LORD HERBERT.

LORD HERBERT, of Cherbury, born A.D. 1581, and died in 1648, for some time Ambassador at Paris, was the first in England to propound Deism" as a philosophical system of religious truth in his work on Truth, distinguished from Probable, Possible, or False Revelation. He wrote several other semitheological treatises, and a Life of Henry VIII., from which the extract is taken.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

SIR THOMAS MORE, Lord Chancellor of England, after divers suits to be discharged of his place, which he had held two years and a half, did at length, by the king's good leave, resign it. The example whereof being rare, will give me occasion to speak more particularly of him.

Sir T. More, a person of sharp wit, and endued besides with excellent parts of learning, as his works may testify, was yet, out of I know not what natural facetiousness, given so much to jesting, that it detracted no little from the gravity and importance of his place, which, though generally noted and disliked, I do not think was enough to make him give it over in that merriment we shall find anon, or retire to a private life. Neither can I believe him so much addicted to his peculiar opinions as to detest all other governments but his own Utopia, so that it is probable some vehement desire to follow his book, or secret offence taken against some person or matter, among which, perchance, the king's new intended marriage or the like might be accounted, occasioned this strange counsel; though yet, I find no reason pretended for it but infirmity and want of health.

Our king therefore taking the seal, and giving it, together with the order of knighthood, to Thomas Audley, speaker of the Lower House, Sir Thomas More, without acquainting any body with what he had done, repairs to his family at Chelsea, where, after a mass celebration, the next day in the church he comes to his lady's pew with his hat in his hand-an office formerly done by one of

his gentlemen-and says, "Madam, my Lord is gone." But she, thinketh this at first to be but one of his jests, was little moved, till he told her staidly he had given up the great seal; whereupon she speaking some passionate words, he called his daughters, then present, to see if they could not spy some fault about their mother's dressing; but they, after search, saying they found none, he replied, "Do you not perceive my lady's nose standeth awry"of which jeer the provoked lady was so sensible, that she went from him in a rage.

Shortly after, he acquainted his servants with what he had done, dismissing them also to the attendance of some other great personage, to whom he recommended them. For his fool, he bestowed him on the Lord Mayor during his office, and afterwards on his successors in that charge. And now coming to himself to consider how much he had left, and finding it was not above one hundred pounds yearly in lands, besides some money, he advised with his daughters how to live together. But the grieved gentlewomen, who knew not what to reply, or indeed how to take these, remained astonished, he says, "We will begin with the slender diet of the students at law, and if that will not hold out, we will take such commons as they have at Oxford; which yet, if our purse will not stretch to maintain, for our last refuge we will go a-begging, and at every man's door sing a Salve Regina to get alms."

But these jests were thought to have in them more levity than to be taken everywhere for current; he might have quitted his dignity without using such sarcasms, and betaken himself to a more quiet and retired life without making them or himself contemptible. And certainly, whatever he intended hereby, his family so little understood his meaning, that they needed some more serious instruction. So that I cannot persuade myself for all this talk, that so excellent a person would omit at fit times to give his family a sober account of his relinquishing his place.

THOMAS HOBBES.

THOMAS HOBBES, the Philosopher of Malmesbury, born A.D. 1588, and died in 1660. He advocated in politics the right of arbitrary government, and in ethics supported the selfish system, in his great work the Leviathan, and his treatise on Human Nature,

DREAMING.

THE imaginations of them that sleep, are those we call dreams. And these also, as all other imaginations, have been before, either totally, or by parcels in the sense. And because in sense, the brain and nerves, which are the necessary organs of sense, are so benumbed in sleep, as not easily to be moved by the action of external objects, there can happen in sleep no imagination, and no dream but what proceeds from the agitation of the inward parts of man's body; which inward parts for the connection they have with the brain and other organs, when they be distempered, do keep the same in motion, whereby the imaginations there formerly made appear as if a man were waking, saving that the organs of sense being now benumbed, so as there is no new object which can master and obscure them with a more vigorous impression, a dream must needs be more clear, in this silence of sense, than are our waking thoughts.

And hence it cometh to pass, that it is a hard matter, and by many thought impossible to distinguish between sense and dreaming. For my part, when I consider, that in dreams I do not often or constantly think of the same persons, places, objects, and actions that I do waking, nor remember so long a train of coherent thoughts dreaming as at other times; and because I, waking, often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdity of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied, that being awake I know I dream not, though when I dream I think myself awake.

And seeing dreams are caused by the distemper of some of the inward parts of the body, divers distempers

must needs cause different dreams. And hence it is, that lying cold breedeth dreams of fear, and raiseth the thought and image of some fearful object (the motion from the brain to the inner parts, and from the inner parts to the brain being reciprocal); and that as anger causeth heat in some parts of the body when we are awake, so when we sleep the over-heating of the same parts causeth anger, and raiseth up in the brain the imagination of an enemy.

CONCEPTIONS OF THE INFINITE.

THERE is no other act of man's mind that I can remem ber naturally planted in him so as to need no other thing to the exercise of it, but to be born a man, and live with the use of his five senses.

These other faculties, of which I will speak by and by, and which seem proper to man only, are acquired and increased by study and industry; and of most men learned by instruction and discipline, and proceed all from the invention of speech and of words. For, besides sense and thoughts, and the train of thoughts, the mind of man has no other motion; though by the help of speech and method, the same faculties may be improved to such a height as to distinguish him from all living creatures. But whatsoever we think or imagine is finite. There is no idea or conception of anything we call infinite. No man can have in his mind an image of infinite magnitude, nor conceive infinite swiftness, infinite time, infinite force, or infinite power.

When we say anything is infinite, we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds of the things named; having no conception of the thing, but only of our own inability. And therefore the name of God is used, not to make us conceive him; for He is incomprehensible, and his greatness and power are inconceivable; but that we may honour Him.

Also, because, whatsoever, as I said before, we conceive, has been perceived first by sense either all at once, or by

parts; a man can have no thought representing anything not subject to sense. No man, therefore, can conceive anything, but he must conceive it in some place, and indued with some determinate magnitude, and which may be divided into parts; not that anything is all in this place, and all in another place at the same time; nor that two or more things can be in one and the same place at once; for none of these things ever have or can be incident to sense; but are absurd speeches taken upon credit without any signification at all, from deceived philosophers and deceived or deceiving schoolmen.

ROBERT BURTON.

ROBERT BURTON, author of the Anatomy of Melancholy, born in A.D. 1578, died in 1640.

THE POWER OF LOVE.

BOCACE hath a pleasant tale to this purpose, which he borrowed from the Greeks, and which Beroaldus hath turned into Latin, Bebelius into verse, of Cymon and Iphigenia. This Cymon was a fool; a proper man of person, and the governor of Cyprus' son, but a very ass; insomuch that his father, being ashamed of him, sent him to a farm-house he had in the country to be brought up. Where by chance, as his manner was, walking alone, he espied a gallant young gentlewoman named Iphigenia, a burgomaster's daughter of Cyprus, with her maid, by a brook side in a little thicket, fast asleep.

When Cymon saw her, he stood leaning on his staff, gaping on her immovable and in a maze; at last he fell so in love with the glorious object, that he began to rouse himself up, to bethink what he was, would needs follow her into the city, and for her sake began to be civil, to learn to sing and dance, to play on instruments, and get all those gentleman-like qualities and compliments in a short space, which his friends were most glad of.