deformeth the face, rotteth the teeth, and to conclude, maketh a man contemptible, soon old, and despised of all wise and worthy men; hated in thy servants, in thyself, and companions; for it is a bewitching and infectious vice; and remember my words, that it were better for a man to be subject to any vice than to it; for all other vanities and sins are recovered, but a drunkard will never shake off the delight of beastliness; for the longer it possesseth a man, the more he will delight in it, and the elder he groweth, the more he shall be subject to it; for it dulleth the spirits and destroyeth the body, as ivy doth the old tree, or as the worm that ingendreth in the kernel of the nut.

"Take heed, therefore, that such a careless canker pass not thy youth, nor such a beastly infection thy old age; for then shall all thy life be but as the life of a beast, and after thy death, thou shalt only leave a shameful infamy to thy posterity, who shall study to forget that such a one was their father. Anacharsis saith, The first draught serveth for health, the second for pleasure, the third for shame, the fourth for madness; but in youth there is not so much as one draught permitted; for it putteth fire to fire; and wasteth the natural [heat of the body.] And, therefore, except thou desire to hasten thine end, take this for a general rule, that thou never add any artificial heat to thy body, by wine or spice, until thou find that time hath decayed thy natural heat, and the sooner thou beginnest to help nature, the sooner she will forsake thee, and trust altogether to art.”

"The dutiful Advice of a loving Son to his aged Father" is supposed to be a libel on Sir Walter, written by his enemies. It will be seen, however, that it bears a strong resemblance to his style, although the metaphor is more profuse and ornamental, and seems to be rather engrafted on his thoughts than to spring up with them. That this piece should be dictated by personal hostility is strange-it contains exhortations that might with the greatest propriety be directed to any man. It is possible, that it might be written by another person in imitation of Sir Walter Raleigh's advice to his son; yet, if he was an enemy, he was of a most uncommon description. On the other hand, it might naturally enough suggest itself to the mind of Raleigh at a time when he was harassed by misfortune and oppressed by power, and when the world's vanity was engraven on his heart in lines too deep to be erased. As the advice, however, is worth quoting, for its own merit, and is written with great force and beauty, we shall give our readers an opportunity of judging for themselves.

"Remember that you are now in the waining, and the date of your pilgrimage well nigh expired, and now that it behoveth you to look towards your countrey, your force languisheth, your senses impair, your body droops, and on every side the ruinous cottage of your faint and feeble flesh threatneth the fall: and having so many harbingers of death to premonish you of your end, how can you but prepare for so

dreadful a stranger? The young man may dye quickly, but the old man cannot live long: the young man's life by casualty may be abridged, but the old man's by no physick can be long adjourned: and, therefore, if green years should sometimes think of the grave, the thoughts of old age should continually dwell in the same.

"The prerogative of infancy is innocency; of childhood, reverence; of manhood, maturity; and of old age, wisdom.

"And seeing then, that the chiefest properties of wisdom are, to be mindful of things past, careful for things present, and provident for things to come; use now the priviledge of Nature's talent to the benefit of your own soul, and procure hereafter to be wise in well doing, and watchful in the foresight of future harms. To serve the world you are now unable; and though you were able, yet you have little cause to be willing, seeing that it never gave you but an unhappy welcome, a hurtful entertainment, and now doth abandon you with an unfortunate farewell.

"You have long sowed in a field of flint, which could bring nothing forth but a crop of cares and afflictions of spirit, rewarding your labours with remorse, and affording, for your gain, eternal danger.

"It is now more than a seasonable time to alter the course of so unthriving a husbandry, and to enter into the field of God's Church, in which, sowing the seed of repentant sorrow, and watering them with the tears of humble contrition, you may hereafter reap a more beneficial harvest, and gather the fruits of everlasting comfort.

"Remember, I pray you, that your Spring is spent, your Summer overpast, you are now arrived at the fall of the leaf; yea, and Winter colours have long since stained your hoary head.

"He that is tossed with variety of storms, and cannot come to his desired port, maketh not much way, but is much turmoiled. So, he that hath passed many years and purchased little profit, hath a long being, but a short life; for, life is more to be measured by well-doing, than by number of years; seeing that most men by many days do but procure many deaths, and others in short space attain to the life of infinite ages. What is the body without the soul, but a corrupt car? And what is the soul without God, but a sepulchre of sin? "If God be the way, the life, and the truth, he that goeth without him, strayeth; and he that liveth without him, dyeth; and he that is not taught by him, erreth.

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"Well (saith St. Augustine) God is our true and chiefest life, from whom to revolt is to fall; to whom to return, is to rise; and in whom to stay, is to stand sure.

"God is he, from whom to depart, is to dye; to whom to repair, is to revive; and in whom to dwell, is life for ever. Be not then of the number of those that begin not to live till they be ready to dye; and then, after a foe's desert, come to crave of God a friend's entertainment.

"Some there be that think to snatch heaven in a moment, which the best can scarce attain unto in the maintenance of many years, and when they have glutted themselves with worldly delights, would jump

from Dives' dyet to Lazarus' crown; from the service of Satan to the solace of a saint.

"But be you well assured, that God is not so penurious of friends, as to hold himself and his kingdom saleable for the refuse and reversions of their lives, who have sacrificed the principal thereof to his enemies, and their own bruitish lust; then only ceasing to offend, when the ability of offending is taken from them.

"Wherefore, good sir, make no longer delayes; but being so near the breaking up of your mortal house, take time, before extremity, to pacifie God's anger.

"Though you suffered the bud to be blasted, though you permitted the fruits to be perished, and the leaves to dry up; yea, though you let the boughs to wither, and the body of your tree to grow to decay, yet (alas) keep life in the root, for fear least the whole tree become fewel for hell fire; for surely where the tree falleth, there it shall lie, whether towards the south, or to the north, to heaven or to hell; and such sap as it bringeth forth, such fruit shall it ever bear.

"Death hath already filed from you the better part of your natural forces, and left you now to be lees and remissals of your wearyish and dying dayes.

"The remainder whereof, as it cannot be long, so doth it warn you speedily to ransom your former losses; for what is age but the calends of death? and what importeth your present weakness, but an earnest of your approaching dissolution? You are now imbarked in your final voyage, and not far from the stint and period of your course. "Be not therefore unprovided of such appurtenances as are behooveful in so perplexed and perilous a journey; death itself is very fearful, but much more terrible in respect of the judgment it summoneth us unto.

"If you were now laid upon your departing bed, burthened with the heavy load of your former trespasses, and gored with the sting and prick of a festered conscience; if you felt the cramp of death wresting your heart-strings, and ready to make the rueful divorce between body and soul; if you lay panting for breath, and swimming in a cold and pale sweat, wearied with strugling against your deadly pangs; O what would you give for an hour's repentance; at what a rate would you value a day's contrition? Then, worlds would be worthless in respect of a little respite; a short truce would seem more precious than the treasures of an empire; nothing would be so much esteemed as a short time of truce, which now by days, and months, and years, is most lavishly mis-spent.

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"It is a strange piece of art, and a very exorbitant course, the ship is sound, the pilot well, the mariners strong, the gale favourable, and the sea calm, to lye idlely in the road, during so seasonable weather and when the ship leaketh, the pilot sick, the mariners faint, the storms boisterous, and the seas a turmoil of outragious surges, then to launch forth, hoise up sail, and set out for a long voyage into a far countrey.

"Yet such is the skill of these evening repenters, who though in

the soundness of their health, and perfect use of their reason, they cannot resolve to cut the cables, and weigh the anchor that withholds them from God.

"Nevertheless they feed themselves with a strong persuasion, that when they are astonied, their wits distracted, the understanding dusked, and the bodies and souls racked and tormented with the throbs and gripes of a mortal sickness; then, forsooth, they will begin to think of their weightiest matters, and become sudden saints, when they are scarce able to behave themselves like reasonable creatures.

“No, no; if neither the canon, civil, nor the common law will allow that man (perished in judgment) should make any testament of his temporal substance; how can he, that is animated with inward garboils of an unsetled conscience, distrained with the wringing fits of his dying flesh, maimed in all his ability, and circled in on every side with many and strange incumbrances, be thought of due discretion to dispose of his chiefest jewel, which is his soul? and to dispatch the whole manage of all eternity, and of the treasures of heaven, in so short a spurt ?

"No, no; they that will loyter in seed-time, and begin to sow when others reap; they that will riot out their health, and begin to cast their accounts when they are scarce able to speak; they that will slumber out the day, and enter upon their journey when the light doth fail them, let them blame their own folly, if they dye in debt, and be eternal beggars, and fall headlong into the lap of endless perdition."

The Sceptic is a piece of ingenious sophistry, which displays the versatility of the author's mind. It is one of those sportive speculations in which men of genius sometimes, by a sort of perversity of intellect, delight to shew their power. Raleigh attempts to prove, from the diversity there is amongst living creatures, and the opposite impressions made by the same thing on different men and animals, that it is impossible to know what the real nature of a thing is, but only what it seems to us. We will quote a part of this amusing essay.

"If then one and the very same thing to the red eye seem red, to another pale, and white to another: if one and the same thing seem not hot or cold, dry or moist, in the same degree to the several creatures which touch it: if one and the self-same sound seem more shrill to that creature which hath a narrow ear, and more base to him that hath an open ear: if the same thing, at the same time, seem to afford a pleasant and displeasant smell to divers and several creatures: if that seem bitter in taste to one, which to another seemeth sweet, that to one hurtful, which to another seemeth healthful: I may report how these things appear divers to several creatures, and seem to produce divers effects.

"But what they are in their own nature, whether red or white, bitter or sweet, healthful or hurtful, I cannot tell. For why should I presume to prefer my conceit and imagination, in affirming that a thing is thus, or thus, in its own nature, because it seemeth to me to be so, before the conceit of other living creatures, who may as well think it to be other

wise in each own nature, because it appeareth otherwise to them than it doth to me?

"They are living creatures as well as I; why then should I condemn their conceit and fantasie, concerning any thing, more than they may mine? they may be in the truth and I in error, as well as I in truth and they err. If my conceit must be believed before theirs, great reason that it be proved to be truer than theirs. And this proof must be either by demonstration, or without it. Without it none will believe. Certainly, if by demonstration, then this demonstration must seem to be true, or not seem to be true. If it seem to be true, then will it be a question, whether it be so indeed as it seemeth to be; and to alledge that for a certain proof, which is uncertain and questionable, seemeth absurd.

"If it be said, that the imagination of man judgeth truer of the outward object, than the imagination of other living creatures doth, and therefore to be credited above others; (besides that which is already said) this is easily refuted by comparing of man with other creatures.

"It is confessed the dog excelleth man in smell and in hearing: and whereas there is said to be a two-fold discourse, one of the mind, another of the tongue, and that of the mind is said to be exercised in chusing that which is convenient, and refusing that which is hurtful in knowledge, justice, and thankfulness: this creature chuseth his food, refuseth the whip, fawneth on his master, defendeth his house, revengeth himself of those strangers that hurt him: and Homer mentioneth Argus, the dog of Ulysses, who knew his master, having been from home so many years, that at his return all the people of his house had forgot him. This creature, saith Chrysippus, is not void of logick: for when, in following any beast, he cometh to three several ways, he smelleth to the one, and then to the second, and if he find that the beast which he pursueth be not fled one of these two ways, he presently, without smelling any further to it, taketh the third way; which, saith the same philosopher, is as if he reasoned thus, the beast must be gone either this, or this, or the other way; but neither this, nor this; ergo, the third and so away he runneth.

"If we consider his skill in physick, it is sufficient to help himself: if he be wounded with a dart, he useth the help of his teeth to take it out, of his tongue to cleanse the wound from corruption: he seemeth to be well acquainted with the precept of Hipocrates, who saith, That the rest of the foot is the physick of the foot, and therefore if his foot be hurt, he holdeth it up that it may rest: if he be sick, he giveth himself a vomit by eating of grass, and recovereth himself. The dog then we see is plentifully furnished with inward discourse.

"Now, outward speech is not needful to make a creature reasonable, else a dumb man were an unreasonable creature.

"And do not philosophers themselves reject this as an enemy to knowledge? and therefore they are silent when they are instructed; and yet even as barbarous and strange people have speech, but we understand it not, neither do we perceive any great difference in their words: but a difference there seemeth to be, and they do express their thoughts and meanings one to another by those words. Even so those