Her troubles did not end here; her mother died soon after. Her father, to the surprise and sorrow of the king and of his friends, left England after his defeat at Marston Moor. He, as well as her brother, were banished and proscribed, their estates seized, and she was left to struggle with all her distresses. The losses of the marquis were reckoned, together with the sums that he had spent in the king's service, at more than £700,000. When the fifths were allowed to those whose estates had been seized, Lady Jane became a solicitor for her father and brothers, with much difficulty obtaining pardon for their lives; and when she found that all she could obtain was not enough for her father's support in his exile, she sold her own plate and jewels given her by her father and grandmother, and sent over the money to him.

Her filial duty in this instance was afterwards made known by Margaret Lucas, whom the marquis married abroad. This lady, having had an excellent education, devoted her life in a great measure to literary pursuits, combined with which, she imbibed unvarying loyalty from her family. She was maid of honour to Queen Henrietta, and attended her when she left England. At Paris she met with the Marquis of Newcastle, and was married to him in 1645, after which time they lived in such a manner as might best suit his ruined fortunes, residing chiefly at Antwerp. Their literary employments were their chief amusement; but she was obliged at one time to come over to England to try to procure some grant for the marquis out of his estates. In this attempt she was unsuccessful, but received liberal assistance from her own and her husband's relations, with which supply she returned to him, and they lived abroad till the Restoration. They survived it many years, both living to a great age. Her compositions in prose and verse were very numerous; and after her return to England with her husband, they lived chiefly in retirement on his estates.

The marchioness also related of Lady Jane that she would not engage herself in marriage till she had obtained permission from her intended husband to send over to her father a considerable share of her own fortune; which afterwards, on being restored to his estates, he repaid.

In deciding upon her marriage, which her father's absence left to her own choice, though not without his consent sanctioning it, she resolved to enter into no family which had ill-treated her king and her father, however advantageous might be the offer. But she accepted of Mr. Charles Cheyne or Cheney, a gentleman of ancient family, in whose principles she could trust. Nor did her expectations deceive her; for she lived happily with him at Chelsea for nearly fifteen years, employing herself in charitable works, working with her needle when not busied with her books and writing, and continuing her religious course, in which she loved to observe the fasts of the church as far as the tenderness of her conscience permitted. If she had any quarrel with the place, it was from the multitude of formal visits which she could not avoid receiving from London and returning.

In her last sickness her sufferings were not often severe, and she was spared what she naturally dreaded-extreme pain; for during the fits which came upon her, her senses were lost for the time. In her intervals of speech she used it mostly in devotion, and in many gentle, cheerful, and obliging expressions to her husband, children, doctors, and other her mournful attend

ants.

In the three weeks' interval, during which there were good hopes of her recovery, "she used often to say, that though she resigned herself wholly to the wise disposal of a good God, yet she, being in expectation of being called away in her first fits, looked upon her recovery as a gracious kind of disappointment (these were her own words) by God Almighty. This she did, she said, not out of discontent at her sickness, which she thankfully acknowledged was tolerably easy, but (as having conquered the world, and being now in her passage to a better) out of her tuition of a glorious crown that, she trusted, awaited her in heaven."

"Now was the time when all the powers of her soul, all her virtues and graces, were summoned together with united force to make up the complement of her devotions, wherein she professed, to the equal comfort and grief of those that heard her, her confidence in God, her patient submission to the will of him, her holy resignation, her indifference to life, and her preparedness to die; of which, amongst many others, there were two remarkable instances: one to a reverend father of our church, whom she told with great unconcernedness, as he was discoursing piously to her, that she was not afraid to die; not that she had or feared any trouble or discontent here, but that she might enjoy the blessings of that better world. The other, to her sad and afflicted husband, whom, as he was at her bed-side praying to God that he would restore her again to health, that she might live and glorify him, when those that went down into the pit could not praise him, she stopped in his prayer, and with a comfortable look and strong voice (though a great difficulty of speech had some time before possessed her) said, 'She would glorify God, whether she lived or died,' and then recommended her children to his

care.

"These dear children of hers, as she often had in health, so she did now more frequently in her sickness, instruct, charging them to apply themselves much to reading; especially to be diligent in constant prayers to God, to be observant to their dear father, and transferring that obedience they had to herself upon him, to pay him now a double duty, and to be entirely loving to one another: then, and not else, they might assure themselves of all good things from God and their father; further enjoining them to be respectful to those that had the charge of them, and ever to give ear to their just and virtuous advices, and carefully to decline the company of vain and impertinent persons. "As it was her only trouble in all her sickness that her indisposition made her incapable of giving that attendance to the offices of religion-praying, meditating, reading, as she used to do; so, in the close, it was the great affliction of all about her, and that which of anything she herself showed most sense of, that her speech failed her; upon the loss of which, she had no other means of expressing those pious ejaculations she in her last sickness incessantly poured forth, but by sighs, and eyes and hands lifted up to heaven, whither we may presume she is gone to increase the number of saints, whom the church this day commemorates, and to enter into the joy of her Saviour." Her funeral sermon was preached at Chelsea on All Saints' Day, 1669, by Dr. Adam Littleton. She died in her forty-eighth year, leaving three children, one of whom died soon after, and was buried with her; as was also her husband about thirty years afterwards, being then Viscount Newhaven.

Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, sister to Lady Jane, was married to the Earl of Bridgwater, and is thus mentioned in his epitaph :

"Here lies interred John, Earl of Bridgwater, Viscount Brackley, &c. Who desired no other memorial of him but only this;-that having, in the nineteenth year of his age, married the Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter to the then Earl, since Marquis, and after that Duke, of Newcastle, he did enjoy almost twenty-two years all the happiness that a man could receive in the sweet society of the best of wives, till it pleased God, in the forty-fourth year of his age, to change his great felicity into as great misery by depriving him of his truly loving and entirely beloved wife, who was all his worldly bliss. After which time, humbly submitting to and waiting on the will and pleasure of the Almighty, he did sorrowfully wear out twenty-three years, four months, and twelve days, and then, on the twenty-sixth day of October, in the year of our Lord 1686, and in the sixty-fourth year of his own age, yielded up his soul into the merciful hand of God, who gave it. Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.'—Job, xiii. 15.”

This Earl of Bridgwater is highly spoken of by Sir Henry Chauncy, who knew him well, and gave a character of him in his history of Hertfordshire, in which he especially mentions his loyalty to the Church of England and to the

king. He was buried by his countess, for whom he made an inscription of greater length than that for himself, enumerating her children by name, and proceeding in the highest strain of panegyric, in which mention is made of her religious and charitable virtues, as well as of her other excellences.

The Eclipse, Commemorated by a Series of Popular Essays on the Wonders of the Heavens, the Dignity of Man, and the Mutual Relations of Nature, Science, and Religion. By PHILIP CATER, Author of "The Great Fiction of the Times."

MR. CATER is a minister of the gospel, and the substance of this little volume was preached to a crowded congregation in Canterbury, on the 24th November last, the moon having on that evening experienced a total eclipse. The author's object was to take advantage of a great natural wonder, to lead his hearers from Nature to Nature's God. We are not favourable to the appropriation of the pulpit, on the Christian Sabbath, to other purposes than those of inculcating the distinguishing doctrines of the gospel; yet, on the other hand, it is not to be denied, that the announcement of such a sermon as that which forms the ground-work of this little volume, could scarcely fail to attract many persons not in the habit of attending any place of worship, and thereby an opportunity be afforded of a word in season being addressed to them. In this tasteful little book there is a very large amount of interesting information connected with the science of all astronomy-the most sublime by far of all the sciences-and he who makes himself master of its contents, will possess no ordinary share of intelligence. We give, as a specimen of Mr. Cater's pleasing style and manner, the chapter headed

IMMENSITY OF THE HEAVENS.

Our country is called Great Britain; but her greatness, like that of ancient Tyre, consists not so much in the extent of her territory as in the extent of her merchandize; or, not so much in the number of her square miles as in the number of her moral and scientific attainments, and philanthropic institutions for increasing the happiness of mankind. Inferior in point of magnitude to few, but superior to many other islands of the sea, she is still but an inconsiderable portion of that globe whose dimensions and magnificent arrangements commanded universal praise, when the morning stars together sang, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."

So remote is the centre of the earth from its surface, that we know no more of what its interior—that is, its deep interior-is composed of, than we know of what the sun or the moon is composed of. And even its islands, and seas, and countries, and continents are as yet by no means fully investigated or explored; though man whose duty it is, and whose profit or pleasure it is, to push his inquiries into remote regions, and into all sciences and all subjects, is not in a certain sense the creature of yesterday, whose days upon earth are as a shadow; but a being whose days are nearly coeval with those of the world. Indeed, so vast and so gigantic is this rolling globe of living and lifeless dust, that were it a ball of red-hot iron, it would not become cool till after the lapse of more than fifty thousand years!

But this great globe, and all which it inherits, dwindles into insignificance when compared with the more stupendous planets of the skies. The two interior ones, it is true, are less than the earth; the first in a great but the

second only in a slight degree. The first exterior planet is likewise much inferior to it; and, what is most surprising and perhaps most inexplicable, as being so singularly at variance with the magnitudes of kindred bodies, the largest of the asteriods must be a very little world indeed, being only 160 miles in diameter! But in the boundary world of our system, we discover a planet whose diameter is 35,000 miles, being 27,000 miles more than that of the earth. But the sixth and seventh exterior planets are the greatest of all; the latter being a thousand times, and the former more than a thousand times, larger than our world; indeed, at one time they were supposed to be superior to the sun itself. By what rule or by what necessity the three outmost planets should be so tremendously greater, or why the four newly-discovered planets should be so much smaller and so much unlike the rest, we cannot say. How much are we taken by surprise, and how many appeals might be made to our ignorance with regard to the magnitudes, and movements, and relative positions of the stars, and, indeed, with regard to all God's works in all places of his dominion.

But what shall we say to the immensity of the glorious orb of day, a body not only a thousand times, but even a million times, larger than our earth, and consequently much larger than all the planets put together. Those spots on its surface, apparently so small, and about which so many conjectures have been hazarded, are some of them thousands and others of them millions of miles in extent. So vast, indeed, are the dimensions of the sun, that it is said if a person were to stand on some certain point to survey its surface while it passed in review, that more than 20,000 years must elapse before the survey would be completed!

The sun shining in his strength, no man can stedfastly behold, yet its distance from the earth is no less than 95,000,000 of miles; but who can imagine what that distance is, or what the ninety-fifth part of it is? Who can properly conceive of that mighty interval of space which a million of miles must necessarily describe? You might count sixty a minute every day, and yet more than three weeks would elapse before you had counted a million, and six years must elapse in counting the number of miles between the earth and the sun; and if it were possible to perform a journey to it, and to perform it at the rate of 100 miles a day, that journey could not be accomplished in less than 2,600 years.

But what is our distance from the sun compared with that of the outmost planet of the system? No more than 95,000,000 is to be compared to 1,839,000,000, so that an inhabitant of that world, travelling at the rate of 100 miles a day, would not accomplish his journey to the sun in less than 500,000 years!

It is then no easy thing to form an exact notion of that space occupied by the eleven planets and the other elements of the solar system. If the swiftest race-horse ever known had begun to traverse this mighty interval a full speed at the birth of Moses, he would only as yet have accomplished but half his journey!

This is wonderful: but it is not half-no, nor yet a thousandth part so wonderful as other facts concerning the immensity of the universe. What is the distance of the nearest fixed star? It is 41,040,000,000,000; or forty-one billions and forty thousand millions of miles. Such words or such figures can impress but a very inadequate idea of a distance so vast. But a celebrated astronomer has calculated that a body moving with the velocity of a cannonball would take 700,000 years in reaching the nearest fixed star; and it has been calculated by another eminent astronomer, that if Sirius and the sun were left alone they would take 33,000,000 of years in falling together. We may give utterance to such words-we may speak of millions, or billions, or trillions of miles; but the mind is overwhelmed with the contemplation of such immeasurable distances; such knowledge is too wonderful for us, it is high, we cannot attain to it; the more we think of it the more we are lost. May, 1845.-VOL. XLIII.-NO. CLXIX.

K

Oh! the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God; how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

"He telleth the number of the stars, he calleth them all by their names." But we cannot tell their number, nor call them by their proper or celestial names for Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or Sirius, are titles by no means descriptive of the nature, the relative positions, or the relative uses of the celestial orbs. In a fine unclouded night the naked eye may discover thousands; but, aided by the telescope, it may discover hundreds of thousands, and a multitude which no man can number. It is certainly true that a little babe bears a far greater proportion to the population of our globe than all the elements of the solar system bear to the number of the stars and to the empire of God. If we were to take the wings of the morning and alight on some fixed star, even there should we see other suns and other systems glittering in illimitable regions; whose numbers and whose distances would be as unutterable as those we now behold.

Through a telescope there may be discovered a multitude of cloudy spots, called nebula, one of which it is said is a thousand times larger than the earth's orbit, notwithstanding that orbit is 190,000,000 of miles in diameter. But the most amazing fact connected with the immensity of the universe is this light travels at the amazing velocity of 200,000 miles in a second of time; but it is supposed that even at this rate time enough has not elapsed from the creation of the world for the light of some of the celestial bodies to reach our earth!

"How distant some of these nocturnal suns!
So distant (says the sage) 'twere not absurd
To doubt if beams set out at nature's birth
Are yet arrived at this so foreign world,
Though nothing half so rapid as their flight.
An eye of awe and wonder let me roll,
And roll for ever; who can satiate sight

In such a scene? in such an ocean wide

Of deep astonishment? where depth, heighth, breadth,
Are lost in their extremes; and where to count

The thick sown glories in the field of fire,
Perhaps a seraph's computation fails."

It is right we should give some idea of the spiritual purposes to which Mr. Cater turns his astronomical discourse. clusion, which he entitles

A VOICE FROM THE HEAVENS.

Here is the con

Now, more solemn than all other considerations, is the reflection that "He who commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up the stars :—who alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea:-who maketh Arcturus, Orion, Pleiades, and the chambers of the south ;-who doeth great wonders past finding out, yea, and wonders without number"-is the God with whom we have to do. Unlike all earthly ties, the tie which binds the creature to the Creator, can never be dissolved. You may be able to assert that you have no father, or no mother, but you cannot assert that you have no God; there may be the family, or the kindred, or the government with whom you have to do; yet more than all and above all, there is the God with whom you have to do: and more inconsistent than the ox which knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib, is the man who knows him not, and in whose words or in whose ways there is no grateful recognition of the Father of all mercies and the Creator of all worlds.

By virtue of that existence, that dignified existence you derive from God, an obligation is laid upon you to honour him and obey him; and this obligation never can become obsolete, and never can be neglected, or set at nought with impunity, or in any kind of consistency with your truest happiness and