Small is the worth

Of beauty, from the light retir'd:

Bid her come forth,

Suffer herself to be desir'd,
And not blush so to be admir'd.

Then die! that she

The common fate of all things rare
May read in thee:

How small a part of time they share
That are so wondrous sweet and fair!
(Life in Johnson.-Biog. Brit., &c.)

PROVOST ALLESTREE.

IN 1665 Provost Meredith died; and King Charles the Second, immediately, unasked and unsolicited, nominated the celebrated Robert Boyle to the Provostship. As hereinafter mentioned in the memoir of that good and great philosopher, Mr. Boyle declined the appointment, out of conscientious scruples respecting his own fitness for holy orders, and out of an equally conscientious belief that none but a clergyman ought to be Provost of Eton. On Boyle's refusal of the proffered dignity, King Charles conferred it on one who had done the House of Stuart good service, in war as well as in peace, and who was already eminent in Church and State.

RICHARD ALLESTREE was of an ancient Derbyshire family, and was born in 1619, at Uppington, in Shropshire, where his father had settled. At the age of seventeen he was entered at Oxford, as a Commoner of Christ Church; he was soon appointed by the Dean one of the students of the college; and after taking his degree of B.A., in due time he was made Moderator in Philosophy, and continued to discharge the duties of that office with a high reputation for piety, learning, and discretion, till the outbreak of the Civil War.

Allestree was one of the first Oxford scholars who took up arms in the Royal cause; and he was present in the King's army at the sanguinary but indecisive battle of Edgehill, in October, 1642. Soon after this battle, Allestree was taken prisoner by a party of the Parliamentarian horse, while he was returning to Oxford to prepare the Deanery of Christchurch for the King's reception. His imprisonment was but short, his captors being in turn obliged to surrender to the main body of the King's army; and Allestree now returned, for a time, to his scholastic duties at the university, taking his M.A. degree in the spring of 1643. He was, however, soon in

arms again. Oxford became the King's head-quarters during the war; and a regiment was raised out of the Oxford scholars, who served as volunteers without pay, and not only performed garrison duty, but took part in the expeditions which the King's general in that city from time to time directed against the enemy's forces and posts in the neighbourhood. Allestree bore arms in this regiment, serving cheerfully and contentedly in the ranks, and distinguishing himself by his steadiness and subordination in all matters of discipline, as well as by his alacrity and firmness in all matters of danger. As the author of the memoir prefixed to his sermons expresses it, he still attended to his studies, "frequently holding his musket in one hand, and book in the other, and making the watchings of a soldier the lucubrations of a student."

At the conclusion of the war, Allestree devoted himself more exclusively than before to the duties of tuition; and he now went into holy orders, at a time when none but the best and purest motives could have induced any one to become a minister of the despoiled and afflicted Church of England.

He was soon driven away from Oxford by the Parliamentarian visitors, whose favour or connivance he disdained to seek by apostasy or time-serving, and whose special ire was directed against him, because, as one of their number stated, "he was an eminent man."

Allestree now (1648) found a refuge in the house of Mr. Newport, a gentleman of Shropshire; and during the twelve years that ensued before the Restoration, he officiated as chaplain and tutor in the houses of several of the loyalist nobility and gentry. But he also, during the latter portion of this period, performed most important and perilous service for the cause of Charles the Second, by taking repeated journeys to the Continent, and conveying com munications between that prince and his adherents in England. The deaths, abroad, of some members of the Cavalier families, in which Allestree had been domiciled as tutor, served as pretexts for these journeys. And, in reality, Allestree several times assisted his private benefactors materially by the diligence and skill with which he collected the effects, and arranged the accounts, of their relatives who died in exile.

Allestree at last nearly fell a victim to the vengeance of the ruling English powers, in one of his missions to the King over the

water. He was seized in the winter before the Restoration as he landed at Dover, examined on suspicion, and though his prudence had prevented any proof from being forthcoming against him, he was committed close prisoner to Lambeth House, where he lay eight weeks, and contracted a contagious illness, which nearly cost him his life.

By the intercession of Lord Shaftesbury, and some other influential statesmen of the expiring commonwealth, Allestree was set at liberty, and retired for a while to the neighbourhood of his relatives in Shropshire. It is worth mention, as showing Allestree's reputation at this time, and that he was "laudatus a laudatis," that Dr. Hammond, who died immediately before the Restoration, bequeathed to Allestree his valuable library by a clause in his will, in which he stated that he left his books to Allestree, "well knowing that in his hands they would be useful weapons for the defence of that cause he had through life so vigorously asserted."

On the Restoration Allestree returned to Oxford, where he was made a Canon of Christ Church, and in October, 1660, took the degree of Doctor of Divinity. He was next appointed one of the King's chaplains; and soon afterwards, on the Divinity chair becoming vacant, he was made Regius Professor. Allestree strenuously exerted himself at Oxford for the benefit of the Church and that university, till 1665, when he was transferred to Eton as its Provost, and continued to preside over our College, to its infinite advantage and credit, until his death in 1680.

It is narrated of him by his biographer, that "it was with some difficulty that he was prevailed on to accept of this benefice, but the consideration that great interest was made for it by a layman, who might possibly succeed on the advantage of his refusal, induced him to comply with his Majesty's gracious offer. For, the Provost of Eton being actually parson of the parish, and presented to the cure, and instituted by the Bishop of Lincoln the diocesan, nothing, he thought, could be more sacrilegious and irregular than such an usurpation by a lay person, nor anything a greater dis-service to the Church, than by an unseasonable modesty to make way for it. Upon these motives it was that Dr. Allestree became Provost of Eton College: and for the same reason it was that, during his life, he continued so, never hearkening to any offer of preferment that might occasion a vacancy.

And it may be truly said, that this was the greatest secular care which attended him to his last moments, it being his dying request to his friends to interpose with the King that he might be succeeded by a person lawfully qualified, and who would promote the welfare of the College."

Few of her chiefs have been greater benefactors to Eton than Provost Allestree. He found the College in debt and difficulty, and the reputation of the school greatly decayed. He left an unencumbered and flourishing revenue, and restored the fame of Eton, as a place of learning, to its natural eminence. He built, at his own private expense, the upper school, and the apartments and cloister under it, which occupy the whole western side of the great quadrangle. To borrow again the language of the memoir prefixed to his sermons :—

"At his coming to Eton he found the society greatly in debt, by an ill custom introduced by the late Republican occupants, who at the year's end divided whatever money remained after the ordinary payments were made, incidental charges and debts contracted being still thrown off to the future year; which in time grew to such a bulk as endangered the College becoming bankrupt to remedy this evil, Dr. Allestree, by an exemplary retrenchment of his own dues, prevailed on the society to do the like, insomuch that within a few years the College paid off above a thousand pound debt, and expended above two thousand pounds in repairs. Another considerable service he did the College and school, and also King's College in Cambridge, whose seminary it is, was this; that whereas formerly the fellowships of Eton were generally disposed of to persons of foreign education, the King was pleased, at the instance of Dr. Allestree, joined with the petition of the Provost and Fellows of King's College, to pass a grant under the broad seal that, for the future, five of the seven Fellows should be such as had been educated at Eton school, and were Fellows of King's College."

Provost Allestree was buried in the College chapel, and his monumental inscription deserves the attentive perusal and the grateful assent of every Etonian.

A sketch of his character has been penned by the same nearly contemporary biographer, who has been already referred to so often. It is of course a panegyric, but it is far superior to the ordinary run of such productions, both as regards the merit of the

subject, and the merit of the writer. Considerable extracts from it are given in the "Biographia Britannica," and I shall quote a few here in conclusion of this sketch of one of the best men that ever held our Collegiate helm:

"From his first childhood he had a strong impression of piety and the duties owed to God and man. In his constitution, he had a great deal of warmth and vigour which made him apt to take fire upon provocation; but he was well aware of it, and kept a peculiar guard upon that weak part; so that his heat was reserved for the great concerns of the honour of God, and the service of his Prince and country, wherein he was altogether indefatigable, and in the most dismal appearances of affairs, would never desert them, nor despair of their restauration. There was not in the world a man of clearer honesty and courage: no temptation could bribe him to do a base thing, or terror affright him from the doing a good one. This made his friendships as lasting and inviolable as his life without the dirty considerations of profit or sly reserves of craft. His conversation was always cheerful and entertaining, especially in the reception of his acquaintance at his table and friendly visits. He was exceeding tender of saying anything that might administer offence or reflect upon any one's reputation. There was no person who more literally verified the saying of the Wise Man, that much study was a weariness of the flesh. After his day's work he was used to be as faint and spent, as if he had been labouring all the time with the scythe or flail; and his intention of thought made such waste upon his spirits that he was frequently in hazard, while at study, to fall into a swoon, and forced to rise from his seat and walk about the room for some time before he could recover himself. His contempt of the world was very extraordinary, as in his large and constant charities, both by settled pensions to indigent persons and families, and occasional alms, so also his bounteous hospitality. In the managery of the business of the Chair of Divinity, as he performed the scholastic part with great sufficiency in exact and dextrous untying the knots of argument and solid determination of controverted points, so he was not oppressed by the fame of any his most eminent predecessors: his prudence was very remarkable in the choice of subjects to be treated on; for he wasted not time and opportunity in the barren insignificant parts of schooldivinity, but insisted on the fundamental grounds of controversy