in confinement stood on terms approaching defiance with his foes, he came to propose to him to risk his reputation, sacrifice his pride, and violate all sense and principle of honour, by the gratuitous baseness of taking false credit for a book, to the composition of which he is allowed to have been himself fully competent. Then, following the well-known course of literary impostures, he takes the time favourable to his purpose; and when it has become unlikely that he can be authoritatively contradicted, he reveals his pretended service, with cautious stipulations of profound and inviolable secrecy, of which the manifest purpose was to prevent the lying secret from reaching the ears of a few venerable persons, who would quickly have exposed the miserable scandal. And having done so, he pressed, with a most ferocious disregard of all decency, for a bishopric, which he obtained. The Earl of Clarendon, the King, and the Duke of York, could have no direct knowledge of the truth. The royal brothers, both alike indifferent to truth, were no friends to the real reputation of their father, and not displeased to see transferred from his memory, a book the substance of which was but reproach to their whole conduct and characters. Clarendon had always professed to believe the book to be the production of the King; and when he received the guilty revelation of the scheming and mitre-hunting Gauden, it was under the seal of the most inviolable secrecy-a secrecy which, we may observe, was in no way objectionable to any party then concerned. Against a testimony little removed from infamous, we should consider that of Levet, the king's affectionate and intelligent page, who never left him during the time assigned to the composition of this work, to be far more than equivalent. "I myself very often saw the king write that which is printed in that book, and did daily read the manuscript of his own hand, in many sheets of paper; and seldom that I read it but tears came from me: and I do truly believe that there is not a page in that book but what I have read, under the King's own hand, before it was printed." To this is added, from the same authority, the evidence of several persons-the printer, the corrector of the press, and the bookseller, who speak to the handwriting, as ascertained from other documents. These, with the assertions of Bishops Inson and Earle, we should consider as decisive in the scale of testimony. As for the host of indirect testimonies, which we cannot here notice on either side, we surmount the difficulties by considering them all as amounting to no calculable value. We know too well the various resources of such frauds, not to know the impossibility, after a little time of silence, of tracing the various trains of contrived accident and seemingly unthought-of confirmation which may be laid by one who is allowed to wait his time, and work in darkness for an end unforethought of but by himself. But if, instead of this digression, we were engaged in the full discussion of this vexata questio, we must confess that the internal probability has impressed us, some years ago, in an actual perusal of the sixwv Basin, with a force that rejects all doubt. The whole texture of the book is the most peculiarly characteristic emanation, bearing the very living stamp of the author's mind-a mind utterly beyond the reach of Gauden's coarse and low-toned spirit to conceive, and breathing the whole sentiment and affections suited to the character

and actual position of the royal sufferer, whose powers of composition are otherwise known to have been such, as renders unaccountable and absurd, the notion that he should have sullied the dignity of which he was so tenacious, so far as to be the accomplice of a superfluous imposture. We can here only add, what should not be omitted, that we must believe there could have been no contest upon such a question, but from the strong anxiety of a party, in everything to lower the character of Charles I.

When the Restoration, after an interval of ten years, once more revived the drooping and prostrate condition of the church in this kingdom, Margetson was appointed to the metropolitan see of Dublin, and was one of the eleven bishops consecrated by primate Bramhal, on the 27th January 1660, as mentioned in the life of that prelate. In 1662, he had occasion to enforce the principle of pulpit-jurisdiction, which has been warmly canvassed in our own times, for which reason we must here decline entering into the controversy, which would lead us far into the discussion of principles more applicable to the church of Ireland in its present state, than to the age of bishop Margetson. We may but observe, that in our own times the reasons for enforcing that degree of episcopal authority which is affirmed in the 28th and 29th of our canons, has been rendered apparent enough by cases in which infidelity has contrived to find its way into the pulpit; while the limitation of that jurisdiction which we think equally deducible from those canons, seems not to be altogether superfluous when the political character of the times must always expose us to the risk of bishops who may feel more inclined to repress than to promote the spiritual advance of the church.

During the short interval of Margetson's tenure of the see of Dublin, his liberality was shown in ample contributions to the repair of the two cathedrals. But on Bramhal's death in 1663, he was by the advice of that able and sagacious prelate, translated to Armagh; and shortly afterwards he was appointed vice-chancellor of the university.

It is unnecessary here to pursue a career only marked by the same course of public events which we have already had to repeat. Margetson died in 1678, with the praise of all good men; as one who had discharged the important duties of his high office, with that rare combination of strictness and charity, which won for him from his clergy that respect tempered by love, which belongs to the parental relation. In him, severity when needful came so softened by affectionate regret, that it was felt by the person on whom it fell, to come from the office and not from the man, and to bear the sanctity of just authority without any alloy of anger. He was not less mild and paternal in the rule of the church, than firm and uncompromising in her defence, and in the maintenance of her interests and lawful rights, never failing either in the council or in the parliament to advocate and maintain them under all the varied assaults of that age of trial and emergency.

He was interred in Christ church.

JAMES USHER, PRIMATE OF IRELAND.

BORN A. D. 1580.-DIED A. D. 1656.

THE family of Primate Usher is traced from a person who came over to Ireland with King John. His name was Nevil, but (after the fashion of the time), he received the name of Usher, from the office he held under the king. This appellation was transmitted through a long line of Irish descendants. Of these, in the 17th century, two rose to the highest dignity in the Irish church. The first, Henry, may be noticed for the honour of having been instrumental in the founding of Trinity college. Arnold Usher, a brother of this prelate, and one of the six clerks in the Irish chancery, married a daughter of Mr. James Stanihurst, a master in chancery, recorder of Dublin, and speaker in three parliaments, father to the learned person noticed in a previous memoir. and by this marriage was father to the most illustrious scholar, prelate, and church historian of his age.

From these parents, James Usher was born in Dublin, in 1580. In his early infancy he had the good fortune to be brought up by two aunts, who being blind from their youth, were domesticated in his father's house. Shut out by their infirmity from the excitements and vanities of the world, they had also escaped its corruptions, and found their refuge and consolation in the sequestered ways of religion: and their blindness was enlightened by the purer inward light which is derived from divine truth. From such teachers, the infancy of Usher was from the earliest dawn of childish thought, nurtured in holy knowledge and love: and habits as well as tastes were imparted, which now may appear to have been the providential, as they surely were the appropriate, training for a high and responsible calling in times of great trial. The soil was good ground in every respect: young Usher was as apt to learn as he was afterwards to teach: he showed a quiet, submissive and studious disposition, a retentive memory and quick apprehension, with a peculiar aptitude to receive religious impressions. Nor can we have any doubt in tracing to these peculiar and most interesting circumstances, much of the affecting and impressive piety which, at a remote period of his afterlife, sustained him in so many and such great trials and adversities.

Such a childhood and such a life, indeed, offer the truest illustrations of the wisdom of the inspired precept, "Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth," &c.; for, omitting the trite truths of the power and permanence of youthful habits, and the obvious advantage of pre-occupying the heart with the impressions which are best, and least found in the ways of life, there is a natural return of the affections to the conversation of early years, which increases, the more man finds disappointment in the attractions of life. And it is a happy coincidence when this bright spot in the retrospect is a hallowed spot. It is one way of converting the natural affections into alliance with that spirit, against which our earthly nature is too much at war; and it is a blessed thing, if in a world all the hopes and desires of which