to be Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ, or the letters of James Howell, a great traveller, an intimate friend of Johnson, and the first who bore the office of the royal-historiographer, which discover a variety of literature, and abound with much entertaining and useful information."-WARTON: Hist. of Eng. Poet., ed. 1840, iii. 440, 441. ROME IN 1621. The following is an extract from a letter written by Howell to Sir William St. John, Knight, dated Rome, September 13, 1621: SIR,-Having seen Antenor's tomb in Padua, and the amphitheatre of Flaminius in Verona, with other brave towns in Lombardy, I am now come to Rome, and Rome, they say, is every man's country; she is called Communis Patris, for every one that is within the compass of the Latin church finds himself here, as it were, at home and in his mother's house, in regard of interest in religion, which is the cause that for one native there be five strangers that sojourn in this city; and without any distinction or mark of strangeness, they come to preferments and offices, both in church and state, according to merit, which is more valued and sought after here than anywhere. But whereas I expected to have found Rome elevated upon seven hills, I met her rather spreading upon a flat, having humbled herself since she was made a Christian, and descended from those hills to Campus Martius with Trasieren, and the suburbs of Saint Peter, she hath yet in compass about fourteen miles, which is far short of that vast circuit she had in Claudius his time: for Vopiscus writes she was then of fifty miles in circumference, and she had five hundred thousand free citizens in a famous cense that was made, which, allowing but six to every family, in women, children, and servants, came to three millions of souls; but she is now a wilderness in comparison of that number. The pope is grown to be a great temporal prince of late years, for the state of the church extends above three hundred miles in length and two hundred miles in breadth; it contains Ferrara, Bologna, Romagnia, the Marquisate of Ancona, Umbria, Sabina, Perugia, with a part of Tuscany, the patrimony, Rome herself, and Latium. In these there are above fifty bishopricks; the pope hath also the duchy of Spoleto, and the exarchate of Ravenna; he hath the town of Benevento in the kingdom of Naples, and the country of Venissa, called Avignon, in France. He hath title also good enough to Naples itself; but rather than offend his champion, the king of Spain, he is contented with a white mule, and purse of pistoles about the neck, which he receives every year for a heriot, or homage, | or what you will call it; he pretends also to and Masseran; of Norway, Ireland, and be lord paramount of Sicily, Urbin, Parma, England, since King John did prostrate our crown at Pandelfo his legate's feet. . . The air of Rome is not so wholesome as of old; and amongst other reasons, one is because of the burning of stubble to fatten their fields. For her antiquities, it would take up a whole volume to write them; those which I hold the chiefest are Vespasian's amphitheatre, where fourscore thousand people might sit; the stoves of Anthony; divers rare statues at Belvidere and St. Peter's, specially that of Laocoon; the obelisk; for the genius of the Roman hath always been much taken with imagery, limning, and sculptures, insomuch that, as in former times, so now I believe, the statues and pictures in Rome exceed the number of living people. Since the dismembering of the empire, Rome hath run through many vicissitudes and turns of fortune; and had it not been for the residence of the pope, I believe she had become a heap of stones, a mount of rubbish, by this time: and however that she bears up indifferent well, yet one may say, Qui miseranda videt veteris vestigia Romæ, Present Rome may be said to be but a monument of Rome past, when she was in that flourish that St. Austin desired to see her in. She who tamed the world tamed herself at last, and falling under her own weight, fell to be a prey to time; yet there is a providence seems to have a care of her still; for though her air be not so good, nor her circumjacent soil so kindly as it was. yet she hath wherewith to keep life and soul together still, by her ecclesiastical courts, which is the sole cause of her peopling now; so that it may be said, when the pope came to be her head, she was reduced to her first principles; for as a shepherd was founder, so a shepherd is still governor and pre of great reading and acquirements for the age at which it was written. It is full of the effervescence of young life and animal spirits. The air of France seems to have actually converted the author into a Frenchman, whose vivacity, point, and badinage he seems to have imbibed. The very moment he touched the Gallic soil he cast away his canonicals, and became the most facetious and joyous of good fellows, the most lively of tourists."(London) Retrospec. Rev., iii. 22-31, 1821. CHARACTER OF THE FRENCH. The present French is nothing but an old Gaul moulded into a new name; as rash he is, as headstrong, and as hair-brained. A nation whom you shall win with a feather, and lose with a straw; upon the first sight of him you shall have him as familiar as your sleep, or the necessity of breathing. In one hour's conference you may endear him to you, in the second unbutton him, the third pumps him dry of all his secrets, and he gives them you as faithfully as if you were his ghostly father, and bound to conceal them sub sigillo confessiones'; when you have learned this you may lie him aside, for he is no longer serviceable. If you have any mour in holding him in a further acquaintance (a favour which he confesseth, and I believe him, he is unworthy of), himself will make the first separation: he hath said over his lesson now unto you, and now must find out somebody else to whom to repeat. Fare him well he is a garment whom I would be loath to wear above two days together, for in that time he will be threadbare. hu full a manner as with us. Their beef they cut out into such chops that that which goeth there for a laudable dish, would be thought here a university commons, new served from the hatch. A loin of mutton serves amongst them for three roastings, besides the hazard of making pottage with the rump. Fowl, also, they have in good plenty, especially such as the king found in Scotland; to say truth, that which they have is sufficient for nature and a friend, were it not for the mistress or the kitchen witch. I have heard much fame of the French cooks, but their skill lieth not in the neat handling of beef and mutton. They have (as generally have all this nation) good fancies, and are special fellows for the making of puff-pastes, and the ordering of banquets. Their trade is not to feed the belly, but the palate. It is now time you were set down, where the first thing you must do is to say your grace; private graces are as ordinary there as private masses, and from thence I think they learned them. That done, fall to where you like best; they observe no method in their eating, and if you look for a carver, you may rise fasting. When you are risen, if you can digest the sluttishness of the cookery (which is most abominable at first sight), I dare trust you in a garrison. Follow him to church, and there he will show himself most irreligious and irreverent. I speak not of all, but the general. At a mass, in Cordeliers' church, in Paris, I saw two French papists, even when the most sacred mystery of their faith was celebrating, break out into such a blasphemous and atheistical laughter that even an Ethnic would have hated it; it was well they were Catholics, otherwise some French hothead or other would have sent them laughing to Pluto. "Familiare est hominis omnia sibi remittere," saith Velleius of all; it holdeth most properly in this people. He is very kindhearted to himself, and thinketh himself as free from wants as he is full; so much he hath in him the nature of a Chinese, that he thinketh all men blind but himself. In this private self-conceitedness he hateth the The French language is, indeed, very sweet Spaniard, loveth not the English, and con- and delectable; it is cleared of all harshness temneth the German; himself is the only by the cutting and leaving out the consocourtier and complete gentleman, but it is nants, which maketh it fall off the tongue his own glass which he seeth in. But of very volubly; yet, in my opinion, it is rather this conceit of his own excellency and partly elegant than copious; and, therefore, is much out of a shallowness of brain, he is very troubled for want of words to find out paraliable to exceptions; the least distaste that phrases. It expresseth very much of itself can be draweth his sword, and a minute's in the action; the head, body, and shoulders pause sheatheth it to your hand; afterwards, concur all in the pronouncing of it; and he if you beat him into better manners, he shall that hopeth to speak it with a good grace take it kindly, and cry serviteur. In this must have something in him of the mimic. one thing they are wonderfully like the devil; It is enriched with a full number of signifimeekness or submission makes them insolent, cant proverbs, which is a great help to the a little resistance putteth them to their heels, French humour in scoffing: and very full of or makes them your spaniels. In a word courtship, which maketh all the people com(for I have held him too long), he is a walk-plimental. The poorest cobbler in the village ing vanity in a new fashion. I will give you now a taste of his table, which you shall find in a measure furnished (I speak not of the present), but not with so hath his court cringes, and his eau benite de cour; his court holy-water as perfectly as the prince of Condé.... At my being there, the sport was dancing, an exercise much used by the French, who do naturally affect the prejudice of my affection, or an invertit. And it seems this natural inclination is ing and partial conceit of his mercies. I so strong and deep-rooted, that neither age know not; but those which others term nor the absence of a smiling fortune can crosses, afflictions, judgments, misfortunes, prevail against it. For on this dancing to me who inquire farther into them than green there assembleth not only youth and their visible effects, they both appear, and gentry, but also age and beggary; old wives in event have ever proved, the secret and which could not set foot to ground without dissembled favours of his affection. It is a a crutch in the streets had here taught their singular piece of wisdom to apprehend truly, feet to amble; you would have thought by and without passion, the works of God, and the cleanly conveyance and carriage of their so well to distinguish his justice from his bodies that they had been troubled with the mercy as not to miscall those noble attrisciatica, and yet so eager in the sport as if butes: yet it is likewise an honest piece of their dancing days should never be done. logic, so to dispute and argue the proceedSome there was so ragged that a swift gal-ings of God, as to distinguish even his judgliard would almost have shaken them into ments into mercies. nakedness, and they, also, most violent to have their carcasses directed in a measure. To have attempted the staying of them at home, or the persuading of them to work when they heard the fiddle, had been a task too unwieldy for Hercules. In this mixture of age and condition did we observe them at their pastimes; the rags being so interwoven with the silks, and wrinkled brows being so interchangeably mingled with fresh beauties, that you would have thought it to have been a mummery of fortunes; as for those of both sexes which were altogether past action, they had caused themselves to be carried thither in their chairs, and trod the measures with their eyes. The Voyage of France. SIR THOMAS BROWNE, M.D., born 1605, died 1682, was the author of four works of great merit: Religio Medici, Lond., 1642, 12mo; Pseudodoxia Epidemica: Enquiries into very many received Tenets, and commonly presumed Truths, or Enquiries into vulgar and common Errors, Lond., 1646, sm. fol.; Hydriotaphia: Urn Buriall, etc., Lond., 1658, 8vo; and Christian Morals, Camb., 1716, 8vo. "It is not on the praises of others, but on his own writings, that he is to depend for the esteem of posterity; of which he will not easily bé deprived while learning shall have any reverence among men; for there is no science in which he does not discover some skill; and scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant, which he does not appear to have cultivated with success."-DR. S. JOHNSON: Life of Sir T. Browne. THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD. And to be true, and speak my soul, when I survey the occurrences of my life, and call into account the finger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies, either in general to mankind, or in particular to myself: and whether out of For God is merciful unto all, because better to the worst than the best deserve; and to say he punisheth none in this world, though it be a paradox, is no absurdity. To one that hath committed murder, if the judge should only ordain a fine, it were a madness to call this a punishment, and to repine at the sentence, rather than admire the clemency of the judge: thus our offences being mortal, and deserving not only death, but damnation, if the goodness of God be content to traverse and pass them over with a loss, misfortune, or disease, what phrenzy were it to term this a punishment, rather than an extremity of mercy, and to groan under the rod of his judgments, rather than admire the sceptre of his mercies! There That fore to adore, honour, and admire him is a There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ, that is, say some, since his nativity, and, as divinity affirmeth, before also; which makes me much apprehend the end of those honest worthies and philosophers which died before his incarnation. It is hard to place those souls in hell whose worthy lives do teach us virtue on earth; methinks amongst those many subdivisions of hell there might have been one limbo left for these. What a strange vision will it be to see their poetical fictions converted into verities, and their imagined and fancied furies into real devils! How strange to them will sound the history of Adam, when they shall suffer for him they never heard of! when they that derive their genealogy from the gods, shall know they are the unhappy issue of sinful man! Religio Medici. THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. Since thou hast an alarum in thy breast which tells thee thou hast a living spirit in thee above two thousand times in an hour, dull not away thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness of doing nothing. To strenuous minds there is an inquietude in over-quietness, and no laboriousness in labour; and to tread a mile after the slow pace of a snail, or the heavy measures of the lazy of Brazilia, were a most tiring penance, and worse than a race of some furlongs at the Olympics. The rapid courses of the heavenly bodies are rather imitable by our thoughts than our corporeal motions: yet the solemn motions of our lives amount unto a greater measure than is commonly apprehended. Some few men have surrounded the globe of the earth; yet many in the set locomotions and movements of their days have measured the circuit of it, and twenty thousand miles have been exceeded by them. Move circumspectly, not meticulously, and rather carefully solicitous than anxiously solicitudinous. Think not there is a lion in the way, nor walk with leaden sandals in the paths of goodness; but in all virtuous motions let prudence determine thy measures. Strive not to run, like Hercules, a furlong in a breath: festination may prove precipitation deliberating delay may be wise cunctation, and slowness no slothfulness. Since virtuous actions have their own trumpets, and, without any noise from thyself, will have their resound abroad, busy not thy best member in the encomium of thy self. Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtues of others, and due unto our own from all whom malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb. Fall not, however, into the common prevaricating way of selfcommendation and boasting, by denoting the imperfections of others. He who discommendeth others obliquely commendeth himself. He who whispers their infirmities proclaims his own exemption from them; and consequently says, I am not as this publican, or hic niger, whom I talk of. Open ostentation and loud vainglory is more tolerable than this obliquity, as but containing some froth, no ink; as but consisting of a personal piece of folly, nor complicated with uncharitableness. Superfluously we seek a precarious applause abroad; every good man hath his plaudite within himself; and though his tongue be silent, is not with out loud cymbals in his breast. Conscience will become his panegyrist, and never forget to crown and extol him unto himself. Bless not thyself only that thou wert born in Athens, but, among thy multiplied acknowledgments, lift up one hand unto heaven that thou wert born of honest parents; that modesty, humility, patience, and veracity lay in the same egg, and came into the world with thee. From such foundations thou mayst be happy in a virtuous precocity, and make an early and long walk in goodness; so mayst thou more naturally feel the contrariety of vice unto nature, and resist some by the antidote of thy temper. Christian Morals. OBLIVION. Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings. Wo slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which, notwithstanding, is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their souls; a good way to continue their memories, while, having the advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistencies to attend the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams. In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from oblivion, in preservations below the moon. Men have been deceived even in their flatteries above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their name in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath already varied the names of contrived constellations. Nimrod is lost in Orion, and Osiris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we find they are but like the earth, durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts: whereof, beside comets and new stars, perspectives begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander about the sun, with Pharethon's favour, would make clear conviction. Urn Burial. OWEN FELLTHAM, OR FELTHAM, born about 1608, died about 1678, lived for some years in the family of the Earl of Thomond, was the author of Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political, Lond., without date, 12mo; 2d edit., Lond., 1628, 4to; 3d, the first complete edit., Lond., 1628, 4to; 12th edit., 1709, 13th edit., 1806, &c., 14th edit., 1820, &c. Both of the last two editions were edited, with an Account of the Author, by J. Cumming. New edit., Lond., Pickering, 1839, 12mo; Century I., 1840, cr. 4to; The Beauties of Owen Feltham, Selected from his Resolves, by J. A., Lond., 1818, 12mo. procure us far more honour than underhandedly seeking to disparage her. The former would show that we loved what we commended, while the latter tells the world we grudge that in others which we want in ourselves. It is one of the basest offices of man to make his tongue the lash of the worthy. Even if we do know of faults in others, I think we can scarcely show ourselves more nobly virtuous than in having the charity to conceal them; so that we do not flatter or encourage them in their failings. But to relate anything we may know against our neighbour, in his absence, is most unbeseeming conduct. And who will not condemn him as a traitor to reputation and society who tells the private fault of his friend to the public and ill-natured world? When two friends part they should lock up one another's secrets, and exchange their keys. The honest man will rather be a grave to his neighbour's errors than in any way expose them. OF NEGLECT. There is the same difference between dili gence and neglect that there is between a garden properly cultivated and the sluggard's field which fell under Solomon's view. when overgrown with nettles and thorns. The one is clothed with beauty, the other is unpleasant and disgusting to the sight. Negligence is the rust of the soul, that corrodes through all her best resolutions. What nature made for use, for strength, for orRe-nament, neglect alone converts to trouble. weakness, and deformity. We need only sit still, and diseases will arise from the mere want of exercise. "We lay aside the Resolves as we part from our dearest friends, in the hope of frequently returning to them. We recommend the whole of them to our readers' perusal. They will find therein more solid maxims, as much piety, and far better writing, than in most of the pulpit lectures now current among us." (London) Retrospective view, x. 365. "For myself, I can only say that Feltham appears not only a laboured and artificial, but a shallow writer. Among his many faults, none strike me more than a want of depth, which his pointed and sententious manner renders more ridiculous. . . . He is one of our worst writers in point of style; with little vigour, he has less elegance."-HALLAM: Lit. Hist. of Europe, Introduc. AGAINST DETRACTION. In some dispositions there is such an envious kind of pride, that they cannot endure that any but themselves should be set forth as excellent; so that, when they hear one justly praised, they will either openly detract from his virtues, or, if those virtues be like a clear and shining light, eminent and distinguished, so that he cannot be safely traduced by the tongue, they will then raise a suspicion against him by a mysterious silence, as if there were something remaining to be told, which over-clouded even his brightest glory. Surely, if we considered detraction to proceed, as it does, from envy, and to belong only to deficient minds, we should find that to applaud virtue would How fair soever the soul may be, yet while connected with our fleshy nature it requires continual care and vigilance to prevent its being soiled and discoloured. Take the weeders from the Floralium and a very little time will change it to a wilderness. and turn that which was before a recreation for men into a habitation for vermin. Our life is a warfare; and we ought not, while passing through it, to sleep without a sentinel, or march without a scout. He who neglects either of these precautions exposes himself to surprise, and to becoming a prey to the diligence and perseverance of his adversary. The mounds of life and virtue, as well as those of pastures, will decay; and if we do not repair them, all the beasts of the field will enter, and tear up everything good which grows within them. With the religious and well-disposed a slight deviation from wisdom's laws will disturb the mind's fair peace. Macarius did penance for only killing a gnat in anger. Like the Jewish |