OLIVER CROMWELL.

WHAT can be more extraordinary, than that a person of mean birth, no fortune, no eminent qualities of body, which have sometimes, or of mind, which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the courage to attempt, and the happiness to succeed in, so improbable a design, as the destruction of one of the most ancient and most solidly-founded monarchies upon the earth? that he should have the power or boldness to put his prince and master to an open and infamous death; to banish that numerous and strongly-allied family; to do all this under the name and wages of a parliament; to trample upon them too as he pleased, and spurn them out of doors when he grew weary of them; to raise up a new and unheard of monster out of their ashes; to stifle that in the very infancy, and set up himself above all things that ever were called sovereign in England; to oppress all his enemies by arms, and all his friends afterwards by artifice; to serve all parties patiently for a while, and to command them victoriously at last; to overrun each corner of the three nations, and overcome with equal facility both the riches of the south and the poverty of the north; to be feared and courted by all foreign princes and adopted a brother to the gods of the earth; to call together parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with the breath of his mouth; to be humbly and daily petitioned that he would please to be hired, at the rate of two millions a year, to be the master of those who had hired him before to be their servant; to have the estates and lives of three kingdoms as much at his disposal, as was the little inheritance of his father, and to be as noble and liberal in the spending of them; and lastly, for there is no end of all the particulars of his glory, to bequeath all this with one word to his posterity; to die with peace at home, and triumph abroad; to be buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity; and to leave a name behind him, not to be extinguished, but with the whole world; which, as it is now too little for his praises, so might have been

too for his conquests, if the short line of his human life could have been stretched out to the extent of his immortal designs? Essay on the Government of Oliver Cromwell.

P. 80, 1. 5. Happiness has, of course, nothing of its modern connotation of approval on the part of the writer. It simply "luck."

P. 80, 1. 15. Oppress ="put down."

G

JOHN EVELYN.

John Evelyn was born at Wotton in 1620, was educated at Oxford, entered the Temple, and during the Civil War spent his time mostly abroad. Under the Commonwealth he lived quietly in England, but after the Restoration he took much part in public, and some in political, affairs. He died in 1706. His Silva is most remarkable for style, his Diary for matter.

FOR

THE LIFE OF TREES.

'OR their preservation, nature has invested the whole tribe and nation (as we may say) of vegetables, with garments suitable to their naked and exposed bodies, temper, and climate: Thus some are clad with a coarser, and resist all extremes of weather; others with more tender and delicate skins and scarfs, as it were, and thinner raiment. Quid foliorum describam diversitates? What shall we say of the mysterious forms, variety, and variegation of the leaves and flowers, contrived with such art, yet without art; some round, others long, oval, multangular, indented, crisped, rough, smooth, and polished, soft and flexible at every tremulous blast, as if it would drop in a moment, and yet so obstinately adhering, as to be able to contest against the fiercest winds that prostrate mighty structures !-There it abides till God bids it fall for so the wise Disposer of things has placed it, not only for ornament, but use and protection both of body and fruit; from the excessive heat of summer, and colds of the sharpest winters, and their immediate impressions; as we find it in all such places and trees, as, like the blessed and good man, have always fruit upon them, ripe, or preparing to mature; such

as the Pine, Fir, Arbutus, Orange, and most of those which the Indies and more southern tracts plentifully abound in, where Nature provides this continual shelter, and clothes them with perennial garments.

Let us examine with what care the seeds, (in which the whole and complete tree, though invisible to our dull sense, is yet perfectly and entirely wrapped up,) exposed, as they seem to be, to all those accidents of weather, storms, and rapacious birds, are yet preserved from avolation, diminution, and detriment, within their spiny, armed, and compacted receptacles; where they sleep as in their causes, till their prisons let them gently fall into the embraces of the earth, now made pregnant with the season, and ready for another burden for at the time of year she fails not to bring them forth. With what delight have I beheld this tender and innumerable offspring repullulating at the feet of an aged tree! from whence the suckers are drawn, transplanted and educated by human industry, and, forgetting the ferity of their nature, become civilized to all his employments.

Can we look on the prodigious quantity of liquor, which one poor wounded birch will produce in a few hours, and not be astonished? Is it not wonderful that some trees should, in a short space of time, weep more than they weigh? And that so dry, so feeble, and wretched a branch, as that which bears the grape, should yield a juice that cheers the heart of man? That the Pine, Fir, Larch, and other resinous trees, planted in such rude and uncultivated places, amongst rocks and dry pumices, should transude into turpentine, and pearl out into gums and precious balms?

Silva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees.

P. 82, 1. 11. It, i.e., the individual leaf or flower, though there is no antecedent except in the plural. A good instance of the negligence of the older style.

P. 83, 1. 9. Avolation, flying, or being blown away.

P. 83, l. 11. Causes. According to the Realist idea of things being essentially contained, and, so to speak, wrapped up in their causes.

P. 83, l. 18. Ferity, wildness.

WHEN

ALGERNON SIDNEY.

Algernon Sidney, born at Penshurst in 1621, was in his time the chief literary exponent of theoretical Republicanism. He fought for the Parliament, was one of the king's judges, though he did not sign the warrant, and was opposed to Cromwell. Exiled at the Restoration, he was pardoned in 1677, but being implicated in the Rye House Piot, was executed on Dec. 7, 1683.

HIS APOLOGY.

WHEN I heard the judgment, to the best of my remembrance I said these words.

Why then, oh Lord! sanctify, I beseech thee, these my sufferings unto me; sanctify me through my sufferings; sanctify me through thy truth; thy word is truth; impute not my blood unto this nation; impute it not unto the great city through which I shall be led to the place of death; let not my soul cry, though it lie under the altar; make no inquisition for it; or, if innocent blood must be expiated, let thy vengeance fall only upon the head of those, who knowingly and maliciously persecute me for righteousness sake.

The Chief Justice then speaking, as if I had been a distempered man, I held out my arm, and desired any that were present to feel my pulse, and whether any man could be more free from emotion; and I do profess, that so far as I do know, and did then feel myself, I was never in a more quiet temper; glory and thanks be unto God for ever, who had filled me with comforts, and so upheld me, that having, as I hope, through Christ, vanquished sin, he doth preserve me from the fears of death.