him, or, interpreting their sober reverence into Mr. Macaulay's bold and somewhat exaggerated language, "honoured him as an Apostle."

It is possible, indeed, that, inasmuch as the early Friends looked upon themselves as a peculiar people set apart to be the specia' servants of Him whose kingdom is not of this world, some of them may have looked with uneasiness on his exertions in the service of his country i but even of such uneasiness there is no sufficient proof, and were there, his character would be no ways affected. Enough, that the form of his religion, his feelings as a Quaker, did not seem to him to interfere with the fulfilment of his duty as a citizen. Had it done so, that form would have been changed rather than his work left undone, for he was not a man who could make one duty an excuse for shirking another within his conscience there was no conflict between the claims of religion and patriotism: he did not fly from the world, but faced it with true words and true deeds, as one who, as he said himself when, during the storm of persecution, he rebuked a powerful persecutor, "was above the fear of man, whose breath is in his nostrils, and must one day come to judgment, because he only feared the living God, that made the heavens and the earth." This reverential fear of God-this it was that made him fearless of man, that gave him "integrity" to "stand firm against obloquy and persecution," and not against them alone, but gave him power over himself, strength to resist temptations from within as well as to sustaiu violence from without; for it must be borne in mind, that he was not one of those who take to piety only when wearied of pleasure, ceasing to pluck the rose because they have been pricked by its thorns. This "strong sense of religious duty" was not his because his other senses were weak, or because he had satiated them; nor did he refrain from enlisting himself in the service of God till he had proved Mammon to be a hard master, but in the strength of his passions he controlled them: in the spring-time of life, when the prizes of pleasure and ambition were before him, he chose the path of self denial, and walked in it to the end. Hear his own simple and touching account of the experiences of his youth, as he thought it right to relate them to some God-fearing men whom he met with in his travels, in order, as he said, that "those who were come to any measure of a divine sense" might be "as looking-glasses to each other, as face

Letter to Vice Chancellor of Oxford: Works, vol. i p. 155.

answereth face in a glass.' "Here I began to let them know," he says, "how and when the Lord first appeared unto me (anno 1656), which was about the twelfth year of my age; how at times, betwixt that and the fifteenth, the Lord visited me, and the divine impressions he gave me of himself; of my persecution at Oxford, and how the Lord sustained me in the midst of that hellish darkness and debauchery; of my being banished the College; the bitter usage I underwent when I returned to my father; whipping, beating, and turning out of doors in 1662; of the Lord's dealings with me in France, and in the time of the Great Plague in London: in fine, the deep sense he gave me of the vanity of this world, of the irreligiousness of the religions of it. Then, of my mournful and bitter cries to Him, that He would show me His own way of life and salvation, and my resolutions to follow him, whatever reproaches or sufferings should attend me, and that with great reverence and brokenness of spirit. How, after all this, the glory of the world overtook me, and I was even ready to give up myself unto it, seeing as yet no such thing as the Primitive Spirit and Church on the earth, and being ready to faint concerning my hope of the restitution of all things," had not "at this time the Lord visited me with a certain sound and testimony of His eternal word, through one of these the world calls Quakers, namely, Thomas Lbe." And then "I related to them the bitter mockings and scornings that fell upon me, the displeasure of my parents, the invectiveness and cruelty of the priests, the strangeness of all my companions; what a sign and wonder they made of me; but above all, that great cross of resisting and watching against mine own inward vain affections and thoughts."

And this son of a courtier, who thus preferred a prison to a courtwho chose as the companions of his youth men, whose very name was a byeword of scorn,† who until his forty-first year had led a life of

* Life prefixed to Works, p. 92.

"A Quaker," or "some very melancholy thing," Pepys describes him in “A very his Diary (December 29, 1667), on his return from Ireland. pleasant" fact to Pepys, who hated the Admiral, and rejoiced in his perplexities at his son's religion, but, doubtless, in his eyes, a strange fancy to be taken by the youth, who, three years before (Diary, August 16, 1664), "had come back from France a most modish person, grown, my wife says, a fine gentleman."

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consistent self-control, and proved his sincerity by his sufferings and sacrifices, can it be believed that he could have thus suddenly found his "resolution give way," even though "courtly smiles and female blandishments" had been "offered" as "bribes to his vanity"?

Mr. Macaulay's faith in human virtue must indeed have been sorely tried--his estimate of the strength of religious duty must be but slight -or, instead of suspecting "the eminent virtues of such a man,' he would have questioned the probability of so strange a fall. But, ke most men who are over doubting in one direction, he is too little so in another, for if he has little faith in the truth of Penn's professions, he has at least a firm confidence in the certainty of his own suspicionsif he be sceptical of virtue, he compensates for it by being credulous of vice; and so, if he refuses to listen to the concurrent testimony of "rival nations and hostile sects," he yet gives full credence to the insinuations of party prejudice, and makes up for his disbelief in the general estimate of Penn's character by an admission of charges respecting which it is hard to discover the facts of which they are the distortion.

But the voice of history cannot be thus silenced: she has already recorded her judgment, from which there is no appeal; and why need Mr. Macaulay cavil at its justice, for. strange as it may seem to him, there is in it no mystery,

This Quaker was a strong and a brave, and therefore a free man : he ruled himself, and fearing God, feared no other; and so he made posterity his debtor, for that spirit which won freedom for himself he left to it as a legacy, and there is no fear that the debt due to him will be unpaid, so long as the inheritance remains.

The memory of good men is sacred: we treasure it, as we value our safety in the present-our hope for the future; for on what, after all, depends our national freedom, of which Mr. Macaulay so often and so loudly vaunts?-most assuredly not, as he would seem to think,* ov the limitations of the prerogative of our rulers, handed down to us from our ancestors, but on that spirit of individual justice, which, inasmuch as it breathed in their hearts, made their freedom both possible and necessary, of the strength whereof these limitations were and are the exact measure. It is not to the fact that for ages past Englishmen have had the habit of preventing their kings from taking their money

• Macaulay, vol. i. chap. 1.

MEMOIRS

OF THE

LIFE OF WILLIAM PENN.

CHAPTER I.

WILLIAM PENN-HIS ORIGIN, OR LINEAL DESCENT, AS COLLECTED FROM PUBLISHED ACCOUNTS.

WILLIAM PENN was descended from an ancient family, respectable both in point of character and independence as early as the first public records notice it. The following is a concise account of his origin:

Among his early ancestors were those of the same name, who were living, between four and five centuries ago, at the village of Penn in Buckinghamshire. Further traces of this family are to be found in Penlands, Pen-street, Pen-house, Pen-wood, all of them the names of places in the same county.

From the Penns of Penn in Buckinghamshire came the Penns of Penn's Lodge, near Myntie, on the edge of Bradon Forest, in the north-west part of the county of Wilts, or rather in Gloucestershire, a small part of the latter being inclosed within the former county. Here, that is, at Penn's Lodge, we know that two, if not more, of the male branches so descended lived in succession. The latter, whose name was William, was buried in Myntie Church. A flat grave-stone, which perpetuates this event, is still remaining. It stands in the passage between two pews in the chancel. It states, however, only that he died on the 12th of March, 1591.

From William, just mentioned, came Giles Penn. Giles, it is known, was a captain in the royal navy. He held alsc for some time the office of English Consul in the Mediterranean. Having intermarried with the family of the Gilberts, who came originally from Yorkshire, but who then lived in the county of Somerset, he had issue a son, whom he called William.

The last-mentioned William, following the profession of his father, became a distinguished naval officer. He was born in the year 1621, and commanded at a very early age the fleet which Oliver Cromwell sent against Hispaniola. This expedition, though it failed, brought no discredit upon him, for Colonel Venables was the cause of its miscarriage. It was con

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