What an idea of the dismantling of our nature do the few words which
Roper, Sir Thomas More's son-in-law, relates, convey! He had seen
Henry VIII. walking round the chancellor's garden at Chelsea, with
his arm round his neck; he could not help congratulating him on
being the object of so much kindness. "I thank our lord, I find his
grace my very good lord indeed; and I believe he doth as singularly
favour me as any subject in his realm. However, son Roper, I may
tell thee, I have no cause to be proud thereof, for if my head
would win a castle in France, it would not fail to be struck
off."--_Edinburgh Review._
* * * * *
There is not only room, but use, for all that God has made in his
wisdom--a use not the less real, because not always tangible, or
immediate.--_Ibid._
* * * * *
Nicholas Brady, (the coadjutor of Tate, in arranging the New Version
of Psalms,) published a translation of the Æneid of Virgil, which
(says Johnson,) when dragged into the world, did not live long
enough to cry.
* * * * *
Blue appears to be the most important of all colours in the
gradations of society. A licensed beggar in Scotland, called a
bedesmen, is so privileged on receiving a _blue_ gown. Pliny informs
us that blue was the colour in which the Gauls clothed their slaves;
and _blue_ coats, for many ages, were the liveries of servants,
apprentices, and even of younger brothers, as now of the Blue Coat
Boys, and of other Blue Schools in the country. Women used to do
penance in _blue_ gowns. Is it not unseemly that blue which has
hitherto been the colour of so many unenviable distinctions, should
be the adopted emblem of liberty--_English True Blue!_
* * * * *