mum, rector erat sanctæ Andreæ ecclesiæ apud Londinum, et circa annum 1641 liturgia Anglicane a senatoribus populi solis, rege et optimatibus dissentientibus, reprobatæ et interdictæ firmiter adhæsit; et dum cultum divinum celebrabat, decurio rebellis cum altero sicario in ecclesiam ruit, et minaciter jubet eum desistere. Jussa injusta contemnens Máris apúpav in precibus perseverabat. Ille furore plusquam fanatico æstuans, scloppum usque ad os hominis obtrudens, instantem, ni desistat, minitatur mortem. Cui sereniter sacerdos, "Fungor ego officio meo, miles; fungere tu tuo." Perculsus ille erubuit, et abiit. Hachettus, Carolo secundo restaurato, factus episcopus Lichfeldiæ et Coventriæ, templum cathedrale pene obrutum, turrim cuspidatam, seu potius obeliscum Gothicum procerissimum, altissimum, et pulcherrimum, tormentis fractum et eversum, culmina plumbea disjecta et direpta, parietes et columnas, et laquearia fœdata et nuda, equorum bellicosorum et stercoris grande receptaculum, palatium episcopale simili ruina turpatum invenit. Hoc neglexit, domo canonica contentus, sed totis viribus ad domum Dei restaurandam incubuit. Nam postridie ejus diei qua Lichfeldiam intravit, diluculo primo servos equosque suos ad sordes a templo removendas extimulavit. Quotque inchoavit acerrime, paucis annis feliciter integravit; nam, partim de propriis sumptibus, partim magnates regni exorando, viginti et tria millia librarum, ingentem eo tempore summam, in hoc opere tam nobili consumpsit. Præsul hic doctus et strenuus fidei Anglicanæ defensor erat contra Jesuitas, et concionator sui temporis celebris: stylus autem ejus rudis est et obsoletus. Huic successit episcopus, a regia meretrice in cathedram intrusus, qui, tali patrona dignus, monstrum fuit avaritiæ; cui nihil episcopale, nihil sacrum, nisi auri sacra fames. Merito tandem ab archiepiscopo Cantuariensi mulctatus est; cujus ex crapula aurea, ut ita dicam, præsens palatium episcopale grande satis et splendidum emicuit. Huic successit vir magni ingenii et doctrinæ Gulielmus Lloyd, cui linguæ orientales quasi vernaculæ erant. Illi proximus fuit Joannes Hough, vir omni laude dignus, qui juvenis adhuc, Magdalenæ collegii apud Oxoniam præses electus fuit, contra illegalia mandata Jacobi secundi qui virum legibus inhabilem in hanc dignitatem eligi jusserat. Ob hoc, irato rege, expulsus erat; sed anno proximo, rege ipso ab Anglia expulso, restitutus, et post aliquot annos ad diœcesin Lichfeldensem evectus, ubi multos annos ab omnibus honoratus vixit, donec ab Anna regina in divitem Vigorniæ cathedram translatus fuit. Aulicis elegantia, religiosis pietatis, omnibus Christianæ benevolentiæ optima documenia præbuit, usque

ad plusquam nonagesimum ætatis annum. Huic successit Chandlerus, primum canonicus, deinde episcopus Lichfeldensis, et postea translatus ad ditissimum diœcesin Dunelmiæ. Ille propugnator strenuus fidei Christianæ contra gigantes istos infideles Collinsium et Tindalium, qui apostolos et evangelistas nequitiæ et ignorantiæ audaciter insimulant, quia prophetias veteris Testamenti historiis novi aptaverunt. Huic successit Richardus Smalbroke, qui miracula Christi, contra Woolstonum, fidei desertorem et calumniatorem, docte et acute defendit. Hujus successor fuit Fredericus Cornwallis, comitis de Cornwallis patruus, qui annos octodecim Diocesin Lichfeldensem, diligenter, sapienter, at amicissime administravit, et nunc cathedram archiepiscopalem Cantuariensem splendide ornat. Hujus successor fuit Joannes Egerton, ducis Bridgwateriensis patruelis, et hæres proximus, vir doctus, elegans, et in rebus agendis acutus et perspicax. Post biennium ad Dunelmiam evectus fuit. Illi successit Brownlow North, comitis Guildfordiæ filius, et Domini North, gazæ regiæ custodis et rerum publicarum curatoris, frater fraterrimus, qui biennium quoque hic commoratus, ad Vigorniam translatus est. Episcopus vere nobilis, comis, et benignus, diœcesi nostræ nunc presidet Richardus Hurd, qui apud academiam Cantabrigiensem studiis humanioribus contemporaneis omnibus facile antecessit; critici acuminis et promptæ doctrinæ quamplurima exemplaria adhuc juvenis edidit. Deinde dialogos quosdam historicos, politicos, et morales, scripsit, qui magno fructu a literatis leguntur: postea prophetias veteris et novi Testamenti, claro et insigni ordine digessit et explicuit. His ingenii et pietatis documentie, morum suavitate, et egregia vultus gratia inductus, comes de Mansfield, judicum nostrorum merito princeps, et legum non magis quam virorum acutissimus judex, regi nostro hunc commendavit, ut fieret præceptor principis Galliæ et fratris ejus secularis episcopi Osnabrugensis. Ex illo igitur spes Britanniæ nunc pendet. Discipuli ejus, ut audivi et spero, bonarum artium studiis alacriter incumbunt, et rapidi proficiunt; et ex illo, precor, derivata virtus in patriam populumque fluat.

1797, June.

T. S."

XCII, Letter written at Paris by Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Communicated by the Gentleman who received it. April 22, 1784.

SEND you herewith a bill for ten Louis d'ors. I do not

pretend to give such a sum: I only lend it to you. When you shall return to your country, you cannot fail of getting into some business that will in time enable you to pay all your debts. In that case, when you meet with another honest man in similar distress, you must pay me by lending this sum to him, injoining him to discharge the debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with such another opportunity. I hope it may thus go through many hands before it meets with a krave to stop its progress. This is a trick of mine for doing a deal of good with a little money, I am not rich enough to afford much in good works, and so am obliged to be cunning, and make the most of a little.

1797, Sept.

XCIII. Letters from the Earl of Orford to Governor Pownall,

LETTER I.

Strawberry-hill, Oct. 20, 1783. I AM extremely obliged to you, Sir, for the valuable communication you have made to me. It is extremely so to me, as it does justice to a memory that I revere to the highest degree; and I flatter myself that it would be acceptable to that part of the world that loves truth; and that part will be the majority as fast as they pass away who have an interest in preferring falshood. Happily, truth is longer-lived than the passions of individuals; and, when mankind are not misled, they can distinguish white from black.

I myself do not pretend to be unprejudiced; I must be so to the best of fathers; I should be ashamed to be quite impartial. No wonder then, Sir, if I am greatly pleased with so able a justification. Yet I am not so blind but that I can discern solid reasons for admiring your Defence. You have placed that Defence on sound and new grounds; and, though very briefly, have very learnedly stated and distinguished the landmarks of our Constitution, and the encroachments made on it, by justly referring the principles of liberty to the Saxon system, and imputing the corruptions of it to the Norman. This was a great deal too deep for that superficial mountebank Hume to go; for, a mountebank he was. He mounted a freteau in the garb of a philosophic empiric, but dispensed no drugs but what he was

authorised to vend by a royal patent, and which were full of Turkish opium. He had studied nothing relative to the English Constitution before Queen Elizabeth, and had selected some of her most arbitrary acts to countenance those of the Stuarts; and even hers, he misrepresented; for, her worst deeds were levelled against the nobility, those of the Stuarts against the people; hers, consequently, were rather an obligation to the people; for, the most heinous part of common despotism is, that it produces a thousand despots instead of one. Muley Moloch cannot lop off many heads with his own hand; at least he takes those in his way, those of his courtiers; but his bashaws and viceroys spread destruction every where.

The flimsy, ignorant, blundering, manner in which Hume executed the reigns preceding Henry VII. is a proof of how little he had examined the history of our Constitution.

I could say much, much more, Sir, in commendation of your work, were I not apprehensive of being biassed by the subject. Still, that it would not be from flattery I will prove, by taking the liberty of making two objections, and they are only to the last page but one. Perhaps you will think that my first objection does shew that I am too much biassed.

I own, I am sorry to see my father compared to Sylla; the latter was a sanguinary usurper, a monster-the former the mildest, most forgiving, best-natured of men, and a legal minister. Nor, I fear, will the only light in which you compare them stand the test. Sylla resigned his power voluntarily, insolently, perhaps timidly, as he might think he had a better chance of dying in his bed if he retreated. than by continuing to rule by force. My father did not retire by his own option: he had lost the majority of the House of Commons. Sylla, you say, Sir, retired unimpeached-it is true,but covered with blood. My father was not impeached, in our strict sense of the word, but, to my great joy, he was in effect. A secret committee, a worse inquisition than a jury, was named-not to try him, but to sift his life forcrimes; and out of such a jury, chosen in the dark, and not one of whom he might challenge, he had some determined enemies, many opponents, and but two he could suppose his friends. And what was the consequence? A man, charged with every state crime almost for twenty years, was proved to have donewhat? paid some writers much more than they deserved, for having defended him against ten thousand and ten thousand libels (some of which had been written by his inquisitors,) all which libels were confessed to have been

lies by his inquisitors themselves: for, they could not produce a shadow of one of the crimes with which they had charged him! I must own, Sir, I think that Sylla and my father ought to be set in opposition rather than paralleled.

My other objection is still more serious; and, if I am so happy as to convince you, I shall hope that you will alter the paragraph, as it seems to impute something to Sir Robert of which he was not only most innocent, but of which, if he had been guilty, I should think him extremely so, for he would have been very ungrateful.

You say, "he had not the comfort to see that he had established his own family by any thing which he received from the gratitude of that Hanover family, or from the gratitude of that country, which he had saved and served." Good Sir, what does this sentence seem to imply, but that either Sir Robert himself, or his family, thought, or think, that the kings George I. and II. or England, were ungrateful for not rewarding his services? Defend him and us from such a charge! He nor we ever had such a thought. Was it not rewarding him to make him prime-minister, and maintain and support him against all his enemies for twenty years together? Did not George I. make his eldest son a peer, and give to the father and son a valuable patent place in the Custom-house for three lives? Did not George II.! give my elder brother the auditor's place, and to my other brother and me other rich places for our lives; for, though in the gift of the First Lord of the Treasury, do we not owe them to the king, who made him so? Did not the late king make my father an earl, and dismiss him with a pension of 4000l. a year for his life? Could he or we not think these ample rewards? What rapacious sordid wretches must he and we have been, and be, could we entertain such an idea! As far have we all been from thinking him neglected by his country. Did not his country see and know those rewards? and could it think those rewards inadequate? Besides, Sir, great as I hold my father's services, they were solid and silent, not ostensible: they were of a kind to which I hold your justification a more suitable reward than pecuniary recompences. To have fixed the House of Hanover on the throne; to have maintained this country in peace and affluence for 20 years; with the other services you record, Sir, were actions, the éclat of which must be illustrated by time and reflexion,and whose splendour has been brought forwarder than I wish it had, by comparison with a period very dissimilar.

If Sir Robert had not the comfort of leaving his family in