stant admonishers to. It little matters how long we live in this world; but it greatly does, in what manner we live in it. We have a full right, while we are here, to all rational enjoyments; and it is our fault, if we suffer other pursuits to become our deluders into disquiet. We should in all things be the seekers of our own peace and welfare, and the promoters of those of others. While we make such the rules of our conduct, we shall be certainly good and happy; equally ready to continue with life, and ready to resign it.

Youth has no more bliss than sober reason can insure to it; nor has age more unhappiness than indiscretion brings upon it. All depends on our acting right parts in those different stages of our being; our credit and felicity being such as we ourselves make them: so that it is not Providence, but perverseness, that makes us otherwise than happy. A. B.

SKETCHES OF CHARACTER. No. I.

WILLIAM PENN.

THE most distinguished of their (the Quakers) converts was William Penn, whose father, Admiral Sir William Penn, had been a personal friend of the king, and one of his instructors in naval affairs. This admirable person had employed his great abilities in support of civil as well as religious liberty, and had both acted and suffered for them under Charles II. Even if he had not founded the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as an everlasting memorial of his love of freedom, his actions and writings in England would have been enough to absolve him from the charge of intending to betray the rights of his countrymen. But though the friend of Algernon Sidney (Clarkson's Life of Penn, 1. p. 248,) he had never ceased to intercede, through his friends at court, for the persecuted. An absence of two years in America, and the occupation of his mind, had probably loosened his connexion with English politicians, and rendered him less acquainted with the principles of the government. On the accession of James, he was received by that prince with favor, and hopes of indulgence to his suffering brethren were early held out to him. He was soon admitted to terms of apparent intimacy, and was believed to possess such influence, that two hundred supplicants were often seen at his

gates, imploring his intercession with the king. That it really was great, appears from his obtaining a promise of pardon for his friend Mr. Locke, which that illustrious man declined, because he thought the acceptance would be a confession of criminality, (Clarkson's Life of Penn, 1. p. 433-438.) He appears in 1679, by his influence on James, when in Scotland, to have obtained the release of all the Scottish Quakers who were imprisoned; and he obtained the release of many hundred Quakers prisoners in England, as well as letters from Lord Sunderland to the Lord Lieutenants in England for favor to his persuasion, several months before the declaration of indulgence. It was no wonder that he should be gained over by this power of doing good. The very occupation in which he was engaged, brought daily before his mind the general evils of intolerance, and the sufferings of his own unfortunate brethren. Though well-stored with useful and ornamental knowledge, he was unpractised in the wiles of the court, and his education had not trained him to dread the violation of principle, so much as to pity the infliction of suffering. It cannot be doubted that he believed the king's object to be universal liberty in religion, and nothing further. His own sincere piety taught him to consider religious liberty as unspeakably the highest of human privileges, and he was too just not to be desirous of bestowing on all other men that which he most earnestly sought for himself. He, who refused to employ force in the most just defence, felt a singular abhorrence of its existence to prevent good men from following the dictates of their conscience. Such seemed to be the motives which inclined this excellent man to lend himself to the measures of the king. Compassion, friendship, liberality, and tolerance, led him to support a system of which the success would have undone his country, and afforded a remarkable proof that in the complicated combinations of political morality, a virtue misplaced may produce as much mischief as a vice. The Dutch minister represents the arch Quaker, as travelling over the kingdom to gain proselytes to the dispensing power. Duncombe, a banker in London, and (it must in justice, though in sorrow, be added) Penn, were the two Protestant counsellors of Lord Sutherland. Henceforward it became necessary for the friends of liberty to deal with him as an enemy, to be resisted when his associates were in power, and watched after they had lost it.

Z.

DEATH OF THE LAST MINSTREL.

The curfew had rung, and the night-cloud flung
A gloom on the landscape far;

The sun was at rest, and faint, from the west,
Rose the lonely vesper star.

When an aged man, with his travel wan,
Pass'd over the mountain's brow,

His hair stream'd white, in the breath of the night,
And his beard was like the snow.

The moon shone dim-she smil'd not on him,
The last of a reverend race;

His harp was unstrung, and his songs unsung,
And the tear bedew'd his face.

He laid him alone, on an iyied stone,
Near a mould'ring castle wall,

And thought on the hour, when his minstrel pow'r
Had rung thro' that ruin'd hall.

But the time was o'er, he would sing no more-
His harp was unstrung for aye-

And the hour was nigh, when the owner should die,
And his high soul quit its clay.

The moon gleam'd bright with a silvery light,
The stream of his life ebb'd fast;

One passing thrill-and his heart was still-
The minstrel had breath'd his last!

The mists were grey, and the dawn of the day
Broke fresh o'er his pallid face:

In the friendly tomb, they made him a home,
The last of a hallow'd race.

W. B.