chronological work entitled Annales, or Annals, the first part of which was published in 1650, and the second, in 1654. It is a chronological digest of universal history, from the creation of the world to the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, in the seventieth year of the Christian era. In this work, which was received with great applause by the learned throughout Europe, and has been several times reprinted on the continent, the author, by fixing the three epochs of the deluge, the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, and their return from Babylon, has reconciled the chronologies of sacred and profane history; and down to the present time, his chronological system is the one which is most generally received. A posthumous work, which he left unfinished, was published in 1660, under the title of Chronologia Sacra. It shows the grounds and calculations of the principal epochs of the Annals,' and as a guide to the study of sacred history, is a very valuable production. Usher and Selden contributed more, perhaps, than any other scholars of the age, to extend the reputation of English learning on the continent of Europe.

The following letter, the only specimen of Usher's style that we shall present, was written when he was not yet twenty years of age, and has reference to a public disputation between him and one Fitz-Symonds, a prominent Jesuit of that day:

'I was not purposed, Mr. Fitz-Symonds, to write unto you, before you had first written to me, concerning some chief points of your religion, as at our last meeting you promised; but seeing you have deferred the same, for reasons best known te yourself, I thought it not amiss to inquire further of your mind, concerning the continuation of the conference began betwixt us. And to this I am the rather moved, because I am credibly informed of certain reports, which I could hardly be persuaded should proceed from him, who in mry presence pretended so great love and affection unto me. If I am a boy, as it hath pleased you very contemptuously to name me, I give thanks to the Lord that my carriage toward you hath been such, as could minister unto you no just occasion to despise my youth. Your spear belike is in your own conceit a weaver's beam, and your abilities such, that you desire to encounter with the stoutest champion in the host of Israel; and therefore like the Philistine, you contemn me as being a boy. Yet this I would fain have you know, that I neither came then, nor now do come unto you, in any confidence of any learning that is in me; in which respect notwithstanding I thank God, I am what I am: but I come in the name of the Lord of hosts, whose companies you have reproached, being certainly persuaded, that even out of the mouths of babes and sucklings he was able to show forth his own praises. For the farther manifestation thereof, I do again earnestly request you, that, setting aside all vain comparisons of persons, we may go plainly forward, in examining the matters that rest in controversy between us; otherwise I hope you will not be displeased, if, as for your part you have began, so I also for my own part may be bold, for the clearing of myself and the truth which I possess, freely to make known what hath already passed concerning this matter. Thus entreating you in a few lines to make known unto me your purpose in this behalf, I end; praying the Lord, that both this and all other enterprises that we take in hand may be so ordered, as may most make for the advancement of his own glory, and the kingdom of his son Jesus Christ.

Tuus ad Aras usque

JAMES USHER.'

JOHN HALES, usually called the Ever Memorable, was born at Bath, Somersetshire, in 1584. At thirteen years of age he was sent to Corpus Christi College, Oxford; and in 1605, was chosen fellow of Merton, through the interest of the warden of that college, Sir Henry Saville. His knowledge of the Greek language was so consummate, that, in 1612, he was appointed professor of Greek in the university. Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian library, at Oxford, dying in 1613, Hales was chosen by the university to deliver his funeral oration; and the same year he was admitted a fellow of Eton College. In 1618, he accompanied Sir Dudley Carleton, the king's ambassador to the Hague, in the quality of chaplain, and by this means he obtained admission to the synod of Dort, then in session there. Witnessing all their proceedings and transactions, he gave Sir Dudley an account of them in a series of letters afterward published among his Golden Remains. Farinden, his friend, tells us, in a letter prefixed to this collection, that Hales 'in his younger days was a Calvinist; but the arguments of the Armenian champion, Episcopius, urged before the synod, made him 'bid John Calvin good night." His letters from Dort are characterized by Lord Clarendon as 'the best memorial of the ignorance, and passion, and animosity and injustice of that convention.'

The eminent learning and abilities of Hales would, certainly, on his return to England, have led to high preferment in the church; but he chose rather to live in studious retirement, and accordingly withdrew to Eton College, where he enjoyed the fellowship to which we have already alluded. Of this, after the defeat of the royal party, he was deprived, for refusing to take the oath of fidelity to the Commonwealth of England, as then established without a king or a house of lords. His ejection, by cutting off the means of subsistence, reduced him to such straits, that he was at length under the necessity of selling the greater part of his library for less than one third of its original cost. This event and his death are touchingly noticed by his intimate friend Farinden, in the following extract from one of his letters: 'Paying him a visit, a few months before his death, I found him in very mean lodgings at Eton, but in a temper gravely cheerful, and well becoming a good man under such circumstances. After a very slight and homely dinner, some discourse passed between us concerning our old friends, and the black and dismal aspect of the times; and at last he asked me to walk out with him into the churchyard. There his necessities compelled him to tell me that he had been forced to sell his whole library, save a few books, which he had given away, and six or eight little volumes of devotion which lay in his chamber; and that for money he had no more than seven or eight shillings which he then showed me: 'and besides,' said he, ‘I doubt I am indebted for my lodging. When I die,' he procceded, 'which I hope is not far off, for I am weary of this uncharitable world, I desire you to see me buried in that place of the churchyard,' pointing to a particular spot. 'But why not in the church,' said I, 'with the provost, Sir Hemy Saville, Sir Henry Wotton, and the rest of your friends and predecessors?' 'Be

cause,' said he, 'I am neither the founder of it, nor have I been a benefactor to it.' Hales died on the nineteenth of May, 1656, and the day following he was buried, in accordance with his own desire, in Eton College churchyard. He is reported to have said in his former days, that he 'thought he should never die a martyr;' but he suffered more than many martyrs have suffered, and certainly died little less than a martyr to unwavering integrity and principle.

Besides sermons and miscellanies, the former of which compose the chief portion of his works, Hales wrote a famous Tract concerning Schism and Schismatics, in which the causes of religious disunion, and, in particular, the bad effects of Episcopal ambition, are freely discussed. The style of his sermons is clear, simple, and correct; and the subjects are frequently illustrated with quotations from the ancient philosophers and Christian fathers. The following extract is from a sermon, Of Inquiry and Private Judgment in Religion:

PRIVATE JUDGMENT IN RELIGION.

It were a thing worth looking into, to know the reason why men are so generally willing, in point of religion, to cast themselves into other men's arms, and, leaving their own reason, rely so much upon another man's. Is it because it is modesty and humility to think another man's reason better than our own? Indeed, I know not how it comes to pass, we account it a vice, a part of envy, to think another man's goods, or another man's fortunes, to be better than our own, and yet we account it a singular virtue to esteem our reason and wit meaner than other men's. Let us not mistake ourselves; to contemn the advice and help of others, in love and admiration to our own conceits, to depress and disgrace other men's, this is the foul vice of pride: on the contrary, thankfully to entertain the advice of others, to give it its due, and ingenuously to prefer it before our own if it deserve it, this is that gracious virtue of modesty but altogether to mistrust and relinquish our own faculties, and commend ourselves to others, this is nothing but poverty of spirit and indiscretion. I will not forbear to open unto you what I conceive to be the causes of this so general an error amongst men. First peradventure the dregs of the church of Rome are not yet sufficiently washed from the hearts of many men. We know it is the principal stay and supporter of that church, to suffer nothing to be inquired into which is once concluded by them. Look through Spain and Italy; they are not men, but beasts, and Issachar-like, patiently couch down under every burden their superiors lay upon them.

Secondly, a fault or two may be in our own ministry; thus, to advise men, (as I have done,) to search into the reasons and grounds of religion, opens a way to dispute and quarrel, and this might breed us some trouble and disquiet in our cures, more than we are willing to undergo; therefore, to purchase our own quiet, and to banish all contention, we are content to nourish this still humour in our hearers; as the Sibarites, to procure their ease, banished the smiths, because their trade was full of noise. In the mean time we do not see that peace, which ariseth out of ignorance, is but a kind of sloth, or moral lethargy, seeming quiet because it hath no power to move. Again, maybe the portion of knowledge in the minister himself is not over great; it may be, therefore, good policy for him to suppress all busy inquiry in his auditory, that so increase of knowledge in them might not at length discover some ignorance in him. Last of all, the fault may be in the people themselves, who, because they are loath to take pains (and search into the grounds of knowledge is evermore painful), are well content to take their

ease, to gild their vices with goodly names, and to call their sloth modesty, and their neglect of inquiry filial obedience. These reasons, beloved, or some of kin to these, may be the motives unto this easiness of the people, of entertaining their religion upon trust, and of the neglect of the inquiry into the grounds of it.

To return, therefore, and proceed in the refutation of this gross neglect in men of their own reason, and casting themselves upon their wits. Hath God given you eyes to see, and legs to support you, that so yourselves might lie still, or sleep, and require the use of other men's eyes and legs? That faculty of reason which is in every one of you, even in the meanest that hears me this day, next to the help of God, is your eyes to direct you, and your legs to support you, in your course of integ rity and sanctity; you may no more refuse or neglect the use of it, and rest yourselves upon the use of other men's reason, than neglect your own and call for the use of other men's eyes and legs. The man in the gospel, who had bought a farm, excuses himself from going to the marriage supper, because himself would go and see it but we have taken an easier course; we can buy our farm, and go to supper too, and that only by saving our pains to see it; we profess ourselves to have made a great purchase of heavenly doctrine, yet we refuse to see it and survey it ourselves, but trust to other men's eyes, and our surveyors and wot you to what end? I know not, except it be, that so we may with the better leisure go to the marriage supper; that, with Haman, we may the more merrily go in to the banquet provided for us; that so we may the more freely betake ourselves to our pleasures, to our profits, to our trades, to our preferments and ambition.

:

Would you see how ridiculously we abuse ourselves when we thus neglect our own knowledge, and securely hazard ourselves upon other's skill? Give me leave, then, to show you a perfect pattern of it, and to report to you what I find in Seneca the philosopher, recorded of a gentleman in Rome, who, being purely ignorant, yet greatly desirous to seem learned, procured himself many servants, of which some he caused to study the poets, some the orators, some the historians, some the philosophers, and, in a strange kind of fancy, all their learning he verily thought to be his own, and persuaded himself that he verily knew all that his servants understood; yea, he grew to that height of madness in this kind, that, being weak in body and diseased in his feet, he provided himself of wrestlers and runaers, and proclaimed games and races, and performed them by his servants; still applauding himself, as if himself had done them. Beloved, you are this man: when you neglect to try the spirits, to study the means of salvation yourselves, but content yourselves to take them upon trust, and repose yourselves altogether on the wit and knowledge of us that are your teachers, what is this in a manner but to account with yourselves, that our knowledge is yours, that you know all we know, who are but your servants in Jesus Christ?

OWEN FELLTHAM, another deeply interesting writer of this period, was a native of Suffolk, where his family had resided for several generations; but of his own personal history little farther is known. His learning and virtues appear to have recommended him to the notice of the earl of Themond, in whose family he, for some years, lived in easy and honorable dependence. During his residence in the family of the earl, Felltham produced a work of very great merit, under the title of Resolves; Divine, Moral, and Political. The date of the first publication of this interesting production. is uncertain, but the second edition appeared in 1628, and so popular did the book continue during the seventeenth century, that in 1709, it had reached the twelfth edition.

The 'Resolves' consists of essays on religious and moral subjects, and seems to derive its name from the circumstance, that the author, who evidently wrote for his own improvement, generally forms resolutions at the end of each essay. Both in substance and in manner, the work, in many places, bears a considerable resemblance to the essays of Bacon. Felltham's style is, for the most part, vigorous, harmonious, and well adapted to the subjects; sometimes imaginative and eloquent, but occasionally chargeable with prolixity, superabundance of illustration, and too great familiarity of expression. His sentiments are distinguished by good sense, and great purity of religious and moral principle. The following passages will illustrate these remarks:

LIMITATION OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE.

Learning is like a river, whose head being far in the land, is, at first rising, little, and easily viewed; but, still as you go, it gapeth with a wider bank; not without pleasure and delightful winding, while it is on both sides set with trees, and the beauties of various flowers. But still the further you follow it the deeper and the broader 'tis; till at last, it inwaves itself in the unfathomed ocean; there you see more water, but no shore-no end of that liquid fluid vastness. In many things we may sound Nature, in the shallows of her revelations. We may trace her to her second causes; but, beyond them, we meet with nothing but the puzzle of the soul, and the dazzle of the mind's dim eyes. While we speak of things that are, that we may dissect, and have power and means to find the causes, there is some pleasure, some certainty. But when we come to metaphysics, to long-buried antiquity, and unto unrevealed divinity, we are in a sea, which is deeper than the short reach of the line of man. Much may be gained by studious inquisition; but more will ever rest, which man can not discover.

OF NEGLECT.

There is the same difference between diligence and neglect, that there is between a garden properly cultivated and the sluggard's field which fell under Solomon's view, when overgrown with nettles and thorns. The one is clothed with beauty, the other is unpleasant and disgusting to the sight. Negligence is the rust of the soul, that corrodes through all her best resolutions. What nature made for use, for strength, and ornament, neglect alone converts to trouble, weakness, and deformity. We need only sit still, and diseases will arise from the mere want of exercise.

How fair soever the soul may be, yet while connected with our fleshy nature, it requires continual care and vigilance to prevent its being soiled and discoloured. Take the weeders from the Floralium1 and a very little time will change it to a wilderness, and turn that which was before recreation for men into a habitation for vermin. Our life is a warfare; and we ought not, while passing through it, to sleep without a sentinel, or march without a scout. He who neglects either of these precautions, exposes himself to surprise, and to becoming a prey to the diligence and perseverance of his adversary. The mounds of life and virtue, as well as those of pastures, will decay; and if we do not repair them, all the beasts of the field will enter, and tear up every thing good which grows within them. With the religious and well-disposed, a slight deviation from wisdom's laws will disturb the mind's fair peace.

Macarius did penance for only killing a gnat in anger. Like the Jewish touch of

1 Flower-garden.