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preacher, who should preach two sermons or divinity lectures in Ashbourne, or in some other convenient town in Derbyshire, not above five miles from Ashbourne." Care was also taken for the market cross and the common well. One charitable man shrewdly desired the vicar to preach a sermon, and set forth his and his brothers' charity, "to stir up the charity of others." And with a soul full of enthusiasm another individual left five marks to buy a copy of Foxe's Acts and Monuments, better known perhaps as the Book of Martyrs; the same to be laid safe in some convenient place in the parish church.

By the way, this last bequest, the like of which is of common occurrence, has about it some interest. Here and there in the old churches may be seen a copy of the famous work, though I fear that nowadays few people care to brush from it the mildew and the dust which the generations have accumulated. And yet an old book has a charm which a new book cannot possibly have. I can read three or four of the melancholy and bitter pages of Master John Foxe's Acts and Monuments out of my folio edition of 1684 with a patience I could not exercise over a modern reprint. There is a musty smell, a ghostly touch and a weird suggestiveness that only two hundred years at least can give to a book, and though Master John is apt to curdle the blood and arouse angry feelings, yet one must needs be grateful for the woodcuts and plates in which are depicted, as only the artists of old could depict them, those kindly instruments by which, and those thrilling scenes in which, both Protestants and Catholics three hundred years ago sought to win their respective opponents into the right way. The illustrations afforded amusement as well as instruction. The dying words of the martyrs were printed on narrow slips of paper out of their mouths, and Cartwright in the Ordinary (Act I, Scene III) makes one of his characters exclaim :

Become a martyr, and be pictur'd

With a long label out o' your mouth, like those
In Fox's book; just like a juggler drawing
Riband out of his throat.

In olden time not only were archbishops, bishops and archdeacons enjoined to have in their houses a copy of the Book of Martyrs, but, in common with Bishop Jewel's Defence of the Apology of the Church of England and Erasmus's Paraphrase upon the Gospels, for the benefit of the poorer clergy and the people, a copy was placed in the parish churches, sometimes "tyed with a chayne to the Egle brass." By this means was kept fresh

the gruesome story of religious persecution, and thence came much of the material which has kept Latimer's candle burning to this hour. Archbishop Laud, before his own head was taken off, wisely ordered John's book out of the churches: why in the house of God should men's souls be vexed and embittered by stories colored and shaded, unjustly and cruelly, with horrors which are characteristic, not of a school of thought or of a religious community, but of the age itself? Nevertheless, as the Papists sent Cranmer to the stake, so did the Puritans send Laud to the scaffold. The best time now to read Foxe is by one's self toward the midnight hour. Draw close the heavy curtains, let the fire on the hearth burn slowly out, forget the changes of time, and by the light of a single taper turn over the heavy leaves. Then, the world being still and fancy somewhat free, the thoughts go back to days when men were not afraid to stand alone and suffer, and not unlikely, in spite of the strange, uncanny feeling which passes over one in shivering waves, in the dreams which follow and the scenes which flit before the mind, all will not be unsavory or sad. I greatly wonder if Paul Taylor, who left this bequest to Ashbourne Church, had ever read Lyly's Euphues or Sidney's Arcadia. A little of either author goes a long way; but one or the other should be chained to the same lectern that holds the Book of Martyrs. Lest it should be thought that we are worse than our fathers, it should be remembered that as early as 1583, exactly twenty years after the publication of Foxe's work, John Stubbes lamented the neglect by his generation of the Acts and Monuments. It is not everybody who can enjoy Foxe.

Before we go from the churchyard we traverse the Vicar's walk from one end to the other. Again the shower breaks upon us, but we tarry to read inscriptions on tombstones and to take in the beauty of the church. Beside one grave is a white rosebush; its one faded, rusty bud is scarcely less suggestive than are the marble monuments or the lichen-covered slabs. As from beneath the trees we watched it, the rain stopped, a sunbeam fell upon it, and we went on our way.

Just outside of the churchyard, and on the north side of Church Street, is the Grammar School, chartered by Queen Elizabeth, and endowed by the contributions of many worthy townsmen, including, as we have seen, Sir Thomas Cokayne. It is a pleasant-looking building, with its quaint gables and neatly-shaped windows; and much has been done in it for the education of the youth of this neighborhood. The seal of the corporation is an elaborate and noteworthy affair. In it two scenes are represented: the upper one, in which four or five of her liege subjects are petitioning

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Queen Elizabeth to grant the charter; the lower one, in which the school is being founded. Her Majesty's face differs much from the portraits of her generally known, and her toes are strikingly prominent; but one's fullest sympathies go out to the two little scholars who are sitting on a form before a great company of black-robed masters. Around the seal is the device: "Sigillum Liberæ Scholæ Grammaticalis Elizabethæ Reginæ Angliæ in villa de Ashburne in comitatum Derbiæ." Any boy who is happy enough to get that seal affixed to his certificate of proficiency or good behavior is surely made for life.

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But what is Ashbourne School to you or to me, dear reader, except that the headmaster thereof, the Reverend Mr. Langley, was in his day an acquaintance of that grand old man, Dr. Johnson? It was in the summer of 1777 that Dr. Johnson and Boswell visited in this place that wealthy beneficed clergyman," Dr. John Taylor, and the two Ashbourne gentlemen, who themselves differed mightily from each other, had many a dispute with the sturdy lexicographer. Langley was a Rupert of debate, and his wild and furious manner is said to be traditional in Fenny Bentley, of which place he was rector, to this day. Johnson's ability in this respect is well known. Taylor "roared" as lustily as either of them. Together the three were well calculated to make glasses jingle and to disturb the serenity of Taylor's upper servant, Mr. Peters, "a decent, good man," observes Boswell, "in purple clothes and large, white wig, like the butler or majordomo of a bishop."

Dr. Taylor's house was on the opposite side of the way, and a right gracious establishment he maintained, for not only had he here a patrimony of some worth, but he was also rector of Market Bosworth and prebendary of Westminster. In his house no scantiness appeared. He was generous and hospitable; "his size, figure, countenance and manner were those of a hearty English squire with the parson superinduced." His violence, especially when his whiggery was disturbed, threw him into considerable distress, but he seems on the whole to have been as dull and heavy as were the extraordinarily large cattle he reared on his farm, and which he showed to his guests with great delight. Said Dr. Johnson to Boswell: "Taylor was a very sensible, acute man, and had a strong mind: that he had great activity in some respects, and yet such a sort of indolence, that if you should put a pebble upon his chimney-piece, you would find it there in the same state a year afterwards." In like confidential manner Taylor expressed to the Scotchman his opinion of Dr. Johnson: "He is a man of a very clear head, great power of words, and a

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