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OUR CHRISTIAN CLASSICS.

JOHN OWEN.

It is Oxford two hundred years ago-Oxford in the days of the Roundheads-and we ask leave to introduce the reader to the resident chief of the University. Tall, and in the prime of life, with cocked hat and powdered hair, with lawn tops to his morocco boots, and with ribbons luxuriant at his knee, there is nothing to mark the Puritan-whilst in his easy unembarrassed movements and kindly-assuring air, there is all which bespeaks the gentleman; but, were it not for the reverences of obsequious beadles and the recognitions of respectful students, you would scarcely surmise the academic dignitary. That old-fashioned divine-his square cap and ruff surmounting the doctor's gown-with whom he shakes hands so cordially, is a Royalist and Prelatist, but withal the Hebrew Professor, and the most famous Orientalist in England, Dr Edward Pocock. From his little parish of Childry, where he passes for no Latiner," and is little prized, he has come up to deliver his Arabic lecture, and collate some Syriac manuscript, and watch the progress of the fig-trees and other rarities which he long since fetched from the Levant; and he feels not a little beholden to the Vice-Chancellor, who, when the Parliamentary triers had pronounced him incompetent, interfered

VOL. II.

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and retained him in his living. Passing the gate of Wadham, he meets the upbreaking of a little conventicle. That no treason has been transacting, nor any dangerous doctrine propounded, the guardian of the University has ample assurance in the presence of his very good friends, Dr Wallis the Savilian Professor, and Dr Wilkins the Protector's brother-in-law. The latter has published a Dissertation on the Moon and its Inhabitants, "with a Discourse concerning the Possibility of a Passage Thither;" and the former, a mighty mathematician, during the recent war had displayed a terrible ingenuity in deciphering the intercepted letters of the Royalists. companion is the famous physician, Dr Willis, in whose house, opposite the Vice-Chancellor's own door, the Oxford Prelatists daily assemble to enjoy the forbidden Prayer-book; and the youth who follows, building castles in the air, is Christopher Wren. This evening they had met to witness some experiments which the tall sickly gentleman in the velvet cloak had promised to shew them. The tall sickly gentleman is the Honourable Robert Boyle, and the instrument with which he has been amusing his brother sages, in their embryo Royal Society, is the newly invented air-pump. Little versant in their pursuits, though respectful to their genius, after mutual salutations, the divine passes on and pays an evening visit to his illustrious neighbour, Dr Thomas Goodwin. In his embroidered night-cap, and deep in the recesses of his dusky study, he finds the recluse old President of Magdalene; and they sit and talk together, and they pray together, till it strikes the hour of nine; and from the great Tom Tower a summons begins to sound, calling to Christ Church cloisters the hundred and one students of the old foundation. And returning to the Deanery, which Mary's cheerful management has brightened into a pleasant home, albeit her own and her little daughter's weeds are suggestive of recent sorrows, the Doctor dives into his library.

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