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borne forward by them which followed after. On the other side, the Christians with no less courage withstood the Turkish fury, beating them down again with great stones and weighty pieces of timber, and so overwhelmed them with shot, darts, and arrows, and other hurtful devices from above, that the Turks dismayed with terror thereof, were ready to retire.

Mahomet, seeing the great slaughter and discomfiture of his men, sent in fresh supplies of his janizaries and best men of war, whom he had for that purpose reserved as his last hope and refuge; by whose coming on his fainting soldiers were again encouraged, and the terrible assault began afresh. At which time the barbarous king ceased not to use all possible means to maintain the assault; by name calling upon this and that captain, promising unto some whom he saw forward golden mountains, and unto others in whom he saw any sign of cowardice, threatening most terrible death; by which means the assault became most dreadful, death there raging in the midst of many thousands. And albeit that the Turks lay dead by heaps upon the ground, yet other fresh men pressed on still in their places over their dead bodies, and with divers event either slew or were slain by their enemies.

In this so terrible a conflict, it chanced Justinianus the general to be wounded in the arm, who, losing much blood, cowardly withdrew himself from the place of his charge, not leaving any to supply his room, and so got into the city by the gate called Romana, which he had caused to be opened in the inner walls; pretending the cause of his departure to be for the binding up of his wound, but being, indeed, a man now altogether discouraged.

The soldiers there present, dismayed with the departure of their general, and sore charged by the janizaries, forsook their stations, and in haste fled to the same gate whereby Justinianus was entered; with the sight whereof the other soldiers, dismayed, ran thither by heaps also. But whilst they violently strive all together to get in at once, they so wedged one another in the entrance of the gate, that few of so great a multitude got in; in which so great a press and confusion of minds, eight hundred persons were there by them that followed trodden under foot, or thrust to death. The emperor himself, for safeguard of his life, flying with the rest in that press as a man not regarded, miserably ended his days, together with the Greek empire. His dead body was shortly after found by the Turks among the slain, and known by his rich apparel, whose head being cut off, was forthwith presented to the Turkish tyrant, by whose commandment it was afterward thrust upon the point of a lance, and in great derision carried about as a trophy of his victory, first in the camp, and afterward up and down the city.

The Turks, encouraged with the flight of the Christians, presently advanced their ensigns upon the top of the uttermost wall, crying Victory; and by the breach entered as if it had been a great flood, which, having once found a breach in the bank, overfloweth, and beareth down all before it; so the Turks, when they had won the utter wall, entered the city by the same gate that was opened for Justinianus, and by a breach which they had before made with their great artillery, and without mercy cutting in pieces all that came in their way, without further resistance became lords of that most famous and imperial city . . . . In this fury of the barbarians perished many thousands of men, women, and children, without respect of age, sex or condition. Many, for safeguard of their lives, fied into the temple of Sophia, where they were all without pity slain, except some few reserved by the barbarous victors to purposes more grievous than death itself. The rich and beautiful ornaments and jewels of that most sumptuous and magnificent church (the stately building of Justinianus the emperor) were, in the turning of a hand, plucked down and carried away by the Turks; and the church itself, built for God to be honoured in, for the present converted into a stable for their horses, or a place for the execution of their abominable and unspeakable filthiness; the image of the crucifix was also by them taken down, and a Turk's cap put upon the head thereof, and so set up and shot at

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with their arrows, and afterward, in great derision, carried about in their camp, as it had been in procession, with drums playing before it, railing and spitting at it, and calling it the God of the Christians, which I note not so much done in contempt of the image, as in despite of Christ and the Christian religion.

ARTHUR WILSON was born at Yarmouth, Norfolk, of a genteel family, in 1596. In the fourteenth year of his age he was sent to France to pursue his studies, and after having remained in that country two years he returned to England, and was placed with Sir Henry Spiller, as one of his clerks in the Exchequer office. In Sir Henry's family he remained for some time, but was at length dismissed thence for having written some satirical verses on one of the maid-servants. After his dismissal he devoted a year to reading and poetry, and then, in 1613, entered, as secretary, into the service of Robert, Earl of Essex, whom he attended in various missions upon the continent for many years. Having, through some misunderstanding with the Earl's lady, been dismissed from his services also, he retired, in 1631, to Oxford, and became gentleman commoner of Trinity College, where he remained nearly two years, during which he was scrupulously observant of the orders of the university. He next became steward to the Earl of Warwick, in whose service he died in the month of October, 1652. Wilson's only literary performance of importance is, The Life and Reign of James the First, which he left in manuscript, and which was published in 1653, the year after the author's death. He also left, in manuscript, a comedy of some merit, entitled The Inconstant Lady.

RICHARD BAKER, with whom we shall conclude our survey of the historical writers of this period, was born at Sissingherst, Kent, in 1568. When in the seventeenth year of his age he entered Hart-hall College, Oxford, and at the end of three years, left the university, went to London, and entered the Inns of Court to study law. He was, however, a man of too considerable quality to follow a profession, and he therefore relinquished his studies in order to travel upon the continent for the improvement of his education. In 1594, he was created master of arts at Oxford, and in the first year of the reign of James the First, was knighted. He married the daughter of Sir George Manwaring of Ightfield, in Shropshire; and having imprudently become security for some of that family's debts, his property, though very considerable, was stripped from him, and to satisfy the balance of the obligation, he was thrown into Fleet prison, where, after lingering for several years, he finally died, on the eighteenth of February, 1645.

While in prison, Sir Richard Baker wrote Meditations and Disquisitions on portions of Scripture, translated Balzac's Letters and Malvezzi's Discourses on Tacitus, and composed two pieces in defence of the theatre. His principal work, however, is A Chronicle of the Kings of England, from the time of the Romans' Government unto the Death of King James. This work, which appeared in 1641, the author complacently declares to be 'collected with so great care and diligence, that if all other chronicles were lost,

this only would be sufficient to inform posterity of all passages memorable or worthy to be known.' Notwithstanding such high pretensions, the 'Chronicle,' in matter, must be regarded as an injudicious performance, and not worthy of much reliance. The style, however, is very superior, and is described in a letter written to him by his former college friend, Sir Henry Wotton, as full of sweet raptures and of researching conceits; nothing borrowed, nothing vulgar, and yet all flowing from you, I know not how, with a certain equal facility.'

With Hobbes the metaphysician, and Lord Herbert, our present remarks will close.

THOMAS HOBBES was the son of a clergyman, and was born at Malmersbury, in Wiltshire, on the fifth of April, 1588. His mother's alarm at the approach of the Spanish Armada, which was then near the coast, is said to have hastened his birth, and was probably the cause of a constitutional timidity with which he was affected through life. Having made considerable progress in the learned languages at school, he entered, in 1603, Magdalen Hall, Oxford, where he spent, in diligent application, five years; and at the expiration of that time he became private tutor to the son of William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire. In 1610, Hobbes attended Lord Cavendish in his travels through France, Italy, and Germany, and after their return to England he continued to reside with him as his secretary. It was during his residence with the Earl of Devonshire, that he became intimate with Lord Bacon, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and Ben Jonson. His patron and his pupil both dying, the former, in 1626, and the latter two years after, Hobbes again visited Paris, but in 1631, he undertook to superintend the education of the young Earl of Devonshire, with whom he set off, three years after, on a tour through France, Italy, and Savoy. At Pisa he became intimate with Galileo, the astronomer, and elsewhere held communication with other celebrated characters.

After his return to England in 1637, Hobbes resided in the Earl's family at Chatsworth, in Derbyshire. He now designed to devote himself to study, but he was soon interrupted by the political contentions of the times. Being a zealous royalist, he found it necessary, in 1640, to retire to Paris, where he lived on terms of intimacy with Descates, and other learned men, whom the patronage of Cardinal de Richelieu had, at that time, drawn together. While at Paris, he engaged in a controversy about the quadrature of the circle, and in 1647, he was appointed mathematical instructor to Charles, Prince of Wales, who then resided in the French capital.

Previously to this time Hobbes had commenced the publication of those works which he sent forth in succession, with the view of curbing the spirit of freedom in England, by showing the philosophical foundation of despotic monarchy. The first of them was originally printed in Latin at Paris, in

1642, under the title of Elementa Philosophica de Cive; which when afterward translated into English was entitled Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society. This treatise is regarded as containing the most exact account of the author's political system. With many profound views, it is disfigured by fundamental and dangerous errors. The principles maintained in it were more fully discussed in his larger work, published in 1651, under the title of Leviathan: or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical and Civil. Man is here represented as a selfish and ferocious animal, requiring the strong hand of despotism to keep him in check; and all notions of right and wrong are made to depend upon views of self-interest alone. Of this latter doctrine, commonly known as the Selfish System of moral philosophy, Hobbes was, indeed, the great champion, both in the 'Leviathan' and more particularly in his small Treatise on Human Nature, published in 1650.

In the same year another work from his pen appeared, entitled De Corpore Politico; or Of the Body Politic. The freedom with which theological subjects were handled in the 'Leviathan,' as well as the offensive political views there maintained, occasioned great outery against the author, particularly among the clergy. This led Charles to dissolve his connection with the philosopher, who, according to Lord Clarendon, 'was compelled secretly to fly out of Paris, the justice having endeavoured to apprehend him, and soon after escaped into England, where he never received any disturbance.' He again took up his abode with the Devonshire family, and became intimate with Seldon, Cowley, and Dr. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. In 1654, he published a short but admirably clear and comprehensive Letter upon Liberty and Necessity; where the doctrine of the self-determining power of the will is opposed with a subtlety and profundity unsurpassed in any subsequent writer on that much agitated question. Indeed, he appears to have been the first who understood and expounded clearly the doctrine of philosophical necessity. On this subject, a long controversy between him and Bishop Bramhall of Londonderry took place. Here he fought with the skill of a master; but in a mathematical dispute with Dr. Wallis, professor of geometry at Oxford, which lasted twenty years, he fairly went beyond his depth, and obtained no increase of reputation. The fact is, that Hobbes did not begin to study mathematics until the age of forty, and, like most late learners, greatly overrated his knowledge. When Charles the Second came to the throne, he conferred upon Hobbes an annual pension of one hundred pounds; but, notwithstanding this and other marks of royal favor, much odium continued to rest both upon him and upon his doctrines. The 'Leviathan' and 'De Cive' were censured in Parliament in 1666, and also drew forth many printed replies.

In 1674, Hobbes entered a new field of literature, and published a metrical version of four books of Homer's Odyssey, which was so well received, that in 1675, when he was eighty-seven years of age, he sent forth a translation of the remainder of that poem, and also the whole of the Iliad. These

translations, though very defective, became, nevertheless, so popular, that three large editions of them were required in less than ten years. As a translator in prose he was more successful than in poetry; and his version of the Greek historian Thucydides, one of his early literary performances, is still regarded as one of the best translations of that author ever produced in the English language. Hobbes passed the last five or six years of his life at Chatsworth, and continued to write till his death. His last performance was Behemoth, or a History of the Civil Wars from 1640 to 1660. His death occurred on the 4th of December, 1679, in the ninety-second year of his age.

In his latter years, Hobbes's growing infirmities and habits of solitude rendered him morose and impatient of contradiction. He was never much inclined to read, and was, consequently, familiar with few books. Homer, Virgil, Thucydides and Euclid, were his favorite authors; and he used to say, that if he had read as much as other men, he should have been as ignorant as they.' In consequence of the timidity of his disposition, he was continually apprehensive about his personal safety, insomuch that he could not endure to be left alone in a house. From the same motive, probably, it was that, notwithstanding his notorious heterodoxy, he maintained an external adherence to the established church. Though he has often been stigmatized as an atheist, yet the following passages, particularly the first, would seem to indicate that the charge is groundless :

GOD.

Forasmuch as God Almighty is incomprehensible, it followeth that we can have no conception or image of the Deity; and, consequently, all his attributes signify our inability and defect of power to conceive any thing concerning his nature, and not any conception of the same, except only this, That there is a God. For the effects, we acknowledge naturally, do include a power of their producing, before they were produced; and that power presupposeth something existent that hath such power: and the thing so existing with power to produce, if it were not eternal must needs have been produced by somewhat before it, and that, again, by something else before that, till we come to an eternal (that is to say, the first) Power of all Powers, and first Cause of all Causes: and this is it which all men conceive by the name of GOD, implying eternity, incomprehensibility, and omnipotency. And thus all that will consider may know that God is, though not what he is even a man that is born blind, though it be not possible for him to have any imagination what kind of thing fire is, yet he can not but know that something there is that men call fire, because it warmeth him.

PITY AND INDIGNATION.

Pity is imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity. But when it lighteth on such as we think have not deserved the same, the compassion is greater, because then there appeareth more probability that the same may happen to us; for the evil that happeneth to an innocent man may happen to every man. But when we see a man suffer for great crimes, which we can not easily think will fall upon ourselves, the pity is the less. And, therefore, men are apt to pity those whom they love; for whom they love they think worthy of good, and therefore not worthy of calamity. Thence it is

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