Unwholesome draught: but here I feel amends,
The breath of heaven fresh blowing, pure and sweet,
With day-spring born; here leave me to respire.-
This day a solemn feast the people hold

To Dagon their sea-idol, and forbid.
Laborious works; unwillingly this rest

Their superstition yields me; hence with leave
Retiring from the popular noise, I seek
This unfrequented place to find some ease,
Ease to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts, that, like a deadly swarm
Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what am now.
Oh, wherefore was my birth from heaven foretold
Twice by an angel, who at last in sight

Of both my parents all in flames ascended
From off the altar, where an offering burn'd,
As in a fiery column, charioting

His godlike presence, and from some great act
Or benefit reveal'd to Abraham's race?
Why was my breeding order'd and prescribed

As of a person separate to God,

Design'd for great exploits, if I must die
Betray'd, captived, and both my eyes put out,

Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze?

Oh, dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon,
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse

Without all hope of day!

O first created Beam, and thou great Word,
'Let there be light! and light was over all;'
Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree?

The sun to me is dark,
And silent as the moon

When she deserts the night,

Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
Since light so necessary is to life,
And almost life itself, if it be true
That light is in the soul,

She all in every part; why was the sight
To such a tender ball as the eye confined,
So obvious and so easy to be quench'd?
And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused,
That she might look at will through every pore?
Then had I not been thus exiled from light,
As in the land of darkness yet in light,
To live a life half dead, a living death,
And buried: but, oh yet more miserable!
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave;
Buried, yet not exempt

By privilege of death and burial,

From worst of other evils, pains, and wrongs;

But made hereby obnoxious more

To all the miseries of life,

Life in captivity

Among inhuman foes.

'Samson Agonistes.'

SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

BORN A.D. 1605; DIED A.D. 1682.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE was born in London in 1605. He received a liberal education at Winchester and Oxford. After travelling on the continent for some time, he settled down in practice as a physician, first near Halifax, but soon afterwards at Norwich, where the rest of his life was spent. He was knighted in 1671, when Charles II. was visiting that city, and there he died peacefully in a good old age in 1682.

His writings enjoyed a wonderful popularity in his lifetime, and they have still a charm which is peculiarly their own, being the productions of one who, it has been said, was at once "an acute observer, a fanciful speculator, a brilliant essayist, an amiable physician, a considerate, thoughtful paterfamilias." He was, too, a man of deep and earnest piety, though the forms in which his religion expressed itself were sometimes fanciful and eccentric. He who laid down the following rules for the guidance of his daily life was surely full of the fear of God and the love of man :--" To pray and magnify God in the night when I could not sleep: to know no street nor passage in this city which may not witness that I have not forgot my God and Saviour in it. Since the necessities of the sick, and unavoidable diversions of my profession, keep me often from church, yet to take all possible care that I might never miss sacraments on their appointed days. Upon sight of beautiful persons, to bless God in his creatures, to pray for the beauty of their souls, and to enrich them with inward graces to be answerable unto the outward. Upon sight of deformed persons, to send them inward graces and enrich their souls, and give them the beauty of the resurrection."

We can quite understand how he who wrote thus, should write also the following hymn, interesting for its own and its author's sake, and because it plainly contains the germ of Bishop Ken's evening hymn. It is from the Religio Medici, published in 1642.

EVENING HYMN.

THE night is come; like to the day,
Depart not Thou, great God, away;
Let not my sins, black as the night,
Eclipse the lustre of Thy light.

U

Keep still in my horizon, for to me
The sun makes not the day, but Thee.
Thou whose nature cannot sleep,
On my temples sentry keep;

Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes,
Whose eyes are open while mine close.
Let no dreams my head infest,
But such as Jacob's temples bless'd.
While I do rest, my soul advance,
Make my sleep a holy trance:
That I may, my rest being wrought,
Awake into some holy thought;
And with as active vigour run
My course as doth the nimble sun.
Sleep is a death;-oh make me try,
By sleeping, what it is to die!
And as gently lay my head.
On my grave, as now my bed.
Howe'er I rest, great God, let me
Awake again at last with Thee.
And thus assured, behold, I lie

Securely, or to wake or die.

These are my drowsy days; in vain

I do now sleep to wake again :

Oh, come that hour when I shall never Sleep again, but wake for ever!

WALLER was descended from an old and wealthy Kentish family; he was the son of Robert Waller of Amersham in Buckinghamshire. His mother was the sister of John Hampden, and cousin to Oliver Cromwell. He entered the House of Commons at a very early age, and began his public life on the side of the Parliament. But he seems to have been a royalist at heart; and in 1643, he was concerned in a plot in behalf of the king, for which he was banished and fined £10,000. He remained in exile for ten years, when he obtained permission to return, and resided on his estate at Beaconsfield. He was on friendly terms with Cromwell, and on his death wrote his panegyric. After the Restoration he was a favourite at the courts of Charles II. and James II. He died at his house at Beaconsfield, at the advanced age of eighty-two. His Divine Poems, from which the following extracts are taken, were composed shortly before his death. He says in them,

Wrestling with death, these lines I did indite;

No other theme could give my soul delight.

Oh that my youth had thus employed my pen!
Or that I now could write as well as then!