imagination everywhere diffuses a solemn a man of dignified appearance, with a light such as that which falls through striking resemblance, as Southey has repainted windows, and which somehow har- marked, to Charles I., "always cheerful, monizes the whole quaint assemblage of but never merry," given to unseasonable images. The sacred is made more inter- blushing, little inclined to talk, but strikesting instead of being degraded by its as-ingly original when once launched in consociation with the quaint; and on the whole, after a stay in this microcosm, we feel better, calmer, more tolerant, and a good deal more amused than when we entered it.

versation; sedate in his dress, and obeying some queer medical crotchets as to its proper arrangement; always at work in the intervals of his "drudging practice;" and generally a sober and dignified physiPassing from the portrait to the orig- cian. From some letters which have been inal, we may recognize, or fancy that we preserved we catch a view of his social derecognize, the same general features. Sir meanour. He was evidently an affectionThomas assures us that his life up to the ate and liberal father, with good old period of the Religio Medici, was a "mira- orthodox views of the wide extent of the cle of thirty years, which to relate were paternal prerogative. One of his sons was not a history, but a piece of poetry, and a promising naval officer, and sends home would sound to common ears like a fable." from beyond the seas accounts of such cuJohnson, with his usual sense, observes riosities as were likely to please the insathat it is rather difficult to detect the mi- tiable curiosity of his parent. In his anraculous element in any part of the story swers, the good Sir Thomas quotes Arisopen to our observation. "Surely," he totle's definition of for.itude for the bensays, a man may visit France and Italy, efit of his gallant lieutenant, and argues reside at Montpelier and Padua, and at elaborately to dissuade him from a praclast take his degree at Leyden, without tice which he believes to prevail in "the anything miraculous." And although king's shipps, when, in desperate cases, Southey endeavours to maintain that the they blow up the same." He proves by miracle consisted in Browne's preservation most excellent reasons, and by the authorfrom infidelity, it must be admitted that ity of Plutarch, that such self-immolation to the ordinary mind that result seems ex-is an unnecessary strain of gallantry; yet plicable by natural causes. We must be somehow we feel rather glad that Sir content with Johnson's explanation, that, Thomas could not be a witness to the rein some sense, "all life is miraculous; ception of this sensible, but perhaps rather and, in short, that the strangeness con- superfluous advice, in the mess-room of sists rather in Browne's view of his own the Marie Rose. It is more pleasant to history, than in any unusual phenomena. observe the carefulness with which he has Certainly, no man seems on the whole to treasured up and repeats all the complihave slipped down the stream of life more ments to the lieutenant's valour and wissmoothly. After his travels he settled dom which have reached him from trustquietly at Norwich, and there passed worthy sources. This son appears to have forty-five years of scarcely interrupted died at a comparatively early age; but prosperity. In the Religio Medici he in- with the elder son, Edward—who, like dulges in some disparaging remarks upon his father, travelled in various parts of marriage. "The whole world," he says, Europe, and then became a distinguished "was made for man; but the twelfth part physician he maintained a long corresof man for woman. Man is the whole pondence, full of those curious details in world and the breath of God; woman the which his soul delighted. His son, for exrib and crooked part of man." He wishes, ample, writes from Prague that "in the after the fashion of Montaigne, that we mines at Brunswick is reported to be a might grow like the trees, and avoid this spirit; and another at the tin mine at foolish and trivial ceremony; and there- Stackenwald, in the shape of a monke, fore-for such inferences are perfectly which strikes the miners, playeth on the legitimate in the history of a humorist - bagpipe, and many such tricks." They he married a lady, of whom it is said that correspond, however, on more legitimate she was so perfect that "they seemed to inquiries, and especially on the points to come together by a kind of natural mag-be noticed in the son's medical lectures. netism," had ten children, and lived very Sir Thomas takes a keen interest in the happily ever afterwards. It is not difficult, fate of an unlucky "oestridge " which from the fragmentary notices that have found its way to London in 1681 and was been left to us, to put together some pic-doomed to illustrate some of the vulgar ture of his personal appearance. He was 'errors. The poor bird was induced to

swallow a piece of iron weighing two-and-| a-half ounces, which, strange to say, it could not digest. It soon afterwards died "of a soden," whether from the severity of the weather or from the peculiar nature of its diet.

The one blot on his character is that he gave evidence in the well-known trial of the witches before Sir Matthew Hale in 1664, and thereby contributed to one of the latest instances of witch-murder in England. All that can be said is that his belief was a little too sincere, and that a doctrine pardonable enough in his speculative moods, should have startled him when exemplified in actual flesh and blood. The great glory of his life was his receiving the honour of knighthood from Charles II. in 1671. Dr. Johnson is eloquent on the skill of his favourite monarch in discovering excellence, and his virtue in rewarding it, though, as a twinge of conscience compels him to add, "with such honorary distinctions at least as cost him nothing." The good doctor died in 1682, in the 77th year of his age, and met his end, as we are assured, in the spirit of his own writings. "There is," he says, "but one comfort left, that, though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death." Or, to take another passage, for his meditations were often amongst the tombs, he says, with his usual quaint and eloquent melancholy, "When I take a full view and circle of myself, without this reasonable moderator and equal piece of justice, death, I do conceive myself the miserablest person extant. Were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moment's breath from me. Could the devil work my belief to imagine I could never die, I could not outlive that very thought. I have so abject a conceit of this common way of existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this to be a man, or to have according to the dignity of humanity. In expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet, in my best meditations, do often defy death."

The man who wrote thus, and lived and died in the spirit of his words, was, by certain of our matter-of-fact friends, called an atheist. Why, it seems impossible to conjecture, unless toleration is considered to be an indication of unbelief. No man. at any rate, has breathed a more exalted religious sentiment into his writings, and it is impossible to study them without at once smiling at him and loving him.

A few remarks on his peculiar style may be added. Johnson, though generally appreciative, calls him "obscure," " rugged," and "pedantic." The last epithet is obviously more or less deserved. He has the propensity, common to the learned men of his day, to coin amazing Latinisms. Here, for example, are a few taken pretty much at random from his posthumous work, the Christian Morals: -- "assuefaction," "minorates," "exantlation," "quodlibetically," "salvifically," "longevous," "exuperances." He says elsewhere that "omneity informed nullity into an essence" at the creation; and in discussing the interesting question of the mode of Haman's death, defines the obscure term "hanging by the circumlocution, illaqueation or pendulous suffocation." But setting aside such freaks, which belong nearly as much to his period as to his individual taste, he can hardly be called an obscure, and still less, a "rugged" writer. There are occasional faults of construction, it is true, which would naturally shock an Addisonian taste, and blemishes which would have been removed by a more careful polish. But he is generally intelligible without an effort; and "ruggedness" is a decidedly infelicitous epithet. His sentences move, it may be, with rather too elaborate a stateliness; they are crammed with the remote allusions that are constantly thronging into his mind, and have a certain sententious and epigrammatic turn; but they are full of a subtle and stately melody, bespeaking a fine musical ear. They have not the impetuous energy of a true rhetorician; they do not expand into the diffuse eloquence of Jeremy Taylor, nor are they animated by the indignant passion of Milton; but they are the grave, quiet utterances of a meditative mind, and their form would be more suitable for a lecture-room than for a pulpit or the floor of a senate, and most suitable for a closet. He must be read in a corresponding spirit; one must stop often to appreciate the flavour of a quaint allusion. and lay down the book at intervals to follow out some sharply diverging line of thought. So read, in the quiet of a retired study, or beneath the dusty shelves of some ancient library and books, to be thoroughly enjoyed, require appropriate scenery as well as appropriate moods. -no congenial student will find fault with Sir Thomas's stately periods. Rather he will admit that the form is in admirable harmony with the matter; and that the sentences march to a most appropriate air. As a general description, it may per

* CHAPTER XYXIX. AFTER church next day, for it was Sunday, Kurz came in to see Habermann and Bräsig:

"Good day! good day! I am angry; nothing but vexations the whole day! What? Such a set of people! Won't let a man speak at all! Eh, one might better keep swine than be a democrat! They listen to the stupidest speeches, and cry 'Bravo,' and give serenades, disturbing people out of their sleep, and when one tries to make an important subject clear to them, do they drum and pipe then? and they call that a Reformverein!"

"Listen to me, Herr Kurz," said Bräsig, stepping up to him, fully two inches taller than usual," it is very unbecoming in you, to sneer at that serenade, for that serenade was given to me, and you would have been turned out again, if the well-meaning Herr Schultz and I had not taken you under our protection.

"I did'nt mean you!" cried Kurz, running up and down the other side of the room, "I meant my brother-in-law, Baldrian, and the dyer, and the other blockheads. And is'nt it enough to drive one crazy? First, the quarrel with my wife, about the Reformverein, then a quarrel with my shop-man, he slept till nine o'clock this morning, was out singing on the streets last night, and at the beerhouse, till four o'clock; then a quarrel with the stable-boy and the horse-doctor,

my saddle-horse has got the influenza, then another quarrel with my wife, she don't want me to have anything to do with farming."

"There she is right again," interrupted Habermann. "All your farming amounts to nothing, because you don't understand it."

"So! I don't understand it? Nothing but vexations! Afterwards the stupid What? What servant maid, she put on a table-cloth for dinner that came down to the floor; well, we sit there, a customer rings, I am pro

does the old proverb say? When it is the fashion, one rides to the city on a bull;' but it is not the fashion in the Reform-voked with the shop-man because he verein, and if one persists in riding in and rampaging about on a bull, the people won't stand it, and they turn him out, with his bull, for the Reformverein is not designed for such purposes."

"It is all one to me!" cried Kurz, "other people rode in on donkeys, and were treated with great distinction."

"You are a rude fellow!" cried Uncle Bräsig, "you are an impertinent rascal! If this were not Karl Habermann's room, I would kick you down stairs, and you might carry your bones home in a bag."

66

Hush, Brasig, hush!" interposed Habermann, "and you, Kurz, ought to be ashamed of yourself, to come here stirring up strife and contention."

"I had strife and contention last evening; I have had strife and contention all day long. This morning, when I had hardly opened my eyes, my wife began with strife and contention; she is not willing I should go to the Reformverein."

"She is quite right, there," said Habermann, seriously, "you are not a fit person to go, for, with your hasty, inconsiderate behavior, you do nothing but mischief;' and leaving him he went over to Bräsig, who was running up and down the room, puffed up like an adder: "Bräsig, he couldn't have meant it so."

doesn't start up immediately, start up my-
self, catch the table-cloth between my feet,
and pull off the soup-tureen, and the whole
concern, on the floor. Do you see, then
my wife comes, and holds me fast, and
says, "Kurz, go to bed, you are unlucky
to-day;" and every time that I get angry,
she says, 66
Kurz, go to bed!" It is
enough to drive one crazy."

"And your wife was right again," said Habermann, “if you had stayed in bed, you would not have come here to make trouble."

"So?" cried Kurz, "did you ever lie in bed all day, with sound limbs, merely because it was an unlucky day? I will never do it again, no matter how much my wife begs me. One worries himself to death! She took away my boots and my trousers, and I lay there and fretted, because I could not get up, if I wanted to." Uncle Bräsig began to laugh heartily.

Well," said Habermann, "then you came over here, and got vexed again."

"Eh, how?" said Kurz, "I did'nt mean that at all, I only came over to ask you two Herr Inspectors if you would go with me to my field, and see if it was ready for ploughing."

Through Habermann's persuasions the quarrel was made up, and the three farmers went to the field, Kurz making close calculations, and reeling off his agricultural phrases, while Bräsig said to himself, "Who is riding on the donkey now?" "I have a piece of ground here," said [* Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by Littell & Gay, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.]

"It is no consequence to me, Karl, what such an uncouth, malicious, miserable beast thinks of me. Riding in on a donkey? Fie, it is nothing but the meanest envy."

Kurz, "measuring a hundred and fifty | been occupied with Kurz, and had not square rods, and I have bought ten cart-paid attention to his old friend, and he loads of manure from Kränger the butcher, now called. real, fat, slaughter-house manure; I am going to plant beets; I had it strewed yesterday; is'nt that enough, gentlemen? Look here!" and he turned out of the road into the field.

Very badly strewed!" said Brasig. "A properly manured field should look like | moving. a velvet cover," and he began to poke the "Good heavens, Karl, what have you lumps apart with his stick. there?" cried Zachary Brasig, going towards him. Still he got no answer, Habermann, pale as death, was looking at that which he held in his hand, and which made his features quiver with agitation.