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fatigues of public engagements, he experienced a never-failing source of gratification in the recreation of a garden. Upon this subject, he thus expresses his sentiments in an address to his son:

"Gardens have charms indeed, that to me exceed all the pleasures of life. It was a garden, that was the earthly paradise of our first parents in the state of innocence. It was in a garden that Epicurus taught his philosophy, who is said to have understood true pleasure the best of any man. But to enlarge on this subject would seem rather poetical and romantic, than suitable to the subject I am treating of. Suffice it to say, that when you grow into years, when you begin to exercise the mind more than the body, as men, before they grow old, always do, then you will find the help of it to contemplation: then the walks, the solitude, the trees, the plants, the birds, the open air, all fellow-creatures of yours, made together with you for his pleasure that is the Author of all things, will please you indeed; when especially the innocence, calmness, and serenity of your thoughts make you fit for so divine and ravishing an exercise* ”

In the privacy of this retirement, he rendered himself no unuseful member of society, by a faithful administration of justice. The motto of his family had long been, Magistratus indicat

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virum*. In the discharge of the office of a magistrate he formed himself upon the model of his instructions to his son, by strictly punishing vice and all notorious disturbers of the peace, by carefully distinguishing between the malevolence of frivolous prosecution and the effrontery of wicked offenders. If he had acted otherwise, he would have become, in his own opinion, the executioner of the iniquitous designs of bad men; an employment, which every person of worth will carefully avoid. As a magistrate and an arbitrator of justice and differences, he permitted neither application to prepossess him, nor any sinister end to incline him to do wrong, no not even the poverty of one of the parties; for that is sometimes a fault in good men, to incline to the cause of the poor against justice, as others do to the side of the rich for advantage.

Though in an almost uninterrupted state of bad health, which he attributed to excess of exercise in his youth, he uniformly enjoyed a tranquillity and composure of mind, the result of those habits of temperance in which he always persevered. He had no curiosity in his appetite for rarities in meat and drink. "The plough, the garden, and the dairy, with a cook of forty shillings a year, would provide all that he wished for." When he presided at his table, he was

Αρχη δεικνύει τον ανδρα. Aristot.

hospitable, but not luxurious; encouraging the learned and the good, but banishing with indignation the flatterer, the calumniator, and the ministers of unlawful pleasures. He seems, however, to have extended his ideas of temperance too far, when he intimates his desire of confining himself to a vegetable diet. "The herds and flocks," he says, "should live secure for me: no fish nor feathered fowl should lose it's life to support me: I would have nature undisturbed in the order and course, that Providence hath appointed it*"

When he recommends the duty of sobriety, he enforces the recommendation by his own resolution : "Wine shall never dispossess my reason of it's dwelling, assigned it by God who gave it me. I will never expose myself to his anger, nor to a sober man's scorn upon that account. As I am a man, I know I am of the most excellent and perfect rank of creatures that this little earth is replenished with, and I will endeavour not to degrade myself into an equality with such as we esteem most sordid†.”

Of pride he entertained the most sovereign contempt, while in his own demeanour he exhibited an amiable pattern of a meek and humble spirit. He has judiciously observed, that a man of birth and quality has this peculiar advantage;

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as he needs not the subterfuge of pride to procure him esteem and respect, so does humility and courtesy doubly add to the lustre of his birth and race.'

Next to his friends, in the selection of whom he was more than commonly nice and exact, his books were his best and most faithful companions, and one of the greatest comforts of his life. And here a pleasing domestic scene presents itself to our view. His eldest son, standing near him while he is writing in his library, is thus animated to the attainment of that knowledge which is treasured up in the volumes of ancient and modern literature. "What a pleasure is it one day to be a judge of the reasonableness and affection of what I am doing, and at the same time seeing round me whatever the world has produced most worth knowing! When I have at hand all that philosophers, divines, historians, poets, mathematicians, architects, &c. understood, digested into the best method and order, communicative of whatever I am most desirous to know without any constraint upon me, ready to be laid by without offence when weary of them, and to be resumed without ceremony: what would a man give for so easy a friend? And here And here you have collected together the most excellent of all mortals in all all ages, of all countries, without being troubled with either their impertinence, insolence, affectation, moroseness, or pride, the common failings

of knowing great and learned men.

But as the use of well-chosen books is the most excellent benefit of any thing that it hath pleased God to bestow upon the children of men, so an ill choice of them is, in the opposite extreme, the most pernicious mischief that can be. Good books instruct us in our duty toward God, toward man, and to ourselves: they form the mind to just and proper thoughts, make us good servants to God, good subjects, and useful to the state both as governors and servants, and whatever else relates to the common advantages of life: ill ones deprave the mind, and have in all those respects a quite contrary effect"-He then proceeds, with great diffidence and modesty, to recommend to his son those books which he thought most worthy of his perusal, and most useful to him in that elevated station which he was to fill in the world.

On the twenty-eighth of May, 1696, he was advanced to the dignities of Viscount and Baron, by the style and title of Viscount Lonsdale, and Baron Lowther.

In 1699, he was made Lord Privy Seal and when through ill health he was obliged to retire from business, the King would not permit him to resign the seal, but ordered him to take it

VOL. II.

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