made him unjust where he shewed injustice, narrow where he shewed narrowness, humanly frail wherein his human frailty comes out. But let me not be mis-apprehended. While personally my whole convictions, and principles, and opinions go with the Nation as opposed to the king in the struggle between Charles and the Common-wealth, and the Roundheads and the Cavaliers, when the national life (under God) was in the keeping of Cromwell and his compeers, and while consequently it is a sorrow even at this late day to find the twinbrothers now before us, to have so utterly committed themselves to Royalty or the hereditary sentiment of it, I none the less honour them and the kindred chivalry of not a few of the Royalists, in so far as they stood fast to what they believed to be the right. As it was, the Vaughans with great family-names of ancestries who had ever been on the side of the king, and surrounded at Oxford from the outset and in the crisis of decision, with those who were intensely for the king, and in Henry Vaughan's case, a semi-superstitious confounding of Christianity itself with the State-form of it in one limited section of the Church i. e. in the National Church-so roughly handled by the Commonwealth-men-under which he had himself got the divine life', and with self-evidently,

sensitive, delicate timidity of spirit that shrank from clamour and contention and coarseness, and while in phrase contemning heraldic boasts really standing apart from the common people,' it could hardly have been otherwise. At the same time every one who loves the Truth more than he dare love his friend or honour any man, must assert for those who ranged themselves on the side of the Commonwealth, and sorrowfully and out of the very depths of prayer pronounced against the unhappy king, co-equal fidelity to conscience and principle and what they believed to be right. I have no wish for resurrection of "bitter things" written on Charles I. It is not called for here: but it were to be recreant to one's profoundest beliefs, to allow unworthy and extremely ignorant denunciations of his conquerors, such as are met with in Royalist books and are held as a very profession of faith by numbers, to go without protest and retort. I must deplore aceordingly the absence of that larger and broader comprehension of a subject that allows for different stand-points and non-differing sincerity. I must pronounce narrow and shallow, the scorn and mockery and insult lavished on the people' of the Commonwealth, and emphatically regard it as a slander on men who feared God and knew no other fear, when

their experiences and scruples and phraseology are made to point sorry jests, and are even interwoven into prayers, false as Despotism's falsest Te Deum. There is lamentably too much of this spirit in HENRY VAUGHAN as often as he has occasion to allude to those who were not of his 'doxy, politically or ecclesiastically. Thus, even in the "Mount of Olives", besides a general indiscriminate verdict on the degeneracy of the ageElijah-like-in the Epistle to the peaceful, humble and pious reader ", there occurs this miserable scoff at the Christian emotion and attainment of others who walked not with him: "I know the world abounds in these Manuals, and triumphs over them. It is not then their scarsity that call'd this forth, nor yet a desire to crosse the Age, nor any in it. I envy not their frequent extasies, and raptures in the third heaven: I onely wish them real, and that their actions did not tell the world, they are rapt into some other place. Nor should they who assume to themselves the glorious stile of saints, be uncharitably moved, if we that are yet in the body, and carry our treasure in earthen vessels, have need of these helps." All very well that

1 Vol. III. p 18.

the Author should assert his own and friends' need of thehelps' offered: but why a sneer, and so much uncharity in inculcating charity? It is'nt for the cripple needing those stilts that in elevating only the more shew his deformity and weakness, to cast disdain on lower and lowlier walkers on their own feet. Moreover it is notorious that devotional, spiritual, Scriptural books were infinitely more in use among those who disavowed stereotyped 'set' prayers than among their opponents. Again, as claiming that days' and 'feasts' and 'fasts' that were only of mere human invention and that had led to over-valuation above the very Sabbath itself, had no sanctity, the Puritans abolished enforced observance of Christmas and the like. So long as one reads Bible words that all know in Old Testament and in New Testament, there can be nothing but pity for the stupid bigotry that refuses to recognize deeper motive than mere destructiveness in such obliteration of the celebration of Christmas-day. Spite of this the Silurist has plaining, accusing words, and Mr. Lyte specially adds a foot-note intended for edification "The Puritans abolished the celebration of Christmas." But why? Was it not written "Their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men." (Isaiah

xxix. 13.) and deeper still: "Full well ye reject [frustrate] the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition ". (St. Mark vii. 9.) The lines so annotated are as follows:

Similarly elsewhere: but I am not careful to illustrate this baser element in an else noble soul. The lines of "Eucharistica Oxoniensis 12 present the Silurist as early paying homage to the king, and the sentiment never wavered, whether in the Psalm-like cries of "Silex Scintillans" or in the almost idolatrous homage to the king-and such a king-in "The King Disguised "3 or in the not un-humourous jibes in "Olor Iscanus". Of the former, take these, in which the fineness of the poetry can't conceal from us the assumption that only the Royalists endured wrong and never did wrong:

"I will not fear what man With all his plots and power can.

Bags that wax old may plundered be;

But none can sequester or let

1 Vol. I. p 109.

2 Vol. II. pp 259-60

Ibid pp 199-201.