unto it, therefore, justly do we sing with the psalmist: This is the day which the Lord hath made. Now I forget the world, and in a sort myself; and deal with my wonted thoughts, as great men use, who, at sometimes of their privacy, forbid the access of all suitors. Prayer, meditation, reading, hearing, preaching, singing, good conference, are the businesses of this day, which I dare not bestow on any work, or pleasure, but heavenly.

I hate superstition on the one side, and looseness on the other, but I find it hard to offend in too much devotion, easy in profaneness. The whole week is sanctified by this day; and according to my care of this, is my blessing on the rest. I show your lordship what I would do, and what I ought; I commit my desires to the imitation of the weak, my actions to the censures of the wise and holy, my weaknesses to the pardon and redress of my merciful God.

THE MURDER OF BUCKINGHAM

James Howell

1

(TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE LADY SCROOP, COUNTESS OF SUNDERLAND: FROM STAMFORD)

MADAM,-I lay yesternight at the post-house at Stilton, and this morning betimes the post-master came to my bed's head and told me the Duke of Buckingham was slain: my faith was not then strong enough to believe it, till an hour ago I met in the way with my Lord of Rutland (your brother), riding post towards London; it pleased him to alight, and show me a letter wherein there was an exact relation of all the circumstances of this sad tragedy. Upon Saturday last, which was but next before yester

'From the Familiar Letters.

day, being Bartholomew Eve, the Duke did rise up in a welldisposed humour out of his bed, and cut a caper or two, and being ready, and having been under the barber's hands (when the murderer had thought to have done the deed, for he was leaning upon the window all the while), he went to breakfast attended by a great company of Commanders, where Monsieur Soubize came unto him, and whispered him in the ear that Rochelle was relieved, the Duke seemed to slight the news, which made some think that Soubize went away discontented: after breakfast the Duke going out, Colonel Fryer stepped before him, and stopping him upon some business, and Lieutenant Felton being behind, made a thrust with a common tenpenny knife over Fryer's arm at the Duke, which lighted so fatally, that he slit his heart in two, leaving the knife sticking in the body; the Duke took out the knife, and threw it away, and laying his hand on his sword, and drawing it half out said, "The villain hath killed me" (meaning, as some think, Colonel Fryer), for there had been some difference betwixt them, so reeling against a chimney, he fell down dead: the Duchess being with child, hearing the noise below, came in her nightgears from her bed-chamber, which was in an upper room, to a kind of rail, and thence beheld him weltering in his own blood. Felton had lost his hat in the crowd, wherein there was a paper sewed, wherein he declared that the reason which moved him to this act was no grudge of his own, though he had been far behind for his pay, and had been put by his Captain's place twice, but in regard he thought the Duke an enemy to the state, because he was branded in Parliament, therefore what he did was for the public good of his country. Yet he got clearly down, and so might have gone to his horse, which was tied to a hedge hard by; but he was so amazed that he missed his way, and so struck into the pastry, where although the cry went

that some Frenchman had done it, he thinking the word was Felton, he boldly confessed, 'twas he that had done the deed, and so he was in their hands. Jack Stamford would have run at him, but he was kept off by Mr. Nicholas, so, being carried up to a tower, Captain Mince tore off his spurs, and asking how he durst attempt such an act, making him believe the Duke was not dead, he answered boldly that he knew he was dispatched, for 'twas not he, but the hand of Heaven that gave the stroke, and though his whole body had been covered over with armour of proof he could not have avoided it. Captain Charles Price went post presently to the King four miles off, who being at prayers on his knees, when it was told him, yet he never stirred, nor was he disturbed a whit till all divine service was done. This was the relation, as far as my memory could bear, in my Lord of Rutland's letter, who willed me to remember him unto your Ladyship, and tell you that he was going to comfort your niece (the Duchess) as fast as he could: and so I have sent the truth of this sad story to your Ladyship, as fast as I could by this post, because I cannot make that speed myself, in regard of some business I have to dispatch for my Lord in the way; so I humbly take my leave, and rest,

Your Ladyship's most dutiful servant,

J. H.

THE INSTABILITY OF HUMAN. GLORY

Daniel Defoe

July 21, 1722.

SIR,-I have employ'd myself of late pretty much in the study of history, and have been reading the stories of the great men of past ages, Alexander the Great, Julius Cæsar, the great Augustus, and many more down, down, down, to

the still greater Louis XIV., and even to the still greatest John, Duke of Marlborough. In my way I met with Tamerlane the Scythian, Tomornbejus the Egyptian, Solyman the Magnificent, and others of the Mahometan or Ottoman race; and after all the great things they have done, I find it said of them all, one after another, AND THEN HE DIED, all dead, dead! hic jacet is the finishing part of their history. Some lie in the bed of honour, and some in honour's truckle-bed; some were bravely slain in battle on the field of honour, some in the storm of a counterscarp, and died in the ditch of honour; some here, some there;-the bones of the bold and the brave, the cowardly and the base, the hero and the scoundrel, are heap'd up together; there they lie in oblivion, and under the ruins of the earth, undistinguish'd from one another, nay, even from the common earth.

"Huddled in dirt the blust'ring engine lies,

That was so great, and thought himself so wise."

How many hundreds of thousands of the bravest fellows then in the world lie on heaps in the ground, whose bones are to this day plowed up by the rustics, or dug up by the labourer, and the earth their more noble vital parts are converted to, has been perhaps applied to the meanest uses!

How have we screen'd the ashes of heroes to make our mortar, and mingl'd the remains of a Roman general to make a hog-sty! Where are the ashes of a Cæsar, and the remains of a Pompey, a Scipio, or a Hannibal? All are vanish'd, they and their very monuments are moulder'd into earth-their dust is lost, and their place knows them no more. They live only in the immortal writings of their historians, and poets, the renown'd flatterers of the age they liv'd in, and who have made us think of the persons,

not as they really were, but as they were pleased to represent them.

As the greatest men, so even the longest-liv'd, - the Methusalems of the antediluvian world-the accounts of them all end with the same: Methusalem lived nine hundred sixty and nine years and begat sons and daughters; and what then? AND THEN HE DIED.

"Death like an overflowing stream

Sweeps us away; our life's a dream."

We are now solemnising the obsequies of the great Marlborough; all his victories, all his glories, his great projected schemes of war, his uninterrupted series of conquests, which are call'd his, as if he alone had fought, and conquer'd by his arm, what so many men obtain'd for him with their blood. All is ended, where other men, and, indeed, where all men ended: HE IS DEAD.

Not all his immense wealth, the spoils and trophies of his enemies, the bounty of his grateful mistress, and the treasure amass'd in war and peace; not all that mighty bulk of gold,-which some suggest is such, and so great, as I care not to mention,-could either give him life, or continue it one moment, but HE IS DEAD; and some say the great treasure he was possess'd of here had one strange particular quality attending it—which might have been very dissatisfying to him if he had consider'd much on it,namely, that he could not carry much of it WITH HIM.

We have now nothing left us of this great man that we can converse with, but his monument and his history. He is now number'd among things pass'd. The funeral as well as the battles of the Duke of Marlborough are like to adorn our houses in sculpture, as things equally gay, and to be look'd on with pleasure. Such is the end of human glory, and so little is the world able to do—for the greatest