3. This extraordinary young person, besides the solid endowments of piety and virtue, possessed the most engaging disposition, the most accomplished parts; and being of an equal age of king Edward VI. she had received all her education with him, and seemed even to possess a greater facility in acquiring every part of manly and classical literature.

4. She had attained a knowledge of the Roman and Greek languages, as well as of several modern tongues; had passed most of her time in an application to learning; and expressed a great indifference for other occupations and amusements usual with her sex and station.

5. Roger Ascham tutor to the lady Elizabeth, having at one time paid her a visit, found her employed reading Plato, while the rest of the family were engaged in a party of hanting in the park; and upon his admiring the singularity of her choice, she told him that she "received more pleasure from that author, than others could reap from all their sport and gaiety."

6. Her heart replete with this love of literature and serious studies, and with tenderness towards her husband, who was deserving of her affection, had never opened it. self to the flattering allurements of ambition; and the information of her advancement to the throne was by no means agreeable to her. She even refused to accept of the crown; pleaded the preferable right of the two princesses; expressed her dread of the consequences attending an enterprize so dangerous, not to say so criminal; and desired to remain in that private station in which she was born.

7. Overcome at last with the entreaties, rather than reasons of her father and father in-law, and above all, of her husband, she submitted to their will, and was prevailed on to relinquish her own judgment. But her elevation was of very short continuance. The nation declared for queen Mary; and the lady Jane, after wearing the vain pageantry of a crown during ten days, returned to private life, with much more satisfaction than she felt when royalty was tendered to her.

8. Queen Mary, who appears to have been incapable of generosity or clemency, determined to remove every person from whom the least danger could be apprehended;.

warning was, therefore, given to the lady Jane to prepare for death; a doom which she had expected, and which the innocence of her life, as well as the misfortunes to which she had been exposed, rendered no unwelcome news to her.

9. The queen's bigoted zeal, under colour of tender mercy to the prisoner's soul, induced her to send priests, who molested her with perpetual disputation and even a reprieve of three days was granted her, in hopes that she would be persuaded during that time, to pay by a timely conversion to popery, some regard to her eternal wel` fare.

10 Lady Jane had presence of mind, in those melancholy circumstances, not only to defend her religion by solid arguments, but also to write a letter to her sister, in the Greek language; in which, besides sending her a copy of the scriptures in that tongue, she exhorted her to maintain in every fortune, alike steady perseverance.

11. On the day of her execution, her husband, Lord Guilford, desired permission to see her; but she refused her consent, and sent him word, that the tenderness of their parting would overcome the fortitude of both; and would too much unbend their minds from that constancy, which their approaching end required of them. Their separation, she said, would be only for a moment; and they would soon rejoin each other in a scene, where their affections would be forever united; and where death, disappointment, and misfortunes, could no longer have access to them, or disturb their eternal felicity.

12. It had been intended to execute the lady Jane and lord Guilford together on the same scaffold, at Tower-hill; but the council, dreading the compassion of the people for their youth, beauty, inuocence, and noble birth, changed their orders, and gave directions that they should be beheaded within the verge of the tower.

13. She saw her husband led to execution, and having given him from the window some token of her remembrance, she waited with tranquillity till her own appointed hour should bring her to a like fate. She even saw his headless body carried back in a cart; and found herself more confirmed by the reports which she heard of the Constancy of his end, than shaken by so tender and melan choly a spectacle.

14. Sir John Gage, constable of the tower, when he led her to execution, desired her to bestow on him some small present, which he might keep as a perpetual memorial of her. She gave him her table book, in which she had just written three sentences, on seeing her husdand's dead body; one in Greek, another in Latin, and a third in English.

15 The purport of them was, "that human justice was against his body, but the Divine Mercy would be fayourable to his soul; and that if her fault deserved punishment, her youth at least and her imprudence, were worthy of excuse; and that God and posterity, she trusted, would shew her favour." On the scaffold, she made a speech to the by-standers, in which the mildness of her disposition led her to take the blame entirely on herself, without uttering one complaint against the severity with which she had been treated.

16. She said, that her offence was, not having laid her hand on the crown, but not rejecting it with sufficient constancy; that she had less erred through ambition than through reverence to her parents, hom she had been taught to respect and obey; that she willingly received death as the only satisfaction which she could now make to the injured state; and though her infringement of the laws had been constrained, she would show by her voluntary submission to their sentence, that she was desirous to atone for that disobedience, into which too much filial ptety had betrayed her; that she had justly deserved this punishment for being made the instrument, though the unwilling instrument, of the ambition of others; and the story of her life, she hoped, might at least be useful, by proving that innocence excuses not great misdeeds, if they tend any way to the destruction of the commonwealth.

17. After uttering these words, she caused herself to be disrobed by her women, and with a steady, serene countenance, submitted herself to the executioner. Hume.

SECTION VI.

The Hill of Science.

1. In that season of the year, when the serenity of the sky, the various fruits which cover the ground, the disColoured foliage of the trees, and all the sweet, but fading graces of inspiring autumn, open the mind to benevolence, and dispose it for contemplation, I was walking in a beattiful and romantic country, till curiosity began to give way to weariness, and I sat down on a fragment of rock Overgrown with moss, where the rustling of the falling leaves, the dashing of waters, and the hum of the distant city, soothed my mind into the most perfect tranquillity, and sleep insensibly stole upon me, as I was indulging the agreeable reveries which the objects around me naturally inspired.

2. I immediately found myself in a vast extended plain, in the middle of which arose a mountain higher than I had before any conception of. It was covered with a multitude of people, chiefly youth, many of whom pressed forward with the liveliest expression of ardour in their countenances, though the way was in many places steep and difficult.

3. I observed, that those who had just begun to climb the hill, thought themselves not far from the top, butes they proceeded, new hills were continually rising to their view, and the summit of the highest they could before discern seemed but the foot of another, till the mountain at length appeared to loose itself in the the clouds. As I was gazing on these things with astonishment, a friendly instructor suddenly appeared, "The mountain before thee," said he, "is the Hill of Science. On the top is the temple of truth, whose head is above the clouds, and a veil of pure light covers her face. Observe the progress of

her votaries: be silent and attentive."

4.

After I had noticed a variety of objects, I turned my eye towards the multitudes who were climbing the steep ascent, and observed among them a youth of lively look, a piercing eye, and something fiery and irregular in all his motions. His name was Genius. He darted like an eagle up the mountain, and left his companions gazing

after him with envy and admiration: but his progress was unequal, and interrupted by a thousand caprices.

5. When Pleasure warbled in the valley, he mingled in her train. When Pride beckoned towards the precipice, he ventured to the tottering edge. He delighted in devious and untried paths, and made so many excursions from the road, that his feebler companions often ontstripped him. I observed that the Muses beheld him with partiality, but Truth often frowned, and turned aside her face.

6. While Genius was thus wasting his strength in eccentric flights, I saw a person of a very different appear

ance, named Application. He crept along with a slow and unremitting pace, his eyes fixed on the top of the mountain, patiently removing every stone that obstructed his way, till he saw most of those below him, who had at first derided his slow and toilsome progress.

7. Indeed, there were few who ascended the hill with equal and uninterrupted steadiness: for besides the di culties of the way, they were continually solicited to turn aside, by a numerous crowd of appetites, passions and pleasures, whose importunity, when once complied with, they become less and less able to resist, and though they often returned to the path, the asperities of the road were more severely felt, the hill appeared more steep and rugged, the fruits which were wholesome and refreshing, seemed harsh and ill-tasted, their sight grew dim, and their feet tript at every little obstruction.

8. I saw, with some surprise, that the Muses, whose business was to cheer and encourage those who were toiling up the ascent, would often sing in the bowers of Pleas ure, and accompany those who were enticed away at the call of the Passions. They accompanied them, however, but a little way, and always forsook them when they lost sight of the hill. The tyrants then doubled their chains upon the unhappy captives, and led them away, without resistance to the cells of ignorance or the mansions of misery.

9. Amongst the innumerable seducers, who were endeavouring to draw away the votaries of Truth from the path of Science, there was one, so little formidable in her appearance, and so gentle and languid in her attempts, that I should scarcely have taken notice of her, but for