CHRIST'S VICTORY IN HEAVEN.

But Justice had no sooner Mercy seen
Smoothing the wrinkles of her Father's brow,
But up she starts, and throws her self between :
As when a vapour, from a moory slough,

Meeting with fresh Eoüs, that but now

Open'd the world, which all in darknesse lay, Doth heav'n's bright face of his rayes disarray, And sads the smiling Orient of the springing day.

She was a Virgin of austere regard;

Not as the world esteems her, deaf and blind;
But as the eagle, that hath oft compar'd

Her eye with Heav'n's, so, and more brightly shin'd
Her lamping sight; for she the same could wind
Into the solid heart, and with her ears

The silence of the thought loud speaking hears,
And in one hand a paire of even scales she wears.

No riot of affection revel kept

Within her brest, but a still apathy

Possessed all her soule, which softly slept

Securely, without tempest; no sad cry

Awakes her pity, but wrong'd poverty,

Sending her eyes to heav'n swimming in tears, With hideous clamours ever struck her ears, Whetting the blazing sword, that in her hand she bears.

The winged lightning is her Mercury,

And round about her mighty thunders sound:

Impatient of himself lies pining by

Pale Sickness with his kercher'd head upwound,

And thousand noisome plagues attend her round;
But if her cloudy brow but once grow foul,
The flints do melt, and rocks to water roll,

And airy mountaines shake, and frighted shadows howl.

Famine, and bloodless Care, and bloody War,
Want, and the want of knowledge how to use
Abundance; Age, and Fear that runs afar
Before his fellow Grief, that aye pursues
His wingèd steps; for who would not refuse
Grief's company, a dull and rawboned sprite,

That lanks the cheeks, and pales the freshest sight,
Unbosoming the cheerful breast of all delight?

Before this cursed throng goes Ignorance,
That needs will lead the way he cannot see:
And, after all, Death doth his flag advance,
And, in the midst, Strife still would roguing be,
Whose ragged flesh and clothes did well agree:
And round about amazèd Horror flies,

And ouer all, Shame veils his guilty eyes,

And underneath, Hell's hungry throat still yawning lies.

Upon two stony tables, spread before her,
She lean'd her bosom, more than stony hard;
There slept th' unpartial Judge, and strict restorer
Of wrong or right, with pain or with reward;
There hung the score of all our debts, the card

Where good, and bad, and life, and death were painted :

Was never heart of mortal so untainted,

But when that scroll was read, with thousand terrors fainted.

Witness the thunder that mount Sinai heard,
When all the hill with fiery clouds did flame,
And wandering Israel, with the sight afeard,
Blinded with seeing, durst not touch the same,
But like a wood of shaking leaves became.

On this dead Justice, she, the Living Law,
Bowing herself with a majestic awe,

All heav'n, to hear her speech, did into silence draw.

SIR HENRY WOTTON.

[BORN 1568, died 1639. How happy is he born and taught,' said to have been printed in 1614; see Courtly Poets, ed. Hannah, 1875. It was quoted to Drummond by Ben Jonson in 1618 or 1619: 'Sir Edward [Henry] Wotton's verses of a happy life he hath by heart.' 'You meaner beauties of the night,' printed with music in Est's Sixth Set of Books, 1624. It was probably written a few years before. In 1651, Reliquiae Wottonianae.]

Sir Henry Wotton, a highly accomplished gentleman and distinguished diplomatist in his day, is now best known to us personally through the affectionate memoir of his humble friend and fellow angler Isaac Walton, and the kindly interest he showed in Milton, whose Comus had excited his warm admiration. He was well born, well bred, and one of the most cultivated men of his time. But, immersed in politics and society, he found but little leisure for the studies he loved till his appointment to the Provostship of Eton in 1624, when he was some 56 years of age. All the middle period of his life from 1595 he was occupied with affairs, not without peril, as when he was one of the secretaries of the Earl of Essex (his fellow secretary, Cuffe, was hanged), not without much vexation, as when his famous definition of an ambassador, public attention being called to it eight years after it was entered in Flecamon's 'albo' at Augsburg, brought him for a time into disgrace with James I.

Of poetry he wrote but little; but of that little two pieces at least have obtained a permanent place in English literature, his Character of a Happy Life, written probably circ. 1614; and the lines, On his mistress the Queen of Bohemia, circ. 1620. Of the apophthegm 'the style is of the man,' it would be difficult to find better illustrations. As in a mirror, they reflect the high refined nature of one who, living in the world, and a master of its ways and courtesies, was yet never of it-was never a worldling. JOHN W. HALES.

THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE.

How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill;

Whose passions not his masters are;
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Untied unto the world by care

Of public fame or private breath;

Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Nor vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;
Who hath his life from rumours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great;

Who God doth late and early pray
More of his grace than gifts to lend;

And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend.

This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall :
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And, having nothing, yet hath all.

ON HIS MISTRESS, THE QUEEN OF BOHEMIA.

You meaner beauties of the night,

That poorly satisfy our eyes

More by your number than your light;

You common people of the skies;

What are you when the moon shall rise?

You curious chanters of the wood,

That warble forth Dame Nature's lays,
Thinking your passions understood

By your weak accents; what's your praise,
When Philomel her voice shall raise?

You violets that first appear,

By your pure purple mantles known
Like the proud virgins of the year,

As if the spring were all your own;
What are you when the rose is blown?

So, when my mistress shall be seen
In form and beauty of her mind,
By virtue first, then choice, a Queen,
Tell me if she were not designed

The eclipse and glory of her kind?

UPON THE DEATH OF SIR ALBERTUS MORTON'S WIFE.

He first deceased; she for a little tried
To live without him, liked it not, and died.