never utterly perish. They had something to say for our good, and seem to have been willing to wait for the season when the world would perceive their merit, appreciate their intentions, and make a fair allowance for their defects or errors.

Feltham lived when parties in religion and politics were most strongly marked and in deadly hostility; but we have not found that he ever loses a liberal spirit. He could triumph at the Restoration, but not in the temper of a slave, a persecutor, or a fanatic. He was a decided Protestant; but in a letter to Johnson the Jesuit, he says, "I am neither Zuinglian, nor Lutheran, nor Calvinist, nor Papist, but Christian." Again, "I shall take it for a favour if you please to let me enjoy my religion in peace. Then I shall so far go along with your wishes, as to pray for direction in the right; making it further my petition to God that he will vouchsafe to build up his church in truth and unity, and to make us both so members of it here, as we may avoid the errors which exclude from that above, where I shall not despair but that you may be met by me."

Hitherto the remarks we have offered have proceeded chiefly from the view which the "Resolves" present to us of Feltham's mind and character. We could not select half a page from any of his one hundred and eighty-five chapters, which would not give the reader some tolerably distinct idea of him. We quote the closing portion of that entitled, "Of Preparing against Death."

He is a

"Lastly. I will endeavour to be prepared. Neither surprise nor stratagems can hurt me, if I be ready for both. He defeats the tyrant of his feast, that is so prepared as not to shrink at torment. The way to die undauntedly is to do that before, which we ought to do when dying. He that always waits upon God is ready whensoever he calls. I will labour to set my accounts even, and endeavour to find God such to me in my life, as I would in death he should appear. If I cannot put off humanity wholly, let me put off as much as I can; and that which I must wear, let me but loosely carry. When the affections are glued to the world, death makes not a dissolution, but a fraction, and not only separates the soul, but tears it away. So the pain and the hazard is more. happy man that lives so, as death at all times may find a leisure to die. And if we consider that we are always in God's hand, that our lease is but during pleasure, and that we are necessitated once to die, as we shall appear infidels not to trust a Deity, so we must be fools to struggle where we can neither conquer nor defend. What do we do living, if we be afraid of travelling that highway which hath been passed through by all that have lived, and must be by all that shall live? We pray, undress, and prepare for sleep that is not one night long; and shall we do less for death, in whose arms we must rest prisoners till the angel with his trumpet summons him forth to resign us? This will not make life more troublesome, but more comfortable. He may play that hath done his task. No steward need fear a just lord, when his accounts are even and always ready drawn up. If I get the son and heir to be mine, the father will

never hold off. Thus living I may die at any time, and be afraid at no time. Who dies death over every day, if he does not kill death outright, at least he makes him tame with watching him."

Feltham appears in somewhat a different light in other works: for example, in his two lay sermons, as we may call them. One of them is full of satire and humour, of learning and gallantry, bestowed upon the power and excellence of woman. Both of them have been omitted in the "Library," nor could they well have been published entire. We quote, however, one passage from the first, which is on Solomon's view of the vanity of all things:

"What then shall we do, or whither turn to find a repose for the soul? All the mass of creatures put together is too narrow a palace to contain the soul of man. It flies in a moment to the deeps and ocean's springs, not only to the roots of mountains, but in a moment pierces quite through the earth's condensed globe, to the stars and highest convex of the bounding sky. So far as the creature reaches, it goes and finds no rest. God only is capacious; in him do all its vast extensions rest. Unlimited thoughts in him a limit find; and when we do lose the creature, still we do find him. He is farther off than the soul can reach, yet nearer than it can avoid."

The second of these discourses is on the passage in Luke, " And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come." The following extract may give us his idea of the power of beauty, which he calls "the wit of nature put into a frontispiece, the spiritual soul in figure; and in it," he adds, "are the influences of

the stars."

"Beauty is an empire without a militia; for needing neither guard nor arms, it imposes whatever does please. Experience can tell us that it has flatted all the strengths of the world. It is mistress of all that is not God; and when it rises to be of holiness, it amounts to be enthroned with him. In woman placed alone, it has done wonders, and taking the world's conquerors by the casque, has rifled them of all their hard-earned wreaths and laurels. Adam's original innocence was not armour sufficient to resist her forces. Samson's giant strength by her was cheated into bondage and servility. David's high-heartedness became inflexed and crooked. the grave incomparable Solomon, though he could precept the erring world against all the seducing crafts of women, yet we see he could not save himself from being entangled by their demalciations. With this man the devil went his old politic way; for his plot being to gain the man, he sets upon him by his mistress first. No doubt but he who bought the farm had a team, and the other had five of oxen; yet could not all these draw so much as a wife: she is a perpetual enchantment that hangs upon all the

retirements of man."

And

Besides about fifty of the "Resolves," we have in one of the

volumes of the "Library" the "Observations of the Low Countries." The remarks on the Dutch, their country, pursuits, and manners, are in the style of the broadest humour, and at the same time are often distinguished for severe, sententious wisdom. We have already alluded to his letters, which are nineteen in number. His forty-one pieces in verse, or "Lusoria," as he calls them, are of very little value. They are inferior to his translations from Latin author's quoted in the "Resolves." We find in them, however, what we have not observed in his more important writings, the mention of a few learned names among his countrymen. The death of Sir R. Cotton is commemorated in a distinct poem, and a couplet from the lines on the Lady E. M. introduces a still higher name:—

"A sheet of Bacon's catch'd at more, we know,

Than all sad Fox, long Holingshed, or Stow."

We had occasion before to mention some of the qualities of Feltham's style. For the most part he expresses himself clearly and in short sentences, with very little grace, but still with much that is picturesque in the diction. Sometimes, as if by accident, he gives us a passage of surpassing beauty, and that might satisfy the most fastidious modern ear. Sometimes he falls into the most puerile inversions, and a vicious kind of rhythm. Would any one take what follows for prose?

"When after sin a Christian once considers,

He finds a shadow drawn upon his light.

The steps of night stay printed in his soul.

His shine grows lean within him, and makes him like
The moon in her declining wane."

What we have thus marked off as verse, is taken from that which stands as a prose paragraph, in the "Resolves." There is more in the same strain. Such a specimen, however, might not be met with in many volumes.

Feltham's use of language is often as strange and offensive as these singularities of style. Like Sir Thomas Browne, he takes great delight in the coinage of most preposterous words from the Latin. This vile licence is to be discovered in many writers of the age, and is a remarkable circumstance in its literary history. A new use of the settled and popular speech is sometimes the sign of originality; and differences among writers in this particular, may partake of and exhibit intellectual characteristics. But in such instances as the one which we have quoted, there is a downright, wilful, and barefaced departure from current and correct language, evincing a paltry pedantry and sheer affectation. Really the English language seems to have had a more settled, genial, and domestic character in the

reign of Elizabeth than in the two or three that followed. Unquestionably it must have had the principle of life in it and of strong health to sustain itself and preserve in a good degree its old form and genius. The authorized translation of the Bible, as has often been remarked, operated powerfully in fixing the language, and in giving permanence to our good old Saxon mine of wealth. Besides, even the learned barbarisms of the writers we have referred to, are always such distinct blemishes, and so wantonly needless, that they increase instead of impairing the native force and obvious beauty of our mother tongue, and thus indirectly increase a fondness for what is really our own.

ART. IX.-The Seaman's Manual; containing a Treatise on Practical Seamanship, &c. By R. H. Dana. Moxon.

WHEN a landsman at first directs his eyes to the rigging of a large three-masted ship, and to all the paraphernalia of her complete outfit, he is perfectly at a loss to discover the meaning and use of many a part, and wonders even how the sailors can know what they are about, especially in the hurry of a squall when handling the cordage and regulating one rope in preference to another. What if it be during pitchy night, and the hands aloft! If, however, the same raw person happens to fall into the company of a party of mariners who are fully occupied with their professional affairs, and still more if it be his lot to take a coasting trip or to encounter a short voyage, he will find himself utterly bewildered by the nautical phraseology that salutes his ears, and the technicalities of their speech; a speech which, although uttered with stentorian voice, and often apparently angry emphasis, has yet such a distinctive and unquestionable import that he never once calls it vulgar, nor applies to it the term slang, in a depreciatory sense. An Englishman, especially, will be the last person in the world to attach the reverse of a kind of romantic partiality to the language and manners of a jolly tar, and will accord a license and lend a hearty laugh on the hearing of certain rough and irreverent expressions, which would meet with stern reproof or disgust if they came from the lips of a land-lubber.

But what would be the condition and feelings of the countryman, whom we are supposing to have little or no experience of nautical affairs, were he, instead of being a curious idler, an astonished looker-on, an amazed auditor, called upon, as we are now, to review "The Seaman's Manual," by Mr. Dana, the author of that remarkable and instructive little work, which some time ago excited a sensation, in England as well as in America, entitled "Two Years before the Mast?" Let us ask our landsman what could he say critically to that chapter in the First Part of the present small

volume which contains rules how "To send down Masts and Yards?" and which, as the chapter is short, has been selected as an example, although, perhaps, more puzzling specimens might have been quoted. We extract the chapter entire, upon which any of our readers may try their reviewing powers:

"To send down a Royal Yard.-If the sail is bent to the yard, furl it, making the gaskets fast to the tye. Cast off the sheets and clewlines, and make them fast to the jack. Be careful to unreeve the clewlines through the quarter-blocks. Cast off the parral-lashing. Overhaul the tye a little, and stop it to the yard just outside of the quarter-block. If stopped too far out, the yard will not hoist high enough to get the lower lift off. Sway away on the halyards, which will cant the yard and hoist it. When high enough, cast off the lower lift and brace, (being careful not to let the brace go,) and make them fast to the jack. Lower away, and as the upper yard-arm comes abreast of the jack, clap a stop round the yard and tye, near the yard-arm, and cast off the lift and brace, making them fast to the jack. Lower away to the deck.

"If the halyards are not single, the yard must be sent down by a yardrope, like the topgallant yard. In some vessels, instead of making the sheets and clewlines fast to the jack, over-hand knots are taken in their ends, and they are let go. The sheets will run out to the topgallant yardarms, and the clewlines will run to the fair-leaders in the cross-trees. In port, the main royal yard is sent down on the starboard side, and the fore and mizen on the larboard; but at sea, the tye is stopped out on the lee side, and the yard sent down in any way that is the most convenient.

"To send down a Topgallant Yard.-Cast off the sheets, bowlines, buntlines, and clewlines, and make them fast to the cross-trees. Reeve a yardrope through a jack-block at the mast-head, unhook the tye, cast off the parral-lashing, bend the yard-rope to the slings of the yard by a fisherman's bend, and stop it to the quarters of the yard. Sway away, and take off the lifts and braces, as with the royal yard.

"To send down a Topgallant Mast.-Hook the top-block to the eyebolt at the larboard side of the topmast cap; reeve the mast-rope through it, then through the sheave-hole in the foot of the topgallant mast, and hitch its end to the eye-bolt on the starboard side of the cap. Come up the rigging, stays and backstays, and guy the mast-head by them. Hoist a little on the mast-rope, and take out the fid. (The fid should always be fastened to the cross-trees or trestle-tress, by a lanyard.) Lower away until the mast is a little short of being through the cap. Then seize or rack together both parts of the mast-rope just above the sheave-hole; cast off the end of the mast-rope, letting the mast hang by the stops, and hitch it round the mast-head to its own part below the cap. Then lower away to the deck. If the rigging is to come on deck, round up the mast-rope for a girtline; if it is to remain aloft, lash it to the top-mast cap, render the shrouds through the cross-trees, and stop them up and down the topgallant rigging. Sheep-shank the stays and backstays, and set them handtaut. If the topmast is also to be sent down, take off the topmast cap and send it on deck.