"Live these fifty years!" the Bishop roared, with actions made to suit.

"Are you mad, my good lord Keeper, thus to speak of

King Canute!

Men have lived a thousand years, and sure his Majesty will do't.

"Adam, Enoch, Lamech, Cainan, Mahaleel, Methuselah,

Lived nine hundred years apiece, and mayn't the King as well as they?" "Fervently," exclaimed the Keeper, "fervently I trust he may."

"He to die!" resumed the Bishop; "he a mortal like to us!

5

10

Death was not for him intended, though communis 15 omnibus:

Keeper, you are irreligious, for to talk and cavil thus.

“With his wondrous skill in healing ne'er a doctor can compete,

Loathsome lepers, if he touch them, start up clean upon their feet;

Surely he could raise the dead up, did his Highness think it meet.

"Did not once the Jewish captain' stay the sun upon the hill,

And, the while he slew the foemen, bid the silver moon

stand still?

So, no doubt, could gracious Canute, if it were his sacred will."

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Might I stay the sun above us, good Sir Bishop?"
Canute cried;

"Could I bid the silver moon to pause upon her heavenly ride?

If the moon obeys my orders, sure I can command the 5 tide.

"Will the advancing waves obey me, Bishop, if I make the sign?"

Said the Bishop, bowing lowly, "Land and sea, my lord, are thine."

Canute turned towards the ocean

"thou foaming brine.

"Back!" he said,

"From the sacred shore I stand on, I command thee to retreat;

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Venture not, thou stormy rebel, to approach thy mas-15

ter's seat:

Ocean, be thou still! I bid thee come not nearer to my feet!"

But the sullen ocean answered with a louder, deeper roar, And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling sounding on 20 the shore;

Back the Keeper and the Bishop, back the King and courtiers bore;

And he sternly bade them never more to kneel to

human clay,

But alone to praise and worship That which earth and

seas obey;

And his golden crown of empire never wore he from

that day.

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XXIII.

WEALTH VERSUS ENJOYMENT.

BY JEREMY TAYLOR.'

SUPPOSE a man gets all the world, what is it that he gets? It is a bubble and a phantasm, and hath no reality beyond a present transient use a thing that is impossible to be enjoyed, because its fruits and usages are transmitted to us by parts and by succession. He s that hath all the world (if we can suppose such a man) cannot have a dish of fresh summer fruits in the midst of winter, not so much as a green fig; and very much of its possessions is so hid, so fugacious, and of so uncertain purchase, that it is like the riches of the sea to 10 the lord of the shore; all the fish and wealth within all its hollownesses are his, but he is never the better for what he cannot get; all the shell-fishes that produce pearls produce them not for him; and the bowels of the earth hide their treasures in undiscovered retire-15 ments; so that it will signify as much to this great proprietor to be entitled to an inheritance in the upper region of the air; he is so far from possessing all its riches that he does not so much as know of them, nor understand the philosophy of its minerals.

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I consider that he who is the greatest possessor in the world enjoys its best and most noble parts, and those which are of most excellent perfection, but in common with the inferior persons, and the most despicable of his kingdom. Can the greatest prince enclose the sun, 25 and set one little star in his cabinet for his own use, or

secure to himself the gentle and benign influence of any one constellation? Are not his subjects' fields bedewed with the same showers that water his gardens of pleasure?

Nay, those things which he esteems his ornament, and the singularity of his possessions, are they not of more use to others than to himself? For suppose his garments splendid and shining, like the robe of a cherub, or the clothing of the fields-all that he that wears them enjoys is that they keep him warm and clean and mod-10 est and all this is done by clean and less pompous vestments; and the beauty of them, which distinguishes him from the others, is made to please the eyes of the beholders: the fairest face or the sparkling eye cannot perceive or enjoy its own beauties but by reflection, 15 It is I that am pleased with beholding his gayety; and the gay man, in his greatest bravery,' is only pleased because I am pleased with the sight; so borrowing his little and imaginary complacency from the delight that I have, not from any inherency in his own possession.

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The poorest artisan of Rome, walking in Cæsar's gardens, had the same pleasures which they ministered to their lord; and although, it may be, he was put to gather fruits to eat3 from another place, yet his other senses were delighted equally with Cæsar's: the birds 25 made him as good music, the flowers gave him as sweet smells; he there sucked as good air, and delighted in the beauty and order of the place, for the same reason and upon the same perception as the prince himself; save only that Cæsar paid for all that pleasure vast 30 sums of money, the blood and treasure of a province, which the poor man had for nothing.

And so it is if the whole world should be given to any man. He knows not what to do with it; he can

use no more but according to the capacities of a man; he can use nothing but meat and drink and clothes. He to whom the world can be given to any purpose greater than a private estate can minister must have new capacities created in him; he needs the understanding of an angel to take the accounts of his estate; he had need have a stomach like fire or the grave,* for else he can eat no more than can one of his healthful subjects; and unless he hath an eye like the sun, and a motion like that of a thought, and a bulk as big as one 10 of the orbs of heaven, the pleasures of his eye can be no greater than to behold the beauty of a little prospect from a hill, or to look upon a heap of gold packed up in a little room, or to dote upon a cabinet of jewels, better than which there is no man that sees at all but sees 15 every day. For, not to name the beauties and sparkling diamonds of heaven, a man's or a woman's or a hawk's eye is more beauteous and excellent than all the jewels of his crown.

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Understanding and knowledge are the greatest in-20 struments of pleasure; and he that is most knowing hath a capacity to become happy, which a less knowing prince, or a rich person, hath not; and in this only a man's capacity is capable of enlargement. But then, although they only have power to relish any pleasure rightly who rightly understand the nature and degrees and essences and ends of things, yet they that do so, understand also the vanity and unsatisfyingness of the things of this world; so that the relish, which could not be great but in a great understanding, appears contempt-20 ible, because its vanity appears at the same time: the understanding sees all, and sees through it.