further from the truth. He was a devout worshipper in her temple; and amidst its lofty and sublime architecture his soul glowed and adored with all the enthusiasm of one newly instructed, and yet seemed as much at home as if he had been made high priest of her mysteries. The quincunxes heavenly and earthly, the body of an insect and the frame of the universe, the smallest plant and the brightest star, each had for him a talismanic charm, and possessed the power of leading him by contemplation directly up to its Author. Hear his own beautiful language:

"Beware of philosophy' is a precept not to be received in too large a sense; for in the mass of nature there is a set of things that carry in their front, though not in capital letters, yet in stenography and short characters, something of divinity, which to wiser reasons serve as luminaries in the abyss of knowledge, and to judicious beliefs as scales and rundles to mount the pinnacles and highest pieces of divinity."

In the same strain he says again :

"The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man; 'tis the debt of our reason we owe to God, and the homage we pay for not being beasts.”

But we cannot give all that Sir Thomas believes at length, we must rather, to use his own language, attempt to do it in "stenography and short characters." He believes in two inspired volumes, the Bible and nature, the latter a public manuscript expansed to all, in sounding whose depths we incur no risks, as bold spirits do in doubtful theological speculations. He was sure of the existence of such beings as witches, and held those to be atheists who denied it. The power of these beings he supposed to lie in an acquaintance with the secret laws of nature, which acquaintance came directly or indirectly from the devil. The question concerning antiChrist he looked upon as the philosopher's stone of divinity. He teaches the presence of God in the hearts of good men, and says, that without this, there is to him no heat under the tropic, nor light though he dwelt in the body of the sun.

He considers Moses as settling the questions of the eternity of matter and the origin of the world by the introduction of a new term "creation." And for a moment laying himself liable to the charge of pantheism, than which nothing could have been further from his thoughts, he tells us "God being all things is contrary to nothing, out of which all things were made, and so nothing became something, and Omniety informed nullity into an essence. From the creation of the world he proceeds to that of man, and remarks that the other creatures were created at the blast of His mouth out of nothing, but that in the creation of man God played the sensible

operator, and seemed rather to make than to create; that having raised the walls of man, he was driven to a harder creation-of a substance like himself, an incorruptible and immortal soul. With all his intimate knowledge, both as a philosopher and a physician, of the frame of man, he found nothing in him which gave him so much satisfaction as that which he did not find, namely, an organ for the soul. For, as to the brain, he discovered nothing in that which he did not find in the "cranny" of a beast; and thus he learned that there is something in us which can do without us, and will be after us. As our frame is wonderful in its construction, and in its relation to the soul, so he discovers something passing strange in the mode of its support. He finds out that we are what we all abhor—cannibals; devourers not only of men, but of ourselves, not merely in an allegory, but in truth: for this mass of flesh came in at our mouths, the frame in which we take so much delight has been upon our trenchers. Sir Thomas is a firm believer in spiritual apparitions, but regards them, not as the spirits of departed men, but as devils, whose object is to seduce men to crime, and to make them believe that the blessed spirits of departed saints are not happy. In the frequent appearance of these spectres in grave-yards, he sees the devil as an insolent champion, rejoicing over the spoils of his victory in Adam. As to death, if the devil could work his fancy to believe he should never die, he would not outlive that very thought. But although he does not fear death, he frankly confesses himself not a little ashamed of it. He feels it to be the disgrace of his nature, that death, in a single moment, can so disfigure him that his dearest friends will start at the sight of him. Suicide he condemns not only as sinful, but also as cowardly; because, although it requires courage to meet death while life is desirable, yet, when it becomes more terrible than death, it is then true valour to dare to live. Hence, he considers Job more valiant than Cato or Codrus. In the same strain of metaphysical acuteness and unique eloquence he speaks of the resurrection, of heaven and of hell; and finishes the first part of his book by telling us that he fears God and yet is not afraid of him; that his thoughts are so fixed on heaven that he has almost forgetten the idea of hell; and that he is as well persuaded of his own personal and eternal salvation as of the existence of such a city as Constantinople.

In the second part of Religio Medici the author discloses his feelings toward his fellow-men. He considers himself predisposed to charity, because he has no idiosyncracy, either in respect of nations, diet, animals or climate. The frogs and snails of the French are as grateful to him as the common viands of his own country. He was

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born in one climate, but framed and constellated unto all,-he is in England everywhere, and under any meridian. The devil is the only substance which he can bring himself heartily to hate. And yet he confesses that if this constitutional predisposition were the only source of his charity, he would be a mere moralist, and divinity would write him a heathen. He drew his purse, not for his sake who demanded it, but for his who enjoined it; neither did he relieve any man upon the rhetoric of his miseries, or in obedience to the earnest calls of sympathy in his own breast. To be moved merely by compassion in helping another he reckoned more selfish than benevolent; because by compassion we make another's miseries our own, and in relieving them we relieve ourselves. But his charity is not restricted to almsgiving, liberality is not its totality. Divinity has wisely divided charity into many branches, so that in so many ways as we may do good, in so many ways may we be charitable. Ignorance requires as merciful a hand as sickness or poverty; he pitied an ignorant man as much as he pitied Lazarus. Therefore he studied not for his own sake alone, but for theirs who studied not for themselves; and thus made his head not a grave, but a treasury of knowledge, and stood forth not the advocate of a monopoly, but of a community in learning. Besides, he considered this the cheapest form of charity, resembling the natural beneficence of the sun which illuminates others without obscuring itself. Of friendship, which he brings in as embraced in the general subject, he speaks in terms of quiet, philosophic rapture, showing that his emotions were not the less intense for being directed by a powerful and steady intellect. He looks upon it as an act within the power of charity to divide a sorrow almost out of itself, at least so far as to make it unfelt. The sorrows of his friend he desired not to share, but to engross. Formerly he thought the noble examples of friendship furnished by history to be rather fictions of what ought to be, than true accounts of what had been. But when he himself came within the charmed circle of friendship, he felt that the noble attachments of Damon and Pythias, Achilles and Patroclus, would be easy of imitation. He tells us he loved his friend before himself, and yet did not think he loved him enough; that when he is separated from him he is dead until he is again with him; and that he is so united to him that union does not content him, but he and his friend wish to become each other. It would be great pleasure to know who was the object of an affection so strangely and strongly expressed. It may have been Mr. Whitefoot, or by possibility the great and good Bishop Hall, the bitterness of whose persecutions would have been greatly mollified by such a friendship.

One more passage and we are done with Religio Medici. The reader may see how the passage grows out of this discussion of charity, by examining the connexion in which it is found. He has just been speaking of the other sex and of marriage.

"It is my temper and I like it the better, to affect all harmony; and sure there is music even in the beauty and in the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres; for those well-ordered motions and regular paces, though they give no sound to the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatever is harmonically composed, delights in harmony, which makes me distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church music. For myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do embrace it; for even that vulgar and tavern music which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion and profound contemplation of the first Composer. There is something in it of divinity more than the ear discovers: it is a hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world and creatures of God,-such a melody to the ear as the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God. I will not say with Plato, the soul is a harmony, but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto music. Thus some, whose temper of body agrees and humours the constitution of their souls, are born poets, though, indeed, all are naturally inclined unto rhythm. This made Tacitus in the very first line of his story fall upon a verse; and Cicero, the worst of poets, but declaiming for a poet, falls in the very first sentence upon a perfect hexameter."

What a passage! How he rises from female beauty to the general idea of harmony! The note which Cupid strikes raises him to the empyrean, and his soul hears the music of the spheres. Even the music of the tavern leads his devout soul up to Him who arranged the harmonies of the universe; and in the undulations of the atmosphere he discovers the sounding hieroglyphics and invisible shadows which represent the Divine sense of order, proportion and beauty. Jehovah himself stands listening to his own music, the universe the instrument, the orbits of its worlds the complicated strings, and the worlds themselves the visible and ponderous notes that roll along them.

Where, but from this remarkable passage, did Addison get the thoughts contained in the last stanza of his paraphrase of the Nineteenth Psalm, commencing

"What though in solemn silence all?”

And where, if not from this same noble paragraph, did Bushnell catch the inspiration of the most eloquent passage of his eloquent address on "Work and Play," delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa, at Cambridge, in 1848? The passage alluded to may be found on

the twenty-eighth page of the address. The resemblance, however, between our countryman and Sir Thomas is one of kindred and not at all of imitation. Though we think the knight assisted the orator, yet it was only as the sun helps the earth to bring forth and mature her natural products. Though the spark came from the flint of the physician, it fell upon appropriate fuel in the genius of the preacher. The fire is doubtless the same, but the flames differ in shape and intensity.

A word upon the critics of Sir Thomas Browne, and we are done. Tuckerman has attempted a portrait of our author; but, as his object was rather eulogy than criticism, he has only thrown a chaplet or two of pretty flowers, not unskilfully woven together, around the philosopher's brow. He has written nothing that we care to recall or correct. Another sketch of Sir Thomas has been given us by Hazlitt in his "Age of Elizabeth," where the good knight appears side by side with Jeremy Taylor, but so wofully disfigured, that if the picture were not labelled, his best friends would never know it. The art of the critic has converted the deep philosopher into a sort of intellectual rope-dancer, or metaphysical clown, whose sole vocation was to amuse the world with his antics. No admirer of Sir Thomas, no fair reader of his works, can look at Hazlitt's account of him without indignation. Almost the first sentence is a gross and palpable slander. "Sir Thomas Browne seemed to be of opinion that the only business of life was to think, and that the proper object of speculation was by darkening knowledge to breed more speculation, and find no end in wandering mazes lost." Sir Thomas “seemed to think" no such thing. Judging from his life and character, he thought it worthy of his powers to be a skilful and experienced physician; he considered the simple exercise of prayer no impeachment of his intellect; he felt it to be a part of his duty to be a virtuous man, a good citizen and an affectionate husband and father. Hear this critic again: "He stands on the edge of the world of sense and reason, and gains a vertigo by looking down on impossibilities and chimeras." True, Sir Thomas was a daring speculator, but no matter where he stood or what he looked upon, his head was always clear. His eagle-eye appears sometimes to see nothing, but this is only because he sees farther than others. Take another passage: "The passion of curiosity (the only passion of childhood) had in him survived old age, and had superannuated his other faculties." What faculties? This is far less true than if we were to say of Hazlitt, that the passion for what was striking had frequently been too strong for his love of truth. Still more palpably in the teeth of the truth, he says: "For a thing ever to have had a name