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 in reading Plato, while the rest of the family were engaged in a party of hunting 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 itself 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 the crown; pleaded the preferable right of the two princesses; expressed her dread of the consequences attending an enterprise so dangerous, not to say so criminal; aud desired to remain in that pri vate 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 und, she submitted to their will, and was prevailed on onish her own judgment. But her elevation was of

continuance. The nation declared for queen the lady Jane, after wearing the vain pageantry during ten days, returned to a private life, with Avasatisfaction than she felt when royalty was ten

Mary who appears to have been incapable of or clemency, determined to remove every per whom the least danger could be apprehended. ing was, therefore, given to lady Jane to prepare for eath; a doom which she had expected, and which the innorence 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 welfare.

10 Lady Jane had presence of mind, in those melancholy circumstances, not only to defend her religion by solid argu D

ment, but also to write a letter to her sister, in the Greck language; in which, besides sending her a copy of the Scriptures in that tongue, she exhorted her to maintain in every fortune, a like 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 misfor tune, 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, innocence, and noble birth, changed their orders, and gave directions that she 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 should bring her to a like fate. She even saw his he body carried back in a cart; and found herself firmed by the reports which she heard of the on his end, than shaken by so tender and melancho cle.

14. Sir John Gage, constable of the Tower, her to execution, desired her to bestow on hin present, which he might keep as a memorial of gave him her table book, in which she had just write sentences on seeing her husband's dead body; one in r another in Latin, a third in English.

15. The purport of them was," that human justice was against his body, but the Divine Mercy would be favourable 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 show her favour." On the scaffold, she made a speech to the bystanders, 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 that she had laid

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her hand upon the crown, but that she had not rejected it with sufficient constancy; that she had less erred through ambition than through reverence to her parents, whom 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 piety had betrayed her: that she had justly deserved this punishment for being made the instrument, though the unwil ling instrument, of the ambition of others: and that the story of her life, she hoped, might at least be useful, by proving thai 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.

SECTION V.

Ortogrul; or, the vanity of riches.

HUME.

As Ortogrul of Basra was one day wandering along ets of Bagdat musing on the varieties of merchanthe shops opened to his view; and observing the cupations which busied the multitude on every wakened from the tranquillity of meditation, hat obstructed his passage. He raised his eyes, chief vizier, who, having returned from the ditering his palace.

have some petition for the vizier, was permitted to Ile surveyed the spaciousness of the apartments, adthe walls hung with golden tapestry, and the floors with silken carpets; and despised the simple neatness of his own little habitation.

Corul mingled with the attendants; and being sup

3. "Surely," said he to himself, "this palace is the seat of happiness: where pleasure succeeds to pleasure and discontent and sorrow can have no admission. Whatever nature has provided for the delight of sense, is here spread forth to be enjoyed. What can mortals hope or imagine, which the master of this palace has not obtained? The dishes of luxury cover his table! the voice of harmony lulls him in his bowers; he breathes the fragrance of the groves of Java, and sleeps upon the down of the cygnets of Ganges.

4. "He speaks, and his mandate is obeyed; he wishes, and his wish is gratified; all, whom he sees, obey him, and all, whom he hears, flatter him. How different, Oh Ortogrul, is thy condition, who art doomed to the perpetual torments of unsatisfied desire; and who hast no amusement in thy power, that can withhold thee from thy own reflections! 5. ** They tell thee that thou art wise; but what does wisdom avail with poverty? Noue will flatter the poor; and the wise have very little power of flattering themselves. That man is surely the most wretched of the sons of wretcheduess, who lives with his own faults and follies always before him; and who has none to reconcile him to himself by praise and veneration. I have long sought content, and have not found it; I will from this moment endeavour to be rich."

6. Full of his new resolution, he shut himself in his chamber for six months to deliberate how he should grow rich. He sometimes purposed to offer himself as a counsellor to one of the kings of India; and sometimes résolved to dig for diamonds in the mines of Golconda.

7. One day, after some hours passed in violent fluctuation of opinion, sleep insensibly seized him in his chair. He dreamed that he was ranging a desert country, in search of some one that might teach him to grow rich; and as on the top of a hill, shaded with cypress, in doub to direct his steps, his father appeared on a sudde before him. 66 Ortogrul," said the old man, perplexity; listen to thy father; turn thine eye site mountain."

8. Ortogrul locked, and saw a torrent tumblin rocks, roaring with the noise of thunder, and s foam on the impending woods, 66 "Now," said

"behold the valley that lies between the hilis."

looked, and espied a little well, out of which issued a su rivulet. "Tell me now," said his father, "dost thou wi for sudden affluence, that may pour upon thee like the mou tain torrent: or for a slow and gradual increase, resembling the rill gliding from the well ?”

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9. Let me be quickly rich," said Ortogrul; "let the gol deu stream be quick and violent.” "look round thee," said his father, "once again." Ortogrul looked and perceived the channel of the torrent dry and dusty; but following the rivulet from the well, he traced it to a wide lake, which the zupply, slow and constant, kept always full. He awoke, and

determined to grow rich by silent profit, and persevering industry.

10. Having sold his patrimony, he engaged in merchandise; and in twenty years purchased lands, on which he raised a house, equal in sumptuousness to that of the vizier, to which he invited all the ministers of pleasure, expecting to enjoy all the felicity which he had imagined riches able to afford. Leisure soon made him weary of himself, and he longed to be persuaded that he was great and happy. He was courteous and liberal: he gave all that approached him hopes of pleasing him, and all who should please him, hopes of being rewarded. Every art of praise was tried, and every source of adulatory fiction was exhausted.

11. Ortogrul heard his flatterers without delight, because he found himself unable to believe them. His own heart told him its frailties; his own understanding reproached him with faults 6. "How long," said he, with a deep sigh, "have I been labouring in vain to ainass wealth, which at last is useless! Let no man hereafter wish to be rich, who is already too wise to be flattered." DR. JOHNSON.

SECTION VI.

The hill of science.

at season of the year, when the serenity of the sky, as fruits which cover the ground, the discoloured fofthe trees, and all the sweet, but fading graces of 25g autumn, open the mind to benevolence, and dispose contemplation, I was wandering in a beautiful and ro

country, till curiosity began to give way to weariand I sat down on the fragment of a rock overgrown th moss; where the rustling of the fallen leaves, the dashng of waters, and the hum of the distant city, soothed my mind into a 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 be fore 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 countenance, though the way was in many places steep and difficult.

3. 1 observed, that those, who had but just begun to climb the hill, thought themselves not far from the top; but as they