each illustration has the aptness usually found only in a practised writer, is wonderful indeed.

When his book was finished he showed it to several of his pious friends. Some liked it, perceiving at once its unique merit; while others were shocked at it. The Lord's people, they thought, ought not to wish truth offered to them in so frivolous a form, nor enjoy it when it did not come in the shape of sermons, psalms and pious dissertations. But the work was done; the lamp was lighted and burns on, now and forever.

In 1672, a law was passed by which the restrictions on irregular preaching were removed or modified, and he stepped out of the dismal jail to light and life; even in a few years to ease and renown. Yet nothing disturbed the even tenor of his way. He kept on preaching, talking and working for good. He published in all sixty books, large and small. He went constantly from place to place, stirring up the people to well-doing; and showed himself especially strong in the ending of quarrels. It was while engaged on one of these errands of righteousness that he brought on the illness that caused his death. He rode a long distance to plead with an angry father the cause of a disinherited son; he prevailed; then he rode back home in a pouring rain which drenched him to the skin. A fever followed, of which he died in a few days.

So passed away one of the most striking, large-hearted, admirable, lovable figures in literary history. The picture of that humble, unlettered worker, soldier, preacher, prisoner; "The Shakespeare of Theology," as some enthusiast has called him, toiling and preaching in his jail, tagging the staylaces for the few pence it would earn for the dear ones at home, thinking now of the blind darling out of his sight as he was out of hers, now of the haps and mishaps of Christian and Hopeful, and always of his duties to God and his fellowmen-the picture once impressed upon the soul can never

be effaced; and one feels a glow of thankfulness that his life ended in peace and honor, instead of what is, alas, more usual, martyrdom.

About 1650 some new kinds of writing became popular; for instance the "diary," a personal record of current events. This gave rise to a class of writers known as "the diarists," of whom John Evelyn (1620-1706) and Samuel Pepys* (1633-1703) were the chief exemplars. Each of them was a man of good social standing, each wrote several books of which all but one are now forgotten, and each wrote one (quite worthless when written) which will endure for ages, growing in value as the years pass. Then, too, of each it may be said "a better man might be better spared”; several greater writers would have caused less of a blank in literature if they had left their works unwritten.

The reason of this seeming paradox is to be found in the diarists' choice of a subject, accidental as that choice was in each case. Neither of their diaries was written with any idea of publication. The choice happened to fall upon the common things about them, the actual occurrences of every-day life—things too trivial for the attention of poet, essayist, dramatist, historian or scientific writer.

In our

day this photographic view of life and manners is embalmed in the realistic novel; but that is the invention of a later time than the age of "the diarists," and if they had not (unconsciously) caught and transcribed the scenes they lived. in, those scenes would have perished from the world with the actors in them. Of such writers as Evelyn, Pepys and Boswell it may again be said, "They builded better than they knew."

Evelyn's life extended over eighty-six years, and included the greater part of the space filled in history by James I.,

* This name is now pronounced "Peps" though the fact that somebody in that day wrote it "Peeps," would tend to show that the latter gives more nearly the colloquial sound.