The name of this veteran parish clerk, as we gather from another source, was Sampson Horton, and it appears from Walton's narrative that he did not long survive the appointment of the "intruding minister." When the sacrament was about to be administered by this worthy, according to the Genevan form, poor Sampson displayed some natural hesitation, and having been called on by the minister "to cease wondering, and lock the church-door," he replied, "Pray take you the keys, and lock me out: I will never come more into this church; for all men will say, my master Hooker was a good man and a good scholar; and I am sure it was not used to be thus in his days;" "and report says," continues Walton, "the old man went presently home and died."

earnest expression soon presented itself to the Arch- We are told by Walton that the parish clerk who bishop. The rectory of Boscum, in the diocese of has been thus incidentally mentioned survived till the Sarum, became vacant, and happening to be in the third or fourth year of the Long Parliament. For disposal of the Primate, it was offered to the harassed many years after Hooker's death, it had been his pastor. The offer was accepted with pious thankful- duty and delight to point out his master's tomb to ness, and Hooker immediately quitted the Temple to strangers who were anxious to see the earthly restingbury himself in the solitude of a country parsonage. place of such a man, and at the same time to add his He made good use of his retirement; for during the personal testimony to the holiness and humility of his four years which he passed at Boscum, he completed character. "But it so fell out," says Walton, "that and published four out of the eight books which he about the said third or fourth year of the Long Parhad proposed to write on the Laws of Ecclesiastical liament, the then present parson of Bourne was sePolity. From Boscum Hooker was transferred, in questered, you may guess why, and a Genevan July 1595, to the parsonage of Bishop's Bourne in minister put into his good living. This, and other Kent, three miles from Canterbury. This living, it like sequestrations, made the clerk express himself in appears, was in the gift of the Crown, and having a wonder and say, they had sequestered so many good become vacant by the elevation of the former Incum-men, that he doubted if his good master, Mr. Hooker, bent, (Dr. William Redman,) to the see of Norwich, had lived till now, they would have sequestered him Queen Elizabeth bestowed it upon Hooker, "whom too!" she loved well," in special acknowledgment of his merit and the services he had rendered to the Church. At Bourne the good parson passed the remainder of his life in quiet seclusion, his time being fully occupied with the duties of his ministry, (to which he sedulously and conscientiously attended,) and with the composition of his great work. His parsonage being on the high-road from Canterbury to Dover, we are told that many scholars and others who travelled that way turned aside to see the man "whose life and learning were so much admired." But the strangers who were thus admitted to his presence must have marvelled not a little at his aspect and demeanour. His mean and humble appearance was little calculated to inspire the worldly-minded with respect or awe. No personal graces, or assumption of superiority, gave any outward indication of the profound and subtle intellect which he was known to possess. Instead of the dignified ecclesiastic they had pictured to themselves, the curious visitors found, in Izaak Walton's words, "an obscure, harmless man; a man in poor clothes, his loins usually girt in a coarse gown, or canonical coat; of a mean stature, and stooping, and yet more lowly in the thoughts of his soul: his body worn out, not with age, but study and holy mortifications; his face full of heat and pimples, begot by his unactivity and sedentary life." His humility and simplicity of character were still more observable than his careless and unstudied demeanour. Of all men that have ever lived he appears best to have realized the idea of a meek-spirited parish pastor, modest, affable, and learned; pious and self-denying, and ever ready to esteem others better than himself. So mild and humble was his nature, says Walton, "that his poor parish-clerk and he did never talk but with both their hats on, or both off, at the same time: and to this may be added, that though he was not purblind, yet he was short or weak-sighted; and where he fixed his eyes at the beginning of his sermon, there they continued till it was ended: and the reader has a liberty to believe, that his modesty and dim sight were some of the reasons why he trusted Mrs.Churchman to choose his wife."

Leaving, with honest Izaak, "this grateful clerk in his quiet grave," we return to his master, Hooker. Notwithstanding the blameless tenor of his life and conversation, the parson of Bourne was not exempt from the usual penalty of exalted excellence-the liability to slander and malicious misrepresentation. An attempt was made to take advantage of his constitutional timidity by circulating, for the purposes of extortion, a slanderous report, deeply affecting his character as a Christian minister, but the plot was unravelled and exposed by his friends Sandys and Cranmer, and the conspirators brought to condign punishment. The accusation which was made against him was one which none of those who knew him could have credited for an instant; but party feelings then ran high, and it is hinted that the slander was invented by a dissenting brother, who endured not Church ceremonies, and hated him for his book's sake.' However this may be, it is worthy of remark that as soon as his character was fully vindicated, Hooker at once forgot and forgave the wrongs he had suffered. He even endeavoured to procure the pardon of the guilty wretches who had slandered him, and he would often afterwards, it is said, exclaim to his friend, Dr. Saravia, "Oh! with what quietness did I enjoy my soul, after I was free from the fears of my slander!

(1) Walton.

And how much more after a conflict and victory over | soul lingered upon earth. When, on the day of his my desires of revenge!"

In the year 1597, Hooker published the fifth book of his Ecclesiastical Polity, and to the day of his death he was busily occupied in the composition of the remaining portion of the work. When overtaken by a sharp sickness, about the year 1600, it was his constant prayer that he might live to finish what he had so well begun. And so great was his anxiety, so earnest his labour and study, that it has been said, "he hastened his own death, by hastening to give life to his books." When, only a few days before his decease, his house was robbed, on being informed of the occurrence, says Walton, his only question was, "Are my books and written papers safe?" And being informed that they were, his reply was, "Then it matters not; for no other loss can trouble me." We must not omit to state that the good man's termagant wife survived him; and though habit possibly enabled him to endure her tyranny with patience, yet it is very evident that he enjoyed through life but a slight share of domestic felicity. It is plain, that this vulgar woman, feeling no interest in his pursuits, being utterly unable to comprehend or appreciate his character, and taking advantage of his yielding and gentle nature, treated him with studied unkindness and contempt. Upon Hooker's death, without waiting "a comely time to bewail her widowhood," she married again; but this second marriage she did not live long enough to repent of, for she died within four months after she became a widow. It has been said that a precious manuscript of the last three books of the Ecclesiastical Polity, completed and carefully revised by her husband, was destroyed through her carelessness and ignorance. Having been sent for to Lambeth by Archbishop Whitgift, about three months subsequently to her husband's death, she is stated to have confessed, after some friendly questioning, that "one Mr. Charke," (whom Wood describes as a "noted puritan,") " and another misister that dwelt near Canterbury, came to her, and desired that they might go into her husband's study, and look upon some of his writings; and that there they two burnt and tore many of them, assuring her that they were writings not fit to be seen.” The morning after making this statement, the unworthy helpmate of our great divine was found dead in her bed, at her lodgings in King Street, Westminster. It is added that her new husband was "suspected and questioned" about her death, but was subsequently declared innocent, and discharged.

It is pleasant to turn from the contemplation of this woman's fate, to the account which has been handed down to us of Hooker's death-bed. His behaviour in the last trying scene of all, and the dying utterances of his parting spirit, were in beautiful accordance with the wisdom and purity of his life. On the great theme to which he had dedicated so much of his attention, he continued to meditate as long as his

(1) See Appendix to Walton's Life of Hooker.

death, it was observed by his friend Saravia, that he appeared to be "deep in contemplation, and not inclinable to discourse," and a request was made that he should disclose what was passing in his mind, he is said to have replied, "That he was meditating the number and nature of angels, and their blessed obedience and order, without which peace could not be in heaven: and oh! that it might be so on earth." His last recorded words also prove the direction of his thoughts, and the chief aim and aspiration of his heart. "I could wish," he said, "to live to do the Church more service; but cannot hope it, for my days are passed as a shadow that returneth not." Such were Hooker's dying words. "More he would have spoken," says his estimable biographer, "but his spirits failed him ; and after a short conflict between nature and death, a quiet sigh put a period to his last breath, and so he fell asleep. And now he seems to rest like Lazarus in Abraham's bosom."

Hooker's great work on the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity is justly considered, in a literary point of view, one of the most remarkable productions of a most remarkable period. It has the reputation of being the first work in our language which affords an example of strict, continuous reasoning, logically arranged and methodized. Every sentence appears to have been carefully weighed, and demands the reader's whole attention. From the first page to the last, it is full of weighty matter, which requires for its perfect comprehension patient and deliberate study. It is one of the few books, which, in Lord Bacon's words, require "to be chewed and digested," and, "to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention." Regarded merely as a monument of erudition-of exact and varied learning-we should consider it deserving of attention, were it not that its claim to distinction rests upon higher grounds than an ambitious parade of authorities, or display of scholarship.

It would have been incredible if such a work had not, in the author's lifetime, excited the attention, and extorted the approbation of the learned. Its publication was an era in the history of theological investigation, and it is no wonder that its fame soon spread through Europe. Soon after the first four books had been given to the world, the attention of Pope Clement VIII. was called to them, by a learned Englishman of the Romish faith, who boasted that though "he had never met with an English book, whose writer deserved the name of an author, yet there now appeared a wonder to them, and it would be so to his Holiness if it were in Latin;" and what was more surprising than all, this learned work, so grave, logical, and majestic, that in style and matter it had never been surpassed, was the production of a "poor, obscure English priest!" At the Pope's request, the same learned Englishman read to his Holiness, in Latin, some portions of the Ecclesiastical Polity, and at the end of the first book, the Pontiff is said to have remarked:-"There is no learning that this man hath not searched into, nothing too hard for

his understanding: this man indeed deserves the name | apt as well to quicken the spirits as to allay that of an author. His books will get reverence by age; which is too eager; sovereign against melancholy and for there is in them such seeds of eternity, that, if the despair; forcible to draw forth tears of devotion, if rest be like this, they shall last till the last fire shall the mind be such as can yield them; able to move consume all learning." and to moderate all affections. .. They must have hearts very dry and tough, from whom the melody of the psalms doth not sometime draw that wherein a mind religiously affected delighteth."

IMAGINATION.

In addition to its high reputation as a model of argumentative composition, there is another point of view in which the ecclesiastical polity of Hooker is interesting to the English student. It affords us It is impossible to read through Hooker's great a curious and valuable example of the weighty and work without meeting with many pithy and pregnant majestic style which was in vogue among the learned passages, which might be profitably brought to the in Elizabeth's days. The idiom, as it has been re-reader's notice, but our limits forbid the insertion of marked, is that of the Latin rather than the English any lengthened extracts. One or two brief specimens, language. It abounds with long, involved, and intri- | however, of his forcible and peculiar manner, selected cate sentences, framed upon the classical models, and at random, we are tempted to subjoin to this notice. requiring to be construed with care and attention. On the other hand, in the choice of words, Hooker appears to have been singularly happy. For precision and propriety of expression he has no equal in the language. The character of massive strength belongs emphatically to all his writings. They speak to us with a tone of grave authority which commands respect, even where the assent of the understanding may be withheld. As a brief illustration of our remarks, we would take the first sentence of the first book of the "Ecclesiastical Polity," which is no doubt familiar to many of our readers -"He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, shall never want attentive and favourable hearers; because they know the manifold defects whereunto every kind of regiment is subject, but the secret lets and difficulties, which in public proceedings are innumerable and inevitable they have not ordinarily the judgment to consider."

The following remarks on the influence of music, and the propriety of employing it for devotional purposes, appear to us highly characteristic of Hooker's style, and from their intrinsic excellence well worthy of citation:-"In harmony, the very image and character, even of virtue and vice, is perceived, the mind delighted with their resemblances, and brought, by having them often iterated, into a love of the things themselves. For which cause there is nothing more contagious and pestilent than some kinds of harmony; than some, nothing more strong and potent unto good. And that there is such a difference of one kind from another, we need no proof but our own experience, inasmuch as we are at the hearing of some more inclined unto sorrow and heaviness, of some more mollified and softened in mind; one kind apter to stay and settle us, another to move and stir our affections; there is that draweth to a marvellous grave and sober mediocrity; there is also that carrieth, as it were, into ecstasies, filling the mind with a heavenly joy, and for the time in a manner severing it from the body; so that, although we lay altogether aside the consideration of ditty or matter, the very harmony of sounds being framed in due sort, and carried from the ear to the spiritual faculties of our souls, is, by a native puissance and efficacy, greatly available to bring to a perfect temper whatsoever is there troubled;

VOL. XIII.

whether it contemplate, meditate, deliberate, or how-
"The mind, while we are in this present life,
tinual recourse unto imagination, the only store-house
soever exercise itself, worketh nothing without con-
of wit and peculiar chair of memory. On this anvil
whereof, as the pulse declareth how the heart doth
it ceaseth not day and night to strike, by means
work, so the very thoughts and cogitations of man's
mind, be they good or bad, do nowhere sooner bewray
themselves, than through the crevices of that wall
of fancy."
wherewith nature hath compassed the cells and closets

OBSERVANCE OF RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS.

"That which the head of all philosophers hath said of women, If they be good the half of the commonwealth is happy wherein they are,' the same we may fitly apply to [festival] times; well to celebrate these religious and sacred days is to send the flower of our time happily. They are the splendour and outward dignity of our religion, forcible witnesses of ancient truth, provocations to the exercise of all piety, shadows of an endless felicity in heaven, on earth everlasting records and memorials, wherein they which cannot be drawn to hearken unto that which we teach, may only by looking upon that we do, in a manner read whatsoever we believe."

SIGNIFICATION OF THE WEDDING-RING.

The ring hath been always used as an especial pledge of faith and fidelity. Nothing more fit to serve as a token of our purposed endless continuance in that which we never ought to revoke. This is the cause wherefore the heathens themselves did in such cases use the ring, whereunto Tertullian alluding saith, that in ancient times, No woman was permitted to wear gold save only upon one finger, which her husband had fastened unto himself with that ring which was usually given for assurance of future marriage.' The cause why the Christians use it, as some of the fathers think, is either to testify mutual love, or rather to serve for a pledge of conjunction in heart and mind agreed upon between them. But what rite and custom is there so harmless wherein the wit of man lending itself to derision, may not easily find out somewhat to scorn and

U

jest at? He that should have beheld the Jews when they stood with a four-cornered garment spread over the head of espoused couples, while their espousals were in making, he that should have beheld their praying over a cup, and their delivering the same at the marriage feast, with set forms of benediction as the order amongst them was, might being lewdly affected, take thereat as just occasion of scornful cavil as at the use of the ring in wedlock among Christians."

UNDUE IMPORTANCE ATTACHED TO PREACHING.

"There is crept into the minds of men at this day, a secret pernicious and pestilent conceit, that the greatest perfection of a Christian mau, doth consist in discovery of other men's faults, and in wit to discourse of our own profession. When the world most abounded with just, righteous, and perfect men, their chiefest study was the exercise of piety, wherein for their safest direction they reverently hearkened to the readings of the law of God, they kept in mind the oracles and aphorisms of wisdom which tended unto virtuous life, if any scruple of conscience did trouble them for matter of actions which they took in hand, nothing was attempted before counsel and advice were had, for fear lest rashly they might offend. We are now more confident, not that our knowledge and judgment is riper, but because our desires are another way. Their scope was obedience, ours is skill; their endeavour was reformation of life, our virtue nothing but to hear gladly the reproof of vice; they in the practice of their religion wearied chiefly their knees and hands, we especially our ears and tongues. We are grown, as in many things else so in this, to a kind of intemperancy, which (only sermons excepted) hath almost brought all other duties of religion out of taste. At the least they are not in that account and reputation they should be."

and with one or two of those which have struck us most in a hasty perusal, we conclude this brief and imperfect sketch of the life and character of Richard Hooker.

Our first extract is from "A learned Sermon on the nature of Pride."-" I am not afraid to affirm it boldly with St. Augustine, that men puffed up through a proud opinion of their own sanctity and holiness, receive a benefit at the hands of God, and are assisted with his grace, when with his grace they are not assisted, but permitted, and that grievously to transgress; whereby, as they were in over-great liking of themselves supplanted, so the dislike of that which did supplant them may establish them afterwards the surer. Ask the very soul of Peter, and it shall undoubtedly make you itself this answer: My eager protestations, made in the glory of my ghostly strength, I am ashamed of; but those crystal tears wherewith my sin and weakness was bewailed, have procured my endless joy; my strength hath been my ruin, and my fall my stay."

From the same sermon we extract the following noble sentences on the nature and excellency of justice. "Slightly to touch a thing so needful most exactly to be known, were towards justice itself to be unjust. Wherefore I cannot let slip so fit an occasion to wade herein somewhat further than perhaps were expedient, unless both the weightiness and hardness of the matter itself did urgently press thereunto. Justice, that which flourishing upholdeth, and not prevailing disturbeth, shaketh, threateneth with utter desolation and ruin the whole world: justice, that whereby the poor have their succour, the rich their ease, the potent their honour, the living their peace, the souls of the righteous departed their endless rest and quietness: justice, that which God and angels and men are principally exalted by: justice, the chiefest matter contended for at this day in the Christian world: in a word, justice, that whereon not only all our present happiness, but in the kingdom of God our future joy dependeth. So that, whether we be in love with the one or with the other, with things present or things to come, with earth or with heaven; in that which is so greatly available to both, none can but wish to be instructed."

Our concluding quotation is from a Funeral Sermon, entitled, "A remedy against sorrow and fear."

"The death of the saints of God is precious in his sight. And shall it seem unto us superfluous at such times as these are to hear in what manner they have

Of Hooker's dispute with Travers we have already spoken at some length, and to his controversial writings it is therefore unnecessary for us to make further reference. But a few admirable sermons are contained in his collected works, which are too characteristic of his disposition and genius to be passed over without a separate notice. In his public preaching, Hooker sedulously avoided the use of florid metaphors and dazzling rhetoric. Nor was he remarkable for the headlong earnestness of manner which distinguished the more popular preachers of the period. His discourses were in general plain but elaborate efforts of reasoning, delivered with suitable simplicity and gravity. In describing the performance of his minis-ended their lives? The Lord himself hath not disterial duties at Bourne, Izaak Walton informs us that dained so exactly to register in the book of life after "his sermons were neither long nor earnest, but ut- what sort his servants have closed up their days on tered with a grave zcal, and an humble voice: his eyes earth, that he descendeth even to their very meanest always fixed on one place, to prevent his imagination actions, what meat they have longed for in their sickfrom wandering; insomuch that he seemed to study ness, what they have spoken unto their children, as he spake." The discourses which have come down kinsfolk, and friends, where they have willed their to us are, as the reader may surmise, no common dead carcasses to be laid, how they have framed their performances, and are characterised by the same solid-wills and testaments, yea, the very turning of their ity of structure which distinguishes his larger work. Many beautiful passages may be selected from them,

faces to this side or that, the setting of their eyes, the degrees whereby their natural heat hath departed from

....

them, their cries, their groans, their pantings, breathings, and last gaspings, he hath most solemnly commended unto the memory of all generations. The care of the living both to live and to die well must needs be somewhat increased, when they know that their departure shall not be folded up in silence, but the ears of many be made acquainted with it. . . . . Howbeit, because to spend herein many words would be to strike even as many wounds into their minds whom I rather wish to comfort: therefore concerning this virtuous gentlewoman only this little I speak, and that of knowledge, ' She lived a dove and died a lamb.' And if amongst so many virtues, hearty devotion towards God, towards poverty tender compassion, motherly affection towards servants, towards friends even serviceable kindness, mild behaviour and harmless meaning towards all; if, where so many virtues were eminent, any be worthy of special mention, I wish her dearest friends of that sex to be her nearest followers in two things: silence, saving only where duty did exact speech; and patience, even then when extremity of pains did enforce grief."

Like a steady star that shines
Through an alley of forest trees,
And ever, betwixt their lines,

Its light the traveller sees:

So, with shining Hope before,
Joyfully pass we on;
Troubles we see no more:

We see but the light alone.

THE MORMON PROPHET.

(Founded on a recent fact.)

ONE lovely day, at noon, in August 1850, the inhabitants of the little village of R-- in Lincolnshire were unusually astir. Groups of men and boys in working attire might have been seen collected here and there. Women lingered on the threshold of their dwellings, unwilling, by an attention to their domestic avocations, to lose one iota of that piquant dish, called scandal, which, "in ev'ry age, in ev'ry clime,” appears so well to suit the feminine palate. The appearance of two strange horsemen, approaching this out-of-the-way village, slightly diversified the attention of our rustic dramatis persona, until now wholly SYDNEY SMITH, in London, was shown a lump of engrossed with a more immediate object of interest. American ice, upon which he remarked, "that he was Let us follow the example of the good people of glad to see anything solvent come from America." R, and take a glance at their physiognomy and THERE is no saying shocks me so much as that appearance. The elder of these equestrians possessed which I hear very often, "that a man does not know a visage at once striking and unprepossessing. Intelhow to pass his time." It would have been but ill-lect marred by low cunning--fanaticism mingled with, spoken by Methuselah, in the nine hundred and sixtyninth year of his life.-Cowley.

PAST AND FUTURE.

ANNABEL C

MEMORY.

DEEM not in its hour of birth
Joy hath left the earth;
Or that its glory cannot last,
When the hour is past.
For, however dear and close
To your heart it rose,
Memory makes it far more bright;
Haloes it with light.

Raindrops, they are very fair
In the cloudy air;

But, the sun upon his way,

How much fairer they!

Like those drops our joys are,
Present to our ken;

Memory, like the sun, will cast
Brightness o'er the past.

HOPE-hope on!

НОРЕ.

when

Hope is my motto still!
And that single word is one
Can shield from a world of ill.

Dark may the morning be,
Sunless, and sad, and cold;

Yet beauty may we see
Or ever the day be old.

if not overpowered by, hypocrisy lips that vainly endeavoured to curb an habitual contemptuous smileeyes now flashing with scornful pride, now raised to heaven with an air of sanctified humility,—such were the prevailing characteristics of his countenance. His dress, without being remarkable for singularity, was arranged more for effect than in accordance with the prevailing fashion of the day. His companion formed a pleasing contrast to this repelling personage. He was young and handsome; his features more expressive of good-nature than common sense, and he evidently appertained to a class common enough in agricultural districts, wealthy gentleman-farmers.

"Dreaming still of the beautiful unbeliever!" exclaimed the elder, in a voice more powerful than melodious; "can unutterable bliss be obtained without sacrifice ?"

"Sacrifice!" retorted the young man, "sacrifice! Was it nothing, think you, to leave childless an aged mother? nothing to relinquish my own true-hearted Marion? Nothing ?-and for what? to"

"Patience, my son," interrupted the first speaker, 'this day-the voice of the Most High has proclaimed it to me this day shall the truth be made manifest; powerful as the whirlwind when it rushes headlong on its course, pure as the drops that glisten in the sun, boundless as the expanse of the starry worlds, eternal as the city of the Lord. Yes, my pupil," he continued in an elevated tone, "this day shall thy future destiny be decided-this day shall prove me a prophet or a deceiver."