last end be like unto his." Diverging then to
Balaam and his ass, he touches on the objection
often made against preachers, that their
works do not square with their teaching.
"Balaam turned a Blesser? how many
queasie Stomackes are there that will loathe
the daintiest meats, if they be served in a
sluttish dish .... Sometimes evill Men out
of the evill Shop of their mouth utter good
Wares. Are there not many (Preachers)
who like "Watermen looke one way and row
the other way—looke towards Heaven and
row with all their strengthe to Hell! . . . .
God knocketh at the hearts of all either by
a softer knock—the inward motions of his
Spirit, or by a lowder knock, with the Rod of
his Afflictions. And if they will give care,
and albeit they cannot open the door, yet
give a plucke at the bolt, or a lift at the
latch, God will give them strength to open
it."

Concerning the excellence of meditating
frequently on our deaths, Mr. Featley has
some good things to tell—though, perhaps, a
little too forcible in some of his expressions.
"It killeth Sin in us, or much diminisheth
the feare of Death. As the stroaking of a
Dead Hand on the Belly cureth a Tympanie,
and as the ashes of a viper applied to the
part that is stung, draws the venome out of
it, so of the ashes of a sinner we may make
a soveraigne Salve against Sin, after this
manner. Art thou Narcissus or Nireus
enamoured with thine owne Beauty? take of
the ashes of a beautifull person, now rotten
in the Grave, and lay them to thy heart and
say: Such as these stinking Ashes and foule
Earth are, I shall be! Such Thoughts as
these are excellent Sawces to season the
pleasures of life, that we surfeit not of
them." There is need of a commentary and
notes to Mr. Featley's text, to let us into the
secret of what was a Tympanie—and what
potency the Mortmain or Dead Hand could
have in its cure. The nostrum of the Viper's
ashes savours strongly of the old Hydrophobian
remedy; namely, taking a hair of the
dog that gave the bite. The Dead Hand,
too, has taken many healing and superstitious
shapes of which not the least terrible
was the fearful Hand of Glory. The Reverend
Dan Featley has a stroke en passant
at suicides which is ingeniously put. Says
he: "they ease the Devill of the paines to
fetch them away—for they fetch their fees
themselves, and leape into the Pit of
Destruction."

At the Funeral of the Right Honourable
and most Excellent Lady, the Lady Elizabeth
Capell, Dowager, Mr. Edmund Barber,
late Chaplain to Her Honour, pronounced
a discourse which is curious as introducing
a term with which our English Charivari
has of late been very merry. Said Mr.
Edmund Barber, in his exordium: "I shall
begin with the first of them, the Party
making the requests," alluding to the
deceased Lady. "Her immediate Father," we
are told, "was that accomplished and
generous Person, Sir Charles Morisin." All
this gentleman's anxiety was for the fitting
establishment of his children, and especially
to "find a fit and proper Husband for Her,
and He (a Person not to be named without
a Preface of Honor and Reverence!)
the truly Noble and Honorable Arthur
Capell!" Having thus bowed low to this
Person of Quality, Mr. Barber proceeds to
enter minutely into the life and actions of
his defunct Patroness—for many pages
together. Making all allowance for the
partiality which Mr. Barber's late office may
be supposed to have inspired, the Lady
Elizabeth Capell must indeed have been a
light before her generation, and have
been adorned with many virtues. Even
as Mr. Barber sarcastically adds, "her
Closet was not, as too many Ladies are, an
Exchange of curious Pictures, and of rare
and costly Jewels—but a private Oratory as
it were: "winding all up with this ingenious
figure: "Her life, as to outward
Providence, was not unlike Joseph's party-
coloured Garment, a Coat of divers colours.
God Almighty thinking it beat to Sawce her
Passover with Sower tarts."

"Such," says Doctor Megott, in the year
sixteen hundred and seventy—finishing the
deceased's funeral praises with a line from
Virgil—"Such was this worthy Person;
who on the twenty-eighth of May last past,
was taken suddenly and fatally! in a manner
Quantum mutatus ab illo! How strange
was this! That Head which was the tenacious
receptacle of so much usefull Learning,
is now the stupefied seat of a Disease! Those
Eyes which had read through so many sorts
of Bookes cannot now by any means be kept
open. That Tongue which dropped things
sweeter than the Honeycomb, cannot now
pronounce an ordinary sentence! That
Person whom so many of all degrees and
Ranks of People so rejoiced to see, is now
become a sad and doleful Spectacle." There
is a certain simplicity about these phrases
sounding racily in our ears—to say nothing
of the quaint Bathos conveyed in the "eyes
which cannot now by any means be kept
open," and the sudden descent from the
sweetness of the Honeycomb to utter inability
to "pronounce an ordinary sentence."
Thus is "Our Friend" in Doctor Megott's
hands, made to point a moral—being dwelt
upon affectionately in Poor Yorick! fashion.

Another "valiant woman," who must have
been the very jewel of her sex, and stored
abundantly with all "vertues," passed away
some time near the close of the seventeenth
century, and was magnified on her funeral day
in a style very quaint and richly Fulleresque.
It bears the title—poetical enough—of
Nature's Good Night, and with this text the
preacher started: "Weep not; she is not
dead, but sleepeth." After which he falls to