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majority. Some of the most remark- as seemed hardly credible to those who able protests which appear in the jour- knew him only by his writings and nals of the peers were drawn up by speeches. The charm of his "softer him; and, in some of the bitterest of hour" has been commemorated by one those pamphlets which called on the of those friends in imperishable verse. English to stand up for their country Though Atterbury's classical attainagainst the aliens who had come from ments were not great, his taste in beyond the seas to oppress and plunder English literature was excellent; and her, critics easily detected his style. his admiration of genius was so strong When the rebellion of 1715 broke out, that it overpowered even his political he refused to sign the paper in which and religious antipathies. His fondthe bishops of the province of Canter-ness for Milton, the mortal enemy of bury declared their attachment to the the Stuarts and of the church, was Protestant succession. He busied him-such as to many Tories seemed a self in electioneering, especially at crime. On the sad night on which Westminster, where, as dean, he pos- Addison was laid in the chapel of sessed great influence; and was, indeed, strongly suspected of having once set on a riotous mob to prevent his Whig fellow-citizens from polling.

and Gay. With Prior he had a close intimacy, which some misunderstanding about public affairs at last dissolved. Pope found in Atterbury, not only a warm admirer, but a most faithful, fearless, and judicious adviser. The poet was a frequent guest at the episcopal palace among the elms of Bromley, and entertained not the slightest suspicion that his host, now declining in years, confined to an easy chair by gout, and apparently devoted to literature, was deeply concerned in criminal and perilous designs against the government.

Henry VII., the Westminster boys remarked that Atterbury read the funeral service with a peculiar tenderness and solemnity. The favourite After having been long in indirect companions, however, of the great Tory communication with the exiled family, prelate were, as might have been exhe, in 1717, began to correspond di-pected, men whose politics had at least rectly with the Pretender. The first a tinge of Toryism. He lived on letter of the correspondence is extant. friendly terms with Swift, Arbuthnot, In that letter Atterbury boasts of having, during many years past, neglected no opportunity of serving the Jacobite cause. "My daily prayer," he says, "is that you may have success. May I live to see that day, and live no longer than I do what is in my power to forward it." It is to be remembered that he who wrote thus was a man bound to set to the church of which he was overseer an example of strict probity; that he had repeatedly sworn allegiance to the House of Brunswick; that he had assisted in placing the crown on the head of George I., and that he had abjured The spirit of the Jacobites had been James III., "without equivocation or cowed by the events of 1715. It remental reservation, on the true faith vived in 1721. The failure of the of a Christian." South Sea project, the panic in the It is agreeable to turn from his pub-money market, the downfall of great lic to his private life. His turbulent commercial houses, the distress from spirit, wearied with faction and treason, which no part of the kingdom was exnow and then required repose, and empt, had produced general discontent. found it in domestic endearments, and It seemed not improbable that at such in the society of the most illustrious a moment an insurrection might be sucof the living and of the dead. Of his cessful. An insurrection was planned. wife little is known: but between him The streets of London were to be barand his daughter there was an affection ricaded; the Tower and the Bank were singularly close and tender. The gen- to be surprised; King George, his tleness of his manners when he was in family, and his chief captains and the company of a few friends was such councillors, were to be arrested; and

King James was to be proclaimed. The had been set in the case of Sir John design became known to the Duke of Fenwick, and to pass an act for cutting Orleans, regent of France, who was on off the bishop's head. Cadogan, who terms of friendship with the House of commanded the army, a brave soldier, Hanover. He put the English govern- but a headstrong politician, is said to ment on its guard. Some of the chief have exclaimed with great vehemence: malcontents were committed to prison; "Fling him to the lions in the Tower." and among them was Atterbury. No But the wiser and more humane Walbishop of the Church of England had pole was always unwilling to shed been taken into custody since that me- blood; and his influence prevailed. morable day when the applauses and When parliament met, the evidence prayers of all London had followed the against the bishop was laid before comseven bishops to the gate of the Tower.mittees of both houses. Those commitThe Opposition entertained some hope tees reported that his guilt was proved. that it might be possible to excite In the Commons a resolution, proamong the people an enthusiasm re-nouncing him a traitor, was carried by sembling that of their fathers, who nearly two to one. A bill was then rushed into the waters of the Thames introduced which provided that he to implore the blessing of Sancroft. should be deprived of his spiritual Pictures of the heroic confessor in his dignities, that he should be banished cell were exhibited at the shop win- for life, and that no British subject dows. Verses in his praise were sung should hold any intercourse with him about the streets. The restraints by except by the royal permission. which he was prevented from communicating with his accomplices were re-little difficulty. For the bishop, though presented as cruelties worthy of the dungeons of the Inquisition. Strong appeals were made to the priesthood. Would they tamely permit so gross an insult to be offered to their cloth? Would they suffer the ablest, the most eloquent member of their profession, the man who had so often stood up for their rights against the civil power, to be treated like the vilest of mankind? There was considerable excitement; | but it was allayed by a temperate and artful letter to the clergy, the work, in all probability, of Bishop Gibson, who stood high in the favour of Walpole, and shortly after became minister for ecclesiastical affairs.

This bill passed the Commons with

invited to defend himself, chose to reserve his defence for the assembly of which he was a member. In the Lords the contest was sharp. The young Duke of Wharton, distinguished by his parts, his dissoluteness, and his versatility, spoke for Atterbury with great effect; and Atterbury's own voice was heard for the last time by that unfriendly audience which had so often listened to him with mingled aversion and delight. He produced few witnesses; nor did those witnesses say much that could be of service to him. Among them was Pope. He was called to prove that, while he was an inmate of the palace at Bromley, the bishop's time was completely occupied by literary and domestic matters, and that no leisure was left for plotting. But Pope, who was quite unaccustomed to speak in public, lost his head, and, as he afterwards owned, though he had only ten words to say, made two or three blunders.

Atterbury remained in close confinement during some months. He had carried on his correspondence with the exiled family so cautiously that the circumstantial proofs of his guilt, though sufficient to produce entire moral conviction, were not sufficient to justify legal conviction. He could be reached only by a bill of pains and penalties. The bill finally passed the Lords by Such a bill the Whig party, then de- eighty-three votes to forty-three. The cidedly predominant in both houses, bishops, with a single exception, were was quite prepared to support. Many in the majority. Their conduct drew hot-headed members of that party were on them a sharp taunt from Lord Batheager to follow the precedent which urst, a warm friend of Atterbury and a

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Atterbury took leave of those whom he loved with a dignity and tenderness worthy of a better man. Three fine lines of his favourite poet were often in his mouth:

"Some natural tears he dropped, but wiped

them soon:

The world was all before him, where to chuse
His place of rest, and Providence his guide."

zealous Tory. The wild Indians," he | Bolingbroke had been before him, the said, "give no quarter, because they prime minister of a king without a believe that they shall inherit the skill kingdom. But the new favourite found, and prowess of every adversary whom as Bolingbroke had found before him, they destroy. Perhaps the animosity that it was quite as hard to keep the of the right reverend prelates to their shadow of power under a vagrant and brother may be explained in the same mendicant prince as to keep the reality way." of power at Westminster. Though James had neither territories nor revenues, neither army nor navy, there was more faction and more intrigue among his courtiers than among those of his successful rival. Atterbury soon perceived that his counsels were disregarded, if not distrusted. His proud spirit was deeply wounded. He quitted Paris, fixed his residence at Montpellier, gave up politics, and devoted himself entirely to letters. In the sixth year of his exile he had so severe an illness that his daughter, herself in very delicate health, determined to run all risks that she might see him once more. Having obtained a license from the English Government, she went by sea to Bordeaux, but landed there in such a state that she could travel only by boat or in a litter. Her father, in spite of his infirmities, set out from Montpellier to meet her; and she, with the impatience which is often the sign of approaching death, hastened towards him. Those who were about her in vain implored her to travel slowly. She said that every hour was precious, that she only wished to see her papa and to die. She met him at Toulouse, embraced him, received from his hand the sacred bread and wine, and thanked God that they had passed one day in each other's society before they parted for ever. She died that night.

At parting he presented Pope with a Bible, and said, with a disingenuousness of which no man who had studied the Bible to much purpose would have been guilty: "If ever you learn that I have any dealings with the Pretender, I give you leave to say that my punishment is just." Pope at this time really believed the bishop to be an injured man. Arbuthnot seems to have been of the same opinion. Swift, a few months later, ridiculed with great bitterness, in the " Voyage to Laputa," the evidence which had satisfied the two Houses of Parliament. Soon, however, the most partial friends of the banished prelate ceased to assert his innocence, and contented themselves with lamenting and excusing what they could not defend. After a short stay at Brussels, he had taken up his abode at Paris, and had become the leading man among the Jacobite refugees who were assembled there. He was invited to Rome by the Pretender, who then held his mock court under the immediate protection of the Pope. Atterbury felt that a bishop of the Church of England would be strangely out of place at the Vatican, and declined the invitation. During some months, however, he might flatter himself that he stood high in the good graces of James. The correspondence between the master and the servant was constant. Atterbury's merits were warmly acknowledged; his advice was respectfully received; and he was, as

But

It was some time before even the strong mind of Atterbury recovered from this cruel blow. As soon as he was himself again he became eager for action and conflict; for grief, which disposes gentle natures to retirement, to inaction, and to meditation, only makes restless spirits more restless. The Pretender, dull and bigoted as he was, had found out that he had not acted wisely in parting with one who, though a heretic, was, in abilities and accomplishments, the foremost man of the Jacobite party. The bishop was

U

the parliamentary proceedings against him, which will be found in the State Trials, from the five volumes of his correspondence, edited by Mr. Nichols, and from the first volume of the Stuart papers, edited by Mr. Glover. A very indulgent but a very interesting account of the bishop's political career will be found in Lord Mahon's valuable History of England.

JOHN BUNYAN. (MAY 1854.)

JOHN BUNYAN, the most popular religious writer in the English language,

courted back, and was without much collect it from his sermons and his condifficulty induced to return to Paris troversial writings, from the report of and to become once more the phantom minister of a phantom monarchy. But his long and troubled life was drawing to a close. To the last, however, his intellect retained all its keenness and vigour. He learned, in the ninth year of his banishment, that he had been accused by Oldmixon, as dishonest and malignant a scribbler as any that has been saved from oblivion by the Dunciad, of having, in concert with other Christ-Church-men, garbled Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. The charge, as respected Atterbury, had not the slightest foundation: for he was not one of the editors of the History, and never saw it till it was printed. He published a short vindication of himself, which is a model in its kind, luminous, temperate, and dig-was born at Elstow, about a mile from nified. A copy of this little work he sent to the Pretender, with a letter singularly eloquent and graceful. It was impossible, the old man said, that he should write anything on such a subject without being reminded of the resemblance between his own fate and that of Clarendon. They were the only two English subjects that had ever been banished from their country and debarred from all communication with their friends by act of parliament. But here the resemblance ended. One The years of John's boyhood were of the exiles had been so happy as to those during which the puritan spirit bear a chief part in the restoration of was in the highest vigour all over Engthe Royal house. All that the other land; and nowhere had that spirit could now do was to die asserting the more influence than in Bedfordshire. rights of that house to the last. A few It is not wonderful, therefore, that a weeks after this letter was written lad to whom nature had given a powerAtterbury died. He had just com-ful imagination, and sensibility which pleted his seventieth year.

Bedford, in the year 1628. He may be said to have been born a tinker. The tinkers then formed an hereditary caste, which was held in no high estimation. They were generally vagrants and pilferers, and were often confounded with the gipsies, whom in truth they nearly resembled. Bunyan's father was more respectable than most of the tribe. He had a fixed residence, and was able to send his son to a village school where reading and writing were taught.

amounted to a disease, should have His body was brought to England, been early haunted by religious terrors. and laid, with great privacy, under the Before he was ten, his sports were innave of Westminster Abbey. Only terrupted by fits of remorse and despair; three mourners followed the coffin. No and his sleep was disturbed by dreams inscription marks the grave. That the of fiends trying to fly away with him. epitaph with which Pope honoured the As he grew older, his mental conflicts memory of his friend does not appear became still more violent. The strong on the walls of the great national ceme-language in which he described them tery is no subject of regret: for nothing worse was ever written by Colley Cibber.

Those who wish for more complete information about Atterbury may easily

has strangely misled all his biographers except Mr. Southey. It has long been an ordinary practice with pious writers to cite Bunyan as an instance of the supernatural power of divine grace to

rescue the human soul from the lowest | loose the reins on the neck of his lusts, depths of wickedness. He is called in that he had delighted in all transgresone book the most notorious of profli- sions against the divine law, and that gates; in another, the brand plucked he had been the ringleader of the youth from the burning. He is designated of Elstow in all manner of vice. But, in Mr. Ivimey's History of the Baptists when those who wished him ill accused as the depraved Bunyan, the wicked him of licentious amours, he called on tinker of Elstow. Mr. Ryland, a man God and the angels to attest his purity. once of great note among the Dissent- No woman, he said, in heaven, earth, ers, breaks out into the following rhap-| or hell, could charge him with having sody:-"No man of common sense and ever made any improper advances to common integrity can deny that Bun- her. Not only had he been strictly yan was a practical atheist, a worthless faithful to his wife; but he had, even contemptible infidel, a vile rebel to God before his marriage, been perfectly and goodness, a common profligate, a spotless. It does not appear from his soul-despising, a soul-murdering, a own confessions, or from the railings soul-damning, thoughtless wretch as of his enemies, that he ever was drunk could exist on the face of the earth. in his life. One bad habit he conNow be astonished, O heavens, to eter- tracted, that of using profane language; nity! and wonder, O earth and hell! but he tells us that a single reproof while time endures. Behold this very cured him so effectually that he never man become a miracle of mercy, a offended again. The worst that can be mirror of wisdom, goodness, holiness, laid to the charge of this poor youth, truth, and love." But whoever takes whom it has been the fashion to reprethe trouble to examine the evidence sent as the most desperate of reprowill find that the good men who wrote bates, as a village Rochester, is that he this had been deceived by a phraseo- had a great liking for some diversions, logy which, as they had been hearing quite harmless in themselves, but conit and using it all their lives, they demned by the rigid precisians among ought to have understood better. There whom he lived, and for whose opinion cannot be a greater mistake than to he had a great respect. The four chief infer, from the strong expressions in sins of which he was guilty were dancwhich a devout man bemoans his ex-ing, ringing the bells of the parish ceeding sinfulness, that he has led a church, playing at tipcat, and reading worse life than his neighbours. Many the history of Sir Bevis of Southampexcellent persons, whose moral charac- ton. A rector of the school of Laud ter from boyhood to old age has been free from any stain discernible to their fellow-creatures, have, in their autobiographies and diaries, applied to themselves, and doubtless with sincerity, epithets as severe as could be applied to Titus Oates or Mrs. Brownrigg. It is quite certain that Bunyan was, at When he was about seventeen, the eighteen, what, in any but the most ordinary course of his life was interausterely puritanical circles, would rupted by an event which gave a lasthave been considered as a young man ing colour to his thoughts. He enof singular gravity and innocence. In- listed in the parliamentary army, and deed, it may be remarked that he, like served during the decisive campaign of many other penitents who, in general 1645. All that we know of his militerms, acknowledge themselves to have tary career is that, at the siege of Leibeen the worst of mankind, fired up cester, one of his comrades, who had and stood vigorously on his defence, taken his post, was killed by a shot whenever any particular charge was from the town. Bunyan ever after brought against him by others. He considered himself as having been declares, it is true, that he had let saved from death by the special inter

would have held such a young man up to the whole parish as a model. But Bunyan's notions of good and evil had been learned in a very different school; and he was made miserable by the conflict between his tastes and his scruples.

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