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JAMES HOWELL.

eries beyond riches as on this side them." And yet God deliver us from pinching poverty, and grant that, having a competency, we may be content and thankful! Let us not repine, or so much as think the gifts of God unequally dealt, if we see another abound with riches, when, as God knows, the cares that are the keys that keep those riches hang often so heavily at the rich man's girdle, that they clog him with weary days and restless nights, even when others sleep quietly. We see but the outside of the rich man's happiness; few consider him to be like the silkworm, that, when she seems to play, is at the very same time spinning her own bowels, and consuming herself: and this many rich men do, loading themselves with corroding cares to keep what they have, probably, unconscionably got. Let us, therefore, be thankful for health and competence, and, above all, for a quiet conscience. Let me tell you, scholar. that Diogenes walked on a day, with his friend, to see a country fair, where he saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and nut-crackers, and fiddles, and hobby-horses, and many other gimcracks; and having observed them, and all the other finnimbruns that make a complete country fair, he said to his friend, "Lord, how many things are there in this world of which Diogenes hath no need!" And truly it is so, or might be so, with very many who vex and toil themselves to get what they have no need of. Can any man charge God that he hath not given him enough to make his life happy? No, doubtless; for nature is content with a little. And yet you shall hardly meet with a man that complains not of some want, though he indeed wants nothing but his will; it may be, nothing but his will of his poor neighbour, for not worshipping or not flattering him: and thus, when we might be happy and quiet, we create trouble to ourselves. I have heard of a man that was angry with himself because he was no taller; and of a woman that broke her looking-glass because it did not show her face to be as young and handsome as her next neighbour's was. And I knew another to whom God had given health and plenty, but a wife that nature had made peevish, and her husband's riches had made purse-proud; and must, because she was rich, and for no other virtue, sit in the highest pew in the church; which being denied her, she engaged her husband into a contention for it, and at last into a lawsuit with a dogged neighbour, who was as rich as he, and had a wife as peevish and purse-proud as the other; and this lawsuit begot higher oppositions and actionable words, and more vexations and lawsuits; for you must remember that both

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were rich, and must therefore have their wills. Well, this wilful, purse-proud lawsuit lasted during the life of the first husband, after which his wife vexed and chid, and chid and vexed, till she also chid and vexed herself into her grave; and so the wealth of these poor rich people was cursed into a punishment, because they wanted meek and thankful hearts, for those only can make us happy. I knew a man that had health and riches, and several houses, all beautiful and ready-furnished, and would often trouble himself and family to be removing from one house to another; and being asked by a friend why he removed so often from one house to another, replied, "It was to find content in some one of them." But his friend, knowing his temper, told him, "If he would find content in any of his houses, he must leave himself behind him; for content will never dwell but in a meek and quiet spirit." And this may appear, if we read and consider what our Saviour says in St. Matthew's gospel, for he there says," Blessed be the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed be the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed be the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And blessed be the meek, for they shall possess the earth." Not that the meek shall not also obtain mercy, and see God, and be comforted, and at last come to the kingdom of heaven; but, in the mean time, he, and he only, possesses the earth, as he goes toward that kingdom of heaven, by being humble and cheerful, and content with what his good God has allotted him. He has no turbulent, repining, vexatious thoughts that he deserves better; nor is vexed when he sees others possessed of more honour or more riches than his wise God has allotted for his share; but he possesses what he has with a meek and contented quietness; such a quietness as makes his very dreams pleasing, both to God and himself.

The Complete Angier.

JAMES HOWELL,

born 1594, from 1619 travelled in Holland, Flanders, Spain, France, and Italy, as steward to a glassware manufactory, and from the Restoration until his death, in 1666, was Historiographer-Royal of England. Of his nearly fifty works and translations, the best known is his Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ; or, Familiar Letters, Domestic and Foreign, Lond., 1645, 4to.

"I believe the second published correspondence of this kind, and, in our own language at least, of any importance after [Joseph] Hall, will be found

to be Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, or the letters of James Howell, a great traveller, an intimate friend of Johnson, and the first who bore the office of the royal-historiographer, which discover a variety of literature, and abound with much entertaining and useful information."-WARTON: Hist. of Eng. Poet., ed. 1840, iii. 440, 441.

ROME IN 1621.

The following is an extract from a letter written by Howell to Sir William St. John, Knight, dated Rome, September 13, 1621: SIR,-Having seen Antenor's tomb in Padua, and the amphitheatre of Flaminius in Verona, with other brave towns in Lombardy, I am now come to Rome, and Rome, they say, is every man's country; she is called Communis Patris, for every one that is within the compass of the Latin church finds himself here, as it were, at home and in his mother's house, in regard of interest in religion, which is the cause that for one native there be five strangers that sojourn in this city; and without any distinction or mark of strangeness, they come to preferments and offices, both in church and state, according to merit, which is more valued and sought after here than anywhere.

But whereas I expected to have found Rome elevated upon seven hills, I met her rather spreading upon a flat, having humbled herself since she was made a Christian, and descended from those hills to Campus Martius; with Trasieren, and the suburbs of Saint Peter, she hath yet in compass about fourteen miles, which is far short of that vast circuit she had in Claudius his time: for Vopiscus writes she was then of fifty miles in circumference, and she had five hundred thousand free citizens in a famous cense that was made, which, allowing but six to every family, in women, children, and servants, came to three millions of souls; but she is now a wilderness in comparison of that number. The pope is grown to be a great temporal prince of late years, for the state of the church extends above three hundred miles in length and two hundred miles in breadth; it contains Ferrara, Bologna, Romagnia, the Marquisate of Ancona, Umbria, Sabina, Perugia, with a part of Tuscany, the patrimony, Rome herself, and Latium. In these there are above fifty bishopricks; the pope hath also the duchy of Spoleto, and the exarchate of Ravenna; he hath the town of Benevento in the kingdom of Naples, and the country of Venissa, called Avignon, in France. He hath title also good enough to Naples itself; but rather than offend his champion, the king of Spain, he is contented with a white mule, and purse of pistoles about the neck, which he receives every year for a heriot, or homage,

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or what you will call it: he pretends also to be lord paramount of Sicily, Urbin, Parma, and Masseran; of Norway. Ireland, and England, since King John did prostrate our crown at Pandelfo his legate's feet. . The air of Rome is not so wholesome as of old; and amongst other reasons, one is because of the burning of stubble to fatten their fields. For her antiquities, it would take up a whole volume to write them; those which I hold the chiefest are Vespasian's amphitheatre, where fourscore thousand people might sit; the stoves of Anthony; divers rare statues at Belvidere and St. Peter's, specially that of Laocoon; the obelisk; for the genius of the Roman hath always been much taken with imagery, limning, and sculptures, insomuch that, as in former times, so now I believe, the statues and pictures in Rome exceed the number of living people. Since the dismembering of the empire, Rome hath run through many vicissitudes and turns of fortune; and had it not been for the residence of the pope, I believe she had become a heap of stones, a mount of rubbish, by this time: and however that she bears up indifferent well, yet one may say,—

Qui miseranda videt veteris vestigia Romse,
Ille potest merito dicere, Roma fuit.
"They who the ruins of first Rome behold,
May say, Rome is not now, but was of old."

Present Rome may be said to be but a monument of Rome past, when she was in that flourish that St. Austin desired to see her in. She who tamed the world tamed herself at last, and falling under her own weight, fell to be a prey to time; yet there is a providence seems to have a care of her still; for though her air be not so good, nor her circumjacent soil so kindly as it was, yet she hath wherewith to keep life and soul together still, by her ecclesiastical courts, which is the sole cause of her peopling now; so that it may be said, when the pope came to be her head, she was reduced to her first principles; for as a shepherd was founder, so a shepherd is still governor and preserver.

Epistola Ho-Eliana.

PETER HEYLIN, D.D., born 1600, died 1662, was the author of at least thirty-seven works,-theological, political, educational, historical, &c. From the Voyage of France; or, a compleat Journey through France (in 1625), Lond., 1673, 8vo, also 1679, we give some quotations.

"This volume, however, we assure our readers, is of a most amusing description, and indicative

PETER HEYLIN.

of great reading and acquirements for the age at which it was written. It is full of the effervescence of young life and animal spirits. The air of France seems to have actually converted the author into a Frenchman, whose vivacity, point, and badinage he seems to have imbibed. The very moment he touched the Gallic soil he cast away his canonicals, and became the most facetious and joyous of good fellows, the most lively of tourists."(London) Retrospec. Rev., iii. 22-31,

1821.

CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH.

The present French is nothing but an old Gaul moulded into a new name; as rash he is, as headstrong, and as hair-brained. A nation whom you shall win with a feather, and lose with a straw; upon the first sight of him you shall have him as familiar as your sleep, or the necessity of breathing. In one hour's conference you may endear him to you, in the second unbutton him, the third pumps him dry of all his secrets, and he gives them you as faithfully as if you were his ghostly father, and bound to conceal them sub sigillo confessiones'; when you have learned this you may lie him aside, for he is no longer serviceable. If you have any humour in holding him in a further acquaintance (a favour which he confesseth, and I believe him, he is unworthy of), himself will make the first separation: he hath said over his lesson now unto you, and now must find out somebody else to whom to repeat. Fare him well he is a garment whoin I would be loath to wear above two days together, for in that time he will be threadbare.

"Familiare est hominis omnia sibi remittere," saith Velleius of all; it holdeth most properly in this people. He is very kindhearted to himself, and thinketh himself as free from wants as he is full; so much he hath in him the nature of a Chinese, that he thinketh all men blind but himself. In this private self-conceitedness he hateth the Spaniard, loveth not the English, and contemneth the German; himself is the only courtier and complete gentleman, but it is his own glass which he seeth in. But of this conceit of his own excellency and partly out of a shallowness of brain, he is very liable to exceptions; the least distaste that can be draweth his sword, and a minute's pause sheatheth it to your hand; afterwards, if you beat him into better manners, he shall take it kindly, and cry serviteur. In this one thing they are wonderfully like the devil; meekness or submission makes them insolent, a little resistance putteth them to their heels, or makes them your spaniels. In a word (for I have held him too long), he is a walking vanity in a new fashion.

I will give you now a taste of his table, which you shall find in a measure furnished (I speak not of the present), but not with so

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full a manner as with us. Their beef they cut out into such chops that that which goeth there for a laudable dish, would be thought here a university commons, new served from the hatch. A loin of mutton serves amongst them for three roastings, besides the hazard of making pottage with the rump. Fowl, also, they have in good plenty, especially such as the king found in Scotland; to say truth, that which they have is sufficient for nature and a friend, were it not for the mistress or the kitchen witch. I have heard much fame of the French cooks, but their skill lieth not in the neat handling of beef and mutton. They have (as generally have all this nation) good fancies, and are special fellows for the making of puff-pastes, and the ordering of banquets. Their trade is not to feed the belly, but the palate. It is now time you were set down, where the first thing you must do is to say your grace; private graces are as ordinary there as private masses, and from thence I think they learned them. That done, fall to where you like best; they observe no method in their eating, and if you look for a carver, you may rise fasting. When you are risen, if you can digest the sluttishness of the cookery (which is most abominable at first sight), I dare trust you in a garrison. Follow him to church, and there he will show himself most irreligious and irreverent. I speak not of all, but the general. At a mass, in Cordeliers' church, in Paris, I saw two French papists, even when the most sacred mystery of their faith was celebrating, break out into such a blasphemous and atheistical laughter that even an Ethnic would have hated it; it was well they were Catholics, otherwise some French hothead or other would have sent them laughing to Pluto.

The French language is, indeed, very sweet and delectable; it is cleared of all harshness by the cutting and leaving out the consonants, which maketh it fall off the tongue very volubly; yet, in my opinion, it is rather elegant than copious; and, therefore, is much troubled for want of words to find out paraphrases. It expresseth very much of itself in the action; the head, body, and shoulders concur all in the pronouncing of it; and he that hopeth to speak it with a good grace must have something in him of the mimic. It is enriched with a full number of significant proverbs, which is a great help to the French humour in scoffing; and very full of courtship, which maketh all the people complimental. The poorest cobbler in the village hath his court cringes, and his eau benite de cour; his court holy-water as perfectly as the prince of Condé.... At my being there, the sport was dancing, an exercise much

used by the French, who do naturally affect the prejudice of my affection, or an invert it. And it seems this natural inclination is ing and partial conceit of his mercies. I so strong and deep-rooted, that neither age know not; but those which others term nor the absence of a smiling fortune can crosses, afflictions, judgments, misfortunes, prevail against it. For on this dancing to me who inquire farther into them than green there assembleth not only youth and their visible effects, they both appear, and gentry, but also age and beggary; old wives in event have ever proved, the secret and which could not set foot to ground without dissembled favours of his affection. It is a a crutch in the streets had here taught their singular piece of wisdom to apprehend truly. feet to amble; you would have thought by and without passion, the works of God, and the cleanly conveyance and carriage of their so well to distinguish his justice from his bodies that they had been troubled with the mercy as not to miscall those noble attrisciatica, and yet so eager in the sport as if butes: yet it is likewise an honest piece of their dancing days should never be done. logic, so to dispute and argue the proceedSome there was so ragged that a swift gal-ings of God, as to distinguish even his judg

liard would almost have shaken them into nakedness, and they, also, most violent to have their carcasses directed in a measure. To have attempted the staying of them at home, or the persuading of them to work when they heard the fiddle, had been a task too unwieldy for Hercules. In this mixture of age and condition did we observe them at their pastimes; the rags being so interwoven with the silks, and wrinkled brows being so interchangeably mingled with fresh beauties, that you would have thought it to have been a mummery of fortunes; as for those of both sexes which were altogether past action, they had caused themselves to be carried thither in their chairs, and trod the measures with their eyes.

The Voyage of France.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE, M.D., born 1605, died 1682, was the author of four works of great merit: Religio Medici, Lond., 1642, 12mo; Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Enquiries into very many received Tenets, and commonly presumed Truths, or Enquiries into vulgar and common Errors, Lond., 1646, sm. fol.; Hydriotaphia: Urn Buriall, etc., Lond., 1658, 8vo; and Christian Morals, Camb., 1716, 8vo.

"It is not on the praises of others, but on his own writings, that he is to depend for the esteem of

posterity; of which he will not easily be deprived while learning shall have any reverence among men; for there is no science in which he does not discover some skill; and scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success."-DR. S. JOHNSON: Life of Sir T. Browne.

THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD.

And to be true, and speak my soul, when I survey the occurrences of my life, and call into account the finger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies, either in general to mankind, or in particular to myself: and whether out of

ments into mercies.

For God is merciful unto all, because better to the worst than the best deserve; and to say he punisheth none in this world, though it be a paradox, is no absurdity. To one that hath committed murder, if the judge should only ordain a fine, it were a madness to call this a punishment, and to repine at the sentence, rather than admire the clemency of the judge: thus our offences being mortal, and deserving not only death, but damnation, if the goodness of God be content to traverse and pass them over with a loss, misfortune, or disease, what phrenzy were it to term this a punishment, rather than an extremity of mercy, and to groan under the rod of his judgments, rather than admire the sceptre of his mercies!

There

fore to adore, honour, and admire him is a
debt of gratitude due from the obligation
of our nature, states, and conditions; and
with these thoughts, he that knows them
best will not deny that I adore him. That
I obtain heaven, and the bliss thereof, is ac-
cidental, and not the intended work of my
devotion; it being a felicity I can neither
think to deserve, nor scarce in modesty to
expect. For these two ends of us all, either
as rewards or punishments, are mercifully
ordained and disproportionably disposed
unto our actions; the one being so far be
low our demerits.
yond our deserts, the other so infinitely be-

There is no salvation to those that believe

It

not in Christ, that is, say some, since his
nativity, and, as divinity affirmeth, before
also; which makes me much apprehend the
end of those honest worthies and philoso-
phers which died before his incarnation.
is hard to place those souls in hell whose
worthy lives do teach us virtue on earth;
methinks amongst those many subdivisions
of hell there might have been one limbo left
for these.

What a strange vision will it be to see their poetical fictions converted into verities, and their imagined and fancied furies into real devils! How strange to them will

SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

sound the history of Adam, when they shall suffer for him they never heard of! when they that derive their genealogy from the gods, shall know they are the unhappy issue of sinful man! Religio Medici.

THE CONDUCT OF LIFE.

Since thou hast an alarum in thy breast which tells thee thou hast a living spirit in thee above two thousand times in an hour, dull not away thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness of doing nothing. To strenuous minds there is an inquietude in over-quietness, and no laboriousness in la bour; and to tread a mile after the slow pace of a snail, or the heavy measures of the lazy of Brazilia, were a most tiring penance, and worse than a race of some furlongs at the Olympics. The rapid courses of the heavenly bodies are rather imitable by our thoughts than our corporeal motions: yet the solemn motions of our lives amount unto a greater measure than is commonly apprehended. Some few men have surrounded the globe of the earth; yet many in the set locomotions and movements of their days have measured the circuit of it, and twenty thousand miles have been exceeded by them. Move circumspectly, not meticulously, and rather carefully solicitous than anxiously solicitudinous. Think not there is a lion in the way, nor walk with leaden sandals in the paths of goodness; but in all virtuous motions let prudence determine thy measures. Strive not to run, like Hercules, a furlong in a breath: festination may prove precipitation deliberating delay may be wise cunctation, and slowness no slothfulness.

Since virtuous actions have their own trumpets, and, without any noise from thyself, will have their resound abroad, busy not thy best member in the encomium of thy self. Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtues of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb. Fall not, however, into the common prevaricating way of selfcommendation and boasting, by denoting the imperfections of others. He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself. He who whispers their infirmities proclaims his own exemption from them; and consequently says, I am not as this publican, or hic niger, whom I talk of. Open ostentation and loud vainglory is more tolerable than this obliquity, as but containing some froth, no ink; as but consisting of a personal piece of folly, nor complicated with uncharitableness. Superfluously we seek a precarious applause abroad; every good man hath his plaudite within himself; and though his tongue be silent, is not with

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out loud cymbals in his breast. Conscience will become his panegyrist, and never forget to crown and extol him unto himself.

Bless not thyself only that thou wert born in Athens, but, among thy multiplied acknowledgments, lift up one hand unto heaven that thou wert born of honest parents; that modesty, humility, patience, and veracity lay in the same egg, and came into the world with thee. From such foundations thou mayst be happy in a virtuous precocity, and make an early and long walk in goodness; so mayst thou more naturally feel the contrariety of vice unto nature, and resist some by the antidote of thy temper. Christian Morals.

OBLIVION.

Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings. We slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which, notwithstanding, is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls; a good way to continue their memories, while, having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original again. Egyp tian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistencies to attend the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.

In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from oblivion, in preservations below the moon. Men have been deceived even in their flatteries above the

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