he acted for the king in treating with the other European powers, it was to exalt his sovereign and himself. His home government was for his own country and for himself. His ecclesiastical reforming and defending was for his church and for himself. Wolsey was not a patriot. Wolsey was no citizen of the world. He had no notion of a kingdom of truth and love. No social affection animated him—no religious idea led him—no godly emotion impelled him.

66

Many, of what men generally call great crimes, are not usually ascribed to Wolsey. Buckingham's death is a blot. His broken celibacy is a blot. His rapacity of wealth and his cunning are blots. But the glaring stain on Wolsey's character is unlawful ambition; because most of his other faults may be traced to this rampant passion. He was too pliant to the mighty that he might rise by the mighty. He was sometimes insolent to his inferiors that they might feel they were inferiors. He grew careless of the multitude when he saw the masses could neither elevate nor sustain him. He assumed undue importance that his name might be honored, and that his will might be law. He was rapacious of wealth that no dwelling might be like his dwelling, and no home like his home. Wolsey's goal was Wolsey-Wolsey first-Wolsey last—Wolsey everything. And in running to this goal he quitted the posts of duty. The eternal law of love-love to one's neighbour— love to God-Wolsey every day, and in every act transgressed. And Wolsey paid the penalty. Joined to his idol self, God and men left him to suffer alone.

"Often before his fall he was made to say

Oh how wretched

Is that poor man, that hangs on princes' favors!

Would to God, in hours of such wretchedness, and especially in his last hour of woe, some one had been near him to direct him to Jesus Christ! In vain had been his chapel, its officers and furniture his dean and sub-dean—his repeater of the quire— his gospeller and pisteller-his singing priests and singing children-his rich and numerous copes-his golden candlesticks -his sumptuous crosses his daily mass:-useless in his last hour were abbey and monks, confessor and abbot, extreme unction and mass. Wolsey needed Christ.-Martin's Lecture on Cardinal Wolsey.

POETRY.

THE INVITATION TO THE FIELDS.

WHY should we ever toil

In silence or turmoil,

To gather gold like Californian slaves?
Why should we still debate,

In melancholy state,

Knowledge abstruse to lead us to our graves?
Or dream majestic dreams,

Filling the earth with schemes

Of human happiness from our Utopian shelves,
World-wide, alas! but far too narrow for ourselves?

Let us be young again,
And o'er the grassy plain

Gambol like children, and give Care the slip,

Forgetful of distress

And mental stateliness,
Let us be young in spirit, as we trip

Beside the running brooks,

Heedless of men and books,

And heart-sore Wisdom's frowns or magisterial sighs, Looking contemptuous down upon our revelries.

Have we out-grown the joys
That fill'd our hearts, as boys?

And does the music of the thrushes bring

No more the young delight

That in our childhood bright

Made beautiful the mornings of the spring?

Ripple the streams no more,

As in the days of yore?

Or are our ears so dull'd by commerce with our kind,

That we can hear no hymns between the trees and wind?

In our too plodding homes
We ponder over tomes,

Ledger and day-book, till we quite forget
That there are fields and bowers,

And river-banks and flowers,

And that we owe our languid limbs a debt:

A debt most sweet to pay

A needful holiday

A brain-refreshing truce, 'mid intellectual strife,
That, fought too keenly out, impairs the mortal life.

We do our nature wrong

Neglecting over long

The bodily joys that help to make us wise;
The ramble up the slope

Of the high mountain cope

The long day's walk, the vigorous exercise,

The fresh, luxurious bath,

Far from the trodden path,

Or mid the ocean waves dashing with harmless roar, Lifting us off our feet upon the sandy shore.

Kind heaven! there is no end
Of pleasures as we wend

Our pilgrimage on life's undevious way

If we but know the laws

Of the Eternal Cause,

And for His glory and our good obey.

But intellectual pride

Sets half these joys aside,

And our perennial care absorbs the soul so much,
That life burns cold and dim under its deadening touch.

What pleasures he hath miss'd

Who struggles to exist

Amid factitious wants and luxuries vain;

Spending his youth and prime,

As if our comrade Time,

Were but a servitor in Mammon's train.

And, waking up at last,

When threescore years have pass'd,

With stiff and palsied joints, and just enough of breath and pay his court to Death.

To own how wrong

he was,

Welcome, ye plump green meads,

Ye streams, and sighing reeds! Welcome, ye corn-fields, waving like a sea! Welcome the leafy bowers,

And children gathering flowers,

And farewell, for awhile, sage drudgery.
What, though we're growing old,

Our blood is not yet cold:

Come with me to the fields,

thou man of many ills,

And give thy limbs a chance among the daffodils!

Come with me to the woods,

And let their solitudes

Re-echo to our voices as we go.
Upon thy weary brain

Let childhood come again,

Spite of thy wealth, thy learning, or thy woe;
Stretch forth thy limbs, and leap—

Thy life has been asleep;

And though the wrinkles deep may furrow thy pale brow, Show me, if thou art wise, how like a child art thou!

CHARLES MACKAY.

ENIGMA.

(Answers in verse are requested.)

WHO seeks my last with all my first, is wise-
Gains the great victory and secures the prize;
But, joining both, he waxes poor indeed,
And deems that wealth which proves his very
Then whilst as one, I bring both heart and soul
To crave the other, may I shun the whole.

need.