SONGS OF THE SIERRAS. By Jonquin Miller. Boston: Roberts Bros. Price, $1.50. SCHOOL HOUSES. By James Johonnot. Architectural Designs by S. E. Hewes. New York: J. W. Schermerhorn & Co. Price, $2.00. For sale in Boston by J. L. Hammett 37 Brat- QUESTIONS OF THE DAY: ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL. By Dr. William Elder. Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird. Price, $3.00. For sale in Boston by A. Williams & Co. NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE WANTED. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied. FOR EIGHT DOLLARS. remitted directly to the Publishers. the LIVING AGE will be punctually for- to pay commission for forwarding the money. Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars. From Dark Blue. IN SEPTEMBER. WHERE lurk the merry elves of autumn now, In this bright breezy month of equinox? Among tanned bracken on the mountain's brow? Or deep in heather tufted round white rocks On a wild moor, where heath bells wither slow, Twined with late-blooming furze - a home of grouse ? By river alders? Or on stubbly plains? Bound not their kingdom so: They follow Beauty's train- of all her house Gay pensioners till not one leaf remains. The splendour of the year is not yet dead: After cold showers the sun shines hotly still To dry the grass and kiss the trembling head Of each wind-shaken harebell on the hill. Then joys the eye to ramble far and wide Through all the fleecy circles of the sky; Broad silverous beams fair slant from southern clouds, Where sunlight seems to hide; A rainbow spans the vale's blue mystery, Whence routed mists troop gloomily, crowds on crowds. Heaven hath its symphonies! What tones combine To swell the cadenced chords of luminous gray That change upon the abysmal hyaline, Whose glimpses sweet throb to the azure play Of an ethereal melody tender as eyes That shine through tears of unrequited lovePure as the petals of forget-me-nots! Such unheard harmonies, The deaf ears of Beethoven smote from above Through vision-filled with heaven his inky blots. As Ceres when she sought her Proserpine Wakes the sere whispers of fallen leaves that lie Tremble the delicate bells Of bindweed, bridelike with its wreath of white For though the perfumed seasons come and go, I think the pity of this life is love; And place too oft our hearts on earthly shrines, Where we would kneel - but where alas! we fall Beneath a shadow ever past recall; We seek for gold, when 'tis but dross that shines. Then if we may not turn our hearts above Moving things withering of new springs to I know the pity of this life is love. Public Opinion. dream. From The Quarterly Review. spectable tradesman, as we find him churchwarden of his parish in 1621; and THE great glory of the English pulpit is, there is no difficulty in supposing that, in by common consent, Jeremy Taylor; and those days of love-locks and daintily he has, we think, fairly earned his suprem-trimmed beards, one of that occupation acy. He is much the most distinguished would occupy as high a position among of those who, in the early part of the the other tradesmen of the town as his seventeenth century, turned in their ser- successors do now. He is said to have mons from the discussion of abstract been descended from the famous Dr. Rowpoints of theology to the earnest recom- land Taylor, who "left his blood" at Hadmendation of those points of Christian leigh, in Suffolk, for the defence of the life and character which are known and Protestant faith. The young Jeremy was loved of all men; no one of his time joined one of the earliest alumni of the Perse in an equal degree the graver studies of Grammar School in Cambridge, which morality and theology with an eager love was founded in 1615, and he became a of polite letters, not only in classic form, sizar at Caius College in 1626. John Milbut in the then comparatively new litera- ton had taken up his abode in Christ's tures of Italy and France; the fluent College only one year before. The two sweetness of his style is, in its way, unsur-poets - for we must not refuse to Taylor passed, and this honied eloquence does the name of poet- were, no doubt, to but reflect the gentleness of a temper use Milton's vigorous expression, "deludwhich passed unsoured, if not unruffled, ed with ragged notions, and brabblements, through the terrible strife of the Civil and dragged to an asinine feast of sowWar and the harshness of Puritan rule. thistles and brambles;" that is, they had Jeremy Taylor was born at Cambridge, to pass through the tedious forms of schoand baptized in Trinity Church in that lastic logic which were still in vogue in town on the 15th of August, 1613. Of the schools; but we may well believe that the date of his birth there is no certain the pliant intellect of Taylor submitted to evidence. It has generally been assumed that he was baptized in infancy, but if we suppose that he was two years old at the time of his baptism we obtain a date which harmonizes better with the indications afforded by his later life; for when he was entered at Caius College in August, 1626, he was described as having completed his fifteenth year; and further, if we suppose him to have been born in 1611, he would be nearly of the canonical age at the date when he is said to have been ordained, instead of being under twenty, an age at which holy orders have very rarely been conferred. He was the son of a barber in the town, probably a re this training with far greater ease and readiness than Milton's fiery self-will; in fact, his works show that his mind had great affinity with such intellects as Aquinas and Scotus, though he also traversed fields foreign to them. "Wranglers" and "senior optimes" as yet were not, and we have no record of the student's success in the schools, but it is hardly doubtful that a mind so fertile in arguments and objections would be a formidable adversary in the wit-combats of those days. He took his bachelor's degree in 1630, and, as his friend Rust tells us, as soon as he was graduate he was chosen fellow." His fellowship was probably on the Perse foundation, and of small value. Soon after taking his M.A. degree, which he did in the usual course in 1634,* he was ordained, being then, if he was born in 1611, twenty-three years of age. From the time of his ordination his life was one of frequent change and no little trouble.. 2. Bishop Jeremy Taylor, his Predecessors, Con- The patronage of Archbishop Laud protemporaries, and Successors. A Biography. By the Rev. Robert Aris Willmott, Incumbent of BearWood, Berks. Second Edition. London, 1848. The whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D D., Lord Bishop of Down, Connor, and Dro more: with a Life of the Author, and a critical examination of his Writings. By the Right Rev. Reginald Heber, D.D., late Lord Bishop of Cal cutta. Revised and corrected by the Rev. Charles l'age Eden, M.A., and the Rev. Alexander Taylor, M A. In 10 volumes. London, 1856. Holy Dying," ch. iii. sec. 4. 66 cured him a fellowship at All Souls', which they must have astonished beyond meashe enjoyed but a couple of years; then we ure the Welsh villagers who formed the find him for a few years Vicar of Upping- rest of the auditory, though it is not imham, then ejected, and following the royal possible that they, too, may have been atarmy; and at last about 1644, settled in a tracted by the preacher's sweet voice and Welsh village on the banks of the Towy, impressive manner, even without underin Carmarthenshire, where he supported standing his words. The collection of himself by keeping a school. In these prayers to which Taylor gave the name of years he had been himself taken prisoner; "Golden Grove," led to his imprisonment. sickness and death had been busy in his Contrary to his wont, he had mingled family; he had lost his wife and a son, with his panegyric on the Church of Engand was married again to Joanna Bridges, land an invective against Puritan preachsaid to have been a natural daughter of ers, and the authorities were perhaps reuCharles I.* For some years he led a life dered suspicious by the dedication to so of poverty and seclusion; yet, if he was well-known a royalist as Lord Carbery. poor and in trouble, he was not friendless: We learn from a letter of John Evelyn's he was constantly befriended by Lord that he was in prison in February, Carbery and his family, whose beautiful 1654-5;* but in April of the same year seat, Golden Grove, was hard by the vil- we find him at large and preaching in the lage where he dwelt. And he dwelt there, little church of St. Gregory, by St. Paul's, we believe, contentedly: if he had fallen where the use of the Common Prayer was into the hands of "publicans and sequestra- still permitted. He returned to Wales, tors," he had still a loving wife and many but in April, 1656, we find him dining with friends to pity him, and some to relieve Evelyn at Says Court, in company with him; he had still his merry countenance, Boyle and Wilkins. In July he is again his cheerful spirit, and his good con- in Wales, much troubled by his narrow science; he could walk in his neighbour's circumstances a trouble which, to his pleasant fields and see the variety of nat- honour be it said, Evelyn lightened so far ural beauties; and if, with all this, he as lay in his power†- and longing for chose to "sit down upon his handful of the society and the libraries which were thorns," he was fit to bear "Nero com- to be found in the "voysinage" of Lonpany in his funeral sorrow for the loss of don. His home in Wales was very sorone of Poppæa's hairs, or help to mourn rowful, for he had just lost a little boy, for Lesbia's sparrow."† In truth, his sit-"that lately made him very glad;" and uation contrasted favourably with that of again, in February, 1656-7, he speaks of many of the royalists who were driven small-pox and fever having broken out in from house and home, and he repeatedly expresses his gratitude to Lord Carbery and his amiable wife for their patronage and protection. It was in his Welsh retreat that the genius of Taylor was matured: there he wrote the "Liberty of Prophesying," the Holy Living" and " "Holy Dying," the "Great Exemplar," or Life of Christ, and many of those great sermons with which his name is always associated. If these latter were delivered as they were written, however they may have charmed the ears of Lord Carbery's cultivated family, * On the single authority of the MS. of Mr. Jones, a descendant of Taylor's, whose papers were used by Heber; see "Life," p. xxxv.ƒ. "Holy Living," ch. ii. sec. 6. his household, and of having buried "two sweet hopeful boys." He had then but one son left, and perhaps began to desire to leave a scene associated with so much grief. He seems generally to have visited London once in the year, and always found friends to welcome him, especially Evelyn, the Mæcenas or ought we rather to say, the Gaius? of distressed churchmen of those days. On one of these visits he was sent to the Tower, because his publisher had prefixed to his "Collection of Offices an engraving of our Lord in the attitude of prayer-a representation which some of the authorities in those *Heber's "Life," pp. xxxix. cclxxiii. See Taylor's letter of May, 1657, in "Life," p. lxiv. |