short time, after some recollections, and upon his entire confidence in Him, to restore him to that serenity of mind and resignation of himself to the disposal and good pleasure of God, that they who conversed most with him could not discover the least murmur or impatience in him, or any unevenness in his conversations. He resolved to improve his understanding of the French language, not towards speaking it, the defect of which he found many conveniences in, but for the reading any books, and to learn the Italian: towards both which he made a competent progress, and had opportunity to buy or borrow any good books he desired to peruse." It was while here, also, that he began the narrative he has left us of his Life, and finished the first seven parts of it, coming down to the Restoration. He wrote, besides, a more ample Vindication of himself from the charges of the Commons; and several Essays and other miscellaneous compositions.

Before June, 1671, he had left Montpelier for Moulins, and there he remained till the end of April, 1674. On the 31st of March, 1671, he had lost his daughter, the Duchess of York; the grief he suffered from her death being greatly aggravated by her having died a Roman Catholic. Of four sons and as many daughters she had borne her husband, three of the sons and one daughter were already dead; the remaining son and another daughter followed in the course of the same year with their mother; and of the eight only two daughters, afterwards Queen Mary and Queen Anne, survived. Clarendon had also lost his wife just before his fall. At Moulins he was visited in June, 1671, by his second son Lawrence; and by him, when he returned to England, he sent a letter to the king, informing his majesty that he had completed his History, and entreating that " an old man who had served the crown above thirty years, in some trust, and with some acceptation," might be permitted to end his days, which could not be many, in his own country and in the society of his children. But to this moving appeal no answer appears to have been returned. Clarendon continued to reside at Moulins for

nearly three years longer; during which time he began the Continuation of his Life (which is three times the length of the previous part of the narrative), and wrote besides his View and Survey of Hobbes's Leviathan, an Historical Discourse on the Usurpations of the Papal Jurisdiction, a second volume of Essays, and other works. He also commenced the laying down of what he calls a method for the better disposing the history of England, that it may be more profitably and exactly communicated than it hath yet been ;" and, in short, to use his own words, "left so many papers of several kinds, and cut out so many pieces of work, that a man may conclude that he never intended to be idle."

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He still, nevertheless, fondly cherished the hope of being permitted to die in England. In the spring of 1674, he removed to Rouen; and thence in the end of August, after he had been reduced to great weakness by an attack of gout, he addressed letters to the king, the queen, and the Duke of York, pathetically beseeching leave to return to his native country. "Since it will be in nobody's power," he said, "long to keep me from dying, methinks the desiring a place to die in should not be thought a great presumption, nor unreasonable for me to beg leave to die in my own country, and among my own children." But his request was unheeded; and he died in Rouen on the 9th of December, in the same year. His eldest son, Lord Corabury, had been sent for, and was with him in his last moments. His body was brought over to England, and buried on the 4th of January, 1675, on the north side of Henry VII.'s Chapel, in Westminster Abbey. The male issue of his eldest son failed in Edward, third Earl of Clarendon, who died in 1723; but the present Earl of Darnley is descended from a daughter of that earl. Clarendon's second son, Lawrence, was created Earl of Rochester in 1683; and his son Henry, second Earl of Rochester, became fourth Earl of Clarendon on the death of his cousin; but both titles failed on his own death without male issue in 1753. The present Earl of Clarendon is descended from a daughter of this fourth

earl, who married William Capel, Earl of Essex, and whose daughter married Thomas Villiers, second son of William Earl of Jersey, who was created Baron Hyde of Hindon in 1756, and Earl of Clarendon in 1776.

The sketch that has been given of his eventful life will sufficiently indicate Clarendon's moral character, as well as his political course. The friends and enemies of the principles upon which he acted, or the side upon which he ranged himself, will naturally take different views of some parts of his conduct; extreme partizans may even see nothing in him to be blamed, or nothing to be admired; but, while it may be admitted that his system of ethics was to some extent conventional, a calm and candid examination will, we believe, acquit him of having acted upon any occasion in direct violation of what he considered to be the rule of right. Even in his behaviour at the time of his daughter's marriage, there may have been more of what he himself, at least, took for sincerity and real feeling, than of the acting, or overacting, which it must be confessed it looks so like even in his own relation. The very fact of his having recorded it is strong evidence that he did not suppose it would be thought discreditable. At any rate, on this and on some other occasions his position was a very difficult and perplexing one, and some allowance may reasonably be made for him. Nor ought we in judging of him to forget either the trying temptations of all kinds through which he had to pass, or the general moral character of the times in which he lived. Of many charges which have been brought against his integrity, we may safely say that no one has been substantiated; and he may be fairly characterized as having probably been upon the whole as honest a man as we have a right to expect that he should have been in the circumstances. He will, at least, stand a comparison with any other minister of the Restoration. Besides that his private character had never been sullied by any notorious vice, (and that in an age of so much vicious example), he certainly in the course of his very extraordinary fortunes displayed many high and admirable qualities. Even his

steady adherence to the cause to which he had attached himself throughout so many years of hopeless depression is something very fine, especially when viewed in contrast with the ungrateful return he met with for all his services and all his sacrifices. His literary reputation rests upon his History, which is undoubtedly, with all its faults and deficiencies, one of the greatest in the short list of our English historical works. It is full of inaccuracies as to dates and other such minutiæ, and it is of course a one-sided account throughout; but there is nothing either little or mean in its partizanship, nor does its looseness of statement much affect its value either as

a narrative of events, or as a composition. The general course of the great contest is, at least, very distinctly presented; and the broad masses into which the picture rolls itself are little injured in their effect by petty incorrectnesses in the details. Even when literally incorrect, they generally convey the true spirit of the story. And the great peculiarity and merit of Clarendon's manner may, perhaps, be said to lie in his power of combining volume and massiveness with the life and interest of minute delineation. It is not, perhaps, either a grand or a picturesque manner; but it is made up of qualities as like to or as near to grandeur and picturesqueness as can well be brought into union.

THAT sanctity which settles on the memory of a great man ought, upon a double motive, to be vigilantly sustained by his countrymen; first, out of gratitude to him, as one column of the national grandeur; secondly, with a practical purpose of transmitting unimpaired to posterity the benefit of ennobling models. High standards of excellence are among the happiest distinctions by which the modern ages of the world have an advantage over earlier, and we are all interested by duty as well as policy in preserving them inviolate. To the benefit of this principle, none amongst the great men of England is better entitled than Milton, whether as respects his transcendent merit, or the harshness with which his memory has been treated.

John Milton was born in London on the 9th day of December, 1608. His father, in early life, had suffered for conscience' sake, having been disinherited upon his abjuring the popish faith. He pursued the laborious