In the year 1671, upon the death of Sir John Kelyng, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench, Sir Matthew Hale was removed from the Exchequer to succeed him. The particular circumstances which caused his elevation to this laborious and responsible situation at a time when his growing infirmities induced him to seek a total retirement from public life, are not recorded by any of his biographers. For four years after he became Chief Justice he regularly attended to the duties of his court, and his name appears in all the reported cases in the Court of King's Bench, until the close of the year 1675. About that time he was attacked by an inflammation of the diaphragm, a painful and languishing disease, from which he constantly predicted that he should not recover. It produced so entire a prostration of strength, that he was unable to walk up Westminster Hall to his court without being supported by his servants. "He resolved," says Baxter, "that the place should not be a burden to him, nor he to it," and therefore made an earnest application to the Lord Keeper Finch for his dismission. This being delayed for some time, and finding himself totally unequal to the toil of business, he at length, in February 1676, tendered the surrender of his patent personally to the King, who received it graciously and kindly, and promised to continue his pension during his life.

On his retirement from office, he occupied at first a house at Acton, which he had taken from Richard Baxter, who says "it was one of the meanest houses he had ever lived in: in that house," he adds, "he lived contentedly, without any pomp, and without costly or troublesome retinue of visitors, but not without charity to the poor; he continueth the study of mathematics and physics still as his great delight. It is not the least of my pleasure that I have lived some years in his more than ordinary love and friendship, and that we are now waiting which shall be first in heaven; whither he saith he is going with full content and acquiescence in the will of a gracious God, and doubts not but we shall shortly live together." Not long before his death he

removed from Acton to his own house at Alderley, intending to die there; and having a few days before gone to the parish churchyard and chosen his grave, he sunk under a united attack of asthma and dropsy, on Christmas-day, 1676.

The judicial character of Sir Matthew Hale was without reproach. His profound knowledge of the law rendered him an object of universal respect to the profession; whilst his patience, conciliatory manners, and rigid impartiality engaged the good opinion of all classes of men. As a proof of this, it is said that as he successively removed from the Court of Common Pleas to the Exchequer, and from thence to the King's Bench, the mass of business always followed him; so that the court in which he presided was constantly the favourite one with counsel, attorneys, and parties. Perhaps indeed no judge has ever been so generally and unobjectionably popular. His address was copious and impressive, but at times slow and embarrassed: Baxter says "he was a man of no quick utterance, and often hesitant; but spake with great reason." This account of his mode of speaking is confirmed by Roger North, who adds, however, that "his stop for a word by the produce always paid for the delay; and on some occasions he would utter sentences heroic." His reputation as a legal and constitutional writer is in no degree inferior to his character as a judge. From the time it was published to the present day, his history of the Pleas of the Crown has always been considered as a book of the highest authority, and is referred to in courts of justice with as great confidence and respect as the formal records of judicial opinions. His Treatises on the Jurisdiction of the Lords' House of Parliament, and on Maritime Law, which were first published by Mr. Hargrave more than a century after Sir Matthew Hale's death, are works of first-rate excellence as legal arguments, and are invaluable as repositories of the learning of centuries, which the industry and research of the author had collected.

After his retirement from public life, he wrote his great work called 'The primitive Origination of Man

kind, considered and examined according to the light of Nature.' Various opinions have been formed upon the merits of this treatise. Roger North depreciates the substance of the book, but commends its style; while Bishop Burnet and Dr. Birch greatly praise its learning and force of reasoning.

Sir Matthew Hale was twice married. By his first wife, who was a daughter of Sir Henry Moore, of Fawley in Berkshire, he had ten children, most of whom turned out ill. His second wife, according to Roger North, was "his own servant-maid ;" and Baxter says, 66 some made it a scandal, but his wisdom chose it for his convenience, that in his age he married a woman of no estate, to be to him as a nurse." Hale gives her a high character in his will, as 66 a most dutiful, faithful, and loving wife," making her one of his executors, and intrusting her with the education of his grand-children. He bequeathed his collection of manuscripts, which he says had cost him much industry and expense, to the Society of Lincoln's Inn, in whose library they are carefully preserved.

The published biographies of Hale are extremely imperfect, none of them containing a particular account of his personal history and character. Bishop Burnet's Life is the most generally known, and, though far too panegyrical and partial, is perhaps the most complete ; it has been closely followed by most of his subsequent biographers. In Baxter's Appendix to the Life of Hale, and in his account of his own Life, the reader will find some interesting details respecting his domestic and personal habits; and Roger North's Life of Lord Guildford contains many amusing, though ill-natured and sarcastie anecdotes of this admirable judge.

A FEW beautiful verses, an acquaintanceship with the immortal Milton, and a traditional reputation for great political honesty in a most corrupt age, have given Marvell a permanent and honourable place among the worthies of his country. His public life was never illustrated by any great or very conspicuous deed, and of his private life very little, with any certainty, is known. Yet is his name familiar to every Englishman that loves his country and his country's literature, and that reveres the associations of genius.

Andrew Marvell was born in the city of Hull, on the 15th of November, 1620; towards the close of the reign of James I., when religious and political differences already announced the convulsion which took place under Charles I., twenty years later. His father was Andrew Marvell, a native of Cambridge, and M. A. of Emanuel College, then a recent foundation, and strongly imbued with Puritanism. Having taken orders, this Andrew,

the father, was elected Master of the Grammar School at Hull; which place he occupied when his son was born. Some four years after the birth of young Andrew, he became lecturer of Trinity Church, Hull. He was reputed both a learned and pious man. His puritanism did not sour his temper or extinguish his wit or humour. Echard the historian calls him "the facetious Calvinistical minister of Hull." The son inherited this facetious humour. Fuller, the wittiest of divines, thus records some of the virtues of the elder Marvell :-" He was a most excellent preacher, who, like a good husband, never broached what he had new-brewed, but preached what he had studied some competent time before: insomuch that he was wont to say that he would cross the common proverb, which called Saturday the working-day, and Monday the holiday of preachers.” * Like his son, he was a man of courage and fortitude, and was not to be driven from his duty by any sense of danger. In the year 1637, when the plague was desolating Hull, and when all who could fled into the country, the worthy lecturer of Trinity church remained in the town, and scrupulously and zealously performed all his clerical duties, as if there had been no pest, or peril of any kind.

This high-minded father probably educated his promising boy himself, for no school is named as having been honoured by the boy that was destined to be the companion and friend of the author of 'Paradise Lost,' and the advocate of honesty and patriotism at the period when they were all but lost. Whoever instructed young Andrew, the boy must have been well taught. At the early age of fifteen, he was admitted of Trinity College, Cambridge, with an exhibition belonging to Hull, his native place. Here his progress on learning is said to have been very rapid. But he had not been long up at Cambridge, ere he was dazzled and ensnared by some Jesuits, who, in disguise, haunted the University, and applied themselves more especially to the conversion or perversion of inexperienced, ingenuous youths. As An

* Worthies.