfulness as his want of health would admit; being now eased of a burthen under which he had been of late groaning, and thus made more capable of enjoying that which he had so ardently coveted, according to his own elegant paraphrase upon those lines in Seneca's Thyestes,' II. 392-404.

Stet quicunque volet potens
Aula culmine lubrico:
Me dulcis saturet quies.
Obscuro positus loco,
Leni perfruar otio:

Nullis nota Quiritibus,
Etas per tacitum fluat.
Sic, cùm transierint mei
Nullo cum strepitu dies,
Plebeius moriar senex.
Illi mors gravis incubat,
Qui notus nimis omnibus,
Ignotus moritur sibi.

Let him that will, ascend the tottering seat
Of courtly grandeur, and become as great
As are his mounting wishes. As for me,
Let sweet repose and rest my portion be.
Give me some mean obscure recess: a sphere
Out of the road of business, or the fear
Of falling lower; where I sweetly may
Myself and dear retirement still enjoy.
Let not my life, or name, be known unto
The (high) grandees of time; tost to and fro
By censures, or applause: but let my age
Slide gently by, not overthwart the stage
Of public action; unheard, unseen
And unconcern'd, as if I ne'er had been.
And thus, while I shall pass my silent days
In shady privacy, free from the noise
And bustles of the mad world, then shall I
A good old innocent plebeian die.
Death is a mere surprise, a very snare,
To him that makes it his life's greatest care
To be a public pageant known to all,

But unacquainted with himself doth fall.'

He could not lie down in bed above a year before his death, on account of the asthma; but sat, rather than lay, in it.

In his sickness he was attended by a pious and worthy divine, Mr. Evan Griffith, minister of the parish; and it was observed, that in all the extremities of his pain, whenever he prayed by him, he forbore all complaints or groans, and with his hands and eyes lifted up was fixed in his devotions. Not long before his death this gentleman told him, There was to be a sacrament the following Sunday at church, but as he believed he was not able to attend and partake with the rest, he would give it to him in his own house.' Upon which, he answered, No; his Heavenly Father had prepared a feast for him, and he would go

to his Father's House to partake of it.' Accordingly, he made himself be carried thither in his chair, and received the sacrament on his knees with a degree of devotion which it may be supposed was the greater, because he apprehended it was to be his last, and so took it as his viaticum, or provision for his journey. He died December 25, 1676,* and was interred in the church-yard of Alderly.†

Sir Matthew Hale was twice married. By his first lady, Anne daughter of Sir Henry Moore of Berkshire, he had ten children, of whom six lived to be married, but only two (his eldest daughter, and his youngest son) survived him. In these children, he is said to have been unhappy; a misfortune, not unusual to persons of strict manners. In his private character he was a kind encourager of studious youth, and freely assisted them with his advice. He loved to enjoy the society of a few friends, but is represented as having been very accessible to flattery. His professional fame, as an author, chiefly rests upon his Historia Placitorum Corona, or History of the Pleas of the Crown,' published in 1736 from his original manuscript, in two volumes folio, by Sollom Emlyn, Esq. of Lincoln's Inn. It has since been

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* On Christmas Day; a day, for which he had long had a particular devotion. See the Extracts.

+ He did not approve of the practice of burying in churches. "Churches," he said, "were for the living, and church-yards for the dead."

His second wife was Anne, daughter of Mr. Joseph Bishop, of humbler lineage but prudent and loving,' by whom he had no issue.

§ The male line of his family became extinct in 1784, by the death of his great grandson, Matthew Hale, Esq. Barrister at Law.