man has broken his word with we, and refuses to perform what he promised; well, he will have little cause to glory in his wickedness, for he will not continue long; the king will return, though I shall not live to see it, you may."

Not long after this the good prelate removed from London to Ryegate, where he immediately set about finishing his Chronologia Sacra. He was now very aged, and though both in body and mind he was healthy and vigorous for a man of his years, yet his eye sight was extremely decayed by his constant studying, so that he could scarcely see to write but at a window, and that in the sunshine, which he constantly followed in clear days from one window to another.

He had now frequent thoughts of his dissolution; and as he was wont to note every year in his almanack, over against the day of his birth, the year of his age, "so I find," says his biographer, this year, 1655, this note written in his own hand : Now aged 75 years, my days are full;' and presently after in capital letters, RESIGNATION."

He died at Ryegate, March 21, 1656, and his friends intended to have buried him there in the Countess of Peterborough's vault, but Cromwell, who knew in what high estimation the archbishop was held, and willing to obtain a little popularity insisted upon burying him pompously at his own expense. The funeral was indeed splendidly solemn, but, after all, the crafty usurper

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left the archbishop's relations to bear the charge, though they could scarcely afford it.

This great man was of a very hale constitution, which he preserved by temperance, He was contented with a little sleep, for though he went to bed pretty late, yet in the summer he would rise by five, and in winter by six o'clock in the morning; his appetite was always suited to his diet; he fed heartily on plain, wholesome meat without sauce, and was better pleased with a few dishes than a variety. He did not like tedious meals, and it was a weariness to him to sit long at table. In his disposition he was courteous and affable, and extremely obliging to all whom he conversed with; and though he could be angry and rebuke sharply when religion or virtue were concerned, yet he was not easily provoked to passion, and rarely for small matters, such as the neglect of servants, or worldly disappointments. The powers of his mind were very strong and the extent of his learning prodigious; so that his advice and correspondence were courted by men of erudition in all parts of the world. His humility and his piety were equally conspicuous with his talents; yet his religion was not of that gloomy and forbidding cast which was too prevalent in the age in which he lived. He loved pleasant conversation and innocent mirth, often telling stories, or relating the wise or witty sayings of other men, or such things as had occurred to his own observation; so that his company was always agreeable,

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agreeable, and for the most part instructive but still he would conform himself to the genius, and improvements of those he conversed with; for as with scholars he would discourse of subjects of learning, so could he condescend to those of meaner capacities. But he could not endure any conversation which was trifling, or in which the characters of absent persons were treated with ridicule and severity.

"I remember once," says his biographer, "that when there happened some discourse at table from persons of quality that did not please him; he said nothing then, seeming not to hear them; but after dinner when I waited on him in his chamber, he looked very melancholy, and on my asking the cause, "It is a sad thing," says he, "to be forced to put one's foot under another's table, and not only to have all sorts of company put upon him, but also to be obliged to hear their follies, and neither to be able to quit their com pany, nor to reprove their intemperate speeches."

He was famous as a preacher, and he usually delivered his sermons extempore, a practice common in his time, but whether the most adviseable is a question on which there will be different opinions, and on each side cogent arguments. A man of such a powerful and well-stored mind as Usher's could not fail to be heard with attention and profit; but when men of superficial knowledge and of ardent imaginations adopt this practice, they lose the advantage to be derived from

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preparatory study, and can contribute but little to the edification of those who hear them. They may declaim with confidence and with fluency, and thereby attract a numerous audience, but the ends of religious instruction will not be answered where the teacher trusts to his present elocution, and and the hearers attend only to be pleased.

Archbishop Usher's method of preaching was excellent and had a great effect; but the same method may be made use of to good purpose by those who take the laudable pains of composing their sermons. In the words of his biographer, "as he was an excellent textuary, so it was his custom to run through all the parallel places, that concerned the subject on which he treated; and paraphrase and illustrate them as they referred to cach other, and their particular contexts; he himself, as he past on, turning his bible from place to place, and giving his auditory time to do the like whereby, as he rendered his preaching extremely easy to himself, so it became no less beneficial to his auditors, acquainting them with the Holy Scriptures and enabling them to recur to the proofs he cited, by which the memory was very much helped to recover the series of what was discoursed upon from them; he never cared to tire his auditory with the length of kis sermon, knowing well, that as the satisfaction in hearing decreases, so does the attention also, and people instead of minding what is said, only listen when there is likely to be an end. And to let you see,"

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says the same writer, "now strictly he endeavoured to keep this rule, I shall give you this one instance; about a year before he died when he had left off preaching constantly, he was importuned by the Countess of Peterborough, and some other persons of quality, to give them a sermon at St. Martin's church; the lord primate complied with their desires, and preached a sermon highly satisfactory to his auditory; but after a pretty while the bishop happening to look on the hour glass, which stood from the light, and through the weakness and deficiency of his sight, mistaking it to be out, when indeed it was not, he concluded, telling them, since the time was past he would leave the rest he had to say on that subject to another opportunity, (if God should please to grant it him) of speaking again to them in that place; but the congregation finding out my lord's mistake, and that there was some of the hour yet to come, and not knowing whether they might ever have the like happiness of hearing him again, made signs to the reader, to let him know that the glass being not run out, they earnestly desired he would make an end of all he intended to have spoken; which the bishop received very kindly, and reassuming his discourse where he had broken off, concluded with an exhortation full of heavenly matter for almost half an hour; the whole auditory being so much moved therewith that none went out of the church until he had finished his sermon."

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