to usher in the new-year, and to cheer up my thoughts, which your letters have à virtue to do always whenfoever they come, they are so full of quaint and copious quick expreffions. When the Spaniards at their firft coalition in the Weft Indies, did begin to mingle with the Americans, that filly people thought that thofe little white papers and letters which the Spaniards ufed to fend one to another, were certain kind of conjurers or fpirits that used to go up and down to tell tales, and make difcoveries. Among other examples, I remember to have read one of an Indian boy fent from a Mexico merchant to a Captain, with a basket of figs, and a letter. The boy in the way did eat fome of them, and the Captain, after he had read the letter, afked him what became of the reft? whereat the boy ftood all astonished; and being fent with another basket a little after to the fame party, his maw began to yern again after fome of the figs, but he first took the letter and clapt it under a great stone hard by, upon which he fat while he was eating, thinking thereby that the fpirit in the letter could not difcover him, &c. Whether your letters be fpirits or no, I will not difpute, but I am fure they beget new fpirits in me; and quod efficit tale illud ipfum eft magis tale; if 1 am poffefled with melancholy, they raise a Ipirit of mirth in me; if my thoughts are contracted with fadnefs, they prefently dilate them into joy, &c. as if they had fome fubtil invifible atoms whereby they operate; which is now an old philofophy newly furbished, and much cried up, that all natural actions and motions are performed by emiffion of certain atoms, whereof there is a conftant effluvium from all elementary bodies, and are of divers fhapes, fome angular, others cylindrical, fome spherical; which atoms are still hovering up and down, and never reft till they meet with fome pores proportionable and cognate to their figures, where they acquiefce. By the expiration of fuch atoms, the dog finds the fcent as he hunts, the peftilence infects, the loadstone attracts iron, the fympathetic powder or Zaphyrian falt calcined by Apollinean heat, operating in July or Auguft, till it come to a lunary complexion; I fay, by the virtue and intervention of fuch atoms, it is found that this faid powder heals at a distance,

without topical applications to the place affected. They who are of this opinion hold, that all fublunary bodies operate thus by atoms, as the heavenly bodies do by their influences. Now it is more vifible in the loadstone than any other body; for by help of artificial glaffes, a kind of mift hath been difcerned to expire out of it, as Dr. Highmore doth acutely, and fo much like a philofopher, obferve. For my part, I think it more congruous to reafon, and to the course of nature, that all actions and motions fhould be thus performed by fuch little atomical bodies, than by accidents and quali ties, which are but notional things, having only an imaginary fubfiftence, and no effence of themselves at all, but as they inhere in fome other. If this philofophy be true, it were no great abfurdity to think that your letters have a kind of atomical energy which operates upon my fpirits, as I formerly told you.

The times continue ftill untoward and troublesome; therefore now, that you and I carry above a hundred years upon our backs, and that thofe few grains of fand which remain in the brittle glaffes of our lives are ftill running out, it is time, my dear Tom, for us to think on that which of all future things is the most certain, I mean our last removal, and emigration hence to another world: it is time to think on that little hole of earth which shall hold us at laft. The time was, that you and I had all the fair continent of Europe before us to range in; we have been fince confined to an island, and now Lincoln holds you, and London me : we must expect the day that fickness will confine us to our chambers, then to our beds, and fo to our graves, the dark filent grave, which will put 3 period to our pilgrimage in this world. And obfervable it is, what method nature doth use in contracting our liberty thus by degrees, as a worthy gentleman obferves.

of

But though this fmall bagful of bones be fo confined, yet the nobleft part of us may be faid to be then fet at liberty, when having fhaken off this flough flesh, fhe mounts up to her true country, the country of eternity; where one moment of joy is more than if we enjoyed all the pleasures of this world a million of years here among the elements.

But

But till our threads are fpun up, let us continue to enjoy ourselves as well as we can; let thofe grains I fpoke of before run gently by their own motion, without jogging the glass by any perturbation of mind, or mufing too much upon the times.

Man's life is nimble and swift enough of itself, without the help of a fpur, or any violent motion: therefore he spoke like a true philofopher, who excepted against the title of a book called De Statu Vita, for he fhould rather have entitled it De Curfu Vita; for this life is ftill upon the fpeed.

You and I have luckily met abroad under many meridians; when our course is run here, I hope we shall meet in a region that is above the wheel of time: and it may be in the concave of fome ftar, if thofe glorious lamps are habitable. Howfoever, my genius prompts me, that when I part hence I fhall not downwards; for I had always foaring thoughts being but a boy, at which time I had a mighty defire to be a bird, that I might fly towards the sky.

So my long-endeared friend, and fellow-traveller, I reft yours verily and ing variably.

LETTER I.

Lady Ruffell's Letter to the King (Charles II.), (Indorfed by her; My letter to the King a few days after my dear Lord's death).

I

May it please your Majefty, FIND my hulband's enemies are not appeafed with his blood, and fill continue to mifreprefent him to your Majefty. It is a great addition to my forrows to hear your Majefty is prevailed upon to believe, that the paper he delivered to the fheriff at his death was not his own. I can truly fay, and am ready in the folemneft manner to atteft, that (during his imprisonment) I often heard him difcourfe of the chiefeft matters contained in that paper, in the fame expreffions he therein ufes, as fome of thofe few relations that were admitted to him, can likewife aver. And fure it is an argument of no great force, that there is a phrafe or two in it another ufes, when nothing is more common than to take up fuch words we like, or are accustomed to

The words included in the parentheses are croffed out.

in our converfation. I beg leave further to avow to your Majesty, that all that is jelly on Sunday night, to be spoken in fet down in the paper read to your Mamy prefence, is exactly true +; as I doubt not but the rest of the paper is, which was written at my request, and the author of it in all his converfation with my husband, that I was privy to, fhewed himfelf a loyal fubject to your Majefty, a faithful friend to him, and a molt tender and confcientious minifter to his foul. I do therefore humbly beg your Majefty would be fo charitable to believe, that he who in all his life was obferved to at with the greatest clearness and fincerity, ingenuous and falfe a thing, as to deliver would not at the point of death do fo diffor his own what was not properly and exprefsly fo. And if after the lofs, in fuch a manner, of the best husband in the world, I were capable of any confolation, your Majesty only could afford it by having better thought of him; whic when I was fo importunate to speak with your Majefty, I thought I had fome rea

It contained an account of all that paffed be tween Dr. Burnet and his Lordship, concerning b 1t fpeech and paper. It is called the Tournal the History of his own Times, vol. i. p. 562.

fon

fon to believe I fhould have inclined you to, not from the credit of my word, but upon the evidence of what I had to fay, I hope I have written nothing in this the wi dibeze your Majely; if I have, I number beg of you to confider it as coming from a woman amazed with grief and that you will pardon the dapter of a person who ferved your Misty's foam was great extremines and your Majely in your greatest *ž and one that is not con Gions of Baring ever done are thing to offend you thefore i hal ever pray for your Majer's long the and nonry reign, who 2212y, may a pickle your Miety, L

mine; but, alas! my understanding is clouded, my faith weak, fenfe frong, and the devil bufy to fl my thoughts with falfe notions, dificulties, and doubts, as of a future condition

t of prayer: but this I hope to make matter of humiliation, not in. Lord, let me under and the reason of there dark and wounding providences, that I fick not under the clicceragements of my own thoughts: I know I have de ferved my plzier, and will be flent ander it, but yet fecretly my heart mourns too fly, I fear, and cannot be comforted, because I have not the dear companion, and Sharer of all my joy and forrows. I want him to talk with, to wax with, to eat and Leep with; al these things are inkome to me now; the day unwelcome, and the right to too; al company and meals I would avoid if it might be yet all this, that I enjoy not the world in my own way, and till fore hinders my comfort; when I fee my cure before me, I remember the piti fore he took in them, this macei my heart rice Can I regret t a leier good for a bigger? Giad frity believe, I could not be dije Folware yield to day, I oft