been only undertaken in his youth, "to charm his anxious thoughts during that sad and calamitous time." Taylor afterwards bestowed the highest commendations upon the performance, and bishop Heber considered Evelyn "fairly entitled to the credit of having transfused the sense, if not all the spirit of his original, into harmonious English verse."

On the sixth and seventh of the following month, we find Evelyn introducing to Taylor a young Frenchman, whom he had "some time before brought to a full consent to the church of England, her doctrine and discipline,” and who, notwithstanding the afflictions of that church, was now a candidate for holy orders. Taylor being well satisfied with him, recommended him to some Irish prelate, whom Evelyn calls the bishop of Meath, then living in abject distress in London, and to whom the fees paid by Evelyn were a matter of charity. "To that necessity," he exclaims, "were our clergy reduced!"

Early in the following year Taylor was again in trouble, being committed to the Tower for a publication to which the bookseller had prefixed a print of Christ in the attitude of prayer. Evelyn ventured to write to the lieutenant of the Tower, soliciting an interview for his friend, whom he recommended as a man of innocent life, and one who had done good service to the cause of protestant truth. This application appears to have been successful, for Dr. Taylor was soon after at liberty.

Evelyn to Taylor, May 9th, 1657.-"Amongst the rest that are tributaries to your worth, I make bold to present you with this small token [a sum of money]; and though it bears no proportion either to my obligation or your merit, yet I hope you will accept it as the product of what. I have employed for this purpose; and which you shall yearly receive, as long as God makes me able, and that it may be useful to you."

Taylor to Evelyn, May 15, 1657.-" A stranger came two nights since from you with a letter and a token; full of humanity and sweetness that was; and this, of charity. . . . . Sir, what am I, or what can I do, or what have I done, that you think I have or can oblige you? Sir, you are too kind to me, and oblige me not only beyond my merit, but beyond my modesty. I only can love you, and honour you, and pray for you; and in all this I cannot say but I am behindhand with you, for I have found so great effluxes [overflowings] of all your worthinesses and charities, that I am a debtor for your prayers, for the comfort of your letters, for the charity your hand, and the affection of your heart."

of

Evelyn to Taylor, June 9, 1657.-" To come and christen my son George.”—“ Sir, I heartily acknowledge the Divine mercies to me, both in this and many other instances of his goodness to me; but for no earthly concernment more than for what he has encouraged me by your charity and ministration towards my eternal and better interest. . . . . Sir, I had forgotten to tell you, (and it did indeed extremely trouble me,) that you are to expect my coach to wait upon you presently after dinner, that you are not to expose yourself to the casualty of the tides in repairing to do so christian an office for, sir, &c. &c."

Taylor to Evelyn, June 9, 1657.-"Honoured and dear Sir, your messenger prevented mine but an hour. But I am much pleased that God hath given you another testimony of his love to your person, and of care of your family; it is an engagement to you of new degrees of duty..... Sir, your kind letter hath so abundantly rewarded and crowned my innocent endeavours in my descriptions of friendship, that I perceive there is a friendship beyond what I have fancied.... and when anything shall be observed to be wanting in my character, I can

tell them where to see the substance, more beauteous

....

than the picture. . . . . Sir, I shall, by the grace of God, wait upon you to-morrow, and do the office you require ; and shall hope that your little one may receive blessings, according to the heartiness of the prayers which I shall then and after make for him."

Taylor to Evelyn, May 12, 1658.".... Sir, I am well pleased with the pious meditations, and the extracts of a religious spirit which I read in your excellent letter. I can say nothing at present but this, that I hope in a short progression you will be wholly immerged in the delights and joys of religion, and as I perceive your relish and gust of the world goes off continually, so you will be invested with new capacities, and entertained with new appetites."

We meet with several other letters from Taylor to Evelyn, after these, but the replies of Evelyn are lost. It is pleasing however to observe how high a value Taylor sets upon his friend's prayers; thus in one letter he says,"I beg of you to assist me with your prayers, and to obtain of God for me that I may arrive to that height of love and union with God, which is given to all those souls who are very dear to God." Several of these letters were written from the north of Ireland, where Jeremy Taylor had accepted a lectureship, in part through the influence and advice of Mr. Evelyn. But soon after the Restoration, all vestiges of their correspondence are at an end.

Mr. Evelyn's consolatory letter (Dec. 15, 1656,) to his brother George, on the death of a son, affords proof that the gospel had taught him in what spirit afflictions ought to be received. He confesses that "there is cause of sadness;" he acknowledges that "it were as well impiety as stupidity to be totally without natural affection; but

we must remember withal," he says, "that we grieve not as persons without hope: lest while we sacrifice to our passions [strong feelings] we be found to offend against God, and by indulging an over-kind nature, redouble the loss, and lose our recompense. Children are such blossoms as every trifling wind de-flowers; and to be disordered at their fall, were to be fond of certain troubles, but the most uncertain comforts; whilst the store of the more mature, which God has left you, invite both your resignation and your gratitude. So extraordinary prosperity as you have hitherto been encircled with, was indeed to be suspected; nor may he think to bear all his sails, whose vessel (like yours) has been driven by the highest gale of felicity..... God has suffered this for your exercise; seek then as well your consolation in his rod as in his staff. Are you offended that it has pleased Him to snatch your pretty babes from the infinite contingencies of so perverse an age, in which there is so little temptation to live? At least consider that your pledges are but gone a little before you; and that a part of you has taken possession of the inheritance which you must one day enter, if ever you will be happy. Brother, when I reflect on the loss, as it concerns our family in general, I could recal my own, and mingle my tears with you (for I have also lost some very dear to me); but when I consider the necessity of submitting to the Divine arrests, I am ready to dry them again, and be silent. There is nothing of us perished, but deposited; and say not that they might have come later to their destiny: it is no small happiness to be happy quickly..... But I have now done with the philosopher, and will dismiss you with the divine. Brother, be not ignorant concerning them which are asleep, that you sorrow not, even as others which have no hope; for if we believe that Jesus

died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. They are the words of St. Paul, and I can add nothing to them.... Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”

About a year after, he had occasion to avail himself of the same store of divine consolation. To the death of one child he refers in the above letter, and the beginning of the year 1658 was darkened with sorrow by the loss of two more, one of whom was a child of great promise. His Diary records the following particulars relative to this afflictive dispensation:

1658, 27 Jan.-“ After six fits of a quartan ague, with which it pleased God to visit him, died my dear son Richard, to our inexpressible grief and affliction; five years and three days old only, but at that tender age a prodigy for wit and understanding; for beauty of body a very angel; for endowment of mind, of incredible and rare hopes. To give only a little taste of some of them, and thereby glory to God, who out of the mouths of babes and infants does sometimes perfect his praises ;-at two years and a half old, he could perfectly read any of the English, Latin, French, or Gothic letters, pronouncing the three first languages exactly. He had before the fifth year, or in that year, not only skill to read most written hands, but to decline all the nouns, conjugate the verbs regular, and most of the irregular; learned out Puerilis, got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and vice versâ, construe and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes, and made considerable progress in Comenius's Janua; began himself to write legily, and had a strong passion for Greek. The number