though he went to bed pretty late, yet in the summer he would rise by five, and in winter by six o'clock in the morning; his appetite was always suited to his diet; he fed heartily on plain, wholesome meat without sauce, and was better pleased with a few dishes than a variety. He did not like tedious meals, and it was a weariness to him to sit long at table. In his disposition he was courteous and affable, and extremely obliging to all whom he conversed with; and though he could be angry and rebuke sharply when religion or virtue were concerned, yet he was not easily provoked to passion, and rarely for small matters, such as the neglect of servants, or worldly disappointments. The powers of his mind were very strong, and the extent of his learning prodigious; so that his advice and correspondence were courted by men of erudition in all parts of the world. His humility and his piety were equally conspicuous with his talents; yet his religion was not of that gloomy and forbidding cast which was too prevalent in the age in which he lived. He loved pleasant conversation and innocent mirth, often telling stories, or relating the wise or witty sayings of other men, or such things as had occurred to his own observation; so that his company was always agreeable, and for the most part instructive: but still he would conform himself to the genius, and improvements of those he conversed with; for as with scholars he would discourse of subjects of learning, so could he condescend to those of meaner capacities. But he could not endure any conversation which was trifling, or in which the charac ters of absent persons were treated with ridicule and severity.

"I remember once," says his biographer," that when there happened some discourse at table from persons of quality that did not please him; he said nothing then, seeming not to hear them; but after dinner when I waited on him in his chamber, he looked very melancholy, and on my asking the cause, " It is a sad thing," says he, "to be forced to put one's foot under another's table, and not only to have all sorts of company put upon him, but also to be obliged to hear their follies, and neither to be able to quit their company, nor to reprove their intemperate speeches."

He was famous as a preacher, and he usually delivered his sermons extempore, a practice common in his time, but whether the most advisable is a question on which there will be different opinions, and on each side cogent arguments. A man of such a powerful and well-stored mind as Usher's, could not fail to be heard with attention and profit; but when men of superficial knowledge and of ardent imaginations adopt this practice, they lose the advantage to be derived from preparatory study, and can contribute but little to the edification of those who hear them. They may declaim with confidence and with fluency, and thereby attract a numerous audience; but the ends of religious instruction will not be answered where the teacher trusts to his present elocution, and the hearers attend only to be pleased.

Archbishop Usher's method of preaching was excellent, and had a great effect; but the same method may be made use of to good VOL. I.No. I.

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purpose by those who take the laudable pains of composing their sermons. In the words of his biographer, " as he was an excellent textuary, so it was his custom to run through all the parallel places, that concerned the subject on which he treated; and paraphrase and illustrate them as they referred to each other, and their particular contexts; he himself, as he past on, turning his bible from place to place, and giving his auditory time to do the like: whereby, as he rendered his preaching extremely easy to himself, so it became no less beneficial to his auditors, acquainting them with the Holy Scriptures, and enabling them to recur to the proofs he cited, by which the memory was very much helped to recover the series of what was discoursed upon from them: he never cared to tire his auditory with the length of his sermon, knowing well, that as the satisfaction in hearing decreases, so does the attention also, and people instead of minding what is said, only listen when there is likely to be an end. And to let you see," says the same writer," how strictly he endeavoured to keep this rule, I shall give you this one instance; about a year before he died, when he had left off preaching constantly, he was importuned by the Countess of Peterborough, and some other persons of quality, to give them a sermon at St. Martin's church; the lord primate complied with their desires, and preached a sermon highly satisfactory to his auditory; but after a pretty while the bishop happening to look on the hour glass, which stood from the light, and through the weakness and deficiency of his sight, mistaking it to be out, when indeed it was not, he concluded, telling them, since the time was past he would leave the rest he had to say on that subject to another opportunity, (if God should please to grant it him,) of speaking again to them in that place; but the congregation finding out my lord's mistake, and that there was some of the hour yet to come, and not knowing whether they might ever have the like happiness of hearing him again, made signs to the reader, to let him know that the glass being not run out, they earnestly desired he would make an end of all he intended to have spoken; which the bishop received very kindly, and reassuming his discourse where he had broken off, concluded with an exhortation full of heavenly matter for almost half an hour; the whole auditory being so much moved therewith that none went out of the church until he had finished his sermon."

An hour was the general limits to which a sermon was confined in those times, and so continued till the close of the century, and for this purpose an hour glass was placed either on the side of the pulpit, or on a stand in front of it. In some churches of the metropolis these reliques of our ancestor's patience and piety still remain; but the sermons have for the most part dwindled into about a quarter of the period.*

* A droll story is told of Daniel Burgess, the celebrated nonconformist preacher at the beginning of the last century. He was famous for the length of his pulpit harangues, and the quaintness of his illustrations. One time he was discoursing with

The archbishop was very careful what persons he ordained for the ministry, both with regard to their characters and their qualifications. "I never (says the writer from whose entertaining narrative most of this article is taken,) heard that he ordained more than one person, who was not sufficiently qualified in respect of learning, and this was in so extraordinary a case, that I think it will not be amiss to give you a short account of it; there was a certain English mechanick living in the lord primate's diocese, who constantly frequented the publick service of the church; and attained to a competent knowledge in the scriptures, and gave himself to read what books of practical divinity he could get, and was reputed among his neighbours and protestants thereabouts, a very honest and pious man; this person applied himself to the lord primate, and told him, that he had an earnest desire to be admitted to the ministry; but the bishop refused him, advising him to go home, and follow his calling, and pray to God to remove this temptation; yet after some time, he returns again, renewing his request, saying, he could not be at rest in his mind, but that his desires toward that calling increased more and more; whereupon the primate discoursed with him, and found upon examination, that he gave a very good account of his faith and knowledge in all the main points of religion. Then the bishop questioned him further, if he could speak Irish, for if not his preaching would be of little use in a country where the greatest part of the people understood no English. The man replied that he did not understand Irish, but if his lordship thought fit he would endeavour to learn it, which he bade him do, and as soon as he had attained the language to come again, which he did about twelve months after, telling my lord that he could now speak Irish tolerably well; on which the bishop examined him, and finding that he spake truth, he ordained him, being satisfied that such a man was able to do. more good than if he had Latin without any Irish at all; nor was he deceived in his expectations, for this man, as soon as he had a cure, employed his talent diligently and faithfully, and proved very successful in converting many of the Irish papists to our church, and continued labouring in that work till the rebellion and massacre, wherein he hardly escaped with his life."

The works of archbishop Usher are too many to be enumerated in this place. The most important, and the best known, are his "Annals of the Old and New Testament," and the "Chronologia Sacra," both in folio.

His likeness was very hard to take, whence it is, that the engraved portraits of him are surprisingly dissimilar. The best is that by Vertue, taken from a picture painted by Sir Peter Lely.

great vehemence against the sin of drunkenness, on which subject having exhausted the usual time, he turned the hour glass, and said, "Brethren, I have somewhat more to say on the nature and consequences of drunkenness, so let's have the other glass and then."

LIFE OF FENELON.

The splendid actions, which rivet the attention of the many on the tale of the hero, and the surprising incidents, by which the mind is hurried along with the story of the adventurer, seldom occur in the history of an author. It is to the thinking and contemplative, accordingly, to those who have been delighted, instructed, or bettered by their writings, that the biography of the learned affords most pleasure. Our favourite author we consider as our friend; and the pleasure which we derive from an account of his life, results from the gratification of a curiosity, which is grafted on affection, esteem, or gratitude. In the reflections which occur in his works, we mark, or think we mark, the characters of that mind from which they proceeded. By this, however, our curiosity is excited, rather than gratified. We are anxious to discover how far the author and the man coincided.

In the works of no author are the principles of the heart from which they flowed more justly unfolded, than in those of François Salignac de la Motte Fenelon. He was the son of Pons de Salignac, Marquis de Fenelon, and Louise de la Cropte, sister of the Marquis de St. Arbre; and was born on the 6th day of August, 1651, in the castle of Fenelon, in Perigord.*

Remote from those sources of corruption, where, too frequently, the tender mind contracts an incurable bias to vice, he spent the first twelve years of his life at his father's seat in the country. Here was formed that heart, which, to be loved, needs only to be known; and here was fostered that genius, whose praise will be ever associated with his name.

Of the early part of Fenelon's life, little is known; and then, indeed, little any way remarkable could occur. At twelve years of age, he was sent to the university of Cahors, to begin his studies; and, afterwards, from thence to Paris, to finish his education, under the care of his uncle Antoine Marquis de Fenelon, lieutenant in the king's army. This nobleman was possessed of great understanding, exemplary piety, and signal bravery.† Under such an

The ancestry of our author has been long distinguished for wealth and honour; and his own name is said to be "the ninth that has reflected literary honour on the house of Salignac." The family of Salignac, or Salagnac, was, in the thirteenth century, possessed of all the lands of that name, comprehending eighteen parishes in Perigord. The Gallia Christiana of 1720, says of Helias de Salignac, who was made Archbishop of Bourdeaux, in 1361, Hic Archiepiscopus cognominabatur de Salignac, que gens, in pago Petrogoriensi, est antiquissima et nobilissima. Raymond de Salignac was lord of Salignac, or Salagnac; and seems to have been the first who added to these lands, those of La Mothe, or Motte Fenelon. From this Raymond, who was still living in 1444, besides two branches, long extinct, is descended that branch to which the subject of these memoirs belonged.

Ramsay's Life of Fenelon, p. 9. edit. Lond. 1723.

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uncle, in whom the father still lived, the talents of the young nelon expanded, and were matured; and with such an example of every virtue, daily exhibited before him, his heart was enamoured of goodness.

At Paris, in the nineteenth year of his age, the Abbé de Fenelon preached with general applause. What the worthy Marquis felt on this occasion, the fond and virtuous parent may conceive; but even he could not describe. The affection of this good man, however, was tempered with prudence; and his piety with discernment. To secure his youthful charge against the dangerous effects of applause on inexperience, his uncle induced the Abbé de Fenelon to observe, for several years, that silence in publick, which might be accompanied with improvement in private. Under M. Tronson, superiour of the seminary of St. Sulpicius, he applied, with redoubled vigour, to the cultivation and improvement of his intellectual and moral powers. At the age of twenty-four, he entered into holy orders. "He assisted," says his friend and biographer, in the most laborious parochial duties, and thought nothing below him in a ministry, where the lowest office is a dignity too great for man."

At the age of twenty-seven, he was chosen by M. de Harlay, archbishop of Paris, to be superiour to a community of women, who had lately been gained over from the Protestant to the Catholick faith. The manner in which he conducted himself in this situation, procured him a recommendation to the king, by whom he was nominated to conduct a mission to the coast of Saintonge, and particularly to the country of Aunis, for the conversion, (as Roman Catholicks term it,) of the Protestants.

It is well known, that, banishing that philanthropy, which, as brethren, every man owes to another; refusing that liberty of inquiry, which is every man's natural right, and extinguishing that charity, which is the distinguishing characteristick, and glory of the Christian name; the church of Rome has often sent forth her missionaries, armed with the terrours of the sword, and the hor rours of devastation, under pretence of disseminating the gospel of peace. Such was the barbarous nature of that mission, or rather military expedition, which Louis XIV. intended Fenelon to conduct.

In youth, the ardour of enterprise is not often tempered with wisdom, and that which is generally styled wisdom, when attained, is seldom any other thing than a well-regulated self-love; and where the favour of the great, the road to promotion in life, is to be acquired, how often do we see the decision of judgment, inAuenced by the largess of selfishness! Rejecting with horrour the king's offer, in the circumstances proposed, the Abbé de Fenelon declared, that, were the mission to be conducted with troops, he abandoned it for ever; but, that, if allowed to conduct it in his own