generally adopted. He died M. P. for Christchurch, &c., and, though he rose from very small beginnings, was enabled to bequeath a large property. *15. 1559.-QUEEN ELIZABETH CROWNED. Her vigour, her constancy, her magnanimity, her penetration, vigilance, address, are allowed to merit the highest praises, and appear not to have been surpassed by any person that ever filled a throne: a conduct less rigorous, less imperious, more sincere, more indulgent to her people, would have been requisite to form a perfect character. By the force of her mind, she controlled all her more active and stronger qualities, and prevented them from running into excess: her heroism was exempt from temerity, her frugality from avarice, her friendship from partiality, her active temper from turbulency and a vain ambition: she guarded not herself with equal care or equal success from lesser infirmities; the rivalship of beauty, the desire of admiration, the jealousy of love, and the sallies of anger. Her singular talents for government were founded equally on her temper and on her capacity. Endowed with a great command over herself, she soon obtained an uncontrolled ascendant over her people; and while she merited all their esteem by her real virtues, she also engaged their affections by her pretended ones. Few sovereigns of England succeeded to the throne in more difficult circumstances; and none ever conducted the government with such uniform success and felicity. Though unacquainted with the practice of toleration, the true secret for managing religious factions, she preserved her people, by her superior prudence, from those confusions in which theological controversy had involved all the neighbouring nations: and though her enemies were the most powerful princes of Europe, the most active, the most enterprising, the least scrupulous, she was able by her vigour to make deep impressions on their states: her own greatness, meanwhile, remained untouched and unimpaired.(Hume.) If ever royal virtues crowned a crown, If ever courage dwelt with courtesy, For temperance, prowess, prudence, equity, Heaven's gem, earth's joy, world's wonder, Nature's WORTHIES OF DEVON, fol. 1701, p. 332. 18.-SAINT PRISCA. Prisca, a Roman lady, was early converted to Christianity; but refusing to abjure her religion, and to offer sacrifice when she was commanded, was horribly tortured, and afterwards beheaded, under the Emperor Claudius, in the year 275. O could we step into the grave, And lift the coffin lid, And look upon the greedy worms It well might change the reddest cheek Into a lily white; And freeze the warmest blood to look Upon so sad a sight! Yet still it were a sadder sight, If in that lump of clay There were a sense to feel the worms So busy with their prey. O pity then the living heart;— The lump of living clay, On whom the canker-worms of care For ever, ever, prey! 20.-SAINT FABIAN. St. Fabian succeeded St. Anterus in the pontificate, in the year 236. Eusebius relates, that, in an assembly of the people and clergy, held for the election of a pastor in his room, a dove, to the great surprise of all present, settled on the head of St. Fabian; and that this miraculous sign united the votes of the clergy and people in promoting him, though a layman and a stranger. He governed the church sixteen years, sent St. Dionysius and other preachers into Gaul, and condemned Privatus, the promoter of a new heresy in Africa, as appears from St. Cyprian. St. Fabian died a glorious martyr in the persecution of Decius in 250, as St. Cyprian and St. Jerom bear witness. The former, writing to his successor, St. Cornelius, calls him an incomparable man; and says, that the glory of his death was equal to the purity and holiness of his life. 21.-SAINT AGNES. St. Jerom says, that the tongues and pens of all nations are employed in the praises of this saint, who overcame both the cruelty of the tyrant and the tenderness of her age, and crowned the glory of chastity with that of martyrdom. St. Austin observes, that her name signifies chaste in Greek, and a lamb in Latin. She has been always considered by the Catholics as a special patroness of purity, with the immaculate Mother of God and St. Thecla. Rome was the theatre of the triumph of St. Agnes; and Prudentius says, that her tomb was shown within sight of that city. She suffered not long after the beginning of the persecution of Dioclesian, whose bloody edicts appeared in March in the year of our Lord 303. She was only thirteen years of age at the time of her glorious death. On the eve of St. Agnes's-day, many kinds of divination are practised by the rustic damsels in the north, to discover their future husbands.-See T. T. for 1815, p. 9, where are some further particulars of this saint. 22.-SAINT VINCENT. Vincent, a deacon of the church in Spain, suffered martyrdom in the Dioclesian persecution, about the year 303. A full description of the dreadful cruelties which he bore may be seen in T. T. for 1815, p, 12. 25.-CONVERSION OF SAINT PAUL. Saint Paul suffered martyrdom under the general persecution of Nero. Being a Roman citizen, he could not be crucified by the Roman laws, as his colleague St. Peter was; he was, therefore, beheaded-hence the usual representation of him with a sword in his hand. St. Chrysostom tells us that his picture was preserved by some of the christians in his time, and that he was but of a low stature (three cubits), that is, four feet six inches high. Nicephorus describes him as a small man, somewhat crooked, of a pale complexion, and appearing older than he really was. Lord Lyttleton's Observations on the Conversion of St. Paul' deserve the most careful perusal of every scholar and every christian. *28. 1725.-PETER THE GREAT DIED, Æt. 52. A people savage from remotest time, A huge neglected empire, ONE VAST MIND, His stubborn country tamed, her rocks, her fens, of courts; Who greatly spurned the slothful pomp THOMSON. *29. 1739.-WESTMINSTER BRIDGE. The first stone was laid on this day: the masonry used in its erection was nearly double the quantity employed in building St. Paul's Cathedral! 30.-KING CHARLES I, MARTYR. He was the worthiest gentleman, the best master, the best friend, the best husband, the best father, and the best christian, that the age in which he lived produced. (Clarendon,) An elegant and candid tribute is paid to the memory of King Charles in the sermon of Bishop Horne, entitled The Christian King. One of the Lansdowne MSS. now deposited in the British Museum (lately copied into the Morning Advertiser) records the following singular affair respecting the unfortunate Charles I and the accomplished Lord Falkland, who was slain in a skirmish in which he unnecessarily engaged, the day before the first battle of Newbury: About this time, there befel the king an accident, which, though a trifle in itself, and that no weight is to be laid upon any thing of that nature; yet since the best authors, both ancient and modern, have not thought it below the majesty of history to mention the like, it may be the more excusable to take notice of. 'The king being at Oxford during the civil wars, went one day to see the public library, where he was shewn, among other books, a Virgil, nobly printed and exquisitely bound. The Lord Falkland, to divert the king, would have his majesty make a trial of his fortune by the sortes vir giliana, which every body knows was an unusual kind of augury some ages past. Whereupon the king opening the book, the period which happened to come up was that part of Dido's imprecation against Æneas, which Mr. Dryden translates thus: |