fing him, and all who fhould pleafe him, hopes of being rewarded. Every art of praife was tried, and every fource of adulatory fiction was exhaufted. Ortogrul heard his flatterers without delight, because he found himself unable to believe them. His own heart told him its frailties; his own underftanding reproached him with his faults. "How long," faid he, with a deep figh, "have I been labouring in vain to ama's wealth, which at last is ufelefs! Let no man hereafter with to be rich, who is already too wife to be flattered!".

DR. JOHNSON,

SECTION V.

LADY JANE GREY.

THIS excellent perfonage was defcended from the Royal Line of England by both her parents.

She was carefully educated in the principles of the Reformation; and her wisdom and virtue rendered her a fhining example to her fex. But it was her lot to continue only a fhort period on this stage of being; for, in early life, the fell a facrifice to the wild ambition of the Duke of Northumberland; who promoted a marriage between her and his fon, Lord Guilford Dudley; and raised her to the throne of England, in oppofition to the rights of Mary and Elizabeth. At the time of their marriage, she was only about eighteen years of age, and her husband was alfo very young: a feafon of life very unequal to oppofe the interefted views of artfal and aspiring men; who, inftead of expofing them to danger, fhould have been the protectors of their innocence and youth.

This extraordinary young perfon, befides the folid endowments of piety and virtue, pofsefsed the most engaging difpofition, the most accomplished parts; and being of an equal age with King Edward VI., fhe had · received all her education with him, and seemed even to pofsefs a greater facility in acquiring every part of manly and claffical literature. She had attained a knowledge of the Roman and Greek languages, as well as of feveral modern tongues; had passed most of her time in an application to learning; and exprefsed a great indifference for other occupations and amufements ufual with her fex and station. Roger Ascham, tutor to the Lady Elizabeth, having at one time paid her a vifit, found her employed in reading Plato, while the rest of the family were engaged in a party of hunting in the park; and upon his admiring the fingularity of her choice, fhe told him, that fhe "received more pleasure from that author, than the others could reap from all their fport and gaiety."-Her heart, replete with this love of literature and ferious ftudies, and with tenderness towards her husband, who was deferving of her affection, had never opened itself to the flattering allurements of ambition; and the information of her advancement to the throne was by no means agreeable to her. She even refused to accept of the crown; pleaded the preferable right of the two princefses; exprefsed her dread of the confequences attending an enterprise fo dangerous, not to fay fo criminal; and defired to remain in that private station in which the was born. Overcome at laft with the entreaties, rather than reafons, of her father and father-in-law, and, above all, of her husband, fhe fubmmitted to their will, and was prevailed on to relinquifa

her own judgment. But this honour was of very short continuance. The nation declared for Queen Mary; and the Lady Jane, after wearing the vain pageantry of a crown during ten days, returned to a private life, with much more fatisfaction than fhe felt when the royalty was tendered to her.

Queen Mary, who appears to have been incapable of generofity or clemency, determined to remove every perfon, from whom the leaft danger could be apprehended. Warning was, therefore, given the Lady Jane to prepare for death; a doom which he had expected, and which the innocence of her life, as well as the misfortunes to which she had been expofed, rendered no unwelcome news to her. The Queen's bigotted zeal, under colour of tender mercy to the prifoner's foul, induced her to fend priests, who molefted her with perpetual disputation; and even a reprieve of three days was granted her, in hopes that she would be perfuaded, during that time, to pay, by a timely converfion to Popery, fome regard to her cternal welfare. The Lady Jane had prefence of mind, in thofe melancholy circumftances, not only to defend her religion by folid arguments, but also to write a letter to her fifter, in the Greek language; in which, befides fending her a copy of the Scriptures in that tongue, the exhorted her to maintain, in every fortune, a like fteady perfeverance. On the day of her execution, her husband, Lord Guilford, defired permifsion to fes her; but fhe refufed her confent, and fent him word, that the tenderness of their parting would overcome the fortitude of both; and would too much unbend their minds from that conftancy, which their approaching end required of them.-Their feparation, fhe faid, would be

only for a moment; and they would foon rejoin each other in a scene, where their affections would be for ever united; and where death, difappointment, and misfortunes, could no longer have accefs to them, or difturb their eternal felicity.

It had been intended to execute the Lady Jane and Lord Guilford together on the fame fcaffold, at Tower-hill; but the council, dreading the compassion of the people for their youth, beauty, innocence, and noble birth, changed their orders, and gave directions that she should be beheaded within the verge of the Tower. She faw her husband led to execution; and having given him from the window fome token of her remembrance, fhe waited with tranquillity till her own appointed hour fhould bring her to a like fate. She even faw his headless body carried back in a cart; and found herself more confirmed by the reports, which the heard of the conftancy of his end, than fhaken by fo tender and melancholy a spectacle. Sir John Gage, conftable of the Tower, when he led her to execution, defired her to beftow on him fome fmall prefent, which he might keep as a perpetual memorial of her. She gave him her table-book, in which the had juft written three fentences, on feeing her husband's dead body; one in Greek, another in Latin, a third in English. The purport of them was, "that human justice was againft his body, but the Divine Mercy would be favourable to his foul: and that if her fault deferved punishment, her youth, at leaft, and her imprudence, were worthy of excufe; and that God and pofterity, the trufted, would fhow her favour." On the fcaffold, fhe made a fpeech to the bye-ftanders, in which the mildness of her difpofition led her to take the blame

entirely on herself, without uttering one complaint against the severity with which the had been treated. She faid, that her offence was, not having laid her hand upon the crown, but not rejecting it with fufficient conftancy: that he had lefs erred through ambition than through reverence to her parents, whom fle had been taught to respect and obey: that she willingly received death, as the only fatisfaction which fhe could now make to the injured ftate; and though her infringement of the laws had been conftrained, fhe would fhow, by her voluntary fubmifsion to their fentence, that he was defirous to atone for that dif obedience, into which too much filial piety had be trayed her: that she had justly deserved this punishment for being made the inftrument, though the unwilling inftrument, of the ambition of others: and that the ftory of her life, the hoped, might at leaft be ufeful, by proving that innocence excufes not great mifdeeds, if they tend any way to the deftruction of the commonwealth. After uttering these words, fhe caufed herself to be difrobed by her women, and with a fteady, ferene countenance fubmitted herself to the executioner.

HUME

SECTION VI.

The Hill of Science.

In that feafon of the year, when the ferenity of the fky, the various fruits which cover the ground, the difcoloured foliage of the trees, and all the fweet, but fading graces of infpiring autumn, open the mind to