"His Majesties proceeding with Sir Walter Raleigh hath given here so much satisfaction and contentment as I am not able to express it unto your honour, but all men doe much extolle his Majesties syncerity in it." some demolished, others ruinous, the woods close shaven, and all like a See wherein I shall comm the fifthe Bishopp in one fifteene yeares. But I love the last Bishopp soe well that I saye not more of the Bushoppricke. My Keeper's place is a great deale more closely poul'd and very much dismembered; and yet am I soe much envied by most, as I knowe not where to complayne but in my Lord's bosom onelye." Among clerical letters of interest, there is one from Theophilus Field Bishop of Bacon appears in these pages, urging Llandaff (1619). Mr. Gardiner does not his elevation to the peerage. Buckingnote that the bishop was brother to ham replies that peerages were once to be Nathaniel Field, the Shakspearean actor. had more easily than at that present time The letter addressed to Buckingham has" when to my knowledg his Majesty canthis passage in it :not endure to heare of making any for his "Right Honorable. My ever acknowledged own benefitt, notwithstanding the great and (next to God and the King) most adored necessities wherein he is." The most best patron. I have presumed to write to the amusing comment on this text is in the King my master in the behalfe, of my poore la- | following petition, sent to Buckingham mentably ruined church of Landaffe, whose rev-soon after he wrote to Bacon: ennewes (being the very sinnewes of any sea) are shranke from a thowsand pounds a yeare to Gerrard and others the Corporation for the To"Your Lordship procured for Sir Thomas seven skore pounds. No part of that which is lost can be recovered without a commission, and baccopipe makers, uppon which there is 4,000 that which is left is in danger of loosing with-li layde out and loste. His Majestie hath recalled the grant, and therefore in equity ought in grace to geve recompence. Wee present to Humiliation and complaint went togeth-his Majestie one without exception to be made a er. Dr. Donne himself, looking for the Deanery of Salisbury (1621), vacant by Dean Bowles succeeding to Lord-Keeper Williams, at Westminster, who was about to take the see of Lincoln, could thus stoop to the mendicant strain in writing to Buckingham: out a new charter." Barron whoe will geve 10,000 li. Humbly craving out of this, such a somme as his Majestie shalbe pleased to grant in lieu of the 4,000 li loste, besids the long services of the Sutors and being bownd for his father for 7,000 li, which the overthrowe of Sir Thos. Gerrard's estate, if his Majestie vouchsafe not to releeve, his lands wilbe all seased uppon and utterly lost, to the undoing of him, his wife, children, and famyly.” They are too long to be dealt with, and too diffuse to bear condensation, but we recommend them to all interested in matter of that tender nature. "Ever since I had your Lordship's letter, I have esteemed myselfe in possession of Salisbury, and more than Salisbury, of a place in your serFor other illustrations of historical charvice; for I tooke Salisbury as a seale of ytt. I acters and incidents, we refer our readers hear that my Lord Keeper finds reason to continue in Westminster, and I know that neyther to Mr. Gardiner's volume. We may add, your Lordship nor he knowes how narrow and for sentimental students, that some amuspenurious a fortune I wrestle with in thys ing love-passages enliven the volume. world. But I ame so far from dependinge upon the assistance of any but your Lordship, as that I do not assist myselfe so far as with a wishe that my Lord Keeper would have left a hole for so poore a worme, as I ame to have crept in at. All that I meane in usinge thys boldnes, of puttinge myself into your Lordship's presence by thys ragge of paper, ys to tell your Lordship that I ly in a corner, as a clodd of clay, attendinge what kinde of vessell yt shall please you to make of your Lordship's humblest and thankfullest and vant, devotedest ser- From The Pall Mall Gazette. THE COMMUNISTS IN LONDON. A CORRESPONDENT, who signs himself "An English Officer under the Commune," sends us the following account of the Communal Association in London. It was written last week: Free-thinkers though they be for the most part, the Communalists in London devote the Sunday to a work of charity such as few believers indulge in on the day of rest. At five o'clock, a public-house in Soho opens its doors painful to note the eagerness with which several of those present, evidently belonging to what is called the better classes, pressed forward and tendered their services. Such sudden falls in the social scale are not rare among the Communalists. A French friend whom I knew in Paris as the influential agent of a large Lyons manufactory is at present contentedly stitching saddlery; and another, a physician, distributes bread for a charitable institution at one pound a week. This matter over, the Citoyen Clement went on to inform us that last Sunday two English policemen had forced their way into the room, looked round and departed, not, however, without having counselled the proprietor of the house to allow no more "communist meetings.' After this illegal interference the committee wrote to Colonel Henderson, informing him of the nature of their meetings, and asking if they were contrary to English law. This missive is yet unanswered. I myself am at a loss to account for the irruption of police, but I know that such wanton attempts to take advantage of a foreigner's ignorance of the law produces a disastrous effect on the minds of those who at least admire our so-called political freedom. More important questions having been laid at rest, the Assembly proceeded to give some time to discussions of a fantaisiste character. The puritan among puritans, Citoyen L., Dictator of Marseilles, rose to demand whether the committee had made inquiries into the truth of certain rumours current in Communalist society, which alleged that a Frenchman and a Republican had struck a woman! Here a little inordinately moustached man broke in, saying that the "orator" had no right to make public" secrets of the Alcove," which phrase testitified to the interrupter's intimate acquaintance with the late Paul de Kock. In answer to this, L. The séance of last Sunday was peculiarly characteristic of the operation of this constitution. Nearly eighty persons were present, the number of refugees having swollen enormously during the last two weeks. The President having called for order by means of a beer pot, the Citizen T., the preserver of the Paris Post Of-delivered a speech equal to the best I have heard fice, was requested to present the budget. I re- fall from his lips. He maintained that Repubmarked that the assessors persisted in estimat- licans could have no secrets. "Alcoves " were ing the amount by shillings instead of pounds, relegated to feudal castles and had no place unwhich proceeding certainly gave apparent im- der the roof that covers a free man's head. portance to the meagre sum (£7 8s.) of the re- Englishmen must know the real character of ceipt; the bulk of the money provided by the of the partisans of the Commune by the examInternational Association, the rest by individual ple we set now that we are in their midst. They partisans. The whole was miserably insufficient. must learn to appreciate that beside the petits A formidable deficit had to be made up, and crevés of the Empire and the pampered landsixty members clamoured for assistance. Only owners of the Versailles Right, the working men 28. could be allotted to each. This, with a few who governed Paris are as an Ireton to a Buckmore shillings to be distributed on Thursday, ingham. If the rumour in question was well constituted for many the whole week's subsist- founded, the man capable of so vile an act was ence. After the discussion of the budget, J. B. no Republican, and could have nothing in comC., ex-member of the Commune and a species mon with the brave men gathered round the of Minister of Public Works to the Association, speaker. This was vehemently applauded, and announced that the committee had received ap-after the electton of three new members for the plications from a company for four navvies to committee in which I noticed three women be employed on a railway near London. It was took part - the meeting dissolved. 222 Cornhill Magazine, 243 253 255 NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for- to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. From The Westminster Review EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE.* A THOUSAND years ago complaint was made that learning was diminishing in England. Before that time wise men were plentiful throughout the country; kings and ministers prospered in peace and in war: the sacred orders were zealous in learning and teaching, and foreigners came hither in search of instruction. But times changed. When Alfred drew this picture of what England had been, the decay had become so general that few on this side of the Humber could understand their rituals in English, or translate a letter from the Latin into their mother-tongue; and there were not many beyond the Humber who were equal to the task. So few were they that the King could not remember one south of the Thames when he ascended the throne.t books. And when we look at their handwriting, and observe the minute care with which they formed every letter, and the pains they bestowed on their work, and then consider the time required to completo the transcript of one book of the Bible, of one story or legend of one life of a saint, we shall find that there is better reason to bless them for having done so much than there is to complain that they did so little. Nameless, except to the brothers of their religious house, unknown in their own days as they are in ours, they call upon us by their works to erect a monument to their memory. In our own irregular way we are doing this. Every manuscript which is brought to light and deciphered and given to the world by our printing societies, by private enterprise, or by Government aid, is a tribute to the men who worked not for fame, who had no No doubt the disturbed condition of the eye to rewards, who laboured only "for country was answerable in a great meas- love of simple men." In these men reliure for this state of things. The Church gion was a reality. They had few misgiv had not yet descended so low as it after- ings to trouble them. Unvexed by the wards did, and State cares, not luxury and discoveries of science, ignorant of the sloth, must be charged with the decay of theories which make us hesitate in our learning. Under the fostering care of faith, the Bible was to them the Book, the Alfred, and urged forward by his example, Church was the witness and keeper of the learning as well as other virtues revived, Truth contained in it, and they lived a and since his days English literature has faith which taught them that the end of shone on with a steadily increasing light. every religious man was to do all that in This side of the Humber, beyond the him lay to improve his fellow-men. Humber, south of the Thames, in the east But who are the men fitted to place this and west, we find evidences of a wide-old-world literature before our generaspread desire to lay before the "lewd" as tion? On the principal that "he who well as the learned the works of old-world drives fat oxen must himself be fat; worthies, sacred and profane; as well as the principle that the man whose faith those wonderful legends of saints and tallies not exactly with my faith is incapaheroes, which enthralled the minds of men ble of using his scholarship to produce a then with an interest far more intense than better translation of our Bible, some will they do now. Nor was the Bible forgot tell us that no man who is not a member ten. It was no sealed book, except in so of the (Roman) Catholic Church is compefar as to the majority of men all books tent to edit these writings produced genwere sealed at a time when books were the erations before England finally thew off rarest of treasures, and readers all but the yoke of Rome. Scholarship, honesty, unknown. "Painful" and industrious ability, a profound acquaintance with the Churchmen were willing to spend their changes which our language, no less than lives in writing, translating, or copying our manners, has undergone, all go for nothing the man possessing these, but disputing the dogmas of the Pope, is not to be trusted he cannot edit an English Text! Well, perhaps it serves us right. Did we not a few years back persecute a Early English Text Society. Seventh Report of the Committee, February, 1871. ↑ King Alfred's "West Saxon Version of Gregory's Pastoral Care." Edited by Henry Sweet, Esq., E.ETS. 1871. " on |