Writ (and be it carefully remarked that all the cases which tell against him, he thinks may be explained away), our doctor comes to the conclusion "that no faults or pretences whatsoever can make it lawful to depose, or so much as to touch, the Lord's anointed."

Chap. xiii., entitled, "Of the necessity and excellenc of monarchy," commences in the following noble strain "A Jove principium, let us begin with Heaven behold its monarchy in the unity of the blessed Trinity; though there be three persons, yet there must be but one God, for the avoiding of that whh we are fallen into, a confounding of persons, and dividing of substance. Descend lower, and consider the angels, and you shall find one arch-angel above the rest, as the angels' monarch. Lower yet, to those senselesse and inanimate rulers of the day and night-the sun and moon, and you shall not find (or so much as the appearance of such a thing) more suns or moons in the same firmament then one, with a prodegie or portent of some dire and direfull event. Come down to the regions, and you shall find in the head of the highest region a prince of the aire. Come to the lowest, and you shall find amongst the wing'd inhabitants thereof the soveraigne eagle as the king of birds. Come amongst the beasts of the field, and the lion will soon let you know that there is a king of beasts. Run into the sea, and there is a king of fishes. Descend into hell, and there is a prince of devils: and shall only man be independent ?”—p. 85.

Dr. T. B. then attempts to show (and in this part of his discourse he talks more like a man of this world than in the others) that liberty, as it was called, is either anarchy or the worst sort of tyranny; and "that there is no such thing as a free state in the world." He then instances several oligarchical governments, which he says he himself visited, and which he takes as examples of free states. His object is to show, from the case of such states as Venice, that there is no law to curb or punish the members of the oligarchy, which is perfectly true; and the same thing as saying that the sovereign, whether either one, a few, or many, being the author of the law,

G 2

as having made it himself, or sanctioning it, though made by others who preceded him in the sovereignty, is not subject to the law; in other words, is not subject to himself. With the following anecdote, illustrative of the state of things at Venice (and a very apt illustration it is),-which we do not recollect to have seen before, unless the similar contrivances that are not unfrequent in the old dramatists can be considered as of the same stock -we shall conclude.

"There was a nobleman who was an Austrian both by birth and family, who, being a traveller, chanc'd to cast his eyes upon a fair and virtuous lady, who in every respect were deserving of each other. This nobleman had no sooner made his mind known unto this paragon for beauty, but he was soon obstructed with a corrival, who was a nobile Veneziano; who, perceiving his mistress's affections to this stranger to be more liberally expressed than unto him, contrives his death, and soon effects it. Shee, loving her martyr more than either others conceived, or shee herself could brook so great a crosse concerning them, studies revenge; and, being an Italian, found herself easily prompted by her own natura! inclination she pretends much love, that she might the better put in execution her greatest hatred; she gets him into a chamber, where she praies him to rest himself in a chair, wherein he was no sooner sat, but his arms and thighs were caught with springs; and, being thus fastened, she murders him with her owne hands, and flies for sanctuary to the next nunnery within the Pope's dominions; leaving behind her, by the murdered, these words written with her own hand in a piece of paper-' Because there is no justice to be executed against a noble Venetian, I have been both judge and executioner myself."—pp.

105-6.

So much for the arguments on which has been supported "The right Divine of kings to govern wrong."

XLIX. HOMO VERMIS.

THIS is the title of a short copy of verses at the end of "the Reformed Virginia Silk-worm," 4to. Lond. 1655. They are not unlike some lines in Pope's Works.

"We all are creeping worms of th' earth:
Some are Silk-worms, great by birth,
Glow-worms some, that shine by night,
Slow-worms others, apt to bite;

Some are Muck-worms, slaves to wealth,
Maw-worms some, that wrong the health;
Some, to the public no good-willers,
Canker-worms, and Caterpillars.
Found about the earth we 're crawling:
For a sorry life we 're sprawling:
Putrid stuff we suck, it fills us;

Death then sets his foot and kills us."

L. WHO FIRST DOUBLED THE CAPE OF
GOOD HOPE?

In this enlightened age the reply of every schoolboy to
this
query will be, "Why, Vasco de Gama, to be sure."
In Portugal, however, a much more ancient navigator
has been mentioned. Vieyra, an old preacher of great
renown at Lisbon, said in one of his sermons, " One man
only passed the Cape of Good Hope before the Portu-
guese. And who was he? and how?-it was Jonas in
the whale's belly. The whale went out of the Mediterra-
nean, because he had no other course; he kept the coast
of Africa on the left, scoured along Ethiopia, passed by
Arabia, took port in the Euphrates on the shores of
Nineveh, and, making his tongue serve as a plank, land-
ed the prophet there."

Dr. Southey says that the sermons of Vieyra, perhaps more than any other compositions in any language, display the strength and the weakness of the human mind.

LI. BERKELEY AND THE PRIESTS.

"Ir may not be amiss to record a little incident that Defell Mr. Berkeley in this city (Leghorn, 1714), with the relation of which he used sometimes to make himself merry among his friends. Basil Kennett, the author of the Roman Antiquities,' was then chaplain to the English factory at Leghorn, the only place in Italy where English service is tolerated by the government; which favour had lately been obtained from the Grand Duke at the particular instance of Queen Anne. This gentleman requested Mr. Berkeley to preach for him one Sunday. The day following, as Berkeley was sitting in his chamber, a procession of priests in surplices, and with all other formalities, entered the room, and, without taking the least notice of the wondering inhabitant, marched quite round it, muttering certain prayers. His fears immediately suggested to him that this could be no other

than a visit from the Inquisition, who had heard of his officiating before heretics, without licence, the day before. As soon as they were gone, he ventured with much caution to enquire into the cause of this extraordinary appearance, and was happy to be informed that this was the season appointed by the Romish calendar for solemnly blessing the houses of all good catholics from rats and other vermin; a piece of intelligence which changed his terror into mirth."-Life of Bishop Berkeley, by Rev. Dr. Hoek, 1776, Lond. p. 6.

LII. TRAITS OF LOUIS XIV.

LOUIS XIV. issued an edict concerning duels, in 1679; in which it is said that "whereas it has been reported to us, that there are men of ignoble birth, and who have never borne arms, who have, nevertheless, the insolence to call out noblemen, and when these noblemen refuse to give them satisfaction, on account of the inequality of their respective conditions, the said challengers engage other noblemen to fight on their behalf; which fights often terminate in murder, the more detestable that it proceeds from an abject cause: we will and ordain that, in such cases of challenge and duel, especially if followed by serious wounds or death, the said ignoble persons or roturiers, convicted of having excited and provoked similar disorders, shall, without remission, be hung and strangled, and all their property, moveable and immoveable, be confiscated; and with regard to the noblemen who shall thus have taken the part of ignoble and unworthy persons, they shall be also put to death in the like manner. This edict was confirmed under the regency, in February 1723. Five centuries before, in times comparatively barbarous, and when the institutions of the country and the system of society were essentially feudal, Louis IX., on the occasion of an accusation by a vilain against a noble, allowed them to try the truth of the charge by single combat, in which the nobleman should fight on horseback, and the vilain on foot;