in letters, and other forms of discourse, addressed to sons, or to youthful friends, or to the world at large, by thoughtful and notable men of the day, giving advice, point by point, on the courses to take in life, the aims to pursue, the principles to be governed by. The composition of sententious precepts and rules was also much in vogue, and much interest was evidently taken in them. To a great extent, the moralizing of that period was of the prudential kind, looking to success and smoothness in life, rather than to high spiritual motives and a fine self-culture. Even Shakespeare, when he framed the advice of Polonius to Laertes, exemplified the fashionable worldlywisdom of his age, in prudential maxims. It is only at the end that he puts a higher meaning into the old man's words, and makes him say:

"This above all, - To thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man."

Of the moralists of that extraordinary age there are none who show a shrewder worldly-wisdom than Montaigne; but his was the wisdom of a profounder consideration of life, from the egoistic standpoint, than most of those who wrote of it had given. In that essay of Book III., in which he tells of his love of life, and how thoughtfully he cultivates it and makes the most of it, he says: "Others are sensible of the sweetness of contentment and of prosperity; I feel it, too, as well as they, but not as it slides and passes by; a man ought to study, taste, and ruminate upon it, to render worthy thanks to Him that grants it to us. I consult myself about a contentment; I do not skim, but sound it; and bend my reason, now grown perverse and ill-humored, to entertain it." In that we have contentment sublimated, and the enjoyment of life erected into both a science and an art. Elsewhere

in the same essay he says: "The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose; all other things, to reign, to lay up treasure, to build, are at the most but mere appendixes and little props." Further: "Grandeur of soul consists, not so much in mounting and in proceeding forward, as in knowing how to govern and circumscribe itself. It takes everything for great that is enough; and shows its height better in loving moderate than eminent things. There is nothing so handsome and lawful as well and duly to play the man; nor science so hard as well to know how to live in this life." And again: "Of the experience I have of myself, I find enough to make me wise, if I were but a good scholar. The life of Cæsar himself has no greater examples for us than

Lord Bacon is believed to have written, for the Earl of Essex, a letter of rare wisdom which was addressed, in the name of the latter, to the young Earl of Rutland. "Behavior," his lordship is told, " is but a garment, and it is easy to make a comely garment for a body that is itself well proportioned." Hence, the essential matter is the shaping and cultivation of one's mind. The excellences of the mind are the same as those found in the physical body, namely, health, strength, and beauty. By health of mind we are kept from things evil and base. Strength of mind is that active power which maketh us to perform good things and great things." Beauty of mind is shown in sweetness and gracefulness of behavior. As for the attaining of such an admirable condition of mind, the young man is pithily told that one "may mend his faults with as little labor as cover them." It would not be easy to put more food for moral thinking into a dozen words.

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Among the moralists of the next generation after Ba

con, the favorite, apparently, was Francis Quarles, whose Enchiridion," or manual of precepts, enjoyed an extraordinary popularity in its day. Many of its maxims are trite, and they carry a little too plainly the marks of an artful and conscious workmanship; but in some of them, on the other hand, so fine an expression is given to an old idea that it carries a new effect. I quote a few examples:

"Hath any wronged thee? be bravely revenged: slight it, and the work's begun; forgive it, and 't is finished. He is below himself that is not above an injury."

"In the commission of evil, fear no man so much as thy own self. Another is but one witness against thee; thou art a thousand: another thou mayest avoid; thyself thou canst not."

"Demean thyself more warily in thy study, than in the street. . . . The multitude looks but upon thy actions; thy conscience looks into them."

"If thou seest anything in thyself which may make thee proud, look a little further, and thou shalt find enough to humble thee.”

"If thou wouldst have a good servant, let thy servant find a wise master."

One of the contemporaries of Quarles was Sir Thomas Browne, who wrote a "Letter to a Friend" on subjects of conduct, and afterwards expanded it into a treatise on "Christian Morals." Like everything that came from that most delightful old physician, it is full of meat for meditation. "Be substantially great in thyself," he writes, " and more than thou appearest unto others, and let the world be deceived in thee as they are in the lights of heaven."

"When thou lookest upon the imperfections of others, allow one eye for what is laudable in them, and the bal

ance they have from some excellency, which may render them considerable."

"Owe not thy humility unto humiliation by adversity, but look humbly down in that state when others look upward upon thee.”

"Be charitable before wealth makes thee covetous, and lose not the glory of the mite. If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them."

When we find a crafty statesman, like Lord Robert Burleigh, addressing to his son Robert "Ten Precepts which prove to be counsels of worldly prudence, just tinctured with a formal piety, we are not surprised. But one expects something more from Sir Walter Raleigh, and it is disappointing to discover scarcely more than a thrifty view of life in the "Instructions" which he left "To his Son and to Posterity." A somewhat higher tone appears in two letters of formal advice that were written from Spain by Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet and diplomatist, to his only son, Thomas, and in a similar epistle by Sir Henry Sidney, to his famous son, the knightly Sir Philip; but neither is at all remarkable.

In Spain, a little later, there was a maker of maxims, Balthasar Gracian, whose sayings have been greatly admired. Discreetness and taste, rather than loftiness of sentiment, are the qualities that permeate them; but they are wise in their kind and most cleverly framed. "Look into the inside of things," says Gracian; "they are usually very different from what they seem." "Have something left to wish for, so as not to be unhappy from very happiness. If there is nothing to desire, there is everything to fear." "Know how to do good to people a little often." "Have no days of carelessness. Destiny loves to play tricks, and will pile chance on chance to take us unawares."

at a time and

The eloquent admonitions of old Thomas Fuller, in his classic discourses on "The Holy State and the Profane State," are almost purely religious; but there are fine gleanings of strictly moral precept in them. For example: he does not condemn anger, in itself, as the moralists commonly do, but commends it, if rightly controlled and directed. 66 Anger," he says, "is one of the sinews of the soul. He that wants it hath a maimed mind.” But "to be angry for every toy, debases the worth of thy anger; and “he will make a strange combustion in the state of his soul, who at the landing of every cockboat sets the beacons on fire." There is a deeper wisdom in this than in the customary deprecation of all anger. So, too, in his counsels concerning recreation. He extols it, as "the breathing of the soul;" but, he pleads, " Spill not the morning (the quintessence of the day) in recreations. For sleep itself is a recreation; add not therefore sauce to sauce." And, in conclusion: "Choke not thy soul with immoderate pouring in of the cordial of pleasures."

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From the Puritan writers of that strange time we get little of the kind of ethic teaching that is the object of my present search. It is not in Puritanism, but in Quakerism, that we find the sense of righteousness uplifted again, and purged of worldly prudence, and made a very living force. Religion, as the followers of George Fox conceived it, included moral rightness in a way and a degree which the professors of religion have not always understood. It made them scrupulous of many things, such as war, and slavery, and the vanities of pomp and title, which mere fervors of emotional piety have often failed to waken the consciences of men against. It made the plain yea and nay of daily human intercourse as sacred to them as the worship of God. And that, I think, is why William Penn became a disciple of George Fox. He was the