LIVING TO GOOD PURPOSE.

9

create another. And, to say nothing of the deep delight implied in growing information and expanding powers, if united to a frank and forth-giving disposition, they will render your friendship a treasure of ever-augmenting value, and the lasting enrichment of the society in which you mingle.

And pray and labour for personal excellence. In love and devotion look to the great Example; and, learning of Jesus, your character will grow exceedingly. Too genuine to be sanctimonious, and too earnest to be frivolous, clear views and profound convictions will give you all the strength of sincerity; and, at once magnanimous and gentle, those who are attracted by your benignant bearing will be impressed by your lofty principle. Instead of your faith being sapped and your fervour dulled by the triflers around you, drawing spiritual strength day by day from the Source of all goodness, yours may be the happiness of convincing the sceptic and reclaiming the libertine. And betwixt the impulse which sets a good work a-going, and the still better impulse which keeps it from flagging; betwixt the children you instruct, the companions you gain over, and the neighbours whom you guide into ways of well-doing; betwixt the suffering you alleviate and the comfort you confer; betwixt the evil which God enables you to restrain, and the right deeds and feelings which He allows you to elicit ;-yours will be a high calling and a happy career. Familiar with important thoughts, and occupied with great concerns, loving widely and extensively endeared,- never aimless, never idle, never forgetful of the Master's business, your life will belong to that class of which the Apostle Paul's was the intensest specimen,- a life which still revives in every dawning day, and which is mighty yet in all the homes of Christendom.

OUR TOWN THREE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

ONE morning lately I was looking at an engraving of T as it stood sixty years ago; and as it somehow detained my eye, I began to think how interesting it would be if we could travel into other times as we travel into other lands, and, without losing our consciousness of the present, could transfer ourselves into any period of the past. Since then I have accomplished this chronological pilgrimage, and I now write to you from my last landingplace, near the close of the sixteenth century; so, be not startled at the date:

T

:

under the mild sway of our occidental star, and most religious and gracious Queen, Elizabeth, the Rose without a Thorn.

During the three days I remain here, I am to rest at the house of the Glanvil family. As I arrived I was struck with the narrowness of the streets. They are too narrow for the passage of anything but pack-horses. In many of them the lowest story is open to the street, with an outer staircase leading to the second floor, and narrowing still further these narrow lanes. The pack-horses, which carry our dresses and our beds (which we have brought with us, the inns providing no such accommodation), with our serving-men, formed quite a cavalcade for this retired little place, and the people ran to their doors as our cortege passed, and the children followed us. The family welcomed us with old English heartiness; and after a substantial supper, we gladly retired to rest at the usual hour of nine.

THE ELIZABETHAN STYLE.

11

Friday. After breakfasting at six o'clock on beefsteaks and ale, we left the family at their household occupations, and sallied forth into the town. There are no shops enclosed from the street; only the upper windows, which project far over the lower rooms, have glass; and butchers, clothiers, cobblers, grocers, and haberdashers, sit behind their open stalls, commending their wares and prosecuting their trade as in a bazaar. Neither are there any manufactories, but nearly every one of the low, dark rooms, in which the poorer people live, contains two or three looms, on which they weave a coarse cloth or serge for their own use, or for transport to Brittany-the Devonshire weavers being especially permitted by law to possess three looms in a family, on account of the trade with the opposite French coast. Indeed, Mr. Carlyle might be happy if he lived in these days, for it is marvellous what trouble the government gives itself about the private affairs of the subject, condescending, with paternal care, to prescribe the number of their dishes and the colour of their clothes, besides accurately weighing out the quantity and quality of their beliefs and disbeliefs; nothing can be farther removed from the "letting-alone" system.

The town is wonderfully more picturesque than as you know it; and what with its projecting gables, and windows, and carved beams, the decision and variety of its architectural lines, the bold broad contrasts of light and shadethe rosy country damsels in their blue linsey-woolsey jackets and petticoats and little white caps, bargaining with the apprentice-craftsmen in their blue doublets and white hosen, and short knife stuck fiercely in the girdle-you might fill your sketch-book in a street; but no one has sketch-books now and unless some of the old illuminators of the Abbey missals are still living, probably not a person in the town can handle a pencil, although Raphael and Michael Angelo are at this moment painting in Italy. So strangely in this

age does the light fall in patches, as in these narrow streets.

Not a creature have I seen dressed in anything but woollen, and mostly of a uniform dull blue or friars' grey. My host, indeed, as a knight, has a right to wear a "pinched" or plaited shirt, broidered with gold, and a velvet doublet; and my hostess, as a knight's wife, may dight herself in crimson velvet, ruffs, and ermine hat,-privileges which they duly exercise on holidays.

The old inmates of the Abbey are all dislodged, but the Abbey buildings are still entire. Part of the old edifice is metamorphosed into a free school, part into cottages, and part is falling into decay. It was strange and sad to pass under the massive gate-house into the large, empty quadrangle. All great changes come in on the shoulders of some ruined classes; and the monks of T- deserved unusual respect and sympathy. Links between our conquered forefathers and their conquerors, their Saxon school was long the nursery and the outlet of talent which had none beside. The second printing-press in England was established under their auspices. Their church was adorned with carvings and paintings, not the work of a few months of bustle and machinery, but the patient and loving contributions of the genius, piety, and home affections of centuries. Well! they had their day, and they lived it,-hunting, dining, merrymaking, alms-giving, and gathering around them a golden flood, which at length has drowned them and their system. The opinions about their fall are various in the town. The gentry, who have received grants of their lands, revile them; the thriving and industrious craftsmen mostly rejoice at the drones having been turned out of the hive; the poor and old, in general, lament them; the beggars are unanimous in declaring that "the sun of England has set for ever over their graves;" and my little friend, Mabel Glanvil, who has

embraced with deep enthusiasm the earnest Genevese Protestantism, imported by the Marian exiles, gives thanks for the mingling of the false "religious" with the world, and the scattering of the true salt through it.

As we left the quadrangle, I saw an old man in a monastic habit, sitting on a bench in a sunny corner. I asked who he was, and how he came to wear the garb of the prohibited faith. He was an old monk, they said, who had lived in the Abbey from his earliest boyhood,-a poor, harmless, doting old man. At the hours of matins and of even song, he was always to be found kneeling in the silent church, counting his beads and crossing himself, and gazing on the bare altar. They had thrown him into prison more than once; but on his release he had invariably been found in a few days in his old dress, occupying his old haunts, not from obstinacy or fiery zealfor he was gentle and obedient as a child in all things else -but from a necessity of second nature. He had no life separate from the monastery and the monastic routine; and so, at length, the fiercest assertors of the royal supremacy had taken pity on him and left him alone. I placed a few groats in his hand. He looked up half-unconsciously in my face, and muttered a Latin benediction. I did not despise it; and looking back, as I passed the gate, I saw a little child bringing him his midday meal.

We had a magnificent dinner, as many courses of meat as Archbishop Cranmer prescribed to be the utmost limit of a bishop's table, namely, five dishes of meat-pottage, capons, raw smoked ham, and other substantials, followed by three of dessert, or bellaria, as it is elegantly called. We had also some rare and novel delicacies,— a jar of pepper handed round to season our meat, a small dish of potatoes, and some cherries,-to say nothing of sundry "subtleties" in sugar and honey, the work of Mabel's dainty fingers. I cannot, however, reconcile myself to the inconvenience of