ing, that it was born a free creature, had served a free man, and should not be mastered by a king of slaves.

His father, the earl of Leicester, being sensible of his approaching death, expressed the strongest desire once more to see his son, and obtained a special pardon from the king for his past offences. Accordingly his filial duty overcame his rigid political principles, and he returned; but brought with him all his prejudices. During his residence in France, he had detected some mean artifices, which had for their object to extort money from the people of England under the false pretext of an approaching war; while he was convinced there was no real misunderstanding between the two courts. He inveighed with his usual asperity against such a fraudulent scheme, and exposed the king and his administration in all the virulence of invective.

The earl of Leicester dying soon after, Sydney felt himself at liberty to censure though he could not reform. The eyes of administration were consequently turned on 'such an obnoxious character, and it was determined to keep him out of parliament by the most unwarrantable stretches of power. In this they twice succeeded: but our patriot's courage rose superior to all opposition; he exposed the duplicity of government with such force as earried conviction; he was zealous in promoting the bill for excluding the duke of York from the throne; he associated only with the most determined enemies of the corrupt court; and by these means provoked its vengeance to such a degree, that a resolution was taken to ruin this formidable enemy, by any methods that ingenious malice, seconded by power, could devise.

Accordingly it was not long before an opportunity was found to let Sydney feel the strength of that eumity which he had provoked. He was charged, on the most incompetent evidence, with being concerned in what is termed the Rye-house plot. His friend, the virtuous

lord William Russel, who had made himself equally obnoxious by his manly defence of civil liberty, had been first condemned on a similar accusation, not only without evidence, but against it; and Sydney was singled out as the next victim of political vengeance.

He was brought to trial in the court of king's-bench, before the sanguinary Jeffreys, on the 21st of November, 1683. Three of the witnesses in favour of the prosecution could swear only to vague reports, gathered from others; which nevertheless were admitted as evidence, though Sydney justly denied the legality of such proceedings. At last lord Howard, a man of the most abandoned principles and character, but a fit tool for such a purpose, positively swore that he had been present at two meetings, when business of a rebellious nature was agitated by the conspirators: and in order to strengthen the evidence of a man who had lost all pretensions to be believed, the attorney-general, by a most shameful and unprecedented expedient, produced a passage from Sydney's Discourses on Government; which, though an abstract principle, without the least reference to the immediate subject of the charge, was deemed sufficient to convict him. Such a perversion of the law of evidence was never before known in the worst times of our history; but perhaps there never was a judge who disgraced the bench like Jeffreys.

Sydney made a manly defence, and exclaimed against the unparalleled means that had been used to convict him. In the most solemn manner he abjured all personal knowledge of the pretended plot; and called God to witness, with uplifted hands and eyes, that he did not believe any such to exist in the contemplation of others. Several noblemen of unimpeachable veracity invalidated the testimony of Howard, and spoke to the innocence of Sydney: but a packed jury, and a bloody judge, declared him guilty; and he suffered death, with the most heroic

fortitude and composure, on Tower-hill, December 7th, 1683.

His attainder was reversed in the first year of William and Mary; and that solemn justice was done to his memory, which had been denied to himself.

His character has thus been drawn by bishop Burnet, who was well acquainted with him: "He was a man of extraordinary courage, and steady even to obstinacy; sincere, but of a rough and boisterous disposition, and impatient of contradiction. He seemed to be a Christian, but of a particular form: he thought it consisted in a certain divine philosophy in the mind; but he was against all public wo ship, and every thing that looked like a church. He was stiff to all republican principles and such an enemy to every thing that looked like monarchy, that he set himself in a high opposition against Cromwell when he assumed the protectorate. He had studied the history of government in all its branches, beyond any man I ever knew."

His Discourses on Government have been so highly esteemed by some, that they are by them regarded as an ample compensation for the loss of Cicero's six books "Of a commonwealth." They certainly abound with energetic sentiments, and marks of deep penetration: but his collective principles are not reducible to practice; and are, in many respects, only ingenious speculations In short, Algernon Sydney commands our respect rather than our love: he was too inflexible for a politician who really wished to serve his country; and had none of those amiable weaknesses which conciliate affection, and blunt the edge of opposition and auimosity.

JOHN TILLOTSON,

ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY.

Born 1630.-Died 1694.

From 5th Charles I., to 5th William III. If ever there was a man whose life in a more peculiar manner evidenced the influence of genuine Christianity; who rose without an effort or a wish, by dint of merit alone; and whose highest exaltation gave more pleasure to the virtuous and the good than to himself; it was archbishop Tillotson. Though all cannot reach his eminence, or equal his success, he furnishes one of the finest models for his profession, from its humblest to its highest sphere. The gifts of Fortune are often capriciously be stowed, and no one can be sure of her favours; but whoever copies this amiable and accomplished divine, will be rich in what the smiles of the world cannot give, nor its frowns take away.

John Tillotson, one among the brightest ornaments of the English church, was the son of a respectable clothier; and was born at Sowerby, near Halifax, in Yorkshire. Both his parents were rigid non-conformists; and he was initiated in the same principles; which, however, his maturer sense and more liberal mind soon taught him to reject.

His proficiency in grammatical learning was great, and almost superior to his years. This aptness for study induced his father to send him to the university of Cambridge, where he was entered a pensioner of Clare-hall; and in due course took the degrees of bachelor and master of arts; having, before he commenced master, been chosen to a fellowship of his college.

The love of truth was the ruling passion of his heart, and he sought it with sedulous zeal. He was early disgusted with the narrow views of the puritans; and had the good-fortune to read a celebrated performance of

Chillingworth's, which fixed the future bias of his mind. Being superior to the prejudices of education, he relinquished whatever was wrong, and adhered to whatever was right in the principles and conduct of those among whom he had been bred; and no man was more instrumental in removing the well-meant though weak scruples of such as rejected communion with the church of England; or had a more tender regard for true liberty of conscience, when serious persuasion, and the force of argument, could not operate conviction of the truth.

He loved the non-conformists, after he had rejected their principles: and for some of them, who had been connected with him by the early ties of duty or of friendship, he retained an affectionate regard that nothing could dissolve. But he chiefly sought associates, after he had settled his mind, among the most eminent divines of the established church; and between him and Dr. John Wilkins, the future bishop of Chester, there existed an intimacy and an unreserved exchange of opinions, which contributed to their mutual improvement.

Having left the university about 1656, he was engaged as tutor to the son of Edward Prideaux, esq. attorney-general to Cromwell, in which situation he spent some time. The time when he entered into holy orders cannot now be ascertained, but it appears that his first employment in the church was that of curate at Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire. Here the young divine began to dis play those mild and gentle manners, that persuasive and impressive eloquence, which laid the foundation of his

fortune and his fame.

As he was now settled in the vicinity of the metropolis, he was not unfrequently invited to appear in the pulpit there; for his reputation as a sacred orator, and the elegance of his compositions, made him peculiarly ac ceptable to such as could appreciate merit and abilities. He was disgusted with the pulpit eloquence of the times;