soned in Windsor Castle by the orthodox Henry VIII, for having eaten flesh during Lent.

"Here noble Surrey felt the sacred rage.”

РОРЕ.

The last victim of the first protestant King of Great Britain was the noble lover of Geraldine. The reforming prince proved his attachment to literature by dooming to the block Sir Thomas More, and the poet with whose writings the era of modern English poetry commences. In the Tower of London are preserved the axes which struck off many illustrious heads. The bit of iron survives moulds which comprised power and genius.

Surrey, in his translation of some fragments of the Æneid, introduced the blank verse which Milton and Thomson adopted, and which Lord Byron rejected.

Sir Thomas More, like his good king, was a poet and a prose writer. Most of his works are written in Latin. The head of the chancellor was exposed, for the space of a fortnight, on London Bridge. Henry VIII, in his clemency, commuted the punishment of hanging, to which the author of "Utopia" was condemned, to that of decapitation. On being informed of this, the learned magistrate replied: Heaven preserve my friends from the like favour!"

Within an interval of twenty-five years, at the period here referred to, prose was less successfully cultivated than poetry. It would be difficult to derive either profit or pleasure from a perusal of the writings of Wolsey, Cranmer, Habington, Drummond, and Joseph Hall, the preacher.

EDWARD VI. AND QUEEN MARY.

EDWARD VI and Queen Mary, who succeeded Henry VIII, and preceded Elizabeth, must be included in the list of British authors. The young king died at the age of sixteen. He was educated by two scholars of the time, John Cheke and Anthony Cooke, and he likewise received instructions from Cardan. Edward left a journal written in his own hand, which is useful for the illustration of history. The young sovereign, whose life was spent in privacy, and as it were in exile, enjoyed the leisure which other princes find only when banished to foreign lands.

Edward was a zealous reformer, and his sister Mary was a violent catholic. She brought back the nation by force to the Roman communion. Gardiner and others, who burned catholics for the reformation, burned for catholicism the protestants whom they had made such: thus we see in political revolutions, old men, who have uniformly adhered to the ruling power, rallying their

energies to recount their own baseness. The commons prostituted themselves to the will of Mary, as they paid obedience to the commands of her father. People changed their faith oftener than their garments. They swore to one thing and presently afterwards swore to directly the contrary; and at length in the reign of Elizabeth, they returned to their first oaths. How many perjuries are required to make one fidelity!

Mary left behind her some Latin and French letters. Erasmus praised the former, but they are absolutely worthless; as to the latter, they are illegible.