reached Padua, and there received the Benedictine habit from the hands of the abbot of saint Justina, on the 27th of May, 1605, in the 30th year of his age, and took the name of Augustine. Even in his noviceship he gave proofs of his great attachment to mental prayer, and of which he afterwards so frequently and judiciously treated, in many of his writings; but an inactive life, and a change of climate, not agreeing with his constitution, he was, although still a novice, sent, for the recovery of his health into England, and upon his arrival in London, immediately learned that his father was upon the point of death; he consequently hastened into the country, and became the happy instrument of effecting his conversion to the Catholic church. After satisfactorily arranging his family affairs, he returned with eagerness to his convent, and finishing his noviceship, he became a member of the Italian congregation, and was sent as a missionary priest into England. Here he proved an able advocate for the plan of establishing a kind of succession of the ancient monks of England, and upon another occasion zealously employed himself in forming the Euglish congregation. However retirement, where he could practice his favourite exercise of mental prayer, was to him a source of real happiness, and this he was permitted to enjoy for some years, either at the mansion of country gentlemen, or in London, whither he had been called by his superiors, about the year 1621, and where he lived in great privacy, employed in several treatises upon mystic subjects, until he was ordered to search out for, and collect records and documents, which were necessary for the defence of the new congregation, and in this occupation he acquitted himself to the entire satisfaction of his superiors. He had been frequently pressed by the president of the congregation, to take up his residence at Doway, as a place well calculated for an ascetic, and where he might have every facility in arranging his materials for composing a church history, in which he had already made progress: for some time he rejected this proposal; but at length, obedience to the wishes. of his superiors, about the year 1624, he took his departure for Douay, but scholastic disputes, and the ceremonies of an university, not suiting with his disposition, he was removed to Cambray, and became confessor to the English nuns. In this em ployment he lived nine years, greatly to his own satisfaction, he then returned to Douay, and some time after was sent upon the English mission. The last years of his life were spent in London, and at length he died, on the 9th day of August, 1641, in Gray's-inn-lane, Holborn. "Father Baker," says Dodd, "was strictly religious; the great master of the ascetics of his time: a laborious collector of antiquities, especially of such as belonged to the English history; and more particularly to the Benedictine order. Reymer and Cressey built afterwards upon his foundation, and only cast into method the materials he had prepared: one in his Apostolatus Benedictinorum, the other in his Church History. He was personally acquainted, and kept a correspondence with the learned antiquarians Camden, Sir Robert Cotton, Sir Henry Spelman, John Sheldon, Godwin, bishop of Hereford, &c. He was an indefatigable writer, having compiled nine volumes folio, kept in the monastery of Benedictine Nuns, in Cambray; besides six MS. folios of ecclesiastical history, that are lost. Again, he composed three folio volumes, con. taining forty spiritual tracts, from whence Cressey extracted the book called Sancta Sophia. Two treatises of the laws of England, lost at the revolution in 1688, when the Catholic chapels were pillaged." The History and Antiquities of Hengrave, in Suffolk, by John Gage, Esq. F. S. A. of Lincoln's Inn, quarto. James Carpenter, and Joseph Booker, London; and John Deck, Bury St. Edmund's. THE gay King Charles expressed a preference for the Catholic, because he was a gentleman and certainly good taste, which implies a love of the arts, distinguishes the Catholic. Indeed, it should be so, for sculpture and painting are handmaids of his Church, and all her splendid and moving ceremonies, help together, to elevate the mind, even from its infancy, as well as to give it a high sensibility, and discriminating power. The late Sir Henry Englefield displayed so much of this faculty of taste, that his were just pretensions to have filled the chair of the society of Antiquaries; and the various literature which he possessed, like a gem of multiplied lustre, was set off to every advantage by the peculiar elegance of his manners. Dr. Milner, to whom, pardon us, we may give the motto, Pax in bello, is the admiration of friends and foes, whenever he touches upon ecclesiastical architecture and antiquities. True it is, he has thrown more light than Bentham, or any former writer, on the architecture of the middle ages, and has mainly helped to fix it on clear and sure principles. Of Mr. Carter, it has been justly said, that the country is more indebted to his professional art, for its illustration, for the preservation of its choicest monuments, and for directing aright the public opinion and taste concerning it, than to any other individual whomsoever; and it must not be forgotten, that the same Mr. Carter felt it was a reproach to behold the sacred monuments of our ancestors, and not to be in communion of faith with so many saints, and men of learning and genius. Sculpture owes much to the lete Mr. Blundell, of Ince; but more to Mr. Townley, who, full of the taste of Greece and Rome, stood foremost to revive and perpetuate it in this country. 4 To this list of Catholics, of taste, we have much pleasure in adding the name of Mr. Gage, and we appeal to his History and Antiquities of Hengrave, and to the opinions expressed in the Literary Gazette, the Museum, and the Gentleman's Magazine, as proofs that he deserves it. He has put forth a work, in which we shall find one of the most beautiful specimens we have of Tudor domestic architecture, illustrated, in the happiest manner, with original documents, many of them as curious, as they are instructive-a Work, which has none of the soporific qualities of topographical folios, but has all the air and spirit of a memoir, to which class it more properly belongs. Mr. Gage has elucidated local history in the manner in which it ought to be elucidated. He has rescued the worthy from oblivion; delineated the changes of manners, and the progress of arts; called back to the fancy, the pomp and splendour of ages that are gone; restored and repeopled the embattled manor houses; and bade for a moment the grave render back its inhabitants to the fond eyes of regret. It would seem, that the censura literaria when it suggested such judicious requisites for a local history, had the History of Hengrave in perspective. But to take a closer view of our subject. "There are few houses," says Mr. Gage, in his preface," built at the commencement of the sixteenth century, remaining in this country, fewer than might at first be imagined, and of these, most are in ruins, or so altered, as to have little of their original character. Hengrave stands a fair, and in some respects an unique, example of the domestic architecture of that period -an embattled manor house, with turrets of singular design and acknowledged beauty." We know that Mr. Gough, in his edition of Camden's Britannica, has pronounced this eulogium upon the place: "the gateway is of snch singular beauty, and in such high preservation, that perhaps a more elegant specimen of the architecture of the age in which it was erected cannot be seen." Mr. Gage opens his work with an account of the parish and neighbourhood, where he dwells so short a time, as not to be found weaving the annals of insignificant places. He quickly enters upon his animated description of Hengrave Hall, begun by Sir T. Kytson, in 1525, and completed by him in 1538. A 'series of documents highly interesting accompanies the description, comprising the Royal licence, kernellare et battellare, the 'mason's and other contracts for the building, and items of disbursements relating to it: and not the least interesting of these documents, are the inventories, taken in 1603, of the furniture of the principal apartments. We doubt not that either in the hall, the musician's room, the armoury, or the great chamber, something will be found to attract the attention of a Mr. Radcliffe, or Sir Walter Scott; many things, particularly the musical instruments, we confess, are new to us. At the period of this survey, we observe, that though the proprietor of the mansion appears, from other parts of the work, not to have conformed to queen Elizabeth's creed, he had so far complied with her edicts, that the living sacrifice was no longer offered up in his domestic chapel, which exhibited only the faded relics of former times, and cold signs of the new. Itm. one longe cushion of white taffita,' Itm. fower little cushions of tapestrye. Sattin, stryped wth gold and silver. In contemplating Hengrave Hall, we are reminded of Cowdroy, the once splendid residence of the Catholic Montagues, and having the fate of that venerable mansion before our eyes, we feelingly congratulate the ublic in their possession of such drawings, as Mr. Gage has given us of Hengrave in this elegant work; indeed, he has shewn no little judgment in his choice of artists, as well as subjects. We have in the monu ments of Margaret, countess of Bath, Thomas Darcy, and Sir Thomas Kytson, the younger, etchings so beautifully finished, that they, and the engraving of the gate house, will, in our estimation, always be considered master-pieces of art. From the description of the Hall, the author goes to the Church, where the round tower, the monuments, and an ancient fresco painting of St. Christopher, are the chief attractions. Peace to the ashes of the Austin Nuns who lie buried here; for Hengrave, at the breaking out of the French Revolution, afforded an asylum to the English convent from Bruges, and some of the community are buried in the church. Mr. Gage now comes to his narrative of the different proprietors of the manor, being the several families of de Hemegrave, Hethe, Stafford, Kytson, Darcy, and Gage. We must here declare that a catalogue of names blazoned out in all the pride of heraldry, has no charms for us. Genealogy, in our opinion, is too prominent a feature in local histories, but happy is Mr. Gage in making it, generally speaking, a subservient object throughout the work. To pourtray the manners and customs of the times is his object, and all the family letters and papers are so interwoven in his notions of the proprietors, as to produce, instead of a dry historical descent, a pleasing memoir. These letters and papers are the charm of the book—as a specimen of the letters, let us take one addressed, on the occasion of |