dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head and broke its stalk, and at night having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces."

"The sun approaching towards the gates of the morning, first opening a little eye of heaven, and sending away the spirits of darkness, and giving light to a cock, and calling up the lark to matins, and by-and-bye gilding the fringes of a cloud, peeping over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked the brow of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God?"

"For so doth the humble ivy creep at the foot of the oak, and leans upon its lowest base, and begs shade and protection, and to grow under its branches, and to give and take mutual refreshment, and pay a friendly influence for a mighty patronage; and they grow and dwell together, and are the most remarkable of friends and married pairs of all the leafy nation."

It is easy, when we read such swallow-flights of poetical expression, to understand why Mason called Jeremy Taylor "the Shakespeare of English prose ;" and why Mr. Lecky, with much more felicity, has compared his style to "a deeply-murmuring sea with the sunlight on it."

The love of nature which filled his soul rejoiced in "the breath of heaven, not willing to disturb the softest stalk of a violet;" in "the gentle wind shaking the leaves with a refreshment and cooling shade;" in "the rainbow, half made of the glory of light, and half of the moisture of a cloud;" and in "the fountain, swelling over the green

turf." In the Divine handiwork he found a continual inspiration of praises and thanksgiving; and he was one of the very first of our writers who endeavoured to lead the soul through Creation up to Creation's God: "Let everything you see represent to your spirit the excellency and the power of God, and let your conversation with the creatures lead you unto the Creator; and so shall your actions be done more frequently with an eye to God's presence, by your often seeing Him in the glass of the creation. In the face of the sun you may see God's beauty; in the fire you may feel His heart warming; in the water His gentleness to refresh you; "it is the dew of heaven that makes your field give you bread."

In the tranquil retirement of Golden Grove Taylor's genius reached its maturity. It was there that he wrote his "Holy Living and Holy Dying," his "Life of Christ," some of his finest "Sermons," his "Treatise on the Real Presence," and the volume of devotional exercises which he affectionately entitled "The Golden Grove." And now we may pause to glance at the distinctive marks of Jeremy Taylor as a divine, a writer, a preacher, and a theologian. In all four capacities we are struck by the fulness and solidity of his thought, the breadth of his observation, the living nature of his sympathies, as well as by those minor but special characteristics, the richness of his imagery and the opulence of his diction. In all he exhibited the same well-balanced judgment, the same judicious avoidance of extremes; the moderate wisdom which sometimes induced him, after the utterance of a strong statement, to qualify it in a later work. In all, we observe the same liberal and enlightened spirit, and the same large-souled disregard of forms and formularies when

set against the eternal verities. We have already commented on his style, in which "the mind, the music" that inform it compel our warmest admiration. When every deduction has been made that a cold and severe critic can claim-when we have admitted his occasional exuberance, the over-amplitude of his images, the infrequent lapse into what, to our modern taste, seems grotesque and objectionable it still remains true that he is unquestionably one of the three or four greatest masters of English prose. His style, more animated and plastic than that of Gibbon, is more sweeping and harmonious than that of Hooker, more majestic than that of South. While Sir Thomas Browne approaches nearer to him than any other writer, he falls short of Taylor in the matter of picturesque allusiveness and poetical sensibility. To this allusiveness we have not failed to direct the reader's attention. From the accumulated treasures of reading, observation, experience, and reflection he draws without stint image and simile, metaphor and illustration. Not less conspicuous is the grandeur of his conceptions, which are those of a man living always in the pure serene air of spiritual thought. The greatest ideas were his ordinary food. He dealt with them as freely and easily as smaller minds deal with their paltry commonplaces. Pathos, terror, sublimity, tenderness-he struck each chord of the manifold lyre with even skill. He handled with equal felicity the radiant pencil of a Claude Lorraine and the powerful brush of a Salvator Rosa. He could paint scenes with the graciousness of a Spenser or the lurid power of a Dante.

We must venture on a few more quotations in illustration of this many-sidedness :

"All the successions of time, all the changes of nature, all the varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to every man and to every creature, doth preach one funeral sermon, and calls us to look and see how the old sexton Time throws up the earth and digs a grave, where we must lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our bodies, till they rise again in a fair or an intolerable eternity."

"When persecution hurls a man down from a large fortune to an even one, or from thence to the face of the earth, or from thence to the grave, a good man is but preparing for a crown, and the tyrant does but just knock off the fetters of the soul, the manacles of passion and desire, sensual lives and lower appetites; and if God suffers him to finish the persecution, then he can but dismantle the soul's prison, and let the soul fly to the mountains of rest. And all the intermediate evils are but like the Purian punishments: the executioner tore off their hairs, and rent their silken mantles, and discomposed their curious dressings, and lightly touched the skin; yet the offender cried out with most bitter exclamations, while his fault was expiated with a ceremony and without blood. So does God to His servants: He rends their upper garments, and strips them of their unnecessary wealth, and ties them to physic and salutary discipline; and they cry out under usages which have nothing but the outward sum and opinion of evil, not the real substance."

"The river that runs slow and creeps by the banks, and begs leave of every turf to let it pass is drawn into little hollownesses, and spends itself in smaller portions, and dies with diversion; but when it runs with vigorousness

and a full stream, and breaks down every obstacle, making it even as its own brow, it stays not to be tempted by little avocations, and to creep into holes, but runs into the sea through full and useful channels. So is a man's prayer; if it moves upon the pit of an abated appetite, it wanders into the society of every trifling accident, and stays at the corners of the fancy, and talks with every object it meets, and cannot arrive at heaven; but when it is carried upon the wings of passion and strong desires, a swift motion and a hungry appetite, it passes on through all the intermediate regions of clouds, and stays not till it dwells at the foot of the Throne, where Mercy sits, and thence sends holy showers of refreshment. I deny not but some little drops will turn aside, and fall from the full channel by the weakness of the banks and hollowness of the passage; but the main course is still continued; and although the most earnest and devout persons feel and complain of some looseness of spirit and unfixed attentions, yet their love and their desire secure the main portions, and make the prayer to be strong, fervent, and effectual."

"Because friendship is that by which the world is most blessed and receives most good, it ought to be chosen among the worthiest persons, that is, amongst those that can do greatest benefit to each other; and though in equal worthiness I may choose by my eye, or ear, that is, into the consideration of the essential I may take in also the accidental and extrinsic worthinesses; yet I ought to give everyone their just value; when the internal beauties are equal, thou shalt help to weigh down the scale, and I will love a worthy friend that can delight me as well as profit me, rather than him who cannot delight me at all,