to do!

had her for his son and heir. Of the contrary part, King Henry VI. did make means for Edmund his brother, then the Earl of Richmond. She, which as then was not fully nine years old, doubtful in her mind what she were best to do, asked counsel of an old gentlewoman, whom she much loved and trusted, which did advise her to commend herself to St. Nicholas, the patron and helper of all true maidens, and to beseech him to put in her mind what she were best This counsel she followed, and made her prayer so full often, but specially that night, when she should the morrow after make answer of her mind determinately. A marvellous thing!-the same night, as I have heard her tell many a time, as she lay in prayer, calling upon St. Nicholas, whether sleeping or waking she could not assure, but about four of the clock in the morning, one appeared unto her, arrayed like a bishop, and naming unto her Edmund, bade take him unto her husband. And so by this means she did incline her mind unto Edmund the king's brother, and Earl of Richmond, by whom she was made mother of the king that dead is (whose soul God pardon), and grand-dame to our sovereign lord King Henry VIII., which now, by the grace of God, governeth the realm. So what by lineage, what by affinity, she had thirty kings and queens within the four degree of marriage unto her, besides earls, marquisses, dukes, and princes. And thus much we have spoken of her nobleness... prayer, every day at her uprising, which commonly was not long after five of the clock, she began certain devotions; and so after them, with one of her gentlewomen, the matins of our lady, which kept her tothen she came into her closet, where then with her chaplain, she said also matins of the day; and after that daily heard four or five masses upon her knees; so continuing in her prayers and devotions unto the hour of dinner, which of the eating day was ten of the clock, and upon the fasting day eleven. After dinner full truly she would go to her stations to three altars daily; daily her dirges and commendations she would say. and her even songs before supper, both of the day and of our lady, beside other many prayers and psalters of David throughout the year; and at night before she went to bed, she failed not to resort unto her chapel, and there a large quarter of an hour to occupy her devotions. No marvel, though all this long time her kneeling was to her painful, and so painful that many times it caused in her back pain and disease. And yet nevertheless, daily when she was in health she failed not to say the crown of our lady, which after the manner of Rome containeth sixty

In

and three aves, and at every ave to make a kneeling. As for meditation, she had divers books in French, wherewith she would occupy herself when she was weary of prayer. Wherefore divers she did translate out of the French into English. Her marvellous weeping they can bear witness of which herebefore have heard her confession, which be divers and many, and at many seasons in the year, lightly every third day. Can also record the same that were present at any time she was houshilde [received the communion], which was full nigh a dozen times every year, what floods of tears there issued forth of her eyes!

NICCOLO DI BERNARDO
MACCHIAVELLI,

a famous Italian, diplomatist, statesman, and author, was born at Florence, 1469, and died there, 1527.

"We doubt whether any name in literary history be so generally odious as that of the man whose character and writings we now propose to consider. The terms in which he is commonly described would seem to import that he was the ambition and revenge, the original inventor of Tempter, the Evil Principle, the discoverer of perjury, and that before the publication of his fatal Prince, there had never been a hypocrite, a tyrant, or a traitor, a simulated virtue, or a convenient crime. The Church of Rome has pronounced his works accursed things. Nor have our own countrymen been backward in testifying their opinion of his merits. Out of his surname they have coined an epithet for a knave, and out of his Christian name a synonyme for the Devil.

...

To a modern statesman the form of the Dis

courses may appear to be puerile. In truth Livy is not an historian on whom implicit reliance can be placed, even in cases where he must have possessed considerable means of information. And the first decade, to which Macchiavelli has confined himself, is scarcely entitled to more credit than our Chronicle of British Kings who reigned before the Roman invasion. But the commentator is indebted to Livy for little more than a few texts which he might as easily have extracted from the Vulgate or the Decameron. The whole train of thought is original."-LORD MACAULAY: Edinburgh Review, March, 1827, and in his works, complete, 1866, 8 vols. 8vo, v. 46, 75. MACCHIAVELLI'S DISCOURSE, "HOW HE THAT WOULD SUCCEED MUST ACCOMMODATE TO THE TIMES."

I have many times considered with myself that the occasion of every man's good or bad fortune consists in his correspondence and accommodation with the times.

We see some people acting furiously, and with an impetus; others with more slowness and caution; and because both in the one and the other they are immoderate, and do not observe their just terms, therefore both

The humorous Saxon scorn and invective with which he lashes the vices of the times are, perhaps, their most noted characteristics; but they are also remarkable for their clear and homely statements of Christian doctrine, and the faithfulness with which they exhibit the simple ideal of the Christian life, in contrast to all hypocrisies and pretensions of religion. In all things,-in his sermons, in his reforms, in his character,-Latimer was

eminently practical."-REV. JOHN TULLOCH, D.D., Principal of St. Mary's College, St. Andrews. Imperial Dict. of Univ. Biog., v. 115.

THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM.

I pray you to whom was the nativity of Christ first opened? To the bishops or great lords which were at that time at Bethlehem? Or to those jolly damsels with their fardingales, with their round-abouts, or with their bracelets? No, no: they had too many lets to trim and dress themselves, so that they could have no time to hear of the nativity of Christ; their minds were so occupied otherwise that they were not allowed to hear of him. But his nativity was revealed first to the shepherds, and it was revealed unto them in the night-time, when every body was at rest; then they heard this joyful tidings of the Saviour of the world; for these shepherds were keeping their sheep in the night season from the wolf and other beasts, and from the fox; for the sheep in that country do lamb two times in the year, and therefore it was needful for the sheep to have a shepherd to keep them. And here note the diligence of these shepherds; for whether their sheep were their own, or whether they were servants, I cannot tell, for it is not expressed in the book; but it is most like they were servants, and their masters had put them in trust to keep their sheep.

Now, if these shepherds had been deceitful fellows, that when their masters had put them in trust to keep their sheep they had been drinking in the alehouse all night, as some of our servants do nowadays, surely the angel had not appeared unto them to have told them this great joy and good tidings. And here all servants may learn by these shepherds to serve truly and diligently unto their masters; in what business soever they are set to do, let them be painful and diligent, like as Jacob was unto his master Laban. Oh what a painful, faithful, and trusty man was he! He was day and night at his work, keeping his sheep truly, as he was put in trust to do; and when any chance happened that any thing was lost he made it good and restored it again of his own. So likewise was Eleazarus a painful man, a faithful and trusty servant. Such a servant was Joseph, in Egypt, to his master Potiphar.

So likewise was Daniel unto his master

the king. But I pray you where are those servants nowadays? Indeed I fear me there be but very few of such faithful servants. Now these shepherds, I say, they watch the whole night, they attend upon their vocation, they do according to their calling, they keep their sheep, they run not hither and thither, spending the time in vain, and neglecting their office and calling. No, they did not so. Here, by these shepherds, men may learn to attend upon their offices and callings. I would wish that clergymen, the curates, parsons, and vicars, the bishops, and all other spiritual persons, would learn this lesson by these poor shep herds, which is this, to abide by their flocks and by their sheep, to tarry amongst them, to be careful over them; not to run hither and thither after their own pleasure, but to tarry by their benefices and feed their sheep with the food of God's word, and to keep hospitality, and so to feed them, both soul and body. For I tell you, these poor, unlearned shepherds shall condemn many a stout and great-learned clerk: for these shepherds had but the care and charge over brute beasts, and yet were diligent to keep them, and to feed them, and the other have the care over God's lambs, which he bought with the death of his son; and yet they are so careless, so negligent, so slothful over them; yea, and the most part intendeth not to feed the sheep, but they long to be fed of the sheep; they seek only their own pastimes, they care for no more. But what said Christ to Peter? What said he? Petre, amas me? (Peter, lovest thou me?) Peter made answer, Yes. Then feed my sheep. And so the third time he commanded Peter to feed his sheep. But our clergymen do declare plainly that they love not Christ, because they feed not his flock. If they had earnest love to Christ, no doubt they would show their love, they would feed his sheep.

Latimer's Sermons.

such mercy unto any of my friends; and God bless all my posterity from such pardons.' The scaffold had been awkwardly erected, and shook as he placed his foot upon the ladder. 'See me safe up,' he said to Kingston; for my coming down I can shift for myself. He began to speak to the people, but the sheriff begged him not to proceed, and he contented himself with asking for their prayers, and desiring them to bear witness for him that he died in the faith of the holy Catholic Church, and a faithful servant of God and the king. He then repeated the Miserere psalm on his knees; and when he had ended, and had risen, the executioner, with an emotion which promised ill for the manner in which his part in the matter would be accomplished, begged his forgiveness. More kissed him. Thou art to do me the greatest benefit that I can receive,' he said. Pluck up thy spirit, man, and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short. Take heed therefore that thou strike not awry for saving of thine honesty.' The executioner offered to tie his eyes. I will cover them myself,' he said; and binding them in a cloth, which he had brought with him, he knelt and laid his head upon the block. The fatal stroke was about to fall, when he signed for a moment's delay, while he moved aside his beard. Pity that should be cut,' he murmured, that has not committed treason.', With which strange words, the strangest perhaps ever uttered at such a time, the lips most famous through Europe for eloquence and wisdom closed forever."-FROUDE: History of Europe, ii., chap.

ix.

THE UTOPIAN IDEA OF PLEASURE; FROM BISHOP BURNET'S TRANSLATION OF MORE'S UTOPIA, Lond., 1684, 8vo.

They think it is an evidence of true wisdom for a man to pursue his own advantages as far as the laws allow it. They account it piety to prefer the public good to one's private concerns. But they think it unjust for a man to seek for his own pleasure by snatching another man's pleasures from him. And, on the contrary, they think it a sign of a gentle and good soul for a man to dispense with his own advantage for the good of others; and that by so doing a good man finds as much pleasure one way as he parts with another: for, as he may expect the like from others when he may come to need it, so, if that should fail him, yet the sense of a good action, and the reflections that one makes on the love and gratitude of those whom he has obliged, gives the mind more pleasure than the body could have found in that from which it had restrained itself. They are also persuaded that God will make up the loss of those small pleasures with a vast and endless joy, of which religion does casily convince a good soul. Thus, upon an inquiry into the whole matter, they reckon that all our actions, and even all our virtues, terminate in pleasure, as in our chief end and greatest happiness; and they call every motion or state, either of body or

mind, in which nature teaches us to delight, a pleasure. And thus they cautiously limit pleasure only to those appetites to which nature leads us; for they reckon that nature leads us only to those delights to which reason as well as sense carries us, and by which we neither injure any other person nor let go greater pleasures for it, and which do not draw troubles on us after them: but they look upon those delights which men, by a foolish though common mistake, call pleasure, as if they could change the nature of things, as well as the use of words, as things that not only do not advance our happiness, but do rather obstruct it very much, because they do so entirely possess the minds of those that once go into them with a false notion of pleasure, that there is no room left for truer and purer pleasures.

There are many things that in themselves have nothing that is truly delighting: on the contrary, they have a good deal of bitterness in them; and yet by our perverse appetites after forbidden objects, are not only ranked among the pleasures, but are made even the greatest designs of life. Among those who pursue these sophisticated pleasures they reckon those whom I mentioned before, who think themselves really the better for having fine clothes, in which they think they are doubly mistaken, both in the opinion that they have of their clothes, and in the opinion that they have of themselves; for if you consider the use of clothes, why should a fine thread be thought better than a coarse one? And yet that sort of men, as if they had some real advantages beyond others, and did not owe it wholly to their mistakes, look big, and seem to fancy themselves to be the more valuable on that account, and imagine that a respect is due to them for the sake of a rich garment, to which they would not have pretended if they had been more meanly clothed; and they resent it as an affront if that respect is not paid them.... Another sort of bodily pleasure is that which consists in a quiet and good constitution of body, by which there is an entire healthiness spread over all the parts of the body not allayed with any disease. This, when it is free from all mixture of pain, gives an inward pleasure of itself, even though it should not be excited by any external and delighting object; and although this pleasure does not so vigorously affect the sense, nor act so strongly upon it, yet as it is the greatest of all pleasures, so almost all the Utopians reckon it the foundation and basis of all the other joys of life; since this alone makes one's state of life to be easy and desirable; and when this is wanting, a man is really capable of no other pleasure. They look upon indolence and freedom from pain,

if it does not rise from a perfect health, to be a state of stupidity rather than of pleasure. There has been a controversy in this matter very narrowly canvassed among them: Whether a firm and entire health could be called a pleasure or not? Some have thought that there was no pleasure but that which was excited by some sensible motion in the body. But this opinion has been long run down among them, so that now they do almost all agree in this, that health is the greatest of all bodily pleasures; and that, as there is a pain in sickness, which is as opposite in its nature to pleasure as sickness itself is to health, so they hold that health carries a pleasure along with it. And if any should say that sickness is not really a pain, but that it only carries a pain along with it, they look upon that as a fetch of subtility that does not much alter the matter. So they think it is all one whether it be said that health is in itself a pleasure, or that it begets a pleasure, as fire gives heat, so it be granted that all those whose health is entire have a true pleasure in it;. and they reason thus: What is the pleasure of eating, but that a man's health which had been weakened, does, with the assistance of food, drive away hunger, and so recruiting itself, recovers its former vigour? And being thus refreshed, it finds a pleasure in that conflict. And if the conflict is pleasure, the victory must yet breed a greater pleasure, except we will fancy that it becomes stupid as soon as it has obtained that which it pursued, and so does neither know nor rejoice in its own welfare.

If it is said that health cannot be felt, they absolutely deny that: for what man is in health that does not perceive it when he is awake? Is there any man that is so dull and stupid as not to acknowledge that he feels a delight in health? And what is delight but another name for pleasure?

But of all pleasures, they esteem those to be the most valuable that lie in the mind; and the chief of these are those that arise out of true virtue, and the witness of a good conscience. They account health the chief pleasure that belongs to the body; for they think that the pleasure of eating and drinking, and all the other delights of the body, are only so far desirable as they give or maintain health. But they are not pleasant in themselves, otherwise than as they resist those impressions that our natural infirmity is still making upon us; and as a wise man desires rather to avoid diseases than take physic, and to be freed from pain rather than to find ease by remedies, so it were a more desirable state not to need this sort of pleasure than to be obliged to indulge it. And if any man imagines that there is a real hap

piness in this pleasure, he must then confess that he would be the happiest of all men if he were to lead his life in a perpetual hunger, thirst, and itching, and by consequence in perpetual eating, drinking, and scratching himself; which any one may easily see would he not only a base, but a miserable state of life. These are, indeed, the lowest of pleasures, and the least pure; for we can never relish them but where they are mixed with the contrary pains. The pain of hunger must give us the pleasure of eating; and here the pain outbalances the pleasure; and as the pain is more vehement, so it lasts much longer: for, as it is upon us before the pleasure comes, so it does not cease but with the pleasure that extinguishes it, and that goes off with it: so that they think none of those pleasures are to be valued but as they are necessary. Yet they rejoice in them, and with due gratitude acknowledge the tenderness of the great author of nature, who has planted in us appetites, by which these things that are necessary for our preservation are likewise made pleasant to us. For how miserable a thing would life be, if these daily diseases of hunger and thirst were to be carried off by such bitter drugs as we must use for those diseases that return seldomer upon us!

GEORGE CAVENDISH, gentleman-usher to Cardinal Wolsey, and subsequently to Henry VIII., died 1557, left in MS. a life of his first-named master, entitled, "The Negotiations of Woolsey, the Great Cardinal of England," Lond., 1641, 4to.

...

"There is a sincere and impartial adherence to truth, a reality, in Cavendish's narrative, which bespeaks the confidence of his reader, and very much increases his pleasure. It is a work without pretension, but full of natural eloquence, devoid of the formality of a set rhetorical composition, unin which all biography and history of old time was spoiled by the affectation of that classical manner prescribed to be written, and which often divests such records of the attraction to be found in the conversational style of Cavendish. . . . Our great poet has literally followed him in several passages of his King Henry VIII., merely putting his language into verse. Add to this the historical importance of the work, as the only sure and authentic source of information upon many of the most interesting events of that reign; and from which all historians have largely drawn (through the secondary medium of Holinshed and Stowe, who adopted Cavendish's narrative), and its intrinsic value need not be more fully expressed."S. W. SINGER: The Life of Cardinal Wolsey, and Metrical Versions from the Original Autograph Manuscript, with Notes and other Illustrations. Chiswick, 1825, 2 vols. 8vo, 1. p. 50 copies.