correspondence with Browne for him, until Dugdale is well again in the spring of 1659. He is busy, meanwhile, on the second volume of his famous Monasticon, and applies for all manner of information to Browne, who gossips to him in return about rare birds he has been seeing in the fields, and strange seaweeds he has been picking up on the shore of Norfolk.

CHAPTER V

LAST YEARS: 1659-1682

No one observed the dying flutter of the Commonwealth with more eagerness, or welcomed the return of royalty with greater joy than Thomas Browne. On Coronation Day, his calm spirit was quite unusually exalted, and his description of the great doings in Norwich is jubilant. He notes with exultation that Cromwell is being hanged and burned in effigy everywhere; and he grimly adds, "whose head is now upon Westminster Hall, together with Ireton's and Bradshaw's." Norwich broke out into beacon bonfires; there were feasts here and feasts there, one little play was acted by strollers in the Market Place, and another by young citizens on a stage at Timber Hill. There was no resistance to the king in Norwich, where "it is thought by degrees most will come to conformity "; nor to the Church, for the observation of Lent is reinstituted, which "makes Yarmouth and fishermen rejoice." Dr. Browne moves up and down the streets of the city, exulting in the happy change, and greeting one highly respectable client after another with that "civil and debonair" expansiveness for which he was famous, while the great minster bells of Christ Church peal forth in the early April

morning, and can scarcely be persuaded to cease until the stroke of noon.

On the 17th of August 1661, in consequence of these great affairs, Edward Reynolds, who had been consecrated Bishop of Norwich, came to take up his residence at the Palace, which had been deserted since the Puritans turned out Joseph Hall. Reynolds, a very liberal churchman, who had been Warden of Merton College, Oxford, was the "loving friend" of Browne, and his arrival a great delight to the philosopher, who was careful in his attendance at the Cathedral when the bishop preached, with his croaking voice, but eloquently, on the 25th of August. It is interesting to note, as an instance of the long hunger of the Anglican worshippers now satisfied at last, that Browne records the delight he feels at seeing Reynolds in his place at church. "He sitteth," he says gleefully, "in his seat against the pulpit, handsomely built up and in his episcopal vestments, and pronounceth the Blessing or the Peace of God at the end." It was long since Christ Church Cathedral had seen such seemly ritual.

The education of a remarkably fine and intelligent brood of children occupied Dr. Thomas and Mrs. Dorothy Browne very pleasantly and fully at this period of their lives. The domestic records of the family are charming to an unusual degree. The young people were trained carefully and firmly, without severity, and it is to be specially noticed that the father spared to each of them a degree of sympathetic consideration which was rare indeed in those days of stiff parental rigour. To his sons, at a very tender age, we find Thomas Browne writing as to valued

friends, anxious to share his interests with them, studiously careful not to wound their susceptibilities or to hold them at a distance. He was rewarded by a touching devotion and, from those who survived him, by an almost adoring piety. Bread cast upon the waters never came back to the giver more plenteously than did Browne's loving solicitude for his children. It is time that we should be introduced to these young persons, although it is a little difficult to be sure that we can count them all. One infant daughter, Dorothy, had died in 1652; two other daughters, Elizabeth, afterwards Mrs. Lyttleton, and Anne, afterwards Mrs. Fairfax, are patent to us as born about 1648 and 1650. A fourth daughter, Lady Cotterell, cannot be clearly placed; but the two sons, delightful boys, and the apples of their father's eyes, are plain enough.

Edward, the eldest of the family, and certainly the most gifted, was born at Norwich in 1644, and was therefore a lad of sixteen at the time of the Restoration. He was succeeded, in 1646, by Thomas, who inherited a less buoyant constitution, with some melancholy in his temperament, but was eminently "biddable" and trustworthy. Both boys received their earliest training in the Norwich grammar school, and Edward went, in 1659, to Trinity College, Cambridge. It seems to have been thought that "honest Tom" was more fitted for business, and therefore in the autumn of 1660, although only fourteen years of age, he was sent alone, in a vintage ship, from Yarmouth to Bordeaux, apparently that he might learn French and study the wine trade. The tender and anxious letters which his parents wrote to him have been preserved, and are very pleasant reading. Except that

he had introductions to a Mr. Dade in Bordeaux, and was well supplied with money from home, the boy, who knew no French, seems to have been thrown

entirely on his own resources. He did not stay long in Bordeaux; we find him at Saintes, at La Rochelle, at Cognac, at the island of Rhé. His father's advices to him are what we should expect them to be :

"Be not dejected and melancholy because you can yet have little comfort in conversation, and all things will seem strange unto you. Remember the camel's back, and be not troubled for anything that, otherwise, would trouble your patience here. Be courteous and civil to all; put on a decent boldness, and avoid pudor rusticus, not much known in France. Hold firm to the Protestant Religion, and be diligent in going to church when you have any little knowledge of the language. . . View and understand all notable buildings and places in Bordeaux or near it, and take a draught thereof, as also the ruined Amphitheatre, but these at your leisure."

This was at "honest Tom's" first start, but he soon grew proficient in the French language and customs. He seems to have lived the longest part of his time with an apothecary in Saintes. His father was anxious lest his youth should lead him to take too much violent exercise; "be temperate," he says, "and stir little in the hot season." His parents were anxious he should be happy, and they pressed him to take lessons in singing and dancing, at their expense. But the poor boy was home-sick for Norwich, and we find him the victim of a settled "mallencholy," for which it seemed to him that the air of Norfolk should be prescribed. Discipline, however, must be maintained, and Tom had to wear out his year, and more