art, but with a design greatly complying with your end; for it is contrived with no small brevity, that since you are intended for a long journey, to a great progress of wisdom and knowledge, you may not be stopped at your setting out, but proceed like the sun, whose swiftness is just proportionable to the length of his course.

In the same year in which the Grammar was published, Taylor produced his Liberty of Prophesying, written, as he informed Lord Hatton, in poverty and tribulation, without books or leisure to consult them. This was the work that Coleridge read with the highest admiration and the liveliest apprehension. He saw in it all the confluent powers of the author, swelling the majestic stream of genius, as it rolled onward in its diversified and winding course. The avowed object of the treatise was to plead the cause of the persecuted church of England. Hallam rejects this interpretation. He denies that the reader can perceive in it the slightest bearing on any toleration, that the Episcopal church might then ask of her victorious enemies. He believes Taylor to have had another class of controversies in his eye. Hallam may, perhaps, refer to a remark of Wood, who tells us that Taylor employed a stratagem to break the compact force of the Presbyterian power, by sowing seeds of division among the various sectaries; that with this view he lay "in ambuscado." That he wrote, also, with an indirect reference to the leaders of his own party, is not improbable. Heber

has ingeniously shown, that the circumstances of the time encouraged a hope of a peaceful adjustment of political differences. The king was in the keeping of Cromwell, and the use of the Prayer Book was permitted; the army had assumed an attitude of hostility towards the Parliament; and the Independents were assailing the Presbyterians with virulence equal to their own. The early stages of seditious intemperance had not yet been inflamed into frenzy. Hall was only just driven from Norwich. It is quite in harmony with the disposition of Taylor to suppose, that he may have been desirous to impress upon the monarch and his advisers among the high church party, the paramount importance of meeting the demands of the Presbyterians in a conciliatory and liberal temper. Of the book itself, I shall have another opportunity of speaking. Its plan is extremely simple. Considering the Apostles' Creed to contain the elements of Christian truth, he regards every subsidiary doctrine as indifferent and dispensable. From this principle the argument spreads on every side into that luxuriant amplitude of learning and illustration, which, while it beautifies, so often overshades the vigour and massiveness of his teaching.

CHAPTER VII.

I. Lord Carbery protects Taylor; Golden Grove.—II. Beauty of the scenery; its influence on his writings. III. Holy Living and Dying. IV. The Great Exemplar; its devotional spirit. V. His Sermons. - VI. Funeral Discourse on Lady Carbery; her character. - VII. Remark of Keble upon Taylor; compared with Burke.. rhetorical and poetical mind contrasted.

VIII. The

GOD, was the beautiful and characteristic saying

of Taylor, places a watery cloud in the eye, that when the light of heaven shines on it, it may produce a rainbow to be a sacrament and a memorial, that God and the sons of men do not love to see a man perish. His own history was a prolonged illustration of the image. In all the sorrows and wearinesses of his dark journey, he was cheered by friends who seemed to be raised up to bless the persecuted pilgrim of the Cross. He had the well courage as as the patience of a hero. "When the north wind blows, and it rains sadly, none but fools sit down in it and cry; wise people defend themselves against it with a warm garment, a good fire, and a dry roof." Through every storm

1 Holy Living, ch. ii. sec. 6.

of difficulty and oppression he worked his way, climbing among the hills till a path opened before him, or some glimmering window guided him into hospitality and a shelter. Such a light streamed over his footsteps from the cheerful friendliness of Golden Grove, the seat of Lord Carbery, and situated in the same village in which his necessities had reduced his aspiring intellect to the drudgery of tuition. Among the

"Southern tracts of Cambria, deep embayed,

With green hills fenced, and ocean's murmurs lulled,"1

it was singularly happy in its combination of woody and pastoral fertility and

Towy flowed through the grounds.

repose. The Bonney gives

a pleasing description of the place. Embracing the rich sweep of the valley from Carmarthen to Llandovery, Gronger Hill, about a mile and a half to the north west, is a prominent feature in the landscape. The whole scene lives in the panorama of Dyer, with its streams, trees, and ruined castles. Of these, Dynevor, once the residence of the Welsh Princes, and Dryslwyn are visible from the windows of the present mansion. Dyer has not forgotten to notice the exquisite variety of foliage for which the vale of Towy is remarkable.

"Below the trees unnumbered rise,
Beautiful in various dyes,

The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beech, the sable yew;

1 Wordsworth.

The slender fir that taper grows,

The sturdy oak with broad spread boughs."

Dynevor Castle is shaded by oaks of extreme antiquity. The union of pastoral and baronial life composes a lovely picture. Taylor would not contemplate such a landscape without delight and gratitude. We possess, in his noblest book, an affecting transcript of his feelings:-"I am fallen into the hands of publicans and sequestrators, and they have taken all from me; what now? Let me look about me. They have left me the sun and moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me; and I can still discourse, and unless I list, they have not taken away my merry countenance, and my cheerful spirit, and a good conscience; they have still left me the providence of God, and all the promises of the Gospel, and my religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them too; and still I sleep and digest, I eat and drink, I read and meditate. I can walk in my neighbour's pleasant fields, and see the variety of natural beauties, and delight in all that in which God delights-that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in God himself. And he that hath so many causes of joy, and so great, is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness, who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down upon his little handful of thorns. Such a person

were fit to bear Nero company in his funeral sorrow for the loss of one of Poppea's hairs, or help to mourn for Lesbia's sparrow: and because he loves