had given many warnings, but could get nobody to liften to or believe her. (From the Latin of De Sapientia Veterum, 1609.) CHILDREN. The joys of parents are fecret, and fo are their griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one, nor they will not utter the other. Children fweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter. They increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death. The perpetuity by generation is common to beafts; but memory, merit, and noble works are proper to men. (Essays, 1625, vii.) He that hath wife and children hath given hoftages to Fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. (Ibid., viii.) THE CHILDLESS. Childlefs fhe was indeed, and left no iffue of her own—a thing which has happened alfo to the moft fortunate perfons, as Alexander the Great, Julius Cæfar, Trajan, and others, and which has always been a moot point and argued on both fides ; fome taking it for a diminution of felicity, for that to be happy both in the individual self and in the propagation of the kind would be a bleffing above the condition of humanity; others regarding it as the crown and confummation of felicity, because that happiness only can be accounted perfect over which fortune has no further power, which cannot be where is pofterity. (From the Latin of The Fortunate Memory of Elizabeth, Queen of England.) PRIVILEGE OF CLERGY. The King began also then (4 H. VII., c. 13), as well in wisdom as in justice, to pare a little the privilege of clergy, or would not be chofen but for fame and opinion, yet it followeth not that the chief motive of the election should not be real and for itfelf; for fame may be only caufa impulfiva, and not caufa conftituens or efficiens. As if there were two horfes, and the one would do better without the fpurs than the other but again, the other with the fpurs would far exceed the doing of the former, giving him the spurs alfo, yet the latter will be judged to be the better horse. And the form as to fay, Tufh! the life of thy horfe is but in its fpur!' will not serve as to a wife judgment: for fince the ordinary inftrument of horsemanship is the spur, and that it is no manner of impediment nor burden, the horfe is not to be accounted the lefs of which will not do well without the spur, but rather the other is to be reckoned a delicacy than a virtue. So glory and honour are the spurs of virtue : and although virtue would languish without them, yet fince they be always at hand to attend virtue, virtue is not to be faid the lefs chofen for itself because it needeth the fpur of fame and reputation and therefore that pofition, nota ejus quod propter opinionem et non propter veritatem eligitur, hæc eft; quod quis, si clam putaret fore, facturus non effet, is reprehended. (No. III.) 2. That course which keeps the matter in a man's power is good; that which leads him without retreat is bad for to have no means of retreating is to be in a fort powerlefs, and power is a good thing.' Hereof Æsop framed the fable of the two frogs that confulted together in the time of drought (when many plashes that they had repaired to were dry). What was to be done? And the one propounded to go down into a deep well, because it was like the water would not fail there; but the other anfwered, Yea, but if it do fail, how fhall we get up again?' And the reason is, that human actions are so uncertain and fubject to perils as that feemeth the beft courfe which hath moft paffages out of it. (No. IV.) 3. From having fomething to having nothing is a greater step than from having more to having lefs; and, again, from having nothing to having fomething is a greater ftep than from having lefs to having more.' It is a pofition in the mathematics that there is no proportion between fomething and nothing, therefore the degree of nullity and quiddity or act feemeth larger than the degrees of increafe and decreafe; as to a monoculus it is more to lofe one eye than to a man that hath two eyes. So if one has loft divers children it is more grief to him to lose the last than all the reft, because he is fpes gregis. And therefore Sibylla, when he brought her three books and had burned two, did double the whole price of both the other, because the burning of that had been gradus privationis, and not diminutionis. (No. X.) ENCLOSURE OF COMMONS, Another statute was made [1489-90] of fingular policy, for the population apparently [the common people |