he felt his easiness of access, and the desires of many, all strangers in particular, to be much with him, made great waste of his time; yet, as he was severe in that, not to be denied when he was at home, so he said he knew the heart of a stranger, and how much eased his own had been, while travelling, if admitted to the conversation of those he desired to see; therefore he thought his obligation to strangers was more than bare civility; it was a piece of religious charity in him.

"He had, for almost forty years, laboured under such a feebleness of body, and such lowness of strength and spirits, that it will appear a surprising thing to imagine how it was possible for him to read, to meditate, to try experiments, and write as he did. He bore all his infirmities, and some sharp pains, with the decency and submission that became a Christian and a philosopher. He had about him all that unaffected neglect of pomp in clothes, lodging, furniture, and equipage, which agreed with his grave and serious course of life. He was advised to a very ungrateful simplicity of diet, which, by all appearance, was that which preserved him so long beyond all men's expectation. This he observed so strictly, that in the course of above thirty years he neither ate nor drank to gratify the varieties of appetite, but merely to support nature; and was so regular in it, that he never once transgressed the rule, measure and kind that were prescribed to him. * **

"His knowledge was of so vast an extent, that were it not for the variety of vouchers in their several sort, I should be afraid to say all I know. He carried the study of Hebrew very far into the Rabbinical writings and the other Oriental languages. He had read so much out of the Fathers, that he had formed out of it a clear judgment of all the eminent ones. He had read a vast deal on the Scriptures, and had gone very

nicely through the whole controversies on religion, and was a true master of the whole body of divinity. He read the whole compass of the mathematical sciences; and though he did not set himself to spring any new game, yet he knew even the abstrusest parts of geometry. Geography, in the several parts of it that related to navigation or travelling, history, and books of travels, were his diversions. He went very nicely through all the parts of physic; only the tenderness of his nature made him less able to endure the exactness of anatomical dissections, especially of living animals, though he knew them to be most instructive. But for the history of nature, ancient or modern, of the productions of all countries, of the virtues and improvements of plants, of ores and minerals, and all the varieties that are in them in different climates, he was by much, by very much, the readiest and perfectest I ever knew, in the greatest compass, and with the truest exactness. This put him in the way of making that vast variety of experiments, beyond any man, as far as we know, that ever lived. And in these, as he made a great progress in new discoveries, so he used so nice a strictness, and delivered them with so scrupulous a truth, that all who have examined them may find how safely the world may depend upon them. But his peculiar and favourite study was chemistry, in which he engaged with none of those ravenous and ambitious designs that draw many into them. His design was only to find out Nature, to see into what principles things might be resolved, and of what they were compounded, and to prepare good medicaments for the bodies of men. He spent neither his time nor his fortune upon the vain pursuits of high promises and pretensions. He always kept himself within the compass that his estate might well bear. And as he made chemistry much the better for his

dealing with it, so he never made himself either the worse, or the poorer for it."

It would be easy to multiply testimonies of the high reputation in which Boyle was held: indeed the reader will find numerous instances collected in the article Boyle, in Dr. Kippis's Biographia Britannica, the perusal of which will amply gratify the reader's curiosity. Still more detailed accounts of Boyle's life and character will be found in other works to which we have already referred, especially in Dr. Birch's Life.

So rapid and complete has been the decay of the Ottoman empire as an aggressive power, that any person now living, unacquainted with history anterior to the date of his own birth, would treat the notion of danger to Christian Europe from the ambition of Turkey, as the idle fear of an over-anxious mind. Yet there was a time, and that within a century and a half, when Popes summoned the princes of Europe to support the Cross, and the Eastern frontier of Christendom was the scene of almost constant warfare between Christian and Moslem. That period of danger was to Poland a period of glory; and the brightest part of it is the reign of the warrior-king, John Sobieski. It proved, indeed, no better than an empty glitter, won at a vast expense of blood and treasure,

the benefits of which were chiefly reaped by the faithless and ungrateful Austria.

Sobieski was the younger son of a Polish nobleman, high in rank and merit. He was born in 1629. The death of his brother, slain in warfare with the Cossacks of the Ukraine, in 1649, placed him in possession of the hereditary titles and inmense estates of his house. To these distinctions he added high personal merits, an athletic body, a powerful, active, and upright mind, and, as the result proved, the qualities which make a general and statesman. It is no won

der therefore that, in the wars carried on by Poland during his youth, against Tartars, Cossacks, and Swedes, he won laurels, though the Republic gained neither honour nor advantage. At an early age he acquired the confidence of Casimir, the reigning king of Poland, and was employed in various services of importance. On the revolt of Lubomirski, Grand Marshal of Poland, Sobieski was invested with that office, and soon after made Lieutenant-General (if we may so translate it) of the Polish army. In that capacity he led the royal troops against Lubomirski. The king's obstinacy forced him to give battle at a disadvantage, and he was defeated, July 13, 1666; but the blame of this mishap was universally thrown on the right person, while the skilful conduct of Sobieski's retreat obtained general admiration.

He married Marie de la Grange d'Arquien, a French lady of noble birth, who had accompanied the queen into Poland. She was a woman of wit and beauty, who exercised throughout life an unusual and unfortunate influence over a husband devotedly attached to her. Aided by her favour with her mistress, Sobieski obtained the highest military office, that of Grand General, in 1667. Happy for Poland, that in this instance favour and merit went hand in hand; for a host of fourscore thousand Tartars broke into the king