"Next comes a perilous question. The Friar has preached a sermon upon the Trinity, in which he has made the mystery appear so perfectly intelligible, that the Admiral is afraid he shall no longer have any merit in believing it, because he understands it so well. This occasions considerable discussion, for neither a first nor a second answer can persuade D. Fadrique that he has the same merit in believing the Trinity as he had when it was wholly incomprehensible. He now wishes to know whether the grief which our Lady felt at the Crucifixion was greater or less than her joy at the Resurrection. The wisdom of the question astonishes the Friar, who declares that he had never seen such a question in the writings of any Doctor of Theology. He gives reasons for both opinions; the Admiral desires to know which opinion is the most probable, and then Fray Luys says, her grief was the greatest, and that he can prove it by twelve reasons. Of course D. Fadrique wishes to hear these reasons, and the Friar then strings together twelve stanzas, much in the style of the Siete Dolores, or our own Christmas Carol of the Seven Good Joys-a relic of Catholicism which I have often heard in my youth.

"We have now a very long discussion upon Free Will, to which I thought there would be no end. The good Friar, who never losses an opportunity of giving good advice to the Admiral, or of paying him a handsome compliment, reminds him dexterously here of his exploit at Tordesillas. Notwithstanding this compliment, Fray Luys argues stoutly upon this knotty point; a friend of the Admiral interferes, and takes part with him against the Friar; the Friar, who grows very sore in the course of this long discussion of an endless subject, tells this person that he has fallen into a great blasphemy, and that he understands nothing at all about the matter, and he interdicts any further dispute with him about it. Notwithstanding this the Admiral goes on, till the poor Friar is obliged at last to tell him it is better to stop, or he will fall into Pelagianism, and therefore he begs pardon for positively declaring that he will answer no more questions upon the subject.

"Mataphysics having thus been prohibited, my Lord the Admiral returns to theology, and desires to know why God is three persons rather than four or five, or any other number, particularly as musicians account three an imperfect number. The Friar answers, that God is three persons because he is, and moreover that three is a perfect number; but he is astonished at the depth and wisdom of such questions, and his astonishment is increased by the next, which is-Who governed Heaven when God was in the Virgin Mary's womb? The Friar is ready with two solutions-there were the other two persons of the Trinity; in this way the difficulty might be explained, but that in reality there is no difficulty, because the soul is not infused in conception.

"Will Antichrist have a guardian angel or not? Just as well as Judas, but to as little purpose. Is there a free will in brutes? When the Devil tempts us, does he come of himself, or does God send him? In what part of the body does the soul reside, and at what part does it go out? Why did Christ choose to be born of a Virgin?

"Some of these reasons, like many other passages of this extraordinary book, could not be expressed in our language without shocking the reader. Nothing, however, is more evident than that the Admiral had no thought of irreverence in proposing such questions, and that the Friar replied to them not only with seriousness, but even with a sense of devotion.

"What will become of the world after the last judgment, is one of the following questions. The heavens, we are told, will be still, none of the spheres will move, time will cease, and the winds, and heat, and cold.

Heaven will finally rest in that situation where it was first created, the sun will be in the east, and the moon in the west. Where will the Lord appear at the Day of Judgment; because at that time both heaven and earth will have been destroyed? No, says the Friar, the world will only be destroyed as to its temporal uses, quanto al temporal provecho, and Christ will appear over the Valley of Jehosaphat near Mount Olivet, and there we shall all be gathered together, men, angels and devils; and then if you have served God better than I have done, you will be better off than I shall be, and a pretty joke it would be if you with your rank and fortune were to go to Heaven, and the Friar to go to Hell. Will the glory of men be greater than the glory of angels? Yes, twofold; because they will be glorified in the body, and angels have no body in which to be glorified. Moreover, having had greater toil for salvation, they will have greater reward. Where was God before he created the Heavens? This is finely answered, though the answer somewhat diluted in the familiar verse of the original-he was then where he is now, for he who is incomprehensible cannot be in any place. God himself is in himself, and all things are in him.

66 Que Dios mismo esta en si mismo

y todo el mundo esta en el.

During what particular part of the Salutation did the act of Incarnation take place? The Friar, who resolves all questions, answers, that it was as soon as Mary had replied to the angel-Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.'

"The Admiral now condescending to a question of simple chronology, asks in what year of the world Christ was born, and the Friar says in reply-Let us count our own years; I am sixty, you are sixty-five; I am near death, and you, by this reckoning, are still nearer. Is bull-fighting sinful? Yes. Is it sinful to treat the people with a bull-fight, if you do not fight yourself? Certainly it is. But why is it sinful? pursues the Admiral, sticking with the keenness of a sportsman to his favorite amusement-why is it sinful, when the practice is so customary, and is a thing allowed? Sir, says the honest Friar, if you will persist in these things at your age, I must tell you that you have one foot in the grave, and another in Hell. St. Cosmes and St. Damian cut off a black man's leg and fastened it upon a white man; which will have this leg at the Resurrection? The black man and the other will then have his own original leg. How long will a soul remain in Purgatory for every particular sin? I cannot tell; you will know when you get there, and you will neither suffer the less nor get out the sooner for having been an Admiral. At the Day of Judgment there will be souls in Purgatory who will not have been there their full time; how will their account be settled? The intensity of their sufferings may compensate for its brevity; they will have condensed and quintessential torments.

"One division of the work consists of questions in physics, another of moral points, another of riddles. The Admiral enquires how many intestines (tripas) a man has, and what is the use of each-a question which the Friar says is of very dirty discussion, es muy suzio platicar. A Cavallero who is troubled with hæmorrhoids wants to know what is good for him. The Friar makes a joke or two upon the disease, but advises him to boil four or five frogs in three parts of a pint of oil, and thus make an ointment. One person asks what is the best method for preserving the teeth; he recommends him to clean them first with the pith of pine wood, then with white wine, lastly with a linen cloth. What shall I do

3

for the tooth-ache? says one of his querists. Fray Luys replies-have the tooth drawn ; but if you do not like to part with it, it is a singular remedy to bear the pain and keep the tooth. This is a very unsatisfactory answer to a poor man with a raging tooth-ache; and the patient requests him in good verse to leave off joking, and tell him how he may obtain relief. The prescription is-about a spoonful of salt, tied in a cloth, held in boiling oil during the time in which a man can twice repeat the creed, then laid on the jaw.

"In the course of these physical questions it appears that the Friar never ate salt, because he says, that being only an earth it can afford no nutriment-an argument which I have heard a medical man assign as a philosophical reason for disliking salt, though if this condiment were not in some degree necessary to our well-being, savages and animals would not seek it with such an instinctive desire. Fray Luys also abstained from saffron-a great article in the cookery of those ages, in England as well as in Spain; he thought it hurt his eye-sight. But he was a great eater of eggs; one of his rhyming friends reminds him of this, and expresses his astonishment at the Friar's ovivorous propensities. This seems to have nettled him, and he replies-I am more astonishment that you do not eat straw; for one who brays ought to be fed like an ass, not with meat which has been drest, but with straw and barley, as his proper food.

"The Friar very honestly reproves the Admiral for his rigorous execution of the game laws, and complains to him of the grievous oppressions which his vassals endured in consequence. Certainly he was no fawner. The Admiral sends one day to consult him upon a case of conscience, whether he may lawfully keep anything which he has found. Ah-ha! says Fray Luys, you found a hawk yesterday, and you want to keep her, though you know by her jesses and her bells that she belongs to another person! Whoever keeps anything which he has found in such a way, and does not have it cried, is guilty of theft.

"Another metrical specimen occurs T. 1, ff. 90. The Friar has fallen out of bed and sprained his foot, upon which the Admiral requires from him a whole copla de pie quebrado, and he rhymes away, exemplifying the metre by glossing upon this pun. A Cavallero has such a pain in one of his double teeth, that he writes to ask if it is not the gout. Fray Luys replies-that he never heard of gout in the teeth; that all grinders, whether of man or of miller, will wear out in time; and that as the knight was threescore years of age, it was no wonder that his tooth should be done with, and be in a state to be plucked out. The knight is not pleased that one who is four-and-twenty years older than himself, should call him sixty before his wife, and complains of this as an injurious mis-statement of the real fact. The Friar upon this makes something like an apology, but he says it is no great error, for he is fourscore, and fifty-six is not far from sixty. This occurs in the second volume, which is by no means so amusing as the first-less from any decay of faculties in the old Franciscan, than because his friends' stock of questions was nearly exhausted. Some of them, however, are sufficiently curious. Has any one entered the kingdom of Heaven, and afterwards been turned out of it? Would it not have been a greater work of power for God to have created Adam from nothing, than to have made him of clay? Why did God make woman, when he knew she would be the occasion of the fall? May not Eve be called Adam's daughter, seeing that she was made out of him? Which sinned the most, Adam or Eve? Would there have been any distinction of master and servant in the world if Adam had not fallen? How hap

pened it that Adam did not wake when Eve was taken out of his side? Why was she made of his rib more than of his head, or any other part? Had Adam a rib the less after this? and had Eve one rib more than her husband? The rib of which Eve was made having belonged to both, which will have it at the Resurrection? How did Adam learn Hebrew? Would the Serpent have been forgiven at the fall if he had confessed his fault, like Adam and Eve? These questions are my Lord the Admiral's, and have all his genuine oddity about them; but when he quits the stage, and Doctor Cespedes medico famoso, clerigo y cathedratico en Valladolid, succeeds as first querist to Fray Luys, a lamentable alteration appears. Who, indeed, could be worthy to propound questions after the Admiral?”

NUGE.....No. I.

"Magnas nugas dicere magno conatu."

TERENT.

AMONG the prettiest prettinesses I have ever deemed worthy a place among my manuscripts, is this idea of PINKNEY'S. He says to Italy,

"Thou art a dimple on the face of earth."

I am a great admirer of TIMES AND SEASONS,—and have never been able to settle it to my own satisfaction, whether morning or evening, twilight or midnight, noonday or daybreak is the happiest hour to me. That it depends upon the mood in which these seasons severally find me is very true, and it is just as true, too, that while enjoying each, I think the present ever the loveliest; and what conclusion, therefore, is more obvious, than that they are all, as they change, alike redolent of the same spirit of beauty and delight, and all fraught with the same power to bless and make happy? Many a song, and many a chapter to them all and several, have I copied, and copied till they are familiar to me as "household words,"-and the pencilled lines, and turned down leaves in many a volume mark the diverse and yet united tributes which authors have paid to each. Thus of Morning, Shakspeare says,—

"But look! the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill."

And still more beautifully, once more,

"See how the morning opes her golden gates,
And takes her farewell of the glorious sun!
How well resembles it the prime of youth,

HAMLET.

Trimmed like a younker, prancing to his love." HENRY VI.

And thus of the earliest Dawn he says

"the morning's war,

When dying clouds contend with growing light;
What time the shepherd, blowing of his nails,

Can call it neither perfect day or night!"

And at Daybreak,—

"The silent hours steal on,

And flaky darkness breaks within the east."

HENRY VI.

RICHARD III.

And how beautiful are these verses from Cymbeline!

"Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,

And Phoebus 'gins to rise:

His steeds to water at those springs,

On chaliced flowers that lies.

"And winking mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes,

With everything, that pretty bin,—
My lady sweet, arise!"

SHAKSPEARE.

But who does not know that the breath of the morning is the gentlest, sweetest, and most invigorating of all the breezes that fan the brow? Who needs to be told that the hour of the matin-song of birds is the time to enjoy the loveliest music in the world, and to see the gayest sight? The warbling of a thousand harmonies, and the flashing of a thousand glancing colors, and the scaling and soaring away of mány a thousand of tiny feathery forms amid the clear blue heavens.

"His genial rays the sun renews;

The scene is bright with glittering dews;
The blushing flowers more beauteous bloom,
And breathe more rich their sweet perfume."

"The laughing hours have chased away the night,
Plucking the stars out from her diadem:
And now, the blue-eyed morn with modest grace,
Looks through her half-drawn curtains in the East,
Blushing in smiles, and glad as infancy!

The mountain tops

Have lit their beacons,-and the vales below

FRISBIE.