T

I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion; or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing with me in that, from which perhaps, within a few days, I should dissent myself.

It is as uncharitable a point in us to fall upon those popular scurrilities and opprobrious scoffs of the Bishop of Rome, to whom as a temporal prince, we owe the duty of good language; I confess there is cause of passion between us; by his sentence I stand excommunicated, heretic is the best language he affords me, yet can no ear 'witness I ever returned to him the name of antichrist, man of sin, or whore of Babylon; it is the method of charity to suffer without reaction: those usual satyrs, and invectives of the pulpit may perchance produce a good effect on the vulgar, whose ears are opener to rhetoric than logic, yet do they in no wise confirm the faith of wiser believers, who know that a good cause needs not to be patroned by passion, but can sustain itself upon a temperate dispute.

THE STUDENT.

THE world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: 'tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts; without this the world is still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day when as yet there

was not a creature that could conceive, or say there was a world. The wisdom of God receives small honour from those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his works: those highly magnify him whose judicious enquiry into his acts, and deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration.*

DEFORMITY.

I HOLD there is general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no deformity in any kind or species of creature whatsoever; I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly, they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express those actions of their inward forms. And having past that general visitation of God, who saw that all that he had made was good, that is, conformable to his will, which abhors deformity, and is the rule of order and beauty; there is no deformity but in monstrosity, wherein, notwithstanding there is a kind of beauty, nature so ingeniously contriving the irregular parts, as they become sometimes

* Man is placed on this stage of the world, to view the several natures and actions of the creatures not idly as they view us.

"The things," says Boyle, "for which I hold life valuable are the satisfaction that accrues from the improvement of knowledge and the exercise of piety."

more remarkable than the principal fabric. To speak yet more narrowly, there was never anything ugly or misshapen, but the chaos; wherein notwithstanding, to speak strictly, there was no deformity, because no form, nor was it yet impregnant by the voice of God.*

* An Emperor of Germany coming by chance, on a Sunday, into a church, found there a most misshapen priest pene portentum naturæ," insomuch as the Emperor scorned and contemned him. But when he heard him read those words in the service, "For it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves," the Emperor checked his own proud thoughts, and made enquiry into the quality and condition of the man and finding him, on examination, most learned and devout, he made him Archbishop of Colen, which place he did excellently discharge.-FULLER'S Holy State.

In Love's Labour Lost, there is the following dialogue between Rosalind and Biron.

Ros. Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Biron,
Before I saw you; and the world's large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks ;
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts,
Which you on all estates will execute,
That lie within the mercy of your

wit:

To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain,
And there withal to win me, if you please,
Without the which I am not to be won;

You shall this twelve-month term from day to day
Visit the speechless sick, and still converse

With groaning wretches and your task shall be,
With all the fierce endeavour of your wit,

To enforce the pained impotent to smile.

Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death!

It cannot be, it is impossible :

Mirth cannot move a soul in agony.

Ros. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, Whose influence is begot of that loose grace,

NATURE AND ART.

NATURE is not at variance with art; nor art with nature; they being both the servants of the providence of God. Art is the perfection of nature; were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.*

Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools: "A jest's prosperity lies in the ear

Of him that hears it; never in the tongue

Of him that makes it."

When Dr. Franklin attended the Privy Council, during the struggle between America and England, as the representative of the province of Massachusetts, Mr. Wedderburn (afterwards Lord Loughborough) inveighed against him in the severest language. At the sallies of his wit, all the members of the council, the president himself (Lord Gower) not excepted, frequently laughed outright. No person belonging to the council behaved with decent gravity except Lord North. Dr. Franklin told Mr. Lee, one of his counsel, after the business was concluded, that he was indifferent to Mr. Wedderburn's speech, but that he was indeed sincerely sorry to see the Lords of the council behave so indecently. "They showed," he added, "that the coarsest language can be grateful to the politest ear."

In the very clothes which he wore before the Privy Coun cil when he was insulted, he afterwards signed the treaties of commerce and alliance.

Perdita. For I have heard it said,

There is an art, which in their piedness shares
With great creating nature.

Pol. Say there be,

CHARITY.

I HOLD not so narrow a conceit of this virtue, as to conceive that to give alms, is only to be cha

Yet nature is made better by no mean,

But nature makes that mean;

So over that art, which you say adds to nature,
Is an art that nature makes; you see, sweet maid,
We marry a gentle scyon to the wildest stock,
And make conceive a bark of baser kind
By bud of nobler race. This is an art

Which does mend nature, change it rather; but
The art itself is nature.

Winter's Tale.

Natural History is subject to a threefold division. For nature is either free and displaying herself in her ordinary course, as in the heavens, living creatures, plants, and the universal furniture of the world :-or put out of her usual course, as in the monsters :—or she is compressed and fashioned, and as it were, new cast, as in artificial operations. An opinion hath, however, long time gone current, as if art were some different thing from nature, and artificial from natural. From this mistake, this inconvenience arises, that many writers of natural history think they have quit themselves sufficiently if they have compiled a history of creatures, or of plants, or of minerals; the experiments of mechanical arts past over in silence. But there is yet a more subtle deceit which secretly steals into the minds of men; namely, that art should be reputed a kind of additament only to nature, whose virtue is this, that it can indeed either perfect nature inchoate, or repair it when it is decayed, or set it at liberty from impediments; but not quite alter, transmute, or shake it in the foundations: which erroneous conceit hath brought in a too hasty despair upon men's enterprises. But on the contrary, this certain truth should be thoroughly settled in