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secures to it some influence over the present. It is now about twice seven years since we passed a few pleasant weeks in one of the less peopled districts of Dorsetshire-that county which Charles II. is said to have described as the only county in England fit to be the home of a gentleman. What the qualities were which, in the estimation of royalty, gave so much of the air proper to the home of gentle blood to the county of Dorset, it will not be difficult to conjecture. Dorsetshire is remarkable for the almost total absence of the usual signs of trade and manufactures. It is no less remarkable, as a natural consequence, for the absence of any considerable middle class to separate between the serfs who till the ground, and the lords who own it. Even agriculture is prosecuted within such limits as may consist with leaving an ample portion of its surface in the good feudal condition of extended sheep-walks and open downs. Such Dorsetshire has ever been, such it still is; but, thanks to projected railroads, such we trust it is not always to be.

On the occasion adverted to, we were indebted for a season to the hospitalities of an honest yeoman, whose residence had been occupied in other days by personages of much higher pretension than our host. It was an ancient mansion on a hill-side, overlooking an extended valley, which, from the corresponding forms of the hills fronting each other, resembled the bed of some departed Ganges, or St. Lawrence. The lower part of the valley was cultivated and wooded, but the high slopes of the hills were treeless and shrubless, except on the spot where the dwelling of our yeoman friend presented itself. That structure, with its somewhat castellated front, with its long ascent of half-decayed steps, its mutilated balustrades, and its ample terrace, rose amid lofty elms and chesnuts, forming a picture not the less pleasant to look upon, from its contrast with the surrounding barrenness. Altogether this Dorset mansion was of a sort to work powerfully on that superstitious feeling and credulity, which are so deeply rooted in the mind of every rural and secluded population. The sounds which came after nightfall, in the autumnal and winter season, across that valley, from the distant sea, and which passed in such wild and strange notes through the branches of those ancient trees, and through the crazy apertures of that more ancient building, did not fall upon the ear without some awakening effect upon the imagination. The dead, who once had paced those terrace walks, were not forgotten; and where could there be a more fitting haunt for those sights which "we fools of nature," shrink from, than the spaces covered with the deep shadows of those overhanging trees-the living things, which budded and grew in the times of other generations, and which seemed to lift

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themselves aloft, as in a proud consciousness of being more associated with what has been than with what is. Within, also, there was much to strengthen fancies of this complexion. There were the gloomy stairs, with their dark walls, their long worn steps, and their railwork of massy oak. Apartments, with their antique panellings, their faded tapestry, and their concealed doorways. At night, the birds, who chose their lodgment amidst the ancient masonry of the chimneys, failed not to send their tokens of inquietude into the chambers below, as the gale from the neighbouring channel came with tumultuous force upon the land. Part of the building, also, had become a ruin, thickly mantled with ivy, where owls might have pleaded their long holding as a right of tenantry, and from which they sallied forth at such times, as if glad to mingle their screams with the night storm, or to flap their wings against the casement of the sleeper.

To one apartment in that interior a special mystery attached. It bore the name of the book-room. Of that room the master of the house always retained the key. It was a part of his tenure that the contents of the book-room should on no account be disturbed. Among those contents, beside a curious library, were many other curious things such as a bonnet, said to have been worn by Queen Elizabeth when visiting those western parts of her dominions; also a fan, which had been wielded by that royal hand; a whole suit of kingly apparel, reported to have been worn by Charles II., and to have been left at the mansion by its royal visitor. Above all, a skull was there. It was the skull of a murdered man. The mark of the death wound was visible upon it. Tradition said that the victim of human violence was an African-a faithful servant in the family which once found its stately home beneath that venerable roof. Amidst so much pointing to the dim past, we may be sure that the imagination of the dwellers in the old hall on the hill-side was not by any means unproductive.

Of course we must not confess to any participation in such susceptibilities in our own case. It was, however, a dark night, and a rough one too, when we obtained our first admission to the mysterious book-room. By the aid of our lamp, we explored the matters of virtu which it contained; examined the dreaded cranium, and found the mark of the wound upon it, strictly as reported. But our attention was soon directed from the curiosities to the literature. The contents of the library we found in no very orderly condition, and not a few of its treasures had evidently suffered much from the state of uselessness to which the whole had been for so long a time reduced. The books were partly on shelves and tables, and partly in heaps upon the

floor. Among them were many existing in all the venerableness of the times before the invention of the printing-press. One of these sets proved to be an illuminated vellum transcript of the epistles of Innocent III.-a pontiff who, in common with many of his race during the middle age, conducted a correspondence exceeding that of all the princes of Europe taken together. Many such works were there, and many learned volumes which had strayed from their fellows, and which bore upon them the marks of having suffered much in their wanderings. But the point which has brought the old Dorset hall on the hill-side, in this manner to our memory is, that, among the printed works in this long-neglected library, was a number of tracts, and pamphlets, and small publications, relating to the countries of the new world, and to the marvels of recent voyaging. Some of them bore date as far back as the time of Elizabeth, but most of them were of the time of James I., and a little later.

Some hours passed, and we were still beguiled by the perusal and comparison of these remains, which, like some newly-discovered fossil bed, pointed our imagination to a former condition of society, if not to a former world. We felt as though drifted back to those times. We thought we saw good Mr. White, the puritan minister of the neighbouring town of Dorchester, as he went forth the spiritual leader of the little band, who, more than two centuries since, sought their spiritual as well as their natural home on the shores of New England. We seemed to listen to the talk of such men as the brave John Smith, and the governor Winthorp; and to be witnesses to the conferences of such men as the lords Say and Brooke, Harry Vane, and John Hampden, as they cogitated their schemes of settlement for injured and free-hearted men on the other side the Western Ocean. We remembered Queen Elizabeth, too—the grave men who were honoured as her counsellors, her own stately presence, her own pliant but masculine temper, and the skill with which she dispensed the tokens both of her pleasure and of her pride. Her arts of cajolery to-day, her haughty invective to-morrow, her ambition-her innate love of rule at all times, and in all things. Her successor, also, we remembered the king whose flesh gave signs of fear at the sight of a drawn sword. One of the most timid among men, having the place of chief over the bravest of nations. The monarch who presumed that he was born a great king, and who supposed that he had made himself a great clerk. The ruler whose soul was below all feeling of enterprise, presiding among a people with whom that feeling was strong, irrepressible, almost boundless. The frivolous imbecile, whose days were spent at the chase or at the cock-pit, and whose nights

were given to court gambols, sensuality, and drunkenness; while around him were minds teeming with principles of the most solemn import, and with feelings of the purest and loftiest aspiration. The king who hated the name of freedom, and who strained his feeble and tremulous nerves to curb the genius of a people determined to be free. The least manly of all the sovereigns of Europe, claiming to be honoured as a demi-god by a nation animated with the stern thought, and full-grown feeling of manhood, beyond any other nation in Christendom, and perhaps beyond all the nations of Christendom collectively in that age.

In all this we see a large amount of the unnatural, and the source of much inevitable mischief. But this mischief fell with its greatest weight on religion, and on the consciences of devout men. Many of the restless spirits of the time-the gallants as they were called-manifested their inquietude beneath this uncongenial control; and no scene of action being open to them, either as soldiers abroad, or as inviting them to do some fine thing at home, they many of them turned their attention to the newly-discovered regions of the earth, and to plans of colonization. But your gallants are not good at colonization. That sort of enterprise demands something more rare than courage, and something more valuable than ordinary worldly sagacity. Social virtue is nowhere tested as in infant settlements. Men who go upon such experiments need rooted principle, no less than stoutness of heart, and a spirit of patient endurance.

In England, at the time to which we refer, it was on minds of this better order that the pressure in favour of emigration came with its greatest force. Elizabeth was the sovereign of a double empire. She claimed dominion over the soul as truly as over the body. By her ecclesiastical supremacy, she took under her jurisdiction, not only the things which belonged to Cæsar, but the things which belonged to God. Her prescriptions on the matter of religion, embraced all that her people should believe, and all that they should do. From her pleasure they were to receive every article of their creed, and every direction, even the minutest, in regard to worship. No pontiff had ever exercised a more rigorous domination in this respect, when seated in the midst of his cardinals, than was exercised by Elizabeth, when presiding in her assembly of ecclesiastical commissioners. The men who should deny the right of the pope to assume such powers might be burned before St. Peter's. The men who made the same denial in respect to Elizabeth were hanged at Tyburn. The queen, indeed, was head of the church in a more intimate degree than of the state, her ecclesiastical functionaries

being generally much more manageable in relation to the one, than her parliaments were found to be in relation to the other. Her power in this department was greater than in any other; and by her proud Tudor temper it was guarded with proportionate solicitude, and exercised with proportionate freedom. In her view, to deny her right to rule the conscience of her subjects, was to deny her right to rule at all, and therefore treason, and an offence to be punished as treason.

In stating thus much, we are not venturing upon ground open to debate. We merely refer to the unquestionable facts of history-facts deplored, we presume, by the modern churchmen as sincerely as by the modern dissenter. The quarrel between Elizabeth and the puritans did not involve any direct impeachment of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the crown. The complaint of the puritan was, not that the queen had presumed to meddle with church affairs, but that she had not exercised her authority in such matters after the puritan fashion. It was deemed just that the sovereign, as such, should uphold sound theology, and scriptural discipline and worship; but the puritan claimed to be the judge as to the doctrine, regimen, or ritual, which should be so regarded. Hence conflict ensued between the royal-conscience and the subject-conscience. Opinions which the crown had ruled as being scriptural, the puritan denounced as erroneous; and regulations enjoined as seemly and devout by the one, were described as superstitious or profane by the other.

In the ecclesiastical history of England, the genius of presbyterianism has never proceeded beyond this point. In Scotland, of late years, it has been otherwise. But in our own earlier history, the adherents of that system, while they claimed exemption in some things from the interference of the civil power, in other, and in greater things, they have clung to the aids of that power with a marked tenacity. The history of English presbyterianism, accordingly, has been too much a struggle for ascendancy, and too little a struggle for freedom. But ascendancy, not based on right, must not be expected to work rightly. It is the rule of the strongest, and it must be sustained by mere strength, more than by principle, virtue, or goodness.

Even in the age of Elizabeth, however, there were men who had passed beyond the point adverted to-men who could draw the line, not with an infallible, but certainly with a vigorous hand between the secular and the spiritual-men who maintained that membership in a Christian church should be restricted to persons of Christian character; that the ministers of churches so constituted should be Christian men, approved as such by the persons to whom they minister; and that the worship and discipline of