of more private and particular consideration; yet, if any such you have, I shall strive to promote it according to the best of my duty, and in the more generall concerns of the nation, shall, God willing, maintain the same incorrupt mind, and clear conscience, free from faction, or selfends, which I have, by His grace, hitherto preserved. So wishing you all health and prosperity, I remain, Gentlemen, &c., your most humble servant.

The 'businesse' of Trinity House is still to be over-seen, with all Vigilance.

For my much respected friends Mr. Matthew Smith and Mr. George Dickinson, Wardens of the Worthy Society of ye Trinity house, Kingston before Hull.

LXXX.

Mr. Penruddock was a gentleman of the Royalist party who was beheaded by Cromwell's orders in 1655 at Exeter, for his share in a rising there. The particulars are given in Clarendon's History of the Rebellion,' Book 14, ad finem. This letter was written by Mrs. Penruddock to her husband the night before his execution.

Mrs. Penruddock's last letter to her Husband.

May 3, 1655.

My Dear Heart,-My sad parting was so far from making me forget you, that I scarce thought upon myself since, but wholly upon you. Those dear embraces which I yet feel, and shall never lose, being the faithful testimonies of an indulgent husband, have charmed my soul to such a reverence of your remembrance, that were it possible, I would, with my own blood, cement your dead limbs to live again, and (with reverence) think it no sin to rob Heaven a little longer of a martyr. Oh! my dear, you must now pardon my passion, this being my last (oh, fatal word!) that ever you will receive from me; and know, that until the last minute that I can imagine you shall live, I shall sacrifice the prayers of a Christian, and the groans of an afflicted wife. And when you are not (which sure by sympathy I shall know), I shall wish my own dissolution with you, that so we may go hand in hand to Heaven. "Tis too late to tell you what I have, or rather have not done for you; how being turned out of doors because I came to beg mercy; the Lord lay not your blood to their charge.

I would fain discourse longer with you, but dare not; passion begins to drown my reason, and will rob me of my devoirs, which is all I have left to serve you. Adieu, therefore, ten thousand times, my dearest dear; and since I must never see you more, take this prayer,-May your faith be so strengthened that your constancy may continue; and then I know Heaven will receive you; whither grief and love will in a short time (I hope)

translate,

My dear,

Your sad, but constant wife, even to love your ashes when dead, ARUNDEL PENRUDDOCK.

May the 3rd, 1655, eleven o'clock at night. your blessing, and present their duties to you.

LXXXI.

Your children beg

Mr. Penruddock's last letter to his Wife.

May, 1655.

Dearest Best of Creatures! I had taken leave of the world when I received yours: it did at once recall my fondness to life, and enable me to resign it. As I am sure I shall leave none behind me like you, which weakens my resolution to part from you, so when I reflect I am going to a place where there are none but such as you, I recover my courage. But fondness breaks in upon me; and as I would not have my tears flow to-morrow, when your husband, and the father of our dear babes, is a public spectacle, do not think meanly of me, that I give way to grief now in private, when I see my sand run so fast, and within a few hours I am to leave you helpless, and exposed to the merciless and insolent that have wrongfully put me to a shameless death, and will object the shame to my poor children. I thank you for all your goodness to me, and will endeavour so to die as to do nothing unworthy that virtue in which we have mutually supported each other, and for which I desire you not to repine that I am first to be rewarded, since you ever preferred me to yourself in all other things. Afford me, with cheerfulness, the precedence of this. I desire your prayers in the article of death; for my own will then be offered for you and yours." J. PENRUDDOCK.

LXXXII.

In his 'Curiosities of Literature,' Mr. D'Israeli publishes a letter from the Thrice Noble, Illustrious, and Excellent Princess Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle,' who was certainly the greatest literary curiosity of her age. Her husband, who had borne arms for the Royal cause with some success during the civil wars, was created a duke at the Restoration.

He and his duchess afterwards retired to the country to devote the remainder of their days to the republic of letters. Horace Walpole, in his 'Royal and Noble Authors,' expended a good deal of caustic wit on the eccentricities of this aristocratic pair-this picture of foolish nobility.' The work of so industrious a couple, had it been rationally pursued, would probably have escaped ridicule; but since each publicly affected to regard the other as the beau ideal of literary ingenuity, and as a good deal of their ingenuity was exhibited in a certain contempt for the laws of style and the rules of grammar, their labours were not much appreciated.

Had her Grace's studies been carefully regulated, she might have done good things, as the following sensible letter will show.

Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, to her Husband, the Duke of Newcastle.

London: 1667,

Certainly, my Lord, you have had as many enemies and as many friends as ever any one particular person had; nor do I so much wonder at it, since I, a woman, cannot be exempt from the malice and aspersions of spiteful tongues which they cast upon my poor writings, some denying me to be the true authoress of them; for your grace remembers well, that those books I put out first to the judgment of this censorious age were accounted not to be written by a woman, but that somebody else had writ and published them in my name; by which your lordship was moved to prefix an epistle before one of them in my vindication, wherein you assure the world, upon your honour, that what was written and printed in my name was my own; and I have also made known that your lordship was my only tutor, in declaring to me what you had found and observed by your own experience; for I being young when your lordship married me, could not have much knowledge of the world; but it pleased God to command his servant Nature to endue me with a poetical and philosophical genius, even from my birth; for I did write some books in that kind be

fore I was twelve years of age, which for want of good method and order I would never divulge. But though the world would not believe that those conceptions and fancies which I writ were my own, but transcended my capacity, yet they found fault, that they were defective for want of learning, and on the other side, they said I had pluckt feathers out of the universities; which was a very preposterous judgment. Truly, my lord, I confess that for want of scholarship, I could not express myself so well as otherwise I might have done in those philosophical writings I published first; but after I was returned with your lordship into my native country, and led a retired country life, I applied myself to the reading of philosophical authors, on purpose to learn those names and words of art that are used in schools; which at first were so hard to me, that I could not understand them, but was fain to guess at the sense of them by the whole context, and so writ them down, as I found them in those authors; at which my readers did wonder, and thought it impossible that a woman could have so much learning and understanding in terms of art and scholastical expressions; so that I and my books are like the old apologue mentioned in Æsop, of a father and his son who rid on an ass. [Here follows a long narrative of this fable, which she applies to herself in these words :-] The old man seeing he could not please mankind in any manner, and having received so many blemishes and aspersions for the sake of his ass, was at last resolved to drown him when he came to the next bridge. But I am not so passionate to burn my writings for the various humours of mankind, and for their finding fault; since there is nothing in this world, be it the noblest and most commendable action whatsoever, that shall escape blameless. As for my being the true and only authoress of them, your lordship knows best; and my attending servants are witness that I have had none but my own thoughts, fancies, and speculations, to assist me; and as soon as I set them down I send them to those that are to transcribe them, and fit them for the press; whereof, since there have been several, and amongst them such as only could write a good hand, but neither understood orthography, nor had any learning (I being then in banishment, with your lordship, and not able to maintain learned secretaries,) which hath been a great disadvantage to my poor works, and the cause that they have been printed so false and so full of errors;

for besides that I want also skill in scholarship and true writing, I did many time not peruse the copies that were transcribed, lest they should disturb my following conceptions; by which neglect, as I said, many errors are slipt into my works, which, yet I hope, learned and impartial men will soon rectify, and look more upon the sense than carp at words. I have been a student even from childhood; and since I have been your lordship's wife, I have lived for the most part a strict and retired life, as is best known to your lordship; and therefore my censurers cannot know much of me, since they have little or no acquaintance with me. 'Tis true I have been a traveller both before and after I was married to your lordship, and some times shown myself at your lordship's command in public places or assemblies, but yet I converse with few. Indeed, my lord, I matter not the censures of this age, but am rather proud of them; for it shows that my actions are more than ordinary, and according to the old proverb, it is better to be envied than pitied; for I know well that it is merely out of spite and malice, whereof this present age is so full that none can escape them, and they'll make no doubt to stain even your lordship's loyal, noble, and heroic actions as well as they do mine; though yours have been of war and fighting, mine of contemplating and writing yours were performed publicly in the field, mine privately in my closet: yours had many thousand eye-witnesses; mine none but my waiting-maids. But the great God, that hitherto bless'd both your grace and me, will, I question not, preserve both our fames to after ages.

Your grace's honest wife and humble servant,
M. NEWCASTLE.

LXXXIII.

More than any other among the distinguished historical personages of the seventeenth century, Algernon Sidney, in point of character and conduct, will continue to have his detractors and admirers. The published letters in the different editions of the Sidney papers serve only to confirm his partisans in their admiration of his consistency of principle as an enemy of monarchical government-even to the extent of deprecating the personal rule of Cromwell-and his enemies in their reprehension of the factious leader who could waste his splendid energies in caballing with France and Holland for the establishment of a republic in England. The most able and eminent of the knot of revolutionary patriots to which he belonged, he was also the most uncompromising and most provokingly obstinate.