on the pillory, burned his book before his eyes by the common hangman, sentenced him to imprisonment for life, cut off both his ears, and burned upon both his cheeks the letters S. L., "Schismatic Libeller," but according to his own version, Stigmata Laudis, "The Marks of Praise." Such were some of the sweet persuasives of argument in the "good old times!"

Subsequent Career. When the government of Charles was overthrown, and the Roundheads came into power, Prynne was released from prison by order of the Commons, restored to office, and made a member of Parliament. Yet when the question came about the execution of the King, Prynne sturdily resisted the motion, and being again thrown into prison for contumacy and "for denying the supremacy of Parliament," he wrote another treatise attacking Cromwell and the army as sturdily as he had attacked the Players and Playgoers. At the Restoration, when Charles II. and the Royalists came again into power, Prynne was once more at large, and the object of courtly favor.

His Character. - Individuality bristled all over him, making him troublesome as an opponent, and not altogether comfortable as a friend; and he continued to the end of his days fighting away in the great war of opinions. The number of his works, many of them large and voluminous, is over fifty. A large part of them are directed against the Catholics. Nearly all of them are stoutly controversial.

Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1605-1676, was a political writer of some note in this period.

Career. He was son of Sir James Whitelocke, a well-known English judge; was educated at Oxford, and admitted to the bar; and was made a member of the Long Parliament. His policy was vacillating, adverse to the arbitrary course of the King, and yet not wholly in favor of energetic measures of resistance. He was made Commissioner of the Admiralty, and occupied several prominent positions under Cromwell. In 1653 and 1654 he was ambassador to the Court of Sweden.

Works.-Whitelocke's journal of his embassy, published in 1772, has been pronounced the best written of his works, and a valuable contribution to the history of Sweden. During his life he published a work in favor of Monarchy as the best form of government, and several Speeches. After his death appeared his Memorials of English Affairs, an interesting record of the political events from the accession of Charles I. to the restoration of Charles II. The style is somewhat dull and at times trivial. But its value as a contemporary record is great and unquestionable. The latest edition appeared at Oxford, 1852. He also left in manuscript a Memorial of English History from the supposed expedition of Brute to the end of the reign of James I., which was published, 1709, by William Penn, the Governor of Pennsylvania. His Notes upon the King's Writ for choosing Members of Parliament is a learned treatise on a very abstruse point of English law.

Sir Matthew Hale, 1609-1676, though celebrated mainly as a jurist, has also an honorable record as a man of letters.

Career. Sir Matthew studied at Oxford, and in Lincoln's Inn. He was made Sergeant-at-Law in 1652, Chief Baron of the Exchequer in 1660, and Lord Chief Justice of England in 1671; and was one of the most renowned and upright judges that ever graced the English bench; equally honored for his general knowledge, legal attainments, and purity of character.

Works. A complete collection of his Moral and Religious Works was published in 2 vols., 8vo, 1805, London. The best known of his legal writings are The History of the Pleas of the Crown; The History of the Common Law of England; and the tract on The Trial of Witches.

"His writings have raised him a character equal to his greatest predecessors, and will always be esteemed as containing the best rationale of the grounds of the law of England. Nor was he an inconsiderable master of polite, philosophical, and especially theological learning."- Dr. Birch.

JOHN GOODWIN, 1593-1665, was a zealous republican and independent, and took an active part in procuring the condemnation of Charles I. He is known as "the great Arminian Puritan."

Goodwin wrote a treatise in defence of his course, entitled The Obstructors of Justice, which, with Milton's Iconoclastes, was burnt by the hangman on the Restora tion. Some of his other works are The Divine Authority of Scripture Asserted; Right and Might Well Met, or a brief and impartial inquiry into the proceedings of the army under Lord Halifax; Redemption Redeemed; Christian Theology, etc.

JAMES HARRINGTON, 1611-1677, educated at Oxford, is principally known as a political writer by his Oceana, a kind of political romance, in imitation of Plato's Atlantis.

Harrington published also several other political treatises, an essay on Virgil, and a metrical translation of four books of the Æneid. Harrington, although prolix and visionary, will always be entitled to respect as an early supporter of political liberty.

OWEN FELTHAM, 1608-1678, was a royalist in the civil war, and is chiefly known as the author of a work on casuistry called The Resolves.

JOHN GODOLPHIN, 1617-1678, was a civilian of eminence, Judge of the Admiralty, and King's Advocate. Besides several works on Admiralty law, he wrote works of a theological and religious character, which give him rank among the Puritan writers. The Holy Limbec, fol.; The Holy Harbor, a Body of Divinity, fol., etc.

JOHN CLIEVELAND, 1613-1659, was a champion of the royal cause, who not only fought for it against the Commonwealth, but exercised for it his poetical talents, which were considerable. He published The King's Disguise; Petition to the Lord Protector for the Scots Rebel, a Satire; The Rustic Rampart; Poems, Orations, etc. Clieveland was very popular in his own day, but has now pretty nearly passed into oblivion.

ARTHUR ANNESLEY, Earl of Anglesey, 1614-1686, Lord Privy Seal, was the author of several political and theological works: Truth Unveiled, with a Treatise on Transub

stantiation; The King's Right of Indulgence in Spiritual Matters; Happy Future State of England.

SIR WILLIAM PETTY, 1623-1687, was a physician by education, but more distinguished as an early and able writer upon politico-economical subjects.

The bulk of Petty's writings still lie unpublished, in MS. Of his printed works the best perhaps are: A Tract concerning Money (against laws limiting the rate of interest), A Discourse on the Extent and Value of Lands, The Political Anatomy of Ireland. Sir William was Secretary to Henry Cromwell in Ireland. He appears to have anticipated many of the deductions of a later age, and has been pronounced an extraordinary man.

Hobbes.

Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679, achieved permanent distinction as a writer by a philosophical work called The Leviathan, in which he treats of the fundamental principles of political science.

Career. Hobbes was educated at Oxford; travelled on the continent several times, as tutor of the Prince of Wales (Charles II.), Lord Cavendish, and other young noblemen; in 1654 returned permanently to England, and died at the country-seat of the Duke of Devonshire, in whose family he had served as tutor to three successive generations.

Works. Hobbes published a number of works, among them a translation of Thucydides, and an inferior translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey, pronounced by Pope "too mean for criticism;" also, treatises on Political Elements, on Human Nature, and on The Elements of Philosophy. The work last named gave rise to a vio lent mathematical discussion about the quadrature of the circle, in which Hobbes made himself ridiculous.

The Leviathan. - Hobbes's fame rests almost exclusively on his Leviathan, or The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth. This treatise, which reduces all theory of government to blind submission to the ruling power, has been the subject of more attention and more denunciation than any other political work in the language. At the time of its appearance it was denounced by writers of all classes. His system of ethics was declared to be pure selfishness, reducing the conscience and emotions to a mere judgment of what succeeds or fails. Of late years, however, there is a tendency to reopen the judgment passed upon Hobbes and to consider his positions more carefully. Certain it is that Hobbes is one of the most vigorous, independent thinkers in the annals of England, anticipating more than one of the discoveries of recent political science, while in point of style he may serve as a model for any age. "A permanent foundation of his fame remains in his admirable style, which seems to be the very perfection of didactic language. Short, clear, precise, pithy, his language never has more than one meaning, which it never requires a second thought to take. By the help of his exact method, it takes so firm a hold on the mind that it will not allow attention to slacken."- Sir James Mackintosh.

Sir Thomas Browne.

Sir Thomas Browne, M. D., 1605-1682, was a profound thinker and a writer of robust English, though he had a fancy for using words of Latin origin, and especially for giving Latin titles to his works.

Chief Work - His most celebrated production is Religio Medici, The Religion of a Physician, which "was no sooner published than it excited the attention of the public by the novelty of its paradoxes, the dignity of its sentiment, the quick succession of images, the multitude of abstruse allusions, the subtilty of disquisition, and the strength of language." - Dr. Sam. Johnson. It was translated into the Latin, Italian, German, Dutch, and French. As a sequel to this work, the author wrote Christian Morals, which is also in high repute.

Other Works. Another work is Pseudodozia Epidemica, an Inquiry into Vulgar Errors. Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial, was occasioned by the accidental discovery of a few buried urns in Norfolk. "The extent of reading displayed in this single treatise is most astonishing, and the whole is irradiated with the flashes of a bright and highly poetical genius, though we are not sure that any regular plan can be discovered in the work."- Cunningham's Biog. Hist. The Garden of Cyrus, or The Quincunxial Lozenge, is a work in which he displays his learning and bis ingenuity in finding everywhere traces of this form: "quincunxes in heaven above, quincunxes in earth below, quincunxes in the mind of man, quincunxes in tones, in optic nerves, in roots of trees, in leaves, in every thing.” — Coleridge. “A reader, not watchful against the power of his infusions, would imagine that decussation was the great business of the world, and that nature and art had no other purpose than to exemplify and imitate a quincunx."-Johnson.

Latinized Diction, -Sir Thomas Browne's fancy for a Latinized diction has already been mentioned. He carries this at times to such an excess as to become almost unintelligible to a reader not acquainted with Latin. "Ice is only water congealed by the frigidity of the air, whereby it acquireth no new form, but rather a consistency or determination of its flueacy, and emitteth not its essence, but condition of fluidity. Neither doth there anything properly conglaciate but water, or watery humidity; for the determination of quicksilver is properly fixation, that of milk coagulation, and that of oil and unctuous bodies only incrassation." He used currently such words as ampliate, dilucidate, manduction, indigitate, reminiscential, evocation, advenient, ariolation, lapifidical, &c.

Bishop Wilkins.

John Wilkins, D. D., 1614-1672, Bishop of Chester, though eminent as a dignitary of the English Church, is chiefly and most favorably known as a philosophical writer.

Career. Bishop Wilkins was born at Fawsley, Northamptonshire, and educated at Oxford. He married a sister of Oliver Cromwell. He

was very zealous in the work of founding the Royal Society, and published many works of a philosophical character. He was appointed by Richard Cromwell Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, but was afterwards ejected. He was subsequently made Prebendary of London and of Exeter, and finally Bishop of Chester.

Works.- Bishop Wilkins's publications show him to have been a man of a philosophical mind, and to have been in many things in advance of his contemporaries. The following are his chief works: Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, in which he anticipates the modern phonographers; Mercury, or The Swift and Secret Messenger, showing how a Man may with Privacy and Speed Communicate his Thoughts to a Friend at any Distance, which looks almost as if he had been on the verge of stumbling upon the Telegraph; Discovery of a New World, a discourse tending to prove that it is probable there may be another habitable world in the moon, with a discourse concerning the possibility of a passage thither; Discourse concerning a New Planet, proving that it is probable that our Earth is one of the planets; Mathematical Magic, or the wonders that may be performed by mechanical Geometry. He published also a number of theological works: Ecclesiastes, or The Gift of Preaching; The Gift of Prayer; The Principles and Duties of Natural Religion, &c.

SIR KENELM DIGBY, F. R. S., 1603-1648, was a courtier of the reign of Charles I. He was a man of science and letters, and during his residence in France, after the expulsion of the Stuarts, he associated with Descartes and other learned men on the continent. Digby returned to England after the Restoration. He was reputed to be versed in the occult art.

Besides several works in Latin, Digby wrote the following in English: A Conference with a Lady about the Choice of Religion; Observations on Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici; Observations on Stanza 22, Canto 9, Book II. of the Fairy Queen, "containing a very deep philosophical commentary upon these mysterious verses;" Discourse concerning the Cure of Wounds by Sympathetic Powder; Chymical Secrets; The Body and Soul of Man; Infallibility of Religion, etc. Sir Kenelm was quite as famous in his day for the beauty of his wife as for his own talents and attainments. "A lady of an extraordinary beauty and of as extraordinary a fame."- Clarendon. Ben Jonson wrote many pieces in her praise.

""Twere true that I died too, now she is dead,

Who was my muse, and life of all I said;

The spirit that I wrote with, and conceived:

All that was good or great with me, she weaved."- B. Jonson.

THOMAS WHITE, 1582-1676, an eminent Catholic divine and philosopher, was born at Hatton, in Essex. He was ordained priest at Douay in 1617, and taught philosophy and divinity there. He was also, for a time, President of the English College at Lisbon. He served for several years on the mission in England; and resided at one time with Sir Kenelm Digby, whose philosophy he supported. His last years were spent in England. He died in London, at the age of ninety-four. The greater part of his works are in Latin. Among his English writings are the following: Dialogues Con