an English nation. The result of this equalization of orders, like that of the patricians and plebeians at Rome, was hardly less marked in the rise of a genuine national sentiment, and in the vigorous display of English power. English yeoman and English knight won equal honors at Cressy and Poictiers; and English pride ran not higher upon the overthrow of the Spanish armada, or after Trafalgar, than at the meeting of England's king and queen-one returning from the north, and the other from the south, each with a captive king.

This awakened life was not content with the achievement of political rights and trophies upon the battle-field. Students by thousands flocked to the Universities. Men began to question and to debate in Parliament upon the assumptions of the Papal See; and when the thirty years' arrears of tribute promised by King John, was demanded of the sovereign returned victor from France, little was lacking that the English Reformation should have been at once effected by Act of Parliament without the scandalous excesses of a Henry VIII.

The age had its representative men, each moving in a sphere by himself, while illustrating an important field in the course of human thought and progress; in arms and chivalry, Edward, the Black Prince; in letters and as the father of English poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer; in the church, the father of the English Reformation, whose arguments were the reliance of Edward, when refusing the obnoxious tribute, whose words were quoted in behalf of civil and religious liberty in the House of Lords, John de Wycliffe; and in a somewhat humbler position, yet not less illustrative of the awakened thought and the representative of the learning and the scholarship possible at that time, Richard de Bury.

The particulars here noted of him are derived from an American edition of his famous work "Philobiblon," prepared for the press, as a labor of love and respect, by Samuel Hand of Albany. He was born at Bury St. Edmunds in 1287, of a respectable family of Norman descent, and educated at Oxford. Here his brilliant reputation as a scholar and a gentleman attracted the notice of the king, who made him tutor to his son, the Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward III. On the latter's accession to the throne, his tutor was remembered by appoint

ments to several important offices about his person. In 1330, he was sent as ambassador to the Holy See, with a highly commendatory letter from the king. He was soon after made Bishop of Durham, and later was called to act as Treasurer, and then as Lord Chancellor of the realm. These offices he resigned as soon as the condition of public affairs would allow, and he returned to his duties as bishop, and to his books, which he seemed to have valued almost above life itself. His frequent journeys upon the continent, his wide acquaintance with the leading men of other countries as well as of his own, enabled him to gratify his love of books, as few men of his time could do. And the wonder is, that with his public employments, he had leisure to read them. But the "Philobiblon"—a treatise on the love of books as the name indicates, with a mixture of personal incident, enough to make it well-nigh an autobiography -shows that his love was not simply for the sake of possession, but that he might make himself master of their contents.

This little work, written in very respectable for mediæval Latin, shows his acquaintance and familiarity with a wide range of classic authors-sufficient to do honor to modern scholarship, while his frequent quotations and allusions to the Scriptures, show him to have been a careful and constant reader of the sacred volume. We must confess to a great admiration of the man, of his attainments, and of his truly Christian and scholarly spirit. His censures upon the ignorance and vicious habits of the Romish clergy, are dealt out with no sparing hand, and furnish ample proof of the necessity of the reform which men like Langlande and Wycliffe so earnestly insisted on. He held however much the same place in the Reformation attempted by Wycliffe, that Erasmus held in the one effected by Luther. Both saw clearly the need of reform, and the general corruption of their times; both were eminent scholars, and both preferred their ease and the enjoyment of their favorite pursuits to an earnest grappling with the trials and difficulties that beset the path of the radical reformer.

The American edition of the "Philobiblon" consists of but two hundred and thirty copies; thirty on large paper. It contains the original Latin on one page, and on the opposite, an English translation made in 1832 by John B. Ingles, in a small 12mo.

volume. Save this translation which seems to be very rare, and another in French, the work has not been in print before since the year 1600. Previously to this the work had gone through five editions, beginning with one at Cologne in 1473, the second at Spire in 1483, then two editions at Paris in 1500. In 1599 it was first printed at Oxford, and the following year in London. A few copies in MSS. are to be found in the great libraries in England and on the Continent. The American edition is enriched not only by the notes contributed by the American editor, but also by notes and an introduction of these parts, biographical, bibliographical, and critical, from the French translation of M. Cochères, published in 1856.

A few extracts will illustrate the spirit of the work. From the first chapter, "on the commendation of wisdom, and of books in which wisdom dwelleth":

"In books, cherubim expand their wings that the soul of the student may ascend and look around from pole to pole, from the rising to the setting sun, from the north and from the sea. . . . In books we find the dead as it were living; in books we foresee things to come; in books warlike affairs are methodized; the rights of peace proceed from books. . . . These are the masters who instruct us without rods and ferules, (Plagosum Orbilium, Richard?) without hard words and anger, without clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not asleep ; if investigating, you interrogate them, they conceal nothing; if you are ignorant, they cannot laugh at you."

From the close of the fifth chapter we take his admonition to his clerical brethren :

"Condescend, therefore, reverend fathers, to remember your predecessors, and to indulge more freely in the study of the sacred books; without which, all religion whatever will vacillate; without which, as a watering-pot, the virtue of devotion will dry up; and without which, no light will be held up to the world."

His commendation of ancient authors must not be passed by without a single illustration. Hear him in regard to Aristotle, in the tenth chapter:

"Even Aristotle, although of gigantic mind, in whom it pleased Nature to try how great a portion of reason she could admit into mor

tality, and whom the Most High made but little inferior to the angels, who sucked those wonderful volumes out of his own fingers which the whole world scarcely comprehends, would not have flourished if he had not, with the penetrating eyes of a lynx, looked through the sacred books of the Babylonians, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, and Medes, all which he transferred into his own treasuries in eloquent Greek."

on

The first part of this reminds one of the inscription the tomb of Raphael in the Pantheon at Rome, only that the worthy bishop is more reverent than the worldly cardinal, who honored the great painter.

Our author has some very practical suggestions on preserving books as well as obtaining them, that would not come amiss in these days:

"We not only set before ourselves a service to God, in preparing volumes of new books, but we exercise the duties of a holy piety, if we first handle so as not to injure them, then return them to their proper places, and commend them to undefiling custody, that they may rejoice in their purity while held in the hand, and repose in security when laid up in their depositories."

With all the conceits and fancies of the author-and there are far less than one would expect at that age- far less than appear in the "Ormulione" or in the "Visions of Piers Ploughman. -the "Philobiblon" may well be regarded as one of the choice legacies of that age, and one which nobly indicates the educating, elevating power of classical learning under the most untoward circumstances, and the claims of medieval scholarship on the part of a studious few -and secures to Richard de Bury a noble place near to, if not beside Wycliffe, Chaucer, and other celebrities of the fourteenth century in English story.

"Ille hic est Raphael, timuit quo sospite vinci Rerum magna parens et moriente

mori."

ARTICLE VIII.

SHORT SERMONS.

"The glorious gospel of the blessed God.” - 1 Tim. i. 11.

THE glory of God is the splendor, or bright-shining of his attributes. If the gospel is glorious, it must be because it is an embodiment and manifestation of the divine glory. This is the doctrine of the Bible. It is the gospel of the glory of God, or the blessed God, which is the true form of the text.

We have, then, the idea of the blessed God

blessed and rejoicing in himself from eternity - manifesting or pouring himself forth in the brightness of his glory, in the gospel; even as the sun fills the universe with light.

1. This was God's great thought, and the fulness of his joy, through a past eternity. It was the covenant and fellowship of the Trinity, the harmony of his attributes, the immutability of his justice, the breadth and length and depth and height of his love, the grandeur of his power, the dazzling lustre of his holiness and truth, the perfection of his wisdom, the freedom of his will, the rectitude of his government, the everlasting stability of his empire.

2. Its outgoing was preceded and foreshadowed by stupendous preparations. From the moment when the first star twinkled in the chaos of universal night till Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea all things had a single purpose and direction. When the visit of a king is awaited in a far off section of his dominion, the preparations are on a scale of regal expensiveness and grandeur. How transcendent, then, must be the majesty of the coming king, when the triumphal arch is the vault of heaven, and the lamps are suns and stars, and the attendant ministers are flaming seraphs, and the gates of the morning are the entrance, and the melody is the symphony of angels and the music of the spheres! On earth, too, there was fitting preparation. The blood-red war-charger had made his fiery circuit, monarchies had been crushed, ancient thrones demolished, and sceptres broken in twain; all the world was quiet under the imperial sway of the mighty Augustus, prophetic voices had been heard breaking the stillness of the long night in the wilderness, and the nations were in expectation of a wonderful advent.

3. Christ was a profound mystery, and an all-resplendent glory.