The Resurrection; so much good there is

Deliver'd of her, that some Fathers be
Loth to believe one woman could do this,
But think these Magdalens were two or three.
Increase their number, Lady, and their fame;
To their devotion add your innocence;
Take so much of th' example as of the name.
The latter half; and in some recompence,
That they did harbour Christ Himself a guest,
Harbour these Hymns to His dear name addrest."

J. D.

Never has the type of Churchwoman who accepts without question the canons and laws that forbid her to invade Church functions and civil offices, been expressed more beautifully than in Lady Magdalen Herbert. She became, by a second marriage, Lady Danby, and over her, when she was laid to rest in Chelsea Parish Church, the Dean of St. Paul's (Donne) preached a magnificent funeral sermon. But this conscious effort to memorialize her character and parts is not so eloquent as the more instinctive tributes offered to her in lifetime by her fellow helpers in the Lord, and, in particular, by those two Priests of the Templeher son and her friend-whose love of harmony and whose sense of form were, in the end, wholly dedicated to the service of the Heavenly King.

Donne undoubtedly desired to impress upon many of the Churchwomen he addressed a sense of the peculiar glory of the limitations of their sex. Yet we may suspect a sly humour in the lines: Nor find we that God breath'd a soul in her. He certainly gave worship to an independent soul in Lady Magdalen Herbert, and in his poem on the metrical version of the Psalms by Mary, Countess of Pembroke, another Churchwoman, and withal a literary woman and a woman of graces, he very distinctly exalted the intellectual and the spiritual qualities that may adorn a woman.

In this poem, besides praising the devoted work of Lady Pembroke, he passed criticism on those careless priests and congregations who are concerned less for the decency and beauty of God's Houses than for the order and decoration of their own front parlours, and who, by

their contempt of Art's aids to worship, bring the churches of England into invidious comparison with those of other lands.

"UPON THE TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS BY SIR PHILIP SYDNEY AND THE

COUNTESS

OF

PEM

Who hath tun'd God and Man; the organ we:
The songs are these, which heaven's high holy Muse
Whisper'd to David, David to the Jews,

And David's successors in holy zeal,

In forms of joy and art do re-reveal
To us so sweetly and sincerely too,
That I must not rejoice as I would do,
When I behold that these psalms are become
So well attir'd abroad, so ill at home;

So well in chambers, in Thy Church so ill.
As I can scarce call that reform'd, until
This be reformed. Would a whole State present
A lesser gift then some one man hath sent ?
And shall our Church unto our Spouse and King
More hoarse, more harsh then any other ring?
For that we pray, we praise Thy name for this,
Which by this Moses and this Miriam is
Already done; and as those Psalms we call,
Though some have other authors, David's all,

So though some have, some may some psalms translate,

We thy Sydnean psalms shall celebrate;

And, till we come th' extemporal song to sing,

Learn'd the first hour that we see the King
Who hath translated those translators, may
These their sweet learnèd labours all the way
Be as our tuning; that, when hence we part,
We may fall in with them, and sing our part."

With a certain sympathy, but with less of reverence than is found in his direct addresses to godly women, Donne said of the Lady Anne Clifford that "she could converse on all topics from Predestination to slea-silk."

This statement does not tell us what the views of the Lady Anne on Predestination were. There was, however, in her religion a certain tone of Calvinism. She was inflexible of purpose, and convinced of the justice of her judg

ments upon life. There were times when the contrarieties of circumstances and of husbands led her to abandon effort and to wait for Providence to bring matters round for her. Her reliance on "God's goodness "God's goodness" was, in a sense, a reliance on the predestination of her fate. It was certainly in the face of extraordinary oppositions that she came at last to conditions of life that enabled her to be herself; to serve God, and to accomplish what she took to be, and what certainly appears to have been, God's purpose for her.

As the wife of Richard Sackville, Earl of Dorset, a 66 cross of her existence was her contention with him about her right to hold and to manage the lands in Westmoreland and other counties of the north together with the revenues accruing from them, which came to her upon the death of her father. Suits-at-law, consultations in the presence of King James, and the persuasions of Abbott, Archbishop of Canterbury, were all powerless to make the Countess of Dorset yield her castles of Appleby and Brougham to her uncle, Lord Francis Clifford become Earl of Cumberland. At last it was decided-the King being arbiter-that as she would not come to an agreement, an agreement should be made without her! She lost her inheritance, and the earl, her husband, gained an indemnity of £17,000. Another "cross" of her first marriage was Lord Dorset's profligate mode of life.

In her second marriage-with Philip, fourth Earl of Pembroke and first Earl of Montgomery-the violent temper and arbitrary disposition of a man whose idiosyncrasies developed into insanity, had to be endured. This peer of brilliant parts was the admired patron of Shakespeare, and the son of the gentle and intellectual Countess of Pembroke, who translated the psalms. In God's mercy, Mary Pembroke was taken from the world before her son's abnormalities became confirmed, and his wife obliged, on their account, to separate from him. It was the Countess Anne's martyrdom, not only to resist Pembroke's disposition of the hand of her daughter by her first marriage to an undesirable parti, but to see the "forwardest courtier" of the old queen her mother and aunts had so highly revered,

F