thoughts, is committed the work of making clear and indisputable the law that right must be maintained at all hazards, and that wrong must at all sacrifice be withstood.

And to our rulers let this plain remonstrance from a living poet be addressed :

O statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul
Of Europe. Keep our noble England whole,
And save the one true seed of freedom sown
Betwixt a people and their ancient throne;
That sober freedom out of which there springs
Our loyal passion for our temperate kings;
For, saving that, ye help to save mankind,
Till public wrong be crumbled into dust,
And drill the raw world for the march of mind,
Till crowds at length be sane, and crowns be just;
But wink no more in slothful overtrust!*

* Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington.'

R. A. S. A.

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.

IR PHILIP SIDNEY was born eight years after Lord seven before Bacon, and ten before Shakespeare, on the 29th of September, 1554, at Penshurst, on the river Medway, the seat of the Sidneys. He was christened Philip, after his god-. father, Philip of Spain, the husband of Mary, who had arrived in England in the previous July, and had interested himself to save many of the Dudleys from the scaffold-nearly all of whom were implicated in the tragic adventures of Lady Jane Grey. Sidney's mother was a daughter of Northumberland. All the family of the Sidneys were in mourning when England's best hero was born. The oak which was planted at Sidney's birth still stands in the park of Penshurst: it is called the 'Bear's Oak,' and the seams and scars on its huge bole and gnarled arms show evidence of its long combat with the storms of three hundred winters. Both Ben Jonson and Waller have put it into verse:—

That taller tree that of a nut was set

At his great birth where all the Muses met.*

Go, boy, and carve this passion on the bark
Of yonder tree, which stands the sacred mark
Of noble Sidney's birth.t

Of his family, Sidney, in a well-known reply to a virulent attack on Leicester, wrote as follows:

I am a Dudlei in blood, that duke's (Northumberland's) daughter's son; and do acknowledge, though in all truth I may justly affirm that I am by my father's syde of ancient and alwaies well-esteemed and wel-matched gentry; yet I do acknowledge, I sai, that my chiefest honor is to be a Dudlei; and truli I am glad to have caws to set forth the nobility of that blood whereof I am descended, which but upon so just a cause without vain glori could not have been uttered.

Ben Jonson's Forest.

† Waller, at Penshurst.

By his mother, Lady Mary Dudley, daughter of John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, he could count among his ancestors the Lisles, who led their men-at-arms and archers into the thick at Cressy; Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, Regent of France; the great Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury; the Greys, created Lords L'Isle, the heirs of the former L'Isles and the Berkeleys. By intermarriage with the Brandons, the Sidneys claimed from the Conqueror. They themselves came from Anjou with Henry II., and received the grant of a manor, to be held by service of a knight's fee. Sir William Sidney, Philip's grandfather, figured prominently in the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and was a favourite with Henry VIII. At the death of that monarch he was left tutor and Chamberlain of the Household to Edward VI. Sir Henry Sidney, his son, was consequently brought up with Edward VI.

Amid this large array of noble ancestry, death by the axe and the sword was an hereditary complaint: few died in their beds; which indeed was an unnatural end in those days of good knights and turbulent citizens. One of the Lisles was hung, drawn, and quartered by Edward II. at Pontefract another was knocked on the head by Lord Berkeley in a quarrel about lands.* No reader of Shakespeare is ignorant how the great Talbot and his son died. Edmund Dudley, Sidney's great-grandfather, had the talent, says Bacon, a very useful one, of putting hateful deeds into good words, and was of the unfortunate partnership of Empson and Dudley; and when John Dudley, his son, the Duke of Northumberland, brought Lady Jane Grey to the scaffold, two Dudleys were beheaded, and the others had some difficulty in keeping their heads on their shoulders. For the rest, the most of them died in a pious frame of mind. Few but left their souls by will to Almighty God, to our Lady Saint Mary, and to all the saints in heaven, and proper legacies to Mother Church; either an endowment for a devout priest to sing for their souls, or a pair of vestments, or a gilt cross or chalice; † and these gifts-dying, as they did, seised of innumerable manors, lordships, and lands, granted to them by the kings of England, as attainders from time to time fell in-they could very well afford to make.

Sir Henry Sidney, the father of Philip, was a very re

*This quarrel caused the longest Chancery suit on record; it lasted for seven generations, from 3 Hen. V. 1415, to 2 James I. 1604 (189 years); and was then settled by a compromise between Lord Berkeley and Sir Robert Sidney, Sir Philip's brother. The Chancery Bar should raise a monument to the founders of this suit.

Frances, daughter of Sir William Sidney, married Thomas Ratcliff, Earl of Sussex, and was the foundress of Sidney-Sussex Hall, Cambridge.

markable man, and well deserves a place in our venerationamidst those severe, resolute, and dexterous statesmen who were the servants of Elizabeth. A favoured companion, and often bedfellow, we are told, of Edward VI. in his boyhood, when he came to man's estate he was made one of the four gentlemen of the bedchamber; and, Holinshed tells us, his wit, gallant bearing, and manly aspect distinguished him as much as the affection of the young king, who died in his arms at Greenwich. He was an ambassador, like his son Philip, at twenty-one. He escaped the disgrace of the Dudleys, and became Lord Deputy in Wales, and afterwards in Ireland. The government of the latter country was then no sinecure, and was conferred by the actual livery of a sword into the hands of the Deputy. Soon after Sir Henry's arrival in Ireland, the noble Walter, Earl of Essex, who for years had devoted his life, energy, and fortune to the pacification of Ulster, died of a broken heart. Sir Henry Sidney found Ireland in a state of desolation: the intrigues of the Spaniards and Jesuits excited everywhere disorder; the feuds of Ormond and Desmond devastating the whole country. The English Pale itself overrun by the gentlemen' of the O'Neals, O'Reillies, and O'Molloys, and their gallowglasses, kerns, and 'loose rascals.' Villages and towns in ruins; churches sacked or burnt. Sometimes in his progresses he came upon towns reduced to three or four inhabitants, and those wanting to give up the keys and be off. On many occasions he describes in his reports scenes of horror and massacre such as we might expect on the border lands of the Hurons or Iroquois. The charred and smoking remnants of villages drenched with blood, and strewn with corpses-children seen to stir in the bodies of their murdered mothers. But Sir Henry Sidney was a wise, bold, and indefatigable governor. He killed James MacConnell, a Scottish ally of the rebels, with his own hand. Shane O'Neal's head he stuck upon the tower of Dublin Castle. He made everywhere bridges, castles, and roads; re-fortified decayed towns; performed long and painful journeys continually throughout the whole country; he had the map of the whole island, with its creeks, promontories, mountains, in his head; did his utmost to secure to every man his own, and strike terror among the savage hordes ever hovering over the farmer's crops and cattle; he tried to civilize the natives, high and low. He often, says Collins, invited gentlemen of the ancient Irish, and reclaimed them to civility, comeliness in habit, and cleanliness in diet. In his travels through the country he was often in danger; but his blithe and manly courage always raised the spirits of his followers with a cheer

ing address of 'Good friends,' and 'Loving companions.' He was a good speaker and writer, well read, cheerful, affable, kind, and beloved. Strong in soul and body, he could wear out his attendants in travel, sleeping six hours a day. Truthful in word and deed, this phrase stamps the man, 'My word is my worst, and so they shall find it.' The people were attached to his government, and his memory was grateful after him. He always sought and fostered science and learning, and spent his youth, life, health, and much of his patrimony in the service of his country.

He was made a Knight of the Garter, and died at Ludlow a few months before his beloved Philip, on the 5th of May, 1586, aged 57. The queen ordered Garter King-at-arms to arrange the funeral. His body was laid out in state in Worcester Cathedral; and then, on a car covered with black velvet and escutcheons, preceded by heralds, he was brought to Penshurst and there interred by a goodly train of lords, knights, gentlemen, and ladies.

Some letters are extant to his sons, which show what a depth of paternal and playful affection existed in this wise and good statesman and soldier.

To his son Robert while at the University of Strasburg:

Our Lord bless you, my sweet boy,-Perge, Perge! my sweet Robin, in the filial fear of God, and in the loving direction of your most loving brother.

I find by Harry White [an attendant taking charge of Robert] that all your money is gone, which with some wonder displeaseth me; and if you cannot frame your charges according to that proportion I have appointed you, I must and will send for you home. [He sends, however, an order for 100l., which, he says, is 20l. more than I promised you]; and thus I look and order that it shall serve you till the last of March, 1580. Assure yourself I will not enlarge one groat thereof, therefore look well to your charges. Pray daily; speak no thing but truly; do no dishonest thing for any respect. Love Mr. Languet with reverence, unto whom in most hearty manner commend me; and to Doctor Lubetyus and Mr. Doctor Sturmius.

If you will follow my counsel you shall be my sweet boy.
Your loving father
HENRY SYDNEY.

After some advice to Robert in another letter, he says

But why do I blunder at these things? Follow the direction of your most loving brother, who in loving you is comparable with me, or exceedeth me. Imitate his virtues, studies, and actions; he is a rare ornament of this age, the very formular that all well-disposed young of our court do form also their manner and life by. In truth, I speak it without flattery of him or of myself, he hath the most rare virtues that ever I found in any man.