ed in tears, and one deep voice only answered Amen. It came from the Earl of Kent. On "An affecting incident now occurred. removing the dead body, and the clothes and mantle which lay beside it, Mary's favorite little dog, which had followed its mistress to the scaffold unperceived, was found nestling under them. No entreaty could prevail on it to quit the spot; and it remained lying beside the corpse, and stained in the blood, till forcibly carried away by the attendants." A. C. "The Dean of Peterborough then prayed in mies perish was the prayer of the Dean of English, being joined by the noblemen and gen- Peterborough; but the spectators were dissolv. tlemen who were present; whilst Mary, kneeling apart, repeated portions of the Penitential Psalms in Latin, and afterwards continued her prayers aloud in English. By this time, the dean having concluded, there was a deep silence, so that every word was heard. Amid this stillness she recommended to God his afflicted Church, her son the King of Scotland, and Queen Elizabeth. She declared that her whole hope rested on her Saviour; and, although she confessed that she was a great sinner, she humbly trusted that the blood of that Immaculate Lamb which had been shed for all sinners would wash all her guilt away. She then invoked the blessed Virgin and all the saints, imploring them to grant her their prayers with God: and finally declared that she forgave all her enemies. It was impossible for any one to behold her at this moment without being deeply affected; on her knees, her hands clasped together and raised to Heaven, an expression of adoration and divine serenity lighting up her features, and upon her lips the words of forgiveness to her persecutors. As she finished her devotions she kissed the crucifix. and making the sign of the cross, exclaimed in a clear, sweet voice,' As thine arms, O my God, were spread out upon the cross, so receive me within the arms of thy mercy: extend thy pity, and forgive my sins!" THE WOFUL VOICE. BY MISS SKELTON. THERE came a voice from a distant land, with a sad lamenting tone It told of war, and chains, and death, power lost, A voice of pain, despair, and woe, a wild and "Weary and wounded, faint and few, we fight, We die, and leave our bones to strew this desert's icy plain, And to thee the memory of our blood, and our dis tant tomb to be An altar and a fitting shrine for a vengeance worthy thee." And And For And And England heard that woful voice, and bow'd her queenly head, there went a wail round her sacred shores, a mourning for the dead; many a happy heart was chill'd, and many a hope laid low, many a warm affection sleeps with them beneath the snow. England wept-well may she weep-yet doth Not all her tears, her blood, her wealth, can bring change that note of utter grief, or hush that She then cheerfully suffered herself to be undressed by her two women, Jane Kennedy and Elizabeth Curle, and gently admonished them not to distress her by their tears and lamentations: putting her finger on her lips, and bidding them remember that she had promised for them. On seeing the executioner come up to offer his assistance she smiled, and playfully said she had neither been used to such grooms of the chamher, nor to undress before so many people. When all was ready she kissed her two women, and giving them her last blessing, desired them to leave her, one of them having first bound her. eyes with the handkerchief which she had chosen for the purpose. She then sat down, and clasping her hands together, held her neck firm and erect, expecting that she was to be beheaded in the French fashion, with a sword, and in a sitting attitude. Those who were present. and knew not of this misconception, wondered at this; and, in the pause, Mary, still waiting for the blow, repeated the psalm, 'In thee, O Lord, have I trusted: let me never be put to confusion.' On being made aware of her mistake she instantly knelt down, and, groping with her hands" Oh, for the block, laid her neck upon it without the slightest mark of trembling or hesitation. Her And last words were. 'Into thy hands I commend my spirit. for thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth.' At this moment the tears and emotions of the spectators had reached their height, and appear, unfortunately, to have shaken the nerves and disturbed the aim of the executioner, so that his first blow was ill-directed, and only wounded his victim. She lay, however, per fectly still, and the next stroke severed the head from the body. The executioner then held the head up, and called aloud, 'God save the Queen! So let all Queen Elizabeth's ene 6 voice of shame, Which tells of chains and bitter death, defeat, and tarnished fame. There came a voice from a distant land, a wild and mournful cry England! mother! weep for us, a bitter death we die! we leave to thee our desert tomb, a fitting shrine to be For a vengeance meet for such fate as ours, a ven- "Oh, England! mourn thy fallen sons; ob! gal- could not save; And let their distant, desert tomb, a deathless altar LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ADDISON. From the Edinburgh Review. The Life of Joseph Addison. direction. She is better acquainted with Shakspeare and Raleigh, than with Congreve and Prior; and is far more at home By Lucy among the ruffs and peaked beards of Theobald's, than among the Steenkirks and flowing periwigs which surrounded Queen SOME reviewers are of opinion that a lady Anne's tea-table at Hampton. She seems who dares to publish a book renounces by to have written about the Elizabethan age, that act the franchises appertaining to her because she had read much about it; she sex, and can claim no exemption from the seems, on the other hand, to have read a utmost rigor of critical procedure. From little about the age of Addison, because that opinion we dissent. We admit, in- she had determined to write about it. The deed, that in a country which boasts of consequence is, that she has had to demany female writers, eminently qualified scribe men and things without having by their talents and acquirements to in- either a correct or a vivid idea of them, fluence the public mind, it would be of and that she has often fallen into errors of most pernicious consequence that inaccu- very serious kind. Some of these errors rate history or unsound philosophy should we may perhaps take occasion to point be suffered to pass uncensured, merely be-out. But we have not time to point out cause the offender chanced to be a lady. one half of those which we have observed; But we conceive that, on such occasions, a and it is but too likely that we may not critic would do well to imitate that cour-have observed all those which exist. The teous Knight who found himself compelled reputation which Miss Aikin has justly by duty to keep the Lists against Brada- earned stands so high, and the charm of mante. He, we are told, defended success- Addison's letters is so great, that a second fully the cause of which he was the cham-edition of this work may probably be repion ; but, before the fight began, exchanged Balisarda for a less deadly sword, of which he carefully blunted the point and edge.* quired. If so, we hope that every para graph will be revised, and that every date and statement of fact about which there can be the smallest doubt will be carefully verified. Nor are the immunities of sex the only immunities which Miss Aikin may rightfully plead. Several of her works, and To Addison himself we are bound by a especially the very pleasing Memoirs of sentiment as much like affection as any the Reign of James the First, have fully sentiment can be, which is i spired by one entitled her to the privileges enjoyed by who has been sleeping a hundred and good writers. One of those privileges we twenty years in Westminster Abbey. We hold to be this, that such writers, when, trust, however, that this feeling will not either from the unlucky choice of a sub- betray us into that abject idolatry which ject, or from the indolence too often we have often had occasion to reprehend duced by success, they happen to fail, shall in others, and which seldom fails to make not be subjected to the severe discipline both the idolater and the idol ridiculous. which it is sometimes necessary to inflict A man of genius and virtue is but a man. upon dunces and impostors; but shall merely be reminded by a gentle touch, like that with which the Laputan flapper roused his dreaming lord, that it is high time to wake. pro Our readers will probably infer from what we have said that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed us. The truth is, that she is not well acquainted with her subject, No person who is not familiar with the political and literary history of England during the reigns of William III., of Anne, and of George I., can possibly write a good life of Addison. Now, we mean no reproach to Miss Aikin, and many will think that we pay her a compliment, when we say that her studies have taken a different * Orlando Furioso, xlv. 68. All his powers cannot be equally develop- It is As a man, he may not have deserved the adoration which he received from those who, bewitched by his fascinating society, and indebted for all the comforts of life to his generous and delicate friendship, wor interesting volume on the Polity and Religion of Barbary; and another on the Hebrew Customs, and the State of Rabbinical Learning. He rose to eminence in his profession, and became one of the royal chaplains, a doctor of divinity, archdeacon of Salisbury, and dean of Lichfield. It is said ter the Revolution, if he had not given of fence to the Government by strenuously opposing, in the Convocation of 1689, the liberal policy of William and Tillotson. shipped him nightly, in his favorite temple at Button's. But, after full inquiry and impartial reflection, we have long been convinced, that he deserved as much love and esteem as can be justly claimed by any of our infirm and erring race. Some blemishes may undoubtedly be detected in his character; but the more carefully it is ex-that he would have been made a bishop afamined, the more will it appear, to use the phrase of the old anatomists, sound in the noble parts-free from all taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of ingratitude, of envy. Men may easily be named, in whom some particular good disposition has been more conspicuous than in Addison. But the just harmony of qualities, the exact temper between the stern and the humane virtues, the habitual observance of every law, not only of moral rectitude, but of moral grace and dignity, distinguish him from all men who have been tried by equally strong temptations, and about whose conduct we possess equally full informa tion. In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return from Tangier, his son Joseph was born. Of Joseph's childhood we know little. He learned his rudiments at schools in his father's neighborhood, and was then sent to the Charter House. The anecdotes which are popularly related about his boyish tricks, do not harmonize very well with what we know of his riper years. There remains a tradition that he was the ringleader in a barring-out; and another tradition that he ran away from school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed on berries and slept in a hollow tree, till after a long search he was discovered and brought home. If these stories be true, it would be curious to know by what moral discipline so mutinous and enterprising a lad was transformed into the gentlest and most modest of men. His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, who, though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made some figure in the world, and occupies with credit two folio pages in the "Biographia Britannica." Lancelot was sent up, as a poor scholar, from Westmoreland to Queen's College, Oxford, in the time of the Commonwealth; made some progress in learning; became, We have abundant proof that, whatever like most of his fellow-students, a violent Joseph's pranks may have been, he pursued Royalist; lampooned the heads of the his studies vigorously and successfully. At university, and was forced to ask pardon fifteen he was not only fit for the university, on his bended knees. When he had left but carried thither a classical taste, and a college, he earned a humble subsistence by stock of learning which would have done reading the liturgy of the fallen Church, to honor to a Master of Arts. He was enterthe families of those sturdy squires whose ed at Queen's College, Oxford; but he had manor-houses were scattered over the Wild not been many months there, when some of Sussex. After the Restoration, his loy- of his Latin verses fell by accident into the alty was rewarded with the post of chaplain hands of Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Magdalene to the garrison of Dunkirk. When Dun- College. The young scholar's diction and kirk was sold to France, he lost his em- versification were already such as veteran ployment. But Tangier had been ceded professors might envy. Dr. Lancaster was by Portugal to England as part of the mar- desirous to serve a boy of such promise; riage-portion of the Infanta Catharine; and nor was an opportunity long wanting. The to Tangier Lancelot Addison was sent. A Revolution had just taken place; and nomore miserable situation can hardly be where had it been hailed with more delight conceived. It was difficult to say whether than at Magdalene college. That great the unfortunate settlers were more tor- and opulent corporation had been treated mented by the heats or by the rains; by by James, and by his Chancellor, with an the soldiers within the wall or by the Moors insolence and injustice which, even in such without it. One advantage the chaplain a Prince and in such a Minister, may justly had. He enjoyed an excellent opportunity excite amazement; and which had done of studying the history and manners of more than even the prosecution of the Jews and Mahommedans; and of this op- Bishops to alienate the Church of England portunity he appears to have made excel- from the throne. A president, duly electient use. On his return to England, after ed, had been violently expelled from his some years of banishment, he published an dwelling: a Papist had been set over the society by a royal mandate: the Fellows high praise; and beyond this, we cannot who, in conformity with their oaths, refus- with justice go. It is clear that Addied to submit to this usurper, had been son's serious attention, during his resdriven forth from their quiet cloisters and idence at the university, was almost engardens, to die of want or to live on chari-tirely concentrated on Latin poetry; and ty. But the day of redress and retribu- that, if he did not wholly neglect other tion speedily came. The intruders were provinces of ancient literature, he vouchejected: the venerable House was again safed to them only a cursory glance. He inhabited by its old inmates: learning does not appear to have attained more than flourished under the rule of the wise and an ordinary acquaintance with the political virtuous Hough; and with learning was and moral writers of Rome; nor was his united a mild and liberal spirit too often own Latin prose by any means equal to his wanting in the Princely Colleges of Ox- Latin verse. His knowledge of Greek, ford. In consequence of the troubles though doubtless such as was, in his time, through which the society had passed, thought respectable at Oxford, was evithere had been no ele tion of new mem-dently less than that which many lads now bers during the year 1688. In 1689, therefore, there was twice the ordinary number of vacancies; and thus Dr. Lancaster found it easy to procure for his young friend admittance to the advantages of a foundation then generally esteemned the wealthiest in Europe. carry away every year from Eton and Rugby. A minute examination of his works, if we had time to make such an examination, would fully bear out these remarks. We will briefly advert to a few of the facts on which our judgment is grounded. Great praise is due to the Notes which At Magdalene, Addison resided during Addison appended to his version of the ten years. He was, at first, one of those second and third books of the Metamorscholars who are called demies; but was phoses. Yet those notes, while they show subsequently elected a fellow. His college him to have been, in his own domain, an is still proud of his name; his portrait still accomplished scholar, show also how conhangs in the hall; and strangers are still fined that domain was. They are rich in told that his favorite walk was under the apposite references to Virgil, Statius, and elms which fringe the meadows on the Claudian; but they contain not a single illusbanks of the Cherwell. It is said, and is ration drawn from the Greek poets. Now, highly probable, that he was distinguished if, in the whole compass of Latin literature, among his fellow students by the delicacy there be a passage which stands in need of of his feelings; by the shyness of his man-illustration drawn from the Greek poets, it ners; and by the assiduity with which he is the story of Pentheus in the third book often prolonged his studies far into the of the Metamorphoses. Ovid was indebted night. It is certain that his reputation for for that story to Euripides and Theocritus, ability and learning stood high. Many both of whom he has sometimes followed years later, the ancient Doctors of Magda-ninutely. But neither to Euripides nor to lene continued to talk in their common Theocritus does Addison make the faintest room of his boyish compositions, and ex-allusion; and we, therefore, believe that we pressed their sorrow that no copy of exer lo not wrong him by supposing that he had cises so remarkable had been preserved. little or no knowledge of their works. It is proper, however, to remark, that Miss Aikin has committed the error, very pardon-classical quotations, happily introduced: able in a lady, of overrating Addison's elas but his quotations, with scarcely a single sical attainments. In one department of exception, are taken from Latin verse. learning, indeed, his proficiency was such as He draws more illustrations from Ausonius it is hardly possible to overrate. His know and Manilius than from Cicero. Even his ledge of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and notions of the political and military affairs Catullus down to Claudian and Prudentius, of the Romans seem to be derived from was singularly exact and profound. He un poets and poetasters. Spots made mederstood them thoroughly, entered into norable by events which have changed their spirit, and had the finest and most dis-the destinies of the world, and have been criminating perception of all their peculworthily recorded by great historians, iarities of style and melody; nay, he bring to his mind only scraps of some copied their manner with admirable skill. and surpassed, we think, all their British imitators who had preceded him, Buchanan and Milton alone excepted. This is His travels in Italy, again, abound with ancient Pye or Hayley. In the gorge of the Apennines he naturally remembers the hardships which Hannibal's army endured, and proceeds to cite, not the authentic nar rative of Polybius, not the picturesque nar- infers that he must have been a good Greek rative of Livy, but the languid hexameters scholar. We can allow very little weight of Silius Italicus. On the banks of the to this argument, when we consider that Rubicon he never thinks of Plutarch's his fellow-laborers were to have been Boyle lively description; or of the stern concise- and Blackmore. Boyle is remembered ness of the Commentaries; or of those let- chiefly as the nominal author of the worst ters to Atticus which so forcibly express book on Greek history and philology that the alternations of hope and fear in a sen- ever was printed; and this book, bad as it sitive mind at a great crisis. His only is, Boyle was unable to produce without authority for the events of the civil war is help. Of Blackmore's attainments in the Lucan. ancient tongues, it may be sufficient to say that, in his prose, he has confounded an aphorism with an apophthegm, and that when, in his verse, he treats of classical subjects, his habit is to regale his readers with four false quantities to a page! All the best ancient works of art at Rome and Florence are Greek. Addison saw them, however, without recalling one single verse of Pindar, of Callimachus, or of the Attic dramatists; but they brought to his recollection innumerable passages in Horace, Juvenal, Statius, and Ovid. It is probable that the classical acquirements of Addison were of as much service The same may be said of the "Treatise to him as if they had been more extensive. on Medals." In that pleasing work we find The world generally gives its admiration, about three hundred passages extracted not to the man who does what nobody else with great judgment from the Roman poets; even attempts to do, but to the man who but we do not recollect a single passage does best what multitudes do well. Benttaken from any Roman orator or historian; ley was so immeasurably superior to all and we are confident that not a line is the other scholars of his time that very quoted from any Greek writer. No person who had derived all his information on the subject of medals from Addison, would suspect that the Greek coins were in historical interest equal, and in beauty of execution far superior to those of Rome. few among them could discover his superiority. But the accomplishment in which Addison excelled his contemporaries was then, as it is now, highly valued and assiduously cultivated at all English seats of learning. Every body who had been at a public school had written Latin verses; many had written such verses with tolerable success; and were quite able to appreciate, though by no means able to rival, the skill with which Addison imitated Virgil. His lines on the Barometer, and the Bowling-Green, were applauded by hundreds, to whom the 'Dissertation on the Epistles of Phalaris' was as unintelligible as the hieroglyphics on an obelisk. If it were necessary to find any further proof that Addison's classical knowledge was confined within narrow limits, that proof would be furnished by his "Essay on the Evidences of Christianity." The Roman poets throw little or no light on the literary and historical questions which he is under the necessity of examining in that Essay. He is, therefore left completely in the dark; and it is melancholy to see how helplessly he gropes his way from blunder Purity of style, and an easy flow of numto blunder. He assigns as grounds for his bers, are common to all Addison's Latin religious belief, stories as absurd as that poems. Our favorite piece is the Battle of the Cock-Lane ghost, and forgeries as of the Cranes and Pygmies; for in that rank as Ireland's "Vortigern;" puts faith piece we discern a gleam of the fancy and in the lie about the thundering legion; is humor which many years later enlivened convinced that Tiberius moved the senate thousands of breakfast tables. Swift boastto admit Jesus among the gods; and pro-ed that he was never known to steal a nounces the letter of Agbarus, King of hint; and he certainly owed as little to Edessa, to be a record of great authority. his predecessors as any modern writer. Nor were these errors the effects of superstition; for to superstition Addison was by no means prone. The truth is that he was writing about what he did not understand. Miss Aikin has discovered a letter, from which it appears that, while Addison resided at Oxford, he was one of several writ ers whom the booksellers engaged to make an English version of Herodotus; and she Yet we cannot help suspecting that he borrowed, perhaps unconsciously, one of the happiest touches in his Voyage to Lilliput from Addison's verses. Let our readers judge. The Emperor,' says Gulliver, 'is taller by about the breadth of my nail than any of his court, which alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders.' About thirty years before Gulliver's |