I would most unwillingly do that which lay not in my power to mend.
King James.

Acts.

me,

THE Pope confirms, by a Bull, 1564, the Decrees of the Council of Trent. King James, then in his twentieth year, appeals to Elizabeth to spare the life of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots, 1586: "What thing, Madam, can greatlier touch me in honour, that both is a king and a son, than that my nearest neighbour, being in straightest friendship with shall rigorously put to death a free, sovereign prince, and my natural mother." By way of justification (which was very necessary) for employing the pen on this occasion, a passage from James's "Second Thoughts," may not improperly be inserted here: "I am unable to revenge the heinous murder committed on my dearest mother. First, in respect of my tender youth, not trained up in dexterity of arms, either to withstand injuries, or to conquer mine own right; being, at all times bygone, detained in captivity. Next, my excessive cupidity from hand to hand, from needy to needy, from greedy to greedy; having sufficient patrimony and casualty, and yet as none at all in store." Every unbiassed person must here admit the wisdom, and commiserate the situation, of James; for nothing was more certain than (at least) a perpetual captivity, had he opposed himself, in any serious shape, to the power and the spleen of the English Court.

The invaluable Library of Elias Ashmole is destroyed by fire at his chambers, in the Middle Temple, together with his collection of about 9000 coins, besides seals, charters, and other curious antiquities, 1679. Two Cameronian women are hanged at Edinburgh, 1681, for calling the king and bishops perjured, bloody men.

The peace of Carlowitz (in Sclavonia) is concluded between Leopold I. of Austria, and Mustapha II. Emperor of the Turks, 1699, after fifteen years hostilities.

The Colonists of New South Wales effect their settlement, 1788. In 1822 a grand ball was given, at Lisbon, to the restored King, John VI., whose son, Don Miguel, was present,—described by Mrs. Baillie as a thin, slight youth, with pale and rather elegant features, from which, however, every ray of intelligence seemed banished: solemn, upright, and immovable; when once seated he had the air of a statue, or an automaton."

We seldom see a man excellent in the mathematics, languages, or heraldry, or any of those little arts, but he is as defective in greater matters.-King James.

Whose power was it that encompassed the earth with air so wonderfully contrived, as at one and the same time to support clouds for rain, to afford winds for health and traffick, to be proper for the breath of animals by its spring, for causing sounds by its motion, and for transmitting light by its transparency?

The little zone of virtue lies between the two poles of confusion and horror: Atheism is the one, and Fanaticism the other.

For modes of faith, let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong, whose life is in the right:
In faith and hope the world may disagree,

But all mankind's concern is charity.-Pope.

Acts.

THE feast of dedication, by Aulus Posthumius, dictator, of a temple to the twin knights, Castor and Pollux, on the spot near the lake Juturna, where they are said to have both appeared upon white horses, and assisted the Romans in the Latin war, at the battle of Regillum, B. C. 496. Their well-known acts of friendship are signified in the constellation Gemini, for, usually, as one sets, the other predominates.

Dante, during his absence from Florence, as ambassador to the Pope, is, by an iniquitous decree, 1302, mulcted eight thousand lire, and condemned, by a faction, to two years' banishment from his native city. To satisfy the fine, his house was immediately entered and pillaged; and scarcely seven weeks had elapsed, when a second decree was issued, that he, and his associates in exile, should be burned, if they fell into the hands of the Neri, their enemies.

In 1591, Queen Elizabeth assigns unto Sir Walter Raleigh the lease, for ninety-nine years, of Sherborne Manor, which she had obtained, but nine days before, from the bishopric of Salisbury, at the rent of two hundred pounds, sixteen shillings, and one penny. This estate was forfeited to the crown upon the knight's attainder, in 1603, and was only lost to the family by the death of Prince Henry, who, with a noble generosity, had purchased it a few months previously, in 1612, with the intention of restoring it to the original proprietor. It was then valued at the annual rental of eighty thousand pounds, which fell to the fortune of Carr, the king's favourite; James, as some slight atonement, giving to the wife of Raleigh (a daughter of Throckmorton) the sum of eight thousand pounds.

The South Sea Company, in 1719, propose their scheme to parliament for discharging the national debt, upwards of thirty millions sterling. Pope publishes his elaborate Epistle, addressed to Lord Bathurst, On the Use of Riches, 1733.

When Fortune comes smiling, she often designs the most mischief.-Raleigh.

Benevolence is the beginning of friendship, just as the pleasure received through the sight is the beginning of love.

Day.

V.

Cal. 28.

Rich. Earl of Warwick, 1381, Otho III. (Emperor), 1002.

Salwarp.
Henry VIII. 1491, Greenwich.
John Alp. Borelli, 1608, Naples.
John Hevelius, 1611, Dantzic.
Richard Verney, Lord Brook,

Margaret, Princess of Hungary, Swift's Character of Stella, in diê.

He who has no grave has the heavens still over him.-Lucan.

See there the olive grove of Academe,

Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird

Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long;

Lyceum there, and painted Stoa next.-Milton.

Acts.

JOHN de Hotham, Bishop of Ely, receives the Great Seal, to do therewith what belonged to the Chancellor, 1328.

Thomas Chaucer, the poet's son, and chief butler to the King, is presented by the Commons their Speaker, 1410.

John of Portugal, surnamed the Fortunate, is crowned King of his enfranchized country, 1640.

The abdication of King James II. is voted by the Lower House, and the throne, by a Resolution, declared vacant, 1689.

Evelyn writes to Sir Thomas Browne, giving him a grandiloquous account (which seems, from Pepys, to have been his usual manner) of the plan of his intended publication upon gardens: “ Our drift is a noble, princely, and universal Elysium, capable of all the amenities that can naturally be introduced into gardens of pleasure, and such as may stand in competition with all the august designs and stories of this nature, either of ancient or modern times; yet so as to become useful and significant to the least pretences and faculties."

Lord Chesterfield writes to his son: "You will say, it may be, that when you write so very ill, it is because you are in a hurry. A man of sense may be in haste, but can never be in a hurry; because he knows that, whatever he does in a hurry he must necessarily do very ill.Little minds are in a hurry, when the object proves (as it commonly does) too much for them; they run, they hare, they puzzle, confound, and perplex themselves; they want to do every thing at once, and never do it at all. There was a Pope, I think it was Pope Chigi, who was justly ridiculed for his attention to little things, and his inability in great ones; and therefore called maximus in minimis, and minimus in maximis. Why? because he attended to little things when he had great ones to do." The Royal Irish Academy is incorporated by patent, 1786.

Whatever busies the mind without corrupting it, has at least this use, that it rescues the day from idleness; and he that is never idle will not often be vicious. Johnson.