"You may wonder, Sir, what I mean by all this preface: it is to let you know, that though I have missed, like a chemist, my great end, yet I account my affections and endeavours well rewarded by something that I have met with by the bye; which is, that they have procured to me some part of your kindness and esteem; and thereby the honour of having my name so advantageously recommended to posterity, by the epistle you are pleased to prefix to the most useful book that has been written in that kind, and which is to last as long as months and years."

It is always pleasing to discover these graceful amenities between distinguished writers, and when the love of a garden is the taste that binds them together it sweetens and adorns their friendship.

CHAPTER XVIII

CLARENDON

THE 1839 edition of Clarendon fills between 900 and 1000 pages in double column of small print.

The student therefore must be possessed of a stout heart who faces the perusal of it in its entirety. But as a book of reference, containing all the royal messages and other documents set out verbatim, it is a valuable work.

Clarendon's style is correct, grave, and ponderous. But on occasion he shows a great felicity in the portrayal of the characters of those with whom he was familiar.

His description of "the incomparable Lord Falkland," who was slain in the Battle of Newbury, has always been regarded by men of letters as a very fine performance. It is too long for entire inclusion here, but portions of it will indicate its great merit :

"In this unhappy battle was slain the Lord Viscount Falkland a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war, than that single loss, it must be most infamous, and execrable to all posterity.

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Before he came to twenty years of age he was master of a noble fortune which descended to him from a grandfather. He was a great cherisher of wit, and fancy, and good parts in any man; and if he found them clouded with

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poverty or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which, in those administrations, he was such a dispenser, as, if he had been trusted with it to such uses, and if there had been the least of vice in his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal.

He was constant and pertinaceous in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied by any pains that were necessary to that end. And therefore, having once resolved not to see London, which he loved above all places, till he had perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went to his own house in the country, and pursued it with that indefatigable industry, that it will not be believed in how short a time he was master of it, and accurately read all the Greek historians.

"In this time, his house being within 10 miles of Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite and accurate men of that university, who found such an immenseness of wit, and such a solidity of judgement in him, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was not ignorant in anything, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resorted, and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university in a less volume, whither they came not so much for repose as study and to examine and refine those grosser propositions which laziness and consent made current in vulgar conversation.

He had a courage of the most clear and keen temper, and so far from fear, that he was not without appetite of danger; and therefore upon any occasion of action, he always engaged his person in those troops which he thought, by the forwardness of the commanders, to be most like to be farthest engaged; and in all such encounters he had about him a strange cheerfulness and companionableness, without at all affecting the execution that was then principally to be attended, in which he took no delight, but took pains to prevent it, where it was not by resistance necessary; insomuch that at Edge-hill, when the enemy was routed, he was like to have incurred great peril, by interposing to save those who had thrown away their arms, and against whom, it may be, were more fierce for

their having thrown them away; insomuch as a man might think he came into the field only out of curiosity to see the face of danger, and charity to prevent the shedding of blood.

"In the morning before the battle, as always upon action, he was very cheerful, and put himself into the first rank of the Lord Byron's regiment, who was then advancing upon the enemy who had lined the hedges on both sides with musketeers; from whence he was shot with a musket in the lower part of the belly, and in the instant falling from his horse, his body was not found till the next morning. Till then there was some hope he might have been a prisoner, though his nearest friends, who knew his temper, received small comfort from that imagination.

"Thus fell that incomparable young man, in the four and thirtieth year of his age, having so much despatched the business of life, that the oldest rarely attain to that immense knowledge, and the youngest enter not into the world with more innocence.

"Whosoever leads such a life needs not care upon how short warning it be taken from him."

Clarendon's account of Charles the II.'s wanderings after the Battle of Worcester is one of the most romantic and exciting stories ever penned. The tramp of twelve miles, first in a peasant's boots which were too painful to retain, then in stockings, and at last with his naked feet;-the boatman's wife at Lyme Regis who betrayed her husband, who was about to take the royal fugitive across to France ;the hair-breadth escapes ;-riding disguised through troops of Cromwell's soldiers ;-up till the last embarkation at Brighthelmstone, then a fishers' village, make a wonderful contrast with the subsequent triumphal entry into London amid the wild acclamations of the people and the clashing of innumerable bells.

The mutability of fortune has seldom been so extravagantly displayed as in the life of Charles II.

CHAPTER XIX

BUNYAN-ISAAC BARROW

THE opening words of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, written as they were in Bedford Prison, have travelled to the ends of the earth with the English language :

"As I walked through the wilderness of this world I lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept I dreamed a dream."

And no dream in all literature is ever likely to supplant it. The characters and scenes of it have long found their place in the hearts of men and in the language of our race, and with the Bible and Shakespere it is destined to such immortality as pertains to the permanence of the human race upon the earth.

The perfect simplicity of the method by which Bunyan seeks to admonish mankind imparts to the Pilgrim's Progress a force that no elaborate diction or eloquent exhortation could achieve.

After Christian has strayed from the way by the advice of Mr Worldly Wiseman, and is confronted and admonished by Evangelist, the narrative proceeds thus:

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Then did Christian address himself to go back; and Evangelist, after he had kissed him, gave him one smile, and bid him Godspeed. So he went on with haste, neither spake he to any man by the way; nor if any asked him, would he vouchsafe any answer. He went like one that was all the while treading on forbidden ground, and could by no means think himself safe till again he was got