counsel. Against the communion, especially, he endeavours that Janus's temple be shut in the whole parish, and that all be made friends.

XVI. He is never plaintiff in any suit but to be right's defendant.—If his dues be detained from him, he grieves more for his parishioners' bad conscience than his own damage. He had rather suffer ten times in his profit, than once in his title, where not only his person, but posterity, is wronged; and then he proceeds fairly and speedily to a trial, that he may not vex and weary others, but right himself. During his suit he neither breaks off nor slacks offices of courtesy to his adversary; yea, though he loseth his suit, he will not also lose his charity. Chiefly he is respectful to his patron; that as he presented him freely to his living, so he constantly presents his patron in his prayers to God.

XVII. He is moderate in his tenets and opinions.—Not that he gilds over lukewarmness in matters of moment with the title of "discretion; " but, withal, he is careful not to entitle violence, in indifferent and inconcerning matters, to be zeal. Indeed, men of extraordinary tallness, though otherwise little deserving, are made porters to lords; and those of unusual littleness are made ladies' dwarfs: whilst men of moderate stature may want masters. Thus many, notorious for extremities, may find favourers to prefer them; whilst moderate men in the middle truth may want any to advance them. But what saith the apostle ?" If in this life only we had hope, we are of all men the most miserable." (1 Cor. xv. 19.)

XVIII. He is sociable and willing to do any courtesy for his neighbour-ministers.—He willingly communicates his knowledge unto them. Surely, the gifts and graces of Christians lay in common, till base envy made the first enclosure. He neither slighteth his inferiors, nor repineth at those who in parts and credit are above him. He loveth the company of his neighbour-ministers. Sure, as ambergris is nothing so sweet in itself, as when it is compounded with other things; so both godly and learned men are gainers by communicating themselves to their neighbours.

XIX. He is careful in the discreet ordering of his own family.—A good minister, and a good father, may well agree together. When a certain Frenchman came to visit Melancthon, he found him in his stove, with one hand dandling his child in the swaddling clouts, and in the other hand holding a book and reading it. Our minister also is as hospitable as his estate will permit, and makes every alms two, by his cheerful giving it. He loveth also to live in a well repaired house, that he may serve God therein more cheerfully. A clergyman who built his house from the ground wrote in it this counsel to his successor :

"If thou dost find

An house built to thy mind
Without thy cost,

Serve thou the more
God and the poor;

My labour is not lost."

XX. Lying on his death-bed, he bequeaths to each of his parishioners his precepts and example for a legacy.—And they, in requital, erect every one a monument for him in their hearts. He is so far from that base jealousy that his memory should be outshined by a brignter successor, and from that wicked desire that his people may find his worth by the worthlessness of him that succeeds, that he doth heartily pray to God to provide them a better pastor after his decease. As for outward estate, he commonly lives in too bare pasture to die fat. It is well if he hath gathered any flesh, being more in blessing than bulk.

IT has been objected to Milton that in his 'Lycidas' he enumerates among "vernal flowers" many of those which are the offspring of Midsummer, and of a still more advanced geason. The passage to which the objection applies is the following:

"Ye Valleys low, where the mild whispers use
Of shades, and wanton winds, and gushing brooks,
On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely looks,
Throw hither all your quaint enamell'd eyes,
That on the green turf suck the honied showers,
And purple all the ground with vernal flowers.
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak'd with jet,
The glowing violet,

The musk-rose, and the well-attir'd woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears:
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,

And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,

To strow the laureat hearse where Lycid lies."

A little consideration will show that Milton could distinguish between the flowers of Spring and the flowers of Summer. The "Sicilian Muse" is to "call the vales, and bid them hither cast their bells, and flow'rets of a thousand hues." There were not only to be cast the "quaint enamell'd eyes" of "vernal flowers," but "every flower that sad embroidery wears;" or, in the still clearer language of the original manuscript of the poem, "every bud that sorrow's livery wears." The "vernal flowers" were to indicate the youth of Lycidas, the flowers of "sorrow's livery" were emblems of his untimely death. The intention of Milton is distinctly to be traced in his first conception of the passage. After the "1athe [early] primrose," we have,

"And that sad flower that strove

To write his own woes on the vermeil grain."

This is the hyacinth, the same as "the tufted crow-toe." He proceeds with more of sorrow's livery

"Next add Narcissus, that still weeps in vain."

Then come "the woodbine," and "the pansy freak'd with jet." In the original passage "the musk-rose" is not found at all. Milton's strewments for the bier of Lycidas, we hold, are not confined to vernal flowers, and therefore it is unnecessary to elevate Shakspere at the expense of Milton: "While Milton and the other poets had strung together in their descrip. tions the blossoms of Spring and the flowers of Summer, Shakspere has placed in one group those only which may be found in bloom at the same time." The writer alludes to the celebrated passage in the Winter's Tale,' where Perdita, at the summer sheep-shearing, • Patterson on the Insects mentioned by Shakspere.

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bestows the "flowers of middle summer upon her guests "of middle age," and wishes for "some flowers o' the spring" that might become the "time of day" of her fairest virgin friends:

"O, Proserpina,

For the flowers, now, that, frighted, thou lett'st fall

From Dis's waggon! daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty; violets, dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,
The flower-de-luce being one!
To make you garlands of."

O! these I lack

SHAKSPERE.

This is indeed poetry founded upon the most accurate observation-the perfect combination of elegance and truth.

The exquisite simplicity of our first great poet's account of his love for the daisy may well follow Shakspere's spring garland. Rarely could he move from his books; no game could attract him; but when the flowers began to spring,

"Farewell my book and my devotion."

Above all the flowers in the mead he loved most

"these flow'rés white and red,

Such that men callen Daisies in our town;
To them have I so great affection,
As I said erst, when comen is the May,
That in my bed there daweth me no day
That I n'am up and walking in the mead
To see this flow'r against the sunné spread,
When it upriseth early by the morrow;

That blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow;
So glad am I when that I have presénce

Of it, to doen it all réverence."

CHAUCER.

Chaucer welcomes the "eye of the day" when "the month of May is comen." Another true poet has immortalized that solitary mountain daisy that he turned down with his plough on a cold April morning:

"Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flow'r,
Thou's met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem.

To spare thee now is past my pow'r,
Thou bonnie gem.

Alas! it's no thy neboor sweet,
The bonnie lark, companion meet!
Bonding thee 'mang the dewy weet!

Wi' speckl'd breast,

When upward springing, blythe, to greet
The purpling east.

Cauld blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early, humble birth;
Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth
Amid the storm,
Scarce rear'd above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

The flaunting flow'rs our gardens yield,
High shelt'ring woods and wa's maun shield,
But thou, beneath the random bield
O' clod or stane,
Adorns the histic stibble-field,
Unseen, alane.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,
Thy suawy bosom sunward spread,
Thou lifts thy unassuming head

In humble guise;

But now the share uptcars thy bed,
And low thou lies!

Such is the fate of artless Maid,
Sweet flow'ret of the rural shade!
By love's simplicity betray'd

And guileless trust,
Till she, like thee, all soil'd, is laid
Low i' the dust.

Such is the fate of simple Bard,

On life's rough ocean luckless starr'd!
Unskilful he to note the card

Of prudent lore,

Till billows rage, and gales blow hard
And whelm him o'er!

Such fate to suffering worth is given,
Who long with wants and woes has striv'n,
By human pride or cunning driv'n
To mis'ry's brink,
Till wrench'd of ev'ry stay but Heav'n,
He, ruin'd, sink!

Ev'n thou who mourn'st the Daisy's fate,
That fate is thine-no distant date;
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate,
Fuil on thy bloom,

Till, crush'd beneath the furrow's weight,
Shall be thy doom!

ROBERT HERRICK is, in his quaint way, a master of his art :—

"Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun

Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the even-song;

And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.

Flowers and love are naturally associated:

BURNS.

We have short time to stay, as you,

We have as short a spring;

As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or any thing:

As

We die

your hours do, and dry

Away,

Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning dew,
Ne'er to be found again.'

"Sweet violets, Love's paradise, that spread
Your gracious odours, which you couched bear
Within your palie faces,

Upon the gentle wing of some calm-breathing wind,
That plays amidst the plain,

If by the favour of propitious stars you gain

Such grace as in my ladie's bosom place to find,

Be proud to touch those places !

And when her warmth your moisture forth doth wear,
Whereby her dainty parts are sweetly fed,
Your honours of the flowrie meads I pray,

You pretty daughters of the earth and sun,

With mild and sweetly breathing straight display

My bitter sighs, that have my heart undone ! "

HERRICK.

RALEIGH.

Another of "the banished minds," has a love simile for the small flower bursting its 66 frosty prison:"-

"All as the hungry winter-starved earth,

Where she by nature labours towards her birth,

Still as the day upon the dark world creeps,
One blossom forth after another peeps,

Till the small flower, whose root is now unbound,
Get from the frosty prison of the ground,

Spreading the leaves unto the powerful noon,
Deck'd in fresh colours, smiles upon the sun.
Never unquiet care lodge in that breast

Where but one thought of Rosamond did rest.”

DRAYTON.

But there are loftier feelings associated with flowers. Love, in some poetical minds, rises into devotion to the Great Source of all beauty and joy. Never were Spring-flowers the parents of holier thoughts than are found in this poem of HERBERT:

"How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean

Are thy returns! ev'n as the flow'rs in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,

The late past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away like snow in May;

As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivel'd heart
Could have recover'd greenness ?

It was gone

Quite under ground, as flow'rs depart

To see their mother-root, when they have blown ;
Where they, together, all the hard weather,

Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are thy wonders, Lord of power!
Killing, and quick'ning, bringing down to hell,
And up to heaven, in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.

We say amiss, 'This, or that, is ;'
Thy word is all; if we could spell.

Oh, that I once past changing were;

Fast in thy Paradise, where no flow'r can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,

Off'ring at heav'n, growing and groaning thither:
Nor doth my flower want a spring show'r;

My sins and I joining together.

But, while I grow in a straight line

Still upwards bent, as if heav'n were mine own,

Thy anger comes, and I decline.

What frost to that? What pole is not the zone

Where all things burn, when thou dost turn,

And the least frown of thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again :
After so many deaths I live and write :
I once more smell the dew and rain ;
And relish versing. O my only light,
It cannot be that I am he,
On whom thy tempests fell all night!

These are thy wonders, Lord of love !
To make us see we are but flow'rs that glide.
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;
Who would be more, swelling through store.
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.”

HERBERT