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seasons, budding sprays, sweet-smelling flowers:
To rocks, to springs, to rills, from leafy bowers,
Thou thy Creator's goodness dost declare,
And what dear gifts on thee he did not spare,
A stain to human sense in sin that lowers.
What soul can be so sick, which by thy songs,
Attired in sweetness, sweetly is not driven
Quite to forget earth's turmoils, spites, and wrongs,
And lift a reverend eye and thought to heaven?
Sweet artless songster, thou my mind dost raise
To airs of spheres, yes, and to angels' lays.

V.

As when it happ'neth that some lovely town
Unto a barbarous besieger falls,
Who both by sword and flame himself installs,
And, shameless, it in tears and blood doth drown
Her beauty spoil'd, her citizens made thralls,
His spite yet cannot so her all throw down,
But that some statue, pillar of renown,
Yet lurks unmaim'd within her weeping walls:
So, after all the spoil, disgrace, and wreck,
That time, the world, and death, could bring combined,
Amidst that mass of ruins they did make,
Safe and all scarless yet remains my mind:
From this so high transcending rapture springs,
That I, all else defaced, not envy kings.

PHINEAS FLETCHER

We have already spoken of Giles Fletcher, the brother of Phineas. Of Phineas we know nothing except that he was born in 1584, educated at Eton and Cambridge, became Rector at Hilgay, in Norfolk, where he remained for twenty-nine years, surviving his brother; that he wrote an account of the founders and learned men of his university; that in 1633, he published 'The Purple Island;' and that in 1650 he died.

His 'Purple Island' (with which we first became acquainted in the writings of James Hervey, author of the 'Meditations,' who was its fervent admirer) is a curious, complex, and highly ingenious allegory, forming an elaborate picture of _Man_, in his body and soul; and for subtlety and infinite flexibility, both of fancy and verse, des

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