calamity that men are subject unto but you may also taste as well as any other man. Farewell, Mr. Lieutenant; for the time of my short abode come to me whenever you please, and you shall be heartily welcome as my friend.' My dear lord, when he uttered these words, should seem to have had some kind of prophetic foresight touching this poor man's fate; for I have just heard this day, seven weeks only after my husband's death, that Sir Michael Blount hath fallen into great disgrace, lost his office, and is indeed committed close prisoner in that same Tower where he so long kept others.

"And now my faltering pen must needs transcribe the last letter I received from my beloved husband, for your heart, dear friend, is one with mine. You have known its sufferings through the many years evil influences robbed it of that love which, for brief intervals of happiness afterwards and this long separation since, hath, by its steady and constant return, made so rich amends for the past. In these final words you shall find proofs of his excellent humility and notable affection for my unworthy self, which I doubt not, my dear Constance, shall draw water from your eyes. Mine yield no moisture now. Methinks these last griefs have exhausted in them the fountain of tears.

"Mine own good wife, I must now in this world take my last farewell of you; and as I know no person living whom I have so much offended as yourself, so do I account this opportunity of asking your forgiveness as a singular benefit of Almighty God. And I most humbly and heartily beseech you, even for His sake and of your charity, to forgive me all whereinsoever I have offended you; and the assurance I have of this your forgiveness is my greatest contentment at this present, and will be a greater, I doubt not, when my soul is ready to depart out of my body. I call God to witness it is no small grief unto me that I cannot make you recompense in this world for the wrongs I have done you. Affliction gives understanding. God, who knows my heart, and has seen my true sorrow in that behalf, has, I hope, of His infinite mercy, remitted all, I doubt not, as you have done in your singular charity, to mine infinite comfort.'

"Now what remaineth but in a few brief sentences to relate how this loved husband spent his last hours, and the manner of his death. Those were for the most part spent in prayer; sometimes saying his beads, sometimes such psalms and prayers as he knew by heart. Seeing his servants (one of which hath been the narrator to me of these his final moments) stand by his bedside in the morning weeping in a mournful manner, he asked them 'what o'clock it was?' they answering that it was eight or thereabout, Why, then,' said

he, 'I have almost run out my course, and come to the end of this miserable mortal life,' desiring them not to weep for him, since he did not doubt, by the grace of God, but all would go well with him; which being said he returned to his prayers upon his beads again, though then with a very slow, hollow, and fainting voice; and so continued as long as he was able to draw so much breath as was sufficient to sound out the names of Jesus and Mary, which were the last words he was ever heard to speak. The last minute of his last hour being come, lying on his back, his eyes firmly fixed towards heaven, his long, lean, consumed arms out of the bed, his hands upon his breast, laid in cross one upon the other, about twelve o'clock at noon, in a most sweet manner, without any sign of grief or groan, only turning his head a little aside, as one falling into a pleasing sleep, he surrendered his soul into the hands of God, who to His own glory had created it. And she who writeth this letter, she who loved him since her most early years-who when he was estranged from her waited his return-who gloried in his virtues, doated on his perfections, endured his afflictions, and now lamenteth his death, hath nothing left but to live a widow; indeed with no other glory than that which she doth borrow from his merits, until such time as it shall please God to take her from this earth to a world where he hath found, she doth humbly hope, rest unto his soul."

The Countess of Arundel is now aged. The virtues which have crowned her mature years are such as her youth did foreshadow. My pen would run on too fast if it took up that theme. This only will I add, and so conclude this too long piece of writing,—she hath kept her constant resolve to live and die a widow. I have seen many times letters from both Protestants and Catholics which made unfeigned protestations that they were never so edified by any as by her. As the Holy Scriptures do say of that noble widow Judith, "Not one spoke an ill word of her," albeit these times are extremely malicious. For mine own part, I never read those words of Holy Writ, "Who shall find a valiant woman ?" and what doth follow, but I must needs think of Ann Dacre, the wife of Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey.

After the lapse of some years, it hath been my hap to have a sight of this manuscript, the reading of which, even as the writing of it in former days, doth cause me to live over again my past life. This lapse of time hath added nothing notable except the dreadful death of Hubert, my dear Basil's only brother, who suffered last

year for the share he had, or leastways was judged to have, in the Gunpowder Plot and treason. Alas! he, which once, to improve his fortunes, denied his faith, when fortune turned her back upon him grew into a virulent hatred of those in power, once his friends and tempters, and consorted with desperate men; whether he was privy to their councils, or only familiar with them previous to their crimes, and so fell into suspicion of their guilt, God knoweth. It doth appear from some good reports that he died a true penitent. There is a better hope methinks for such as meet in this world with open shame and suffering than for secret sinners, who go to their pompous graves unchastised and unabsolved.

By his brother's death Basil recovered his lands; for his present majesty hath some time since recalled the sentence of his banishment. And many of his friends have moved him to return to England; but for more reasons than one he refused so much as to think of it, and has compounded his estate for 7001. 8s. 6d. Our children have now grown unto ripe years. Muriel (who would have been a nun if she had followed her godmother's example) is now married, to her own liking and our no small contentment, to a very commendable young gentleman, the son of Mr. Yates, and hath gone to reside with him at his seat in Worcestershire; and Ann, Lady Arundel's goddaughter, nothing will serve but to be a "holy Mary," as the French people do style those dames which that great and good prelate, M. de Genève, hath assembled in a small hive at Annecy, like bees to gather the honey of devotion in the garden of religion. This should seem a strange fancy, this order being so new in the Church, and the place so distant; but time will show if this should be God's will; and if so, then it must needs be ours also.

What liketh me most is that my son Roger doth prove the very image of his father, and the counterpart of him in his goodness. I am of opinion that nothing better can be desired for him than that he never lose so good a likeness.

And now farewell, pen and ink, mine old companions, for a brief moment resumed, but with a less steady hand than heretofore; now not to be again used except for such ordinary purposes as housewifery and friendship shall require.

VOL. III.

T

Poetry of Church Festivals, Seasons, & Ordinances.

THE influence exercised by particular books is often to be measured, not so much by their intrinsic worth, by the genius of the author, the beauty of his style, the novelty of his materials, or the care with which he has acquired and arranged them, as by the temper and the needs of the age, or of the public mind, in some particular respect, at the moment of their appearance, or other external circumstances which may give them a force and opportuneness of which they might otherwise have been devoid. It is not the best, the most learned, the most conscientious volume that succeeds in winning a place among the leading influences of a particular time; and the secret of such success is to be looked for, when it happens, in the prevailing tone of thought among the community, which welcomes what is in harmony with itself, and responds with enthusiasm to a voice that wakes up its own echoes, unlocks some pent-up feeling, and unfolds to the heart the object of its own unconscious longings. Then

"From some rude and powerless arm

A random shaft in season sent
Shall light upon some lurking harm,

And work some wonder little meant."

In such a case the age may be said to produce the book, and the book to react upon the age. Such is the relation between the "leading journal" and public opinion; such is the account to be given of the power exercised by publications like the Essays and Reviews, or again by some of the political brochures that have had most popularity and influence in our own generation.

The work from which we have taken the verses just quoted is an admirable instance of this. The Christian Year has rich merits as a volume of poetry; but its wonderful popularity, and the effect that it has produced on the religious feeling of England, is not due to its poetical merit. Had Mr. Keble been less of a poet, he might not have attained so great a success; but he has shown as great, or even greater power in some of the pieces in his Lyra Innocentium,— a book which never has had, and never will have, in the present state of feeling in this country, any influence that can be compared to that of the Christian Year. In his earlier volume he gave religious

minds in England just what they wanted: he opened to them a new source of soothing and gentle feeling at a time that they were weary with excitement, and athirst for something more satisfying and refreshing than the evangelical school could give them. He caught up the quiet and practical tone of the Prayer-book, nine-tenths of which is either simple Scripture or translation from the Catholic Breviary, and brought it home in a set of sweet and graceful poems, which people were to read Sunday after Sunday, and festival after festival. No wonder the book soon made its way; it came like the sound of some simple ancient chant ringing through the aisles of a cathedral to ears that had before been accustomed to the nasal vulgarisms of a conventicle. Gradually it became a household book: good people made it a sort of Anglican Imitation of Christ. Its popularity still continues, and shows no sign of decrease, though it must now be not far short of forty years since the first edition was issued. All the best minds of Anglicanism, of every shade of opinion, have felt its influence-Dean Stanley quotes it as well as Dr. Pusey. It was as well known at Oxford as Butler's Analogy; and though it never reached the lower classes of society, who are seldom Anglican by choice, it has toned the feelings, and to some extent formed the character, of thousands in every class but the lowest. A prelate who was fond of would-be witticisms gave it the rather ill-natured name of the "Sunday puzzle;" but the term itself indicates the habit into which people fell of making it their "spiritual reading" once a-week. The aim of the author was entirely attained. "Next to a sound rule of faith," he said in his advertisement, there is nothing of so much consequence as a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical religion; and it is the peculiar happiness of the Church of England to possess, in her authorised formularies, an ample and secure provision for both." It is curious how faithfully the book reflects, along with so many points of the very best and highest doctrine that has ever been maintained within the Anglican pale, some of the errors that belong to the Protestant side of the Establishment. Thus in the poem on the occasional service for "Gunpowder Treason," the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory is called a "lurid dream," and the Presence of our Lord in the Eucharist is said to be "in the heart, not in the hand❞—in which Anglicans receive their Communion. It has always seemed to us a strange witness to the fact that the dogmatism of the High-Church party is in reality more a matter of sentiment than of faith, that not only has this heterodox statement remained untouched in the successive editions of the Christian Year, but that it has remained there without complaint or animadversion, though there has been a great deal of agitation and protestation in

.6