upon this controversy, but the enforcement of conscience only, and a preventive fear, lest the omitting of this duty should be against me, when I would store up to myself the good provision of peaceful hours; so lest it should be still imputed to be, as I have found it hath been, that some self pleasing humour of vain glory has incited. me to contest with men of high estimation, now while green years are upon my head; from this needless surmisal I shall hope to dissuade the intelligent and equal auditor, if I can but say successfully, that which in this exigent behoves me, although I would be heard only, if it might be, by the elegant and learned reader, to whom principally for a while I shall beg leave I may address myself: to him it will be no new thing, though I tell him, that if I hunted after praise by the ostentation of wit and learning, I should not write thus out of mine own season, when I have neither yet completed to my mind the full circle of my private studies (although I complain not of any insufficiency to the matter in hand) or were

I ready to my wishes, it were a folly to commit any thing elaborately composed to the careless and interrupted listening of these tumultous times. Next, if I were wise only to mine own ends, I would certainly take such a subject, as of itself might catch applause; whereas this has all the disadvantages on the contrary; and such a subject, as the publishing whereof might be delayed at pleasure, and time enough to pencil it over with all the curious touches of art, even to the perfection of a faultless picture; when, as in this argument, the not deferring is of great moment to the good speeding, that if solidity have leisure to do her office, art cannot have much. Lastly, I should not chuse this manner of writing, wherein, knowing myself inferior to myself, led by the genial power of nature to another task, I have the use, as I may ac.count, but of my left hand." Prose Works, vol. 1. page 62.

Such is the delineation that our author has given us of his own mind and motives in his treatise on Church Government, which

the mention of his early design to take orders has led me to anticipate.

Having passed seven years in Cambridge, and taken his two degrees, that of batchelor, in 1628, and that of master, in 1632, he was admitted to the same degree at Oxford, in 1635. On quitting an academical life, he was, according to his own testimony, regretted by the fellows of his College; but he regarded the house of his father as a retreat favorable to his literary pursuits, and, at the age of twenty-four, he gladly shared the rural retirement, in which his parents had recently settled, at Horton, in Buckinghamshire: here he devoted him. self, for five years, to study,with that ardour and perseverance, to which, as he says himself, in a letter to his friend, Charles Diodati, his nature forcibly inclined him. The letter I am speaking of, was written in the last year of his residence under the roof of his father, and exhibits a lively picture of his progress in learning, his passion for virtue, and his hope of renown.

"To give you an account of my studies,"

he says, "I have brought down the affairs of the Greeks, in a continued course of reading, to the period in which they ceased to be Greeks. I have long been engaged in the obscurer parts of Italian history, under the Lombards, the Franks and the Germans, to the time in which liberty was granted them by the emperor Rodolphus; from this point I think it best to pursue in separate histories, the exploits of each particular city*."

He shews himself, in this letter, most passionately attached to the Platonic philosophy: "As to other points, what God may have determined for me, I know not; but this I know, that if he ever instilled an intense love of moral beauty into the breast of any man, he has instilled it into mine:

* De studiis etiam nostris fies certior, Græcorum res continuatâ lectione deduximus usqucquo illi Græci esse sunt desiti: Italorum in obscurâ re diu versati sumus sub Longobardis et Francis et Germanis ad illud tempus, quo illis ab Rodolpho Germaniæ rege concessa libertas cst; exinde quid quæque civitas suo marte gesserit, separatim legere præstabit.

Ceres, in the fable, pursued not her daughter with a greater keenness of enquiry, than I, day and night, the idea of perfection. Hence, wherever I find a man despising the false estimates of the vulgar, and daring. to aspire in sentiment, language, and conduct, to what the highest wisdom, through every age, has taught us as most excellent, to him I unite myself by a sort of necessary attachment; and if I am so influenced by nature or destiny, that by no exertion or labours of my own, I may exalt myself to this summit of worth and honor, yet no powers of heaven or earth will hinder me from looking with reverence and affection upon those, who have thoroughly attained this glory, or appear engaged in the successful pursuit of it.

"You enquire with a kind of solicitude even into my thoughts.-Hear then, Diodati, but let me whisper in your ear, that I may not blush at my reply-I think (so help me Heaven) of immortality. You enquire also what I am about? I nurse my wings, and