have had the same consequences; without the precedent of Charles's sentence, the idea of sending Louis XVI. to the block would not have occurred to any one in France. The world would have been changed.

These reflections, which present themselves on occasion of every historical catastrophe, are vain. There is always a moment in the annals of nations in which, if such or such a thing had not happened, if such or such a man had been or had not been dead, if such or such a measure had been taken, or such or such a fault not committed, that which followed could not have happened. But God decrees that men should be born with dispositions suited to the events which they are to bring about. Louis XVI. had a hundred opportunities of escape; he did not escape, simply because he was Louis XVI. It is childish then to lament accidents which produce what they are destined to produce. At each step in life, a thousand different distances, a thousand future chances, are opening on us, though we can see but one horizon, and rush forward to one futurity.

RALEIGH. COWLEY.

JAMES I. put to death the famous Sir Walter Raleigh, whose Universal History is still read for Sir Walter's own sake. If there are books which keep alive the names of the authors, there are authors whose names keep alive their books.

Cowley, in the order of poets, comes immediately after Shakspeare, though he was born later than Milton. A royalist in his opinions, he wrote for the theatres, and composed poems, satires, and elegies. He abounds in traits of wit. His versification is said to want harmony; his style, though often far-fetched, is nevertheless more natural, and more correct than that of his predecessors.

Cowley attacks us. From Surrey to Byron, there is scarcely an English author who has not insulted the name, the character, the genius of the French. With admirable impartiality and self-denial, we submit to this outrage; humbly confessing our inferiority, we celebrate,

with sound of trumpet, the excellence of all the authors across the Channel, born or to be born, great or small, male or female!

In his poem on the Civil War, Cowley says:

It was not so when Edward proved his cause
By a sword stronger than the Salic laws,

when the French did fight

With women's hearts against the women's right.

Our King John, Charny, Ribeaumont, Beaumanoir, the thirty Bretons, Duguesclin, Clisson, and a hundred thousand others, had women's hearts!

Of all the men who have shed lustre on Great Britain, he who most attracts my regard, is Lord Falkland. I have wished, a hundred times, to have been this accomplished model of intelligence, generosity, and independence, and never to have appeared on earth in my own form or by my own name. Endowed with a three-fold genius for literature, arms, and policy; constant to the muses, even beneath the tent, and to liberty, in a palace; devoted to an unfortunate monarch, without being blind to his faults, Falkland has left a memory in which melancholy blends with admiration. The verses which Cowley addressed to him, on his return from a military expedition, are noble and true. The

poet begins by enumerating the virtues and talents of his hero; then adds:

Such is the man whom we require, the same
We lent the North, untouched as is his fame;
He is too good for war, and ought to be
As far from danger as from fear he's free.
Those men alone.....

Whose valour is the only art they know,
Were for sad war and bloody battles born,
Let them the state defend, and he adorn!

Fruitless wish! Life, in the midst of his country's woes, became the lot of this friend to the muses. His grief betrayed itself in the carelessness of his attire. On the morning of the first battle of Naseby, his intention of dying was guessed by his change of habit; he arrayed himself as if for a day of rejoicing, and asked for clean linen, saying, with a smile, " I do not wish my body to be buried in soiled garments. I foresee great misfortunes, but I shall be out of them before the day is over." Placing himself in the front rank of Lord Byron's regiment, a ball, winged by that liberty which he adored, enfranchised him from the oaths of honour to which he was a slave.

There remain some speeches and verses by Falkland, Secretary of State to Charles I.: he aided Clarendon to revise the Royal Procla

mations, and Chillingworth in his History of Protestantism.

The Bible, partly translated in the reign of Henry VIII., was re-translated under James I. by forty-seven scholars. This last translation is a masterpiece. The authors of that immense undertaking did for the English language what Luther did for the German, and the writers of Louis the Thirteenth's time for French. They established the language.