and entered a gentleman-commoner of Broadgate Hall, afterwards called Pembroke College, Oxford. After he had taken his Master of Arts degree, he turned his studies to physic, and first began, rather prematurely, as it would appear, to practise his profession in Oxfordshire. Shortly after he went to Ireland, and thence abroad. To complete his medical education, he prosecuted his studies at Montpellier and Padua, and after some stay at these famous schools, returned home by way of Holland, and was created Doctor of Physic at the University of Leyden. Browne returned to London about the year 1634, and the next year is supposed to have written the celebrated treatise "Religio Medici," a work which was no sooner published than it excited attention in an extraordinary degree. It first came out, as it was said, surreptitiously, in itself a circumstance calculated to recommend it to notice; but, besides this, it was distinguished by much learning, great subtlety, and exuberant imagination, and written in the strongest and most forcible language. Dr Browne settled, in 1636, at Norwich, where his practice soon became very extensive, many patients resorting to him for advice; and in 1637, he was incorporated Doctor of Physic in the University of Oxford. A few years after, he married Mrs Mileham, of a good family in the county, "a lady," as she is described, "of such symmetrical proportion to her worthy husband, both in the graces of her body and mind, that they seemed to come together by a kind of natural magnetism." In 1646, his work entitled "Enquiries into Vulgar and Common Errors" appeared. In 1658, the discovery of some ancient urns in Norfolk gave him occasion to write "A Discourse on Sepulchral Urns," in which he treats, with his asual learning, on the funeral rites of the ancient nations, exhibits their various treatment of the dead, and examines the substances found in the urns liscovered in Norfolk. There is, perhaps, none of his works which better exemplifies his reading or memory. In 1671, Browne received the honour of knighthood from Charles II. at Norwich, where he continued to live in high reputation, till, in his seventy-sixth year, he was seized with a colic, which, after having tortured him about a week, put an end to his life, October 19, 1682. On his monument, in the church of St Peter Mancroft, Norwich, is the following inscription:

"Near the Foot of this Pillar Lies Sir THOMAS BROWNE, Kt. and Doctor in Physick, Author of Religio Medici, and other Learned Books, Who practic'd Physick in this city 46 years, And died Oct. 1682, in the 77 year of his Age, In Memory of whom Dame Dorothy Browne, who had bin his Affectionate Wife 41 Years, caused this Monument, to be Erected."

CARLYLE, THOMAS, one of the most original f all our modern essayists, and one whose

influence has been co-extensive with the diffu sion of our literature, was born at Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, on the 4th December 1795. The intelligence of his father, who was a small farmer, and the piety and strong common sense of his mother, are on record. He attended first the parish school of Ecclefechan, and afterwards that of Annan, where he met Edward Irving, when a strong friendship sprang up between them. In 1809, when about fourteen years of age, he came to study at the Edinburgh University. His habits at this time are said to have been lonely and contemplative, and his reading in all kinds of literature assiduous and extensive. He distinguished himself in the mathematical class, and succeeded in gaining the friendship of Professor John Leslie, which we find was shortly afterwards useful to him, in his appointment to a tutorship at Kirkcaldy. Previous to this appointment he taught for two years in the burgh school of Annan. In 1818 he returned to Edinburgh, became a contributor to the "Edinburgh Encyclopædia," and also made a translation of "Legendre's Geometry." In 1823 he acted as ti cor to Charles Buller. He published a translation of Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister" in 1824. His "Life of Schiller" appeared in the London Magazine (1823-24), at that time counting among its contributors Lamb, Hazlitt, De Quincey, and Allan Cunningham. In 1826 he married an only daughter of Dr Welsh of 1addington: on the father's side the Welshes were lineal descendants of John Knox. From the year of his marriage in 1826, till 1834, he resided it Craigenputtoch, a retired farm-house about fifteen miles from Dumfries. In 1834 he removed to London, settling at Chelsea, where he resided till his death in 1881. "Sartor Resartus," written at Craigenputtoch, appeared by instalments in Fraser's Magazine, after numerous rejections. His "History of the French Revolution" was published in 1837. In the same year he delivered a course of lectures on "German Literature," in Willis's Rooms, London; in 1839 he lectured on the "Revolutions of Modern Europe," and in 1840 on "Hero-Worship." This was his last public appearance in this capacity, with the exception of his rectorial address to he Edinburgh students in 1866, a description of which interesting occasion, by Alexander Smith, is given in this volume. Mr Carlyle's of her works are, "Past and Present," "Letters an I Speeches of Oliver Cromwell," "Latter-day Pamphlets," "Life of John Sterling," "History of Frederick II.,"

," "Early Kings of Norway," al:o an essay on the "Portraits of John Knox." On the occasion of Mr Carlyle's eightieth birthday, he was presented by a numerous circle of literary friends and admirers, with a gold nedal and an address, signed by various friends and wellwishers. The publication of Carlyle's essays marked a new era in biographical portraiture, and his papers on Samuel Johnson and Robert

of writing may be seen from his letters, and from these occasional contributions already mentioned. The essay entitled "Conversation" he afterwards expanded into the delightful poem bearing the same title. The Connoisseur lasted from January 1754 to September 1756, and was succeeded by Johnson's Idler. Cowper died at East Dereham, in Norfolk, on the 25th of April 1800.

DE QUINCEY, THOMAS, was born on the 15th of August 1785 at "The Farm," a countryhouse near Manchester. His parents were people in the middle walk of life, cultured and intelligent. He had an elder brother and several sisters. His early youth was passed amid the most delightful surroundings, and he writes, in after-life, "Were I to return thanks to Providence for all the separate blessings of my early situation, I would single out these four as worthy of special commemoration: That I lived in a rustic solitude; that this solitude was in England; that my infant feelings were moulded by the gentlest of sisters; finally, that I and they were dutiful and loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent Church."" He was a small, sensitive child; a dreamer, always musing, imaginative, revelling almost from infancy in a world of his own creation, and he grew up to manhood with his whole character coloured by the solitary dream-life he had led. At school he was an apt scholar, particularly proficient in Latin. At the age of fifteen he set out with a friend and schoolmate-Lord Westford-for a visit to Ireland, where the latter lived. He passed several months at the residence of Lord Altamount, afterwards the Marquis of Sligo, Lord Westport's father, in the county of Mayo. He soon grew tired of school, and we next meet with him in London. He had already begun the pernicious habit of opium eating. By and by he indulged in it for the sake of the pleasure it gave him, and for the purpose, he says, of keeping his "moral affections in a state of cloudless serenity and high over all the great light of this majestic intellect." He attended the University at Oxford, and soon after he left college he went to live in the Lake country, where he lived for twenty years. In 1816 he married, and in 1821 he created his first sensation by the publication of the "Opium Eater." In 1809 he had become acquainted with Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey, and this was the commencement of a life-long friendship. In 1829 he quitted Grasmere, and from that time resided mostly in Glasgow and Edinburgh, until his death in the last-named place, December 8, 1859, at the age of seventy-four. De Quincey was a wonderful talker. His talk was brilliant and full of learning; his memory was tenacious; his discourse sparkled with anecdote, and yet was utterly devoid of pedantry. His writings embrace A variety of subjects — biographical sketches,

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speculative papers, political economy, fantasies or prose poems, theological essays, literary history, rhetoric, historical and critical essays, and many others. As a political economist he took a high place. In appearance he was a small, attenuated-looking man, with large, piercing eyes, and a face carved with lines of intense thought and suffering. He was very absentminded, and very careless in his attire, often dressed in a coat two or three sizes too large for him, trousers that barely reached the tops of his shoes, and a hat that almost fell over his eyes; yet, as Professor Wilson said of him, "a person of the highest intellectual and imaginative powers; a metaphysician, a logician, and a political economist of the first order; a profound and comprehensive scholar, a perfect gentleman, . and one of the best of men."

FOSTER, REV. JOHN, was the son of a farmer, residing between Wainwright and Hebden Bridge, Halifax, Yorkshire. There Foster was born, September 17, 1770. While a youth, he worked at the loom, and in his seventeenth year, through the patronage of the Rev. Dr Fawcett, Baptist minister of Hebden Bridge, he was entered as a student of the Baptist College, Bristol, in 1791. On the completion of his studies in 1797 he ac cepted the charge of a congregation at Chichester, Sussex, which he held for two years and a half. In 1804 he became minister of Frome, in Somersetshire, but a morbid state of the thyroid gland unfitted him from preaching with effect, and he resigned his charge in 1806. From this time till July 1839, he became a regular contributor to the Eclectic Review, writing in all about 185 articles, fifty of which were selected and pub. lished in a separate form in 1844. In 1817 he had accepted a charge at Downend, near Bristol, but his preaching proving unacceptable to his congregation he resigned, and for the remainder of his life resided at Stapleton, near Bristol, chiefly engaged in literary work. There he died, October 15, 1843. His "Essays" have gone through more than twenty editions, and still continue to be popular. His excellent taste, clear and comprehensive intellect, rendered him an admirable essayist. His "Essays," in the form of letters, published in 1805, were really addressed to the lady who soon afterwards became his wife.

FULLER, THOMAS.-A conspicuous place in the prose literature of our language is due to the historian, divine, and essayist, Thomas Fuller. He was born at Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, in 1608, and educated at Queen's College, Cambridge. The works of Fuller are very numerous, the chief of them being the following: "A History of the Worthies of England," one of the earliest biographical works in the language, a strange mixture of topography, biography, and popular antiquities; "The Holy and Profane State," "The History of the Holy War," and

"The Church History of Britain." The present examples of his powers as an essayist are given from "The Holy and Profane State." Fulier was an extraordinary man. If there was an amusing writer in this world, he was one. There was in him a combination of those qualities which minister to our entertainment, such as few have ever possessed in an equal degree. He was, first of all, a man of multifarious reading; of great and undigested knowledge, which an extraordinary retentiveness of memory preserved ever ready for use, and considerable accuracy of judgment enabled him successfully to apply. "Next to Shakespeare," says Coleridge, "I am not certain whether Thomas Fuller, beyond all other writers, does not excite in me the sense and emotion of the marvellous: the degree in which any given faculty or combination of faculties is possessed and manifested, so far surpassing what one would have thought possible in a single mind, as to give one's admiration the flavour and quality of wonder! Wit was the stuff and substance of Fuller's intellect. It was the element, the earthen base, the material which he worked in; and this very circumstance has defrauded him of his due praise for the practical wisdom of the thoughts, for the beauty and variety of the truths, into which he shaped the stuff. Fuller was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced great man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men. He is a very voluminous writer; and yet in all his numerous volumes on so many different subjects, it is scarcely too much to say that you will hardly find a page in which some one sentence out of every three does not deserve to be quoted for itself-as motto or as maxim." Dr Fuller having requested one of his companions to make an epitaph for him, received the following:

"Here lies Fuller's earth." He returned to dust in 1661.

GOLDSMITH, OLIVER, was born on the 10th of November 1728, at Pallas, a small village in the county of Longford, Ireland. He was the second son of the Rev. Charles Goldsmith, incumbent of the parish, the country parson so lovingly described in "The Deserted Village:"

"A man he was to all the country dear,

And passing rich with forty pounds a year."

Within two years from the birth of Oliver, however, he succeeded his wife's uncle in the rectory of Kilkenny-West, a living worth £200 a year; and took up his abode at Lissoy, in the county of Westmeath. When sixteen years of age, Goldsmith entered Trinity College, Dublin, and in 1749 he took the degree of B. A., and left college. It was then determined, in utter disregard of his manifest unfitness, that he should enter the Church. He applied to the Bishop of Elfin for ordination, arrayed in scarlet breeches; but his

lordship took exception to his scholarship, theology, or morals, and dismissed him. Law was next selected with little better success. Accordingly, another little purse being collected for him, he set out for Edinburgh, then, as now, one of the first medical schools of the world. During the sessions of 1752 and 1753 he studied medicine at Edinburgh. On the pretext, or with the serious intention, of completing his medical studies under the distinguished Albinus of Leyden, he now resolved on going to the Continent. He took ship for Bordeaux-an inexplicable choice for one going to Leydenbut owing to stress of weather it had to put in at Newcastle. Here he and his four fellowpassengers were apprehended as agents of the French Government. This, which might be regarded as a misfortune, saved his life; for the ship, continuing its voyage to Bordeaux, was wrecked at the mouth of the Garonne, and all on board perished. After some delay he was liberated, and sailed direct for Rotterdam, proceeding thence on foot to Leyden. His time and attention during the eighteen months he spent at this university, were divided between the lecture-hall and gambling-table-the fashion. able resort of the day, which he had not sufficient power of will to resist. Again reduced to poverty, but too much ashamed to own it, he started on foot for a tour through Europe, with one clean shirt, a flute, and a guinea as provision for his journey. Having trudged through Belgium and France, he arrived at Geneva, where he became tutor to an English youth, whose character seems to have been the very opposite of his own. To the great satisfaction of both, this engagement terminated at Marseilles; and Goldsmith, enriched somewhat by his tutorial fee, travelled onward through the north of Italy. At Padua he resided seven months, and then he directed his steps homeward through France. He arrived in London in February 1756. He was now in his twentyeighth year, with a livelihood to make in a country where his voice and his flute were of no service. On the strength of his B.A. degree, he obtained an ushership in a school, but his B.A. having failed him, he tried what the Paduan doctorate could do. He obtained an assistantship in a laboratory in Fish Street Hill, and afterwards commenced on his own account a medical practice in Southwark. A poor patient, a printer, succeeded in bringing him under the notice of his master, Mr Samuel Richardson, publisher, and author of "Sir Charles Grandison," who employed him as a corrector for the press; and in this humble and fortuitous way Goldsmith entered the service of the muses. For five or six years he led a hand-to-mouth life-in turns, teacher, physician, and literary hack, contributing in turn to the Monthly Magazine, the Bee, Busybody, Lady's Magazine, Public Ledger. The contributions to the Public Ledger