seems to have been a healthy, spirited boy, sometimes angering the chaplain so far "ut difficulter manus tenuerim." He adds, however, "tenui tamen sit Deo gratia." On another occasion, while the chaplain is rapt in the most heavenly contemplations, "ad cœlum toto corde suspirans muitò ultra solitum et raro exemplo," the unfortunate Michael again interrupts him, "abrupit suavem hanc occupationem," with the request that he would change his clothes, which were wet through, and "disturbed his mind with frivolous questions." This poor youth, who seems his special charge, is perhaps less really cared for than the denizens of the servants' hall.

Thomas qui nunc est, as our chaplain terms | self as a merchant at Smyrna - spends him, to distinguish him from the earlier bar- his life, a victim, even in that early day, onet, succeeded his father in 1669, and about to the propria quæ maribus, in which he seven years after our narrative begins. Mr. makes but slow progress, as well as to the Travers's duties involve not only the re- catechetical lectures of Mr. Travers, inligious teaching and confessorship (if we volving such high points of doctrine, that may so term it) to the whole household at the unfortunate youth might well have Ketton, but also a kind of tutorship, both found, even in the Latin grammar, then at religious and classical, to the young chil- least uncontroverted, a welcome asylum dren of Sir Thomas and to a nephew re- from controversial theology. Poor Michael siding with him. This two-fold function enables him to introduce us most fully to every part of the house, and makes him a connecting link between the highest and lowest members of the establishment. It is, indeed, difficult to define the exact position he fills in it, but while we cannot but see that he is often treated very little better than a servant (of which he pathetically complains), he does not always maintain the dignity of his position; as when he accepts a guinea from Lady Wimbledon on her departure, with the same gratification with which one of the servants would have received the accustomed fee. He seems to flit about from one department to another, now breakfasting From the children's department we aswith the lady's-maid, now dining in the cend to the higher scene, of which Sir servant's hall, then again with the baronet Thomas, his lady and their frequently and his friends, and sometimes supping changing entourage of guests and visitors, with my lady. He may well, therefore, be form the chief features. The lady of the here pressed into our service as a guide to house was the sole daughter and heiress the domestic establishment throughout. of Sir Robert King, of Boyle, in Ireland, From the kitchen, in which is enthroned by the Viscountess Wimbledon, herself a Mistress Harvey, Mistress Sarah Steele, daughter of Sir Edward Zouche, of Wokand a host of subordinates, we pass on to ing. To this alliance must be attributed the servants' hall, where Mr. Shelley, the the strong Puritanical influences which steward (we presume) reigns equally su- reigned at this time at Ketton, very dispreme over a goodly host of subordinates. tasteful, as it would seem, to Sir Thomas, Passing on through the outer or servants' whose devotion was rather to hunting and dining-hall (for so we interpret the "tric- other kindred pursuits than to any more linium exterius "), we ascend to the spiritual object. Lady Wimbledon, like nursery (or "gynæcæum," as our chaplain the Shunammite of old, was not only "a terms it), where the nurse, Mistress Ellis, great woman," but a very good one, enthe French bonne Mademoiselle Loisel, and tertaining and feeding the prophets of her other domestics are in charge of the chil- day, for whom, in the form of preachers dren of the family, to wit: Thomas, aged and chaplains, she seems to have a singufour; Robert, about three, and Sophia and lar predilection. A daughter of that anElizabeth, the eldest, apparently, of the fam- cient Norman family of Zouche, whose ily. Here also (or rather between nurse and alphabetical misfortune has placed it last chaplain), a young Michael Barnardiston, in the libro d'oro of our nobility, where it a nephew of Sir Thomas, as I conceive- ought to be amongst the first, she was the son, probably, of Michael Barnardis- married in early life to the first and last ton, his next brother, who had settled him- Viscount Wimbledon, a younger son of

the Exeter family, a man eminent alike in, is the general programme of chaplain-i ́f› the arts of war and peace, as his stately at Ketton, varied only by fresh visitors monument in the Cecil chapel in Wimble- and fresh subjects of converse and reading, don church testifies, at great length, and in the inflated style of the age, closing with the quaint sentence: "After many travells he returned to this patient mother earth from which he came."

and on Sunday receiving the addition of public worship, writing out the last sermon for Lady Barnardiston (who appears to prefer this more contracted form of discourse to the interminable improvisations From the grand Puritan mother-in-law, of Mr. Darby or Mr. Travers), and other reonly an occasional visitor, we must pass to ligious duties. Sometimes after the service introduce the reader to Mr. Arthur Bar-Mr. and Mrs. Darby join the household at nardiston, an uncle; another Mr. Arthur dinner, Mistress Harvey showing her exe(called of Hodsdon), probably a cousin; getical skill by arguing with the chaplain Elizabeth Barnardiston, Sir Thomas's sis- on the meaning of the seventh chapter of ter (an occasional visitor), with some the Romans, or some equally difficult subother relatives who stand out less distinct-ject. This is followed by a second service ly from the family group. Then we have, at the church, after which our chaplain deas frequently joining the circle, Mr. Darby, livers a catechetical discourse in his own the clergyman of Ketton; Mr. Barrington, an intimate friend and neighbour, who runs in constantly with London politics and gossip; Mr. Tucker, who appears to have had a similar position as a friend of the family, and to have filled the same rôle as importer of news; Sir Gervase Elwes and his nephew, Sir Thomas Robinson, hunting friends of Sir Thomas, with a number of other occasional visitors, whose names it would be tedious to recount, and whose faces, could we even sketch them, would rather confuse than clear up our chaplain's picture.

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room to the men-servants of the family, whose names he duly records. Then follow the general family prayer at eight, pious meditation till ten, closing a course of spiritual exercises which might have almost satisfied the rule of St. Benedict. We can hardly wonder that the genial Sir Thomas took a different view on this subject from that of the all but canonized Sir Nathanael. Indeed, to the great scandal of our friend, he sometimes pleads hunting fatigues as an excuse for shorter prayers or an omitted sermon. Sophia's increasing illness, which Mr. Travers vainThe opening of the diary is somewhat ly hopes will hasten the repentance of the abrupt. It discovers the family as absent worldly baronet, soon brings the greater in London our friend waking with a members of the household into the foreheadache, vertiginosus et gravato cere- ground. Sir Thomas gets a holiday from bro;" the daughter Sophia sickening with his parliamentary duties and hastens down a fever, and a consequent confusion in the from London, accompanied by his wife, his household. The ordinary chaplain's life sister, and his aunt. But the tempting ocnow unfolds itself; family prayers and a cupation of hunting again interrupts his sermon; breakfast, visit to the nursery; a spiritual prospects, and, to say the truth, retirement for private meditation and his grief for his threatened loss seems very writing dinner with Mr. Arthur and the doubtful. Off he starts after breakfast family at twelve o'clock: after dinner, with Sir Gervase Elwes and Mr. Robinson conversation and a reading in Shakspeare to the hunting field, while the afflicted till about three; a walk with Mr. Shelley chaplain has recourse to the "Funeral Serin the neighbouring fields, varied occasion-mon of Nathanael," which he always uses ally by a stroll through the orchard to as a kind of specific on emergencies such, collect mosses or gums from the old trees, or to the kitchen-garden to enjoy a chat with the gardener, Mr. Coles, for whom he ever and anon procures "melon, and cauliflower, and cucumber seeds," and mixes with such subjects the inevitable subject of the state of the good gardener's soul. Then follow writing and meditation, private prayers, succeeded by family prayer at seven o'clock; supper, and after supper gossip till ten. On bright summer evenings a stroll in the portico or arcade, or in the field next the church, to look at the stars, then retirement for the night. Such

as these, and occasionally also as a species of penance, and in order to mature his good resolutions of imitating, in his humble sphere, his illustrious model. Next morning he breakfasts (0 mores) with Mistress Ann, the lady's-maid of Sir Thomas's aunt. On a later occasion we find him (the sleeping accommodation at the hall being somewhat contracted) relegated to the bedroom of Mr. Weston, the butler or steward in the London household. During Sir Thomas's residence, the regular dinner-hour seems to be two o'clock, after which the baronet spends the afternoon in

gaming and dice; to which, and to his, confesses "prius Shakpeare quam sacras lukewarmness in prayer, the chaplain at- literas legi." But Baxter's "Saint's Rest" tributes the fatal progress of Sophia's ill- appears to have been to him a most unfailness: "quod Sir T. B. abfuerit a precibus ing resource almost always concluding matutinis et tempus male collocaverit per his readings and constantly taken up as totum ferè diem, et dum benedictionem a kind of anodyne when any of the more prandio hodie invocarem, strophio com- trying passages of his chaplain duty, or ponendo praesens vacaret." Alas! poor any of the humiliations of his position in man; the long prayer fidgetted him and the household, which he seems keenly to led him unconsciously to play with his feel, requires a spiritual remedy. Another neck-tie. Meantime, good Mr. Darby book to which he almost as frequently rebrings to the sick child currantia aliqua, sorts, is the memoir of the almost sainted unam ex eis Chinensem:" what this Chi- Sir Nathanael, by Fairclough, which serves nese plum could be, except it were a China as a remedy in another way. For while orange, one cannot well guess. The more Baxter opens to him the compensations of prudent Mr. Travers naturally adds: " quod a future world, the panegyrical biographer, ego ægris oculis aspexi." A dreadful prac- by telling him what the world of Ketton titioner, by name Mr. Firmin, now comes on once was, and the high estate of its Purithe scene, a true disciple of Sangrado. tan chaplains and dependants in a better By him the unfortunate child is bled in day, enables him to revenge himself by the the neck, and her death, now rendered in- comparison, and gives him a pièce de luxe, in evitable, follows immediately after. The what must have otherwise been from its funeral, as it brings all the household to melancholy theme, a pièce de resistance. church, compels Mr. Travers to accompany Other fare provided by the library was, the mourners, though he confesses during Purchas's Pilgrim, Herbert's Poems, Ray's the service "partim languidus, partim Phytologia Britannica (as a guide to the affectus fui." After the funeral he visits natural history of Ketton). Lord Bacon's the vaults under the church, where he sees Works, Olearius' Eastern Travels, A Histhe coffins of the ancestral Barnardistons tory of the Turks (with portraits of Tam(one, of immense size, the largest he had erlane and Scanderbeg), besides theologiever seen), together with those of some cal works, practical and controversial, younger members of the family, whose chiefly of a Nonconformist type, the claslives probably might have been (like poor sics, among which the Georgics of Virgil Sophia's) prolonged by wiser treatment. hold a high place, while the pictures of And now we have an episode of high art the Emperors bring in Suetonius as a neat Ketton. Mr. Haward, an artist, and cessary dish. But Shakspeare gives our nephew of Mr. Darby the rector, had been chaplain his highest intellectual treat, and engaged to paint for the baronet a picture hours are spent over his historical plays. of the Emperor Charles V., probably in and comedies, including those which he continuation of a series of imperial por- describes "ominosorum titulorum," "Multraits. For we are early introduced to tum laboris circa nihil," et "Amoris labor the scene of the village carpenter hanging perditus." The course of reading was not the pictures of the twelve Cæsars in the a little grotesque. Three or four Psalms great hall; a historic line which Sir are immediately succeeded by " King Thomas seems to have been more anxious Lear". - that again by the meditations of to reproduce on canvas than that of his M. de Brieux " On the Vanity of Human. twenty-five" Equestrian" ancestors. Mr. Wishes". then we have political news. Travers thinks it desirable, therefore, to and State trials, of which the Gazette of get up a little of the history of the great about a week or ten days old was almost emperor, especially that of its monastic the only reporter. Sometimes we read of close, which he studies accordingly in the such terrible inflictions as Edwards's "Serpages of Strada, "De Bello Belgico." As mon on Sin," preached at Cambridge at this allusion introduces us to the library at the time of the plague, over which the Ketton, we may here give such account as chaplain confesses, "Somnolentus evasi et we are able of the books which the chap- dormivi per quasi semi horam." Lest the lain has recourse to in the baronet's collec- reader should do the same, we will at tion. His reading is of a very mixed once fall back upon the more exciting character, including a jumble of divinity, topic of the political news which so slowly history, poetry, geography, and natural reached Ketton, either through private history, so strangely alternated, that from channels or the daily reports of London a long reading of the Psalms he falls back gossip, conveyed to the Hall by Mr. Darby, on Shakspeare's comedies; nay, once even Mr. Barrington, and Mr. Tucker. To us,

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whose life, if it have not extended between on other occasions found a little counterthe birth of the great European revolutions and their latest developments, has yet covered some portion of this age of wonders and horrors, it must be strange to read of the trifling matters of political change which were then thought suffi ciently wonderful and terrible to bring up Mr. Barrington or Mr. Tucker in hot haste to communicate them to the Ketton household. Of these topics, the most exciting were the trials of Ireland, Pickering, and Groves, for high treason, the sentence of the pillory upon Reading and others, the long impeachment and trial of the Lord Treasurer Danby, the difficulties springing up thereout between the King and the House of Commons, the case of Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey, the reconstruction of the Privy Council by Charles II., on which the chaplain gives a long digression, and the opinions and plans of the papists. This last subject furnishes the following episode:

acting influence at the dinner-table. "Garrivimus nimis otiose ad prandium" is a confession which in manifold forms finds utterance in Mr. Travers's diary. On one occasion, while sitting at supper with Mistress Harvey, Mistress Anna, the lady'smaid, Mr. Haward, the artist, Mdlle. Loisel, and Mr. Arthur Barnardiston (whose position in the household presents a problem which would puzzle Sir Bernard Burke himself to reconcile with the proprieties of the great "equestrian family"), the conversation turns on matrimonial gossip, report giving Mr. Arthur to Mrs. Harvey, while another rumour implicated Mille. Loisel. Here it is impossible to depart in a single word from the grotesque original "Mr. A. B. coram omnibus dixit sermonem esse eum ducturum esse Mdlle. Loisel." Cui illa "Look, then, Mr. Travers, you had better have held your tongue." Cui ego extemplo Why, what am I the worse?" After a little more of such bantering, we arrive at the still "After diuner we all engaged in conversatiou on the opinions of the papists, Mr. Darby giv"Precatus more perplexing conclusion ing us the occasion for it by mentioning the sum breviter et serio et in omnibus Dombooks of Dr. Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln, where-ino me submittens." The reader, will perupon he told a remarkable story which Arthur, haps, too readily conclude that a chapEarl of Essex, had related to a person who was lain's life at Ketton was after all, a merry wondering how those convicted for treason, and life, and that Mr. Travers had little to for the murder of Sir Elmondsbury Godfrey, complain of in his treatment by the had one and all asserted their innocence to the "equestrian" family. There is, however, last. To whom my Lord replied: When I another side of the picture; and the slights was Viceroy in Ireland, a murder was committed and indifference he has sometimes to enthere, of which a certain man was found guilty counter try to the very utmost the humiland condemned, who not less vehemently than ity and geniality of his nature. these protested his innocence till he came to the occasion, he meditates sadly on the thought gallows. It happened, through God's permis- that he is treated "no better than a sersion, that this man, being very corpulent, broke the rope, and, though at first seeming dead, was having to rise from table bebrought to life. When he came to himself, he fore the rest, while "everything cold and said that he rejoiced that he had that short res-rejected by every other guest is offered to pite of life, momentary though it was, in order him." Of this, however, he complains less, that he might relieve his couscience by confess- than that such servile respect is required of ing that he had actually killed the man for him by Sir Thomas and his lady that he whose murder he was convicted. The priest (he dares not even say a word or utter an said) who confessed him had denied him absolu- opinion on matters belonging to his own tion unless he give a solemn promise that he office and province. This meditation apwould deny his guilt to the very moment of his propriately closes with a prayer for padeath. The Eirl added that he was intending tience and resignation under such varied to send to Ireland to procure the whole trial and affronts. But here we are compelled to the facts from the original archives. I should admit that he brings them not a little upon rither fear (observed our good chaplain) lest he had absolved me under the condition that I himself. For he toadies Lady Wimbledon should be everlastingly condemned hereafter.'" to such a degree that she does not think it unbecoming to send him a guinea when she leaves, which he accepts with as unbecoming a degree of grateful servility. But he has a consolation of another kind which is altogether denied his persecutors, and that is, a real Nonconformist martyrdom. From his high position in regard to the Establishment, he is able to discuss

But while this was a good specimen of the conversation in the "triclinium exte

rius on serious subjects, we have an equally suggestive sketch of a conversation of a lighter character. From many indications, we are led to conclude that the excessive pressure of religious topics

99 vant:

On one

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were at

with Mr. Tucker the proceedings of Con-1 casionally into the foreground, he might vocation in regard to "comprehension, well sympathize less with the tutor than toleration," and many subtle points which with his uncle "qui defessus venando justhat learned body seems "ever learning," sit me solummodo precari." Sometimes, though “never able to come to the knowl- as we shall see, the baronet's fatal wish edge of," while to Mr. Fairclough (the brought him more inextricably into the son probably of the former rector, the chaplain's net than he could have exauthor of the Funeral Sermon), and to pected. Mr. Darby he holds his own against the For now a more important personage Book of Common Prayer, and the seduc- comes upon the stage, the great Puritan tive persuasions of those who were tempt- mother-in-law, the Viscountess Wimbleing him to hear it. From the same eleva- don, whose arrival occasions even more tion like the angels "on the hill apart," sensation than the Gazette of the past he holds converse with Mdlle. Loisel -a week, or even the intelligence of the death relic most probably of French Calvinism of the King of Sweden. The visit seems on the absolute predestination of the rather unexpected. "While we minutest events in the lives of the elect." dinner," writes the amazed chaplain, It must here be confessed that the Church "news was brought us that the carriage herself had somewhat the manners of a containing Lady Wimbledon and Lady step-mother to such erring children as Mr. Barnardiston was only two miles off." Travers. All was harsh and uninviting, After a colloquy with the outriders who and the rules of a "close communion" were carried on this important news, and a "reso carried out in what was professedly an tirement to implore the Divine counsel!" open" one, as to make it difficult for men (for what, it does not appear), our author in our chaplain's position to return to the descends the great staircase, confronts the Church without the apparent surrender of dreaded Sir Thomas, "qui me vix aspexit," Christian liberty. "I was so affected," he and mortified at his rudeness, returns to tells us once," with Mr. Darby's sermon his apartment, where he has instant rethat I was disposed to receive the Eucharist course to "Baxter's Saint's Rest," and dewith him, but that he had required all who rives from that the conclusion that " "happiwished to do so to give notice during the ness is not to be looked for in this world," week preceding, which I had not done." "ob incapacitatem nostram naturalem et Surely so slight a barrier might have been moralem." His old friend, that good Saremoved in such a case. We must not, maritan, Mr. Barrington, arrives soon after however, conclude from this short retro- to reassure his mind, bringing letters from spect of our chaplain's religious history his cousin Howe and other relatives, which that it ended altogether in talk. The relig- greatly consoled him. Then he is taken ious societies, those great forcing-houses of to be introduced to Lady Wimbledon's exotic plans and productions, did not then chaplain, Mr. Wills, a great preacher, but exist, or at least were only just born. But of a somewhat melancholy tone, perhaps such charitable works as redeeming Chris- in part attributable to his singular afflictians from Turkish and Algerian slavery tion in losing his eldest daughter through had full scope among us, and had due her falling into a well the night before she recognition at Ketton. The son of a poor was to have been married. From the Leicestershire clergyman, a Mr. Ouseley, grand chaplain there is only a single step had thus fallen among thieves, and good to the grand patroness, whom he now sees Mr. Travers produced as much as three for the first time, "quantum scio," he adds, and sixpence to increase the gathering at that he may impart a little degree of carethe Hall, while Mistress Harvey added her lessness and indifference to what he too two shillings to the half-guinea of my lady, evidently regards as one of the greatest and poor Malle. Loisel found a shilling epochs of his life. The morning after this for the same necessary object. Our young courtly interview, both the chaplains friend Michael Barnardiston acts as col- breakfast with the cook, the lady's-inaid, lector on this occasion, and is remitted and the butler, -sic transit gloria mundi! five bad marks and a detention during But Mr. Travers's happiness is completed dinner-time for his zeal in his new office. by the arrival of a coat from London, Poor boy! as his studies in the catechism which so exactly fits him, that he exwere of the abstrusest kind, including the claims in that spirit of thankfulness which doctrines of "effectual calling, justifica- is habitual to him: "Tentaturus indui an tion, sanctification, and adoption," not to congrueret. Congruit, sit Deo gratia opspeak of the higher mysteries of election time." In the meantime everything cenand final perseverance, which come oc- tres in the august mother-in-law, who