We may be thankful that the Church of England is, at this time, according to the prayer of her own true poet:..... For her defence, replenished with a band Cause should recur, which righteous Heaven avert! Of angry umpires, partial and unjust. Wordsworth's Excursions, p. 252. Increase of Nobles.-p. 212. Major Beake, in Richard Cromwell's Parliament, spoke thus upon the question of giving the Protector the power of creating peers. "You have no cause to fear the new nobility... Suppose the single person should nominate five hundred peers, or more, to grow up over us and overtop us, such a numerous nobility will rather strengthen your hands than his; for by experience we found the numerous nobility of King James was the destruction of his son. When King Charles began to multiply lords, they struck in with you, and deserted the king. "Though God in his providence hath taken away the nobility, yet what God doth providentially, he not always approves. That he did approve it, is not clear to me. To untie this knot, we may say he did not do it approvingly. I take the single person and the Commons as two scales, the House of Lords as the beam. Both scales are subject to factions, and tyranny, and extravagances. The beam is prudential. The power for seven hundred years transmitted to them, they have as much right to as the gentleman has to his cloak. Usage is a good right, if ancient. If nothing be right but what is natural, he hath not right to his victuals, his meat and drink: so that there is but a tantum non to make it natural. It is so twisted with the Constitution, that five hundred for one upon the poll, would be for a House of Lords. The Parliament might as well take away meum and tuum as a House of Lords."-Burton's Journal, iii. 362. Number of the House of Commons.—p. 235. This subject was incidentally noticed in the debates upon the union with Ireland. Mr. Grey observed that in the plan of Parliamentary reform, which he had brought forward, it was not proposed to increase the number of members; and that the plan proposed by Mr. Pitt went upon the principle of preserving the number the same, by extinguishing a number of boroughs, to balance the number of members that were to be introduced by a more popular election. (Parl. History, xxxv. p. 70-1.) "As to that number," said he, "which may be convenient for a deliberative assembly, I should consider 558, (that of the House before the Union,) a number as great as would be consistent with order. The human voice even may afford some criterion, as the number ought not to be greater than could be able to hear the discussion. It has rarely happened of late, indeed, that the attendance has been great, or that parties have been very nicely balanced; if, however, the attendance were to be regular, and an additional hundred members were to be in troduced, it would be quite impossible for you, Sir, with all that wisdom, dignity, and firmness by which you are distinguished, to preserve order amidst the conflict of nicely balanced parties." (Ib. 99.) He suggested, therefore, "that forty-four of the most decayed boroughs should be struck off, which would lead to a vacancy of eighty-eight members; that the ratio at which Ireland was to have one hundred members, should be preserved, which, for the remainder 478, would give 85 for that country."-Ib. 101. The gloss of Drusius upon a verse of St. James, (Mŋ πολλοὶ διδάσκαλοι γίνεσθε, αδελφοί με, iii. 1.) may here be remembered and applied; "Summa summarum; quo pauciores sunt magistri, eo melius agitur cum populo. Nam ut medicorum olim Cariam, ita doctorum et magistrorum nunc multitudo perdit rempublicam. Utinam vanus Quoted by Bishop Bull, vol. i. 139. sim!" Intellectual obliquity of vision.-p. 244. "There is a squint eye that looks side-long; to look upon riches and honours on the left hand, and long life here, on the right, is a squint eye. There is a squint eye that looks upwards and downwards; to look after God and Mammon is a squint eye. There are squint eyes that look upon one another; to look upon one's own beauty, or wisdom, or power, is a squint eye. The direct look is to look inward upon their own conscience; not with Nebuchadnezzar ; 'Is not this great Babylon which I have built by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?' but with David, Quid retribuam! for if thou look upon them with a clear eye, thou wilt see that though thou hast them, thou hast but found them,... thou hast them but by chance, by contingency, by fortune."-Donne's Sermons, lxx. p. 711. Clothmakers.-p. 249. "I hear say there is a certain cunning come up in mixing of wares. How say you, were it not a wonder to hear that Clothmakers should become Poticaries; . . yea, and as I hear say, in such a place whereas they have professed the Gospel, and the word of God most earnestly of a long time? See how busy the Devil is to slander the word of God! Thus the poor Gospel goeth to wreck. If his cloth be seventeen yards long, he will set him on a rack, and stretch him out with ropes, and rack him till the sinews shrink again, while he hath brought him to eighteen yards. When they have brought him to that perfection, they have a pretty feat to thick him again. He makes me a powder for it, and plays the Poticary; they call it flock-powder: they do so incorporate it to the cloth, that it is wonderful to consider; truly a good invention. Oh that so goodly wits should be so ill applied! they may well deceive the people, but they cannot deceive God. They were wont to make beds of flocks, and it was a good bed too: now they have turned flocks into powder to play the false thieves with it. O wicked Devil! what can he not invent to blaspheme God's word? These mixtures come of covetousness. They are plain theft. Woe worth that these flocks should slander the word of God: as He said to the Jews, the wine is mingled with water, so might he have said to us of this land, thy cloth is mingled with flock-powder."-Latimer. St. Paul's School.-p. 255. Upon this subject Erasmus speaks more fully in his Dialogue De Pronunciatione. Ursus. Proinde Joannes Coletus, vir æterná dignus memoria, quum templo divi Pauli scholam puerilem addidisset, nullâ curâ magis torquebatur, quam in quos ejus rei præfecturam delegaret. Episcopi judicant hanc rem indignam suá solicitudine. Scholasteres censibus recipiendis se potius quam scholæ curandæ datos arbitratur, et pulchre sibi videntur suo functi officio, si ludimagistros non deciment. In collegiis canonicorum fere semper deterior pars superat. Magistratus vel judicio carent, vel indulgent privatis affectibus. Leo. Quid tandem consilii reperit? Urs. Hominem conjugatum et liberis divitem scholæ præfecit: provisionem delegavit aliquot e civibus laicis, quorum probitatem habere sibi videbatur exploratam, ut ab his in hæredes proximos derivetur. Leo. Num eû providentiá securum reddidit? Urs. Minime; sed his aiebat sibi videri minimum esse periculi, ut tum habebant res humanæ. There is no profession which may more truly deserve to be called liberal, when carried on by a just and honourable man. -p. 256. A writer who has been condemned by Dryden to be held in worse remembrance than he deserved, has left this charac⚫ter of an English Merchant resident in foreign parts. "He is goes abroad with a stock of honour, as well as money, to traffick with and manage either bravely; being a master and not a slave to wealth, and such a master as honours it by commands, making it only to serve to noble ends. He neither sticks at trivial expense nor gain, nor |