He

206. THE queen spoke not a word; and the king desired the lords to deliver their opinion; who all sate silent, expecting who would begin; there being no fixed rule of the board, but sometimes, according to the nature of the business, he who was first in place begun, at other times he who was last in quality; and when it required some debate before any opinion should be delivered, any man was at liberty to offer what he would. But after a long silence, the king commanded the chancellor of the exchequer to speak first. He said, it could not be expected, that he would deliver his opinion in a matter that was so much too hard for him, till he heard what others thought; at least, till the question was otherwise stated than it yet seemed to him to be. said, he thought the council would not be willing to take it upon them to advise that the duke of York, the next heir to the crown, should go a volunteer into the French army, and that the exposing himself to so much danger, should be the effect of their counsel who ought to have all possible tenderness for the safety of every branch of the royal family; but if the duke of York, out of his own princely courage, and to attain experience in the art of war, of which there was like to be so great use, had taken a resolution to visit the army, and to spend that campaign in it, and that the question only was, whether the king should restrain him from that expedition, he was ready to declare his opinion, that his majesty should not; there being great difference between the king's advising him to go, which implies an approbation, and barely suffering him to do what his own genius inclined him to do. The king and queen liked the stating of the question, as suiting best with the tenderness they ought to have; and the duke was

as well pleased with it, since it left him at the liberty he desired; and the lords thought it safest for them: and so all were pleased. [Davies' Scholarship, 1851.]

207. How comes history to tell us of so many assassinations of princes, downfalls of favourites, underminings and poisonings of great persons? Why in all or most of these sad events, still only worth has been the crime, and envy the executioner? What drew the blood of Cæsar, banished Cicero, and put out the eyes of the brave and victorious Belisarius, but a merit too great for an emperor to reward, and for envy to endure? And what happiness then can there be in such things, as only make the owners of them fall a woeful sacrifice to the base suspicions and cruelties of some wicked and ungrateful great ones: but always worse than they are or can be great? He indeed who is actually possessed of these glorious endowments, thinks them both his ornament and defence: and so does the man think the sword he wears, though the point of it may be sometimes turned upon his own breast; and it is not unheard of for a man to die by that very weapon, which he reckoned he should defend and preserve his life by.

[Bell's Scholarships, 1851.]

208. LASTLY, leaving the vulgar arguments, that by learning man excelleth man in that wherein man excelleth beasts; that by learning man ascendeth to the heavens and their motions, where in body he cannot come, and the like; let us conclude with the dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is, immortality or continuance for to this tendeth generation, and raising

of houses and families; to this buildings, foundations, and monuments; to this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and in effect the strength of all other human desires. We see then how far the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power or of the hands. For have not the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, or more, without the loss of a syllable or letter; during which time, infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Cæsar; no, nor of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose of the life and truth. But the images of men's wits and knowledges remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages: so that, if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other.

209.

[Corpus Christi College, 1851.]

MEANWHILE Charles, satisfied with the easy and almost bloodless victory which he had gained, and advancing slowly with the precaution necessary in an enemy's country, did not yet know the whole extent of

his own good fortune. But at last a messenger despatched by the slaves acquainted him with the success of their noble effort for the recovery of their liberty; and at the same time, deputies arrived from the town, in order to present him with the keys of their gates, and to implore his protection from military violence. While he was deliberating concerning the proper measures for this purpose, the soldiers fearing that they should be deprived of the booty which they had expected, rushed suddenly and without orders into the town, and began to kill and plunder without distinction. It was then too late to restrain their cruelty, their avarice or licentiousness. All the outrages of which soldiers are capable in the fury of a storm, all the excesses of which men can be guilty when their passions are heightened by the contempt and hatred which difference in manners and religion inspires, were committed. Above thirty thousand of the innocent inhabitants perished on that unhappy day, and ten thousand were carried away as slaves. Muley Hascen took possession of a throne surrounded with carnage, abhorred by his subjects, on whom he had brought such calamities, and pitied even by those whose rashness had been the occasion of them. The emperor lamented the fatal accident which had stained the lustre of his victory; and amidst such a scene of horror there was but one spectacle that afforded him any satisfaction. Ten thousand Christian slaves, among whom were several persons of distinction, met him as he entered the town, and falling on their knees, thanked and blessed him as their deliverer.

[Corpus Christi College, 1851.]

210. SUCH situations bewilder and unnerve the weak,

but call forth all the strength of the strong. Surrounded by snares in which an ordinary youth would have perished, William learned to tread at once warily and firmly. Long before he reached manhood he knew how to keep secrets, how to baffle curiosity by dry and guarded answers, how to conceal all passions under the same show of grave tranquillity. Meanwhile he made little proficiency in fashionable or literary accomplishments. The manners of the Dutch nobility of that age wanted the grace which was found in the highest perfection among the gentlemen of France, and which, in an inferior degree, embellished the Court of England; and his manners were altogether Dutch. Even his countrymen thought him blunt. To foreigners he often seemed churlish. In his intercourse with the world in general he appeared ignorant or negligent of those arts which double the value of a favour and take away the sting of a refusal. [Trinity College, 1851.]