four or five of that period; and the only one at all worthy of attention is the aprocryphal letter from Anne Boleyn to her husband from the Tower, with which our readers are too well acquainted to wish to meet with it in our pages. The greater proportion of the first part is occupied with correspondence of the time of James I. and Charles I., principally of letters to the favourite Buckingham, soliciting his patronage and favour, but containing many from Raleigh, Sir Dudley Carleton, the Earl of Bristol, Dr. Donne, and other eminent persons. Some of them afford striking evidence of the sycophancy of all classes, and particularly of the spiritual as well as temporal peers, who often addressed him in terms suited only to the Deity, styling themselves his "creatures," and approaching him with the most unmanly and disgusting humility. Such is the nature of a great many of the letters to the duke, and those which related to political affairs evince the extraordinary influence which he possessed. From the renowned Bacon there are several letters; and though part are deserving of attention, we shall perhaps have a better opportunity of noticing them. The negotiations for the marriage of Charles I. with the Spanish Princess occupy several pages; and almost an equal number are filled with particulars of the arrangement with the French court for a similar purpose.

The history of the reign of Elizabeth receives many valuable illustrations, especially with reference to the connexion between this country and the Netherlands; the correspondence on which affair, together with the few other articles that occur in the second part of the volume, were, it is said, copied from the originals in the library of Viscount Longueville, at Euston Maudit, in Northamptonshire. However sensible we may be of the imperfect account which we have given of the contents of, or rather of the subjects which are noticed in, the " Cabala," it is not in our power to render it more satisfactory, unless we in fact made this article an index to the work. We therefore wish to impress upon every person, who is interested in the period of history to which it refers, the necessity of attentively perusing the whole volume, as it is impossible to ascertain its contents in any other manner; for there is no index, the letters are not arranged in chronological order, and no notes whatever exist; nor is it stated in either of the editions where the originals of the first part are preserved. Dr. Field Bishop of Llandaff's letter to the Duke of Buckingham will perhaps justify our assertion with respect to the sycophancy of the prelates of the age. Field was translated from St. David's in December, 1635, and died, without reaping the effects he expected, in June, 1636, between which periods his letter must have been written.

"My gracious good Lord,

"In the great library of men, that I have studied these many years, your grace is the best book and most classick author that I have read, in whom I find so much goodness, sweetness, and nobleness of nature, such an heroick spirit for boundless bounty, as I never did in any. I could instance in many, some of whom you have made Deans, some Bishops, some Lords, and Privy Councillors; none that ever looked toward your grace did ever goe empty away. I need goe no further than myself, (a gum of the earth) whom some eight years ago you raised out of the dust for raising but a thought so high as to serve your Highness. Since that, I have not played the truant, but more diligently studied you than ever before; and yet (dunce that I am) I stand at a stay, and am a non proficient; the book being the same that ever it was, as may appear by the great proficiency of others. This wonderfully poseth me, and sure there is some guile, some wile in some of my fellow students, who hide my book from me, or some part of it. All the fault is not in mine own blockishness, that I thrive no better. I once feared this before, that some did me ill offices; your grace was pleased to protest, no man had, and to assure me no man could. My heart tells me it hath been always upright, and is still most faithful unto you. I have examined my actions, my words, and my very thoughts, and found all of them ever since most sound unto your grace. Give me leave after so long patience, (for which virtue you were once pleased to commend me to my old master King James, and I have not yet lost it) now that for these twelve months almost I have been not onely upon the stage, but upon the rack of expectations, even distracted between hope and fear, to comfort myself with recordation of your loving kindnesses of old, when, on that great feast-day of your being inaugured our Chancellor, my look was your book wherein you read sadness, to which I was bold to answer, I trusted your grace would give me no cause. You replied with (loss of blood rather) that was your noble expression, but God forbid so precious an effusion, (I would empty all my veins rather than you should bleed one drop) when as one blast of your breath is able to bring me to the heaven where I would be. My Lord, I am grown an old man, and am like old household stuff, apt to be broke upon often removing. I desire it, therefore, but once for all, be it Ely, or Bathe and Wells; and I will spend the remainder of my days in writing an history of your good deeds to me and others; whereby I may vindicate you from the envy and obliquy of this present wicked age wherein we live; and whilst I live in praying for your grace, whose I am totally and finally,

"THEOPHILUS LANDAVEN."-P. 111.

But the Bishop of Llandaff was by no means singular in his adulation of greatness; for his brother prelates nearly equalled him in this disgraceful conduct. Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, for example, tells Charles I., in a letter in which he complained that he had not received his writ of summons to Parliament, which was "denied to no prisoners or condemned peers" in the pre

ceding reign, that his Majesty's presence was "the onely Heaven wherein his soul delighted'.'

Queen Elizabeth's attention to her dress is shown by the following extract from a letter from Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burghley, to Sir Henry Norris, the English ambassador to the French court, dated 20th February, 1566-7.

"The Queen's Majesty would fain have a taylor that had skill to make her apparell both after the French and Italian manner; and she thinketh that you might use some mean to obtain some one such there as serveth that Queen, without mentioning any manner of request in the Queen Majesty's name. First to cause my Lady your wife to use some such means to get one, as thereof knowledge might not come to the Queen Mother's ears, of whom the Queen's Majesty thinketh thus, that if she did understand that it were a matter wherein her Majesty might be pleasured, she would offer to send one to the Queen's Majesty. Nevertheless, if it cannot be so obtained by this indirect means, then her Majesty would have you devise some other good means to obtain one that were skilfull.”—P. 125.

Those who are acquainted with the character of Burghley, are aware of the various pursuits to which he gave his attention, and they will not be surprised at the ensuing passages in his letter to Sir Henry Norris. In a postscript to his dispatch of the 27th of August, 1568, he says:

"I have boldly received from you sundry books; and I am bold to pray you to provide for me a book concerning architecture, entituled according to a paper here included, which I saw at Sir Thomas Smith's, or if you think there is any better of a late making of that argument."-P. 141.

A book was sent accordingly; but from his letter of the 27th of September it is evident that it was not the one he wished:

"I thank you for the book you sent me of architecture; but the book which I most desired is made by the same author, and yet entituled Novels institutions per bien bastir' per Philemont de L'orm.2" -Pp. 141-2.

' Page 108.

The following notice of L'Orme will be found in Gwilt's edition of Chambers's Civil Architecture, Lond. 1826, among the notes of its learned editor.

"Philibert De Lorme, a native of Lyons, was born in the beginning of the sixteenth century. He may be fairly ranked among the restorers of architecture in France; but as the father of constructive skill, more especially in carpentry, he has the highest claims on our gratitude. His employment in Paris and its vicinity was very extended; in the former, the palace of the Tuilleries, in its original state, was from his designs; Jean Bullant being said to have been associated with him for the purpose of carrying them into execution. Both these architects have been honoured by Chambray, who thought them not unworthy to stand by the side of the greatest masters, in his celebrated 'Parallele.' "The taste of the age decoyed De Lorme into the customary division of his façades into 'pavillons,' as the French term them, with towers whose quoins are heavily rusticated; a practice destructive of all effect, as well as unity of design, and calculated to make that appear petite which its volume alone would otherwise have rendered imposing.

Cecil's dislike to his mission to the Queen of Scots, in 1570, is forcibly displayed in his letter to Norris.

"I am thrown into a maze at this time, that I know not how to walk from dangers. Sir Walter Mildmay, and I, are sent to the Scottish Queen, as by the Queen Majesty's letters you may see: God be our guide; for neither of us like the message."-P. 167.

A petition from Lord Falkland to the King for the pardon of his son is extremely curious:

"Most humbly shewing that I had a son, until I lost him in your Highness's displeasure, where I cannot seek him, because I have not will to find him there. Men say, there is a wild young man now a prisoner in the Fleet, for measuring his actions by his own private sense; but now that, for the same, your Majesty's hand hath appeared in his punishment, he bows and humbles himself before, and to it. Whether he be mine or not, I can discern by no light, but that of your royal clemency, for only in your forgiveness can I own him for mine. Forgiveness is the glory of the supremest powers, and this the operation, that when it is extended in the greatest measure, it converts the greatest offenders into the greatest lovers; and so makes purchase of the heart, as especial priviledge peculiar and due to sovereign princes.

"If now your Majesty will vouchsafe out of your own benignity to become a second nature, and restore that unto me which the first gave me, and vanity deprived me of, I shall keep my reckoning of the full number of my sons with comfort, and render the tribute of my most humble thankfulness; else my weak old memory must forget one." P. 221.

A few extracts from the letters of Henry Rich, first Lord Kensington, and afterwards Earl of Holland, describing his inter

"De Lorme was the author of two works on architecture, viz. a complete Treatise in nine books, fol. Paris, 1567, which was probably the book sent to Cecil, and the other on carpentry, entitled,Nouvelles Inventions pour bien bâtir et à petits frais,' fol. Paris, 1561. The latter contains an entirely new system of carpentry, in which the chief feature is a substitution of comparatively thin curviform ribs for the heavy trussed roofs then in general use. These ribs are formed of planks in thickness rarely more than three or four feet long, about a foot wide, and one inch thick; their forms, of course, depending on those of the plan and section. They are secured at their feet by a strong wall plate laid horizontally. The joint of each plank is broken in the middle of the contiguous plank. As the whole security of the system depends on the perpendicularity of the ribs, they are kept in their vertical direction by keys which pierce them, pinned or wedged on each side of the rib. The most magnificent specimen of this species of carpentry was in the dome of the Halle aux Bleds at Paris, designed by Legrand and Molenos, now replaced, in consequence of its destruction by fire, with a cast-iron ribbed dome. Not the least merit of De Lorme's invention was that of its requiring but small timbers for very extended spans, independent of its consequent lightness. Specimens of this sort of construction will be found in Kraaft's Art de Charpente,' fol. Paris. Quatremere de Quincy, under the article De Lorme, Encyclopedie Methodique, says of this architect's works, that they assurent à son nom une gloire peut-être plus réelle, mais à coup sûr plus durable que celle qu'il doit à ses édifices en partie détruits ou denaturés." "P. 164. The notice of him in the "Nouveau Dictionnaire Historique" states, that he died on the 9th of February, 1570.

views with Henrietta Maria of France, subsequently the Queen of Charles the First, must be read with some interest.

In a letter to the Prince, dated 26th February, 1624-5, he says, she is “a lady of as much loveliness and sweetness to deserve your affection as any creature under Heaven can do ;" that she is "the sweetest creature in France; and that

"her growth is very little short of her age, and her wisdom infinitely beyond it. I heard her discourse with her mother and the ladies about her with extraordinary discretion and quickness. She dances (the which I am a witness of) as well as ever I saw any creature. They say she sings most sweetly, I am sure she looks so.”—P. 287.

In another letter he informed the royal lover that his Highness's reputation

"as the most compleat young prince and person in the world hath begotten in the sweet Princess Madam so infinite an affection to your fame, as she could not contain herself, from a passionate desiring to see your picture, the shadow of that person so honored; and knowing not by which means to compass it, it being worn about my neck; for though others, as the Queen and Princesses, would open it, and consider it, the which ever brought forth admiration from them, yet durst not this poor young lady look any otherwise on it than afar off, whose heart was nearer it than any of the others that did most gaze upon it. But at the last (rather than want that sight, the which she was so impatient of,) she desired the gentlewoman of the house where I am lodged, that had been her servant, to borrow of me the picture in all the secrecy that may be, and to bring it unto her, saying, she could not want that curiosity, as well as others, towards a person of his infinite reputation. As soon as she saw the party that brought it, she retired into her cabinet, calling only her in, where she opened the picture in such haste as showed a true picture of her passion, blushing in the instant at her own guiltiness. She kept it an hour in her hands, and when she returned it she gave it many praises of your person. Sir, this is a business so fit for your secrecy as I know it shall never go further than unto the king your father, my lord Duke of Buckingham, and my lord of Carlisle's knowledge. Å tenderness in this is honourable, for I would rather dye a thousand times than it should be published, since I am by this young lady trusted, that is for beauty and goodness an angel.”— P. 288.

Kensington thus related the particulars of an audience with which he was honoured with the Queen Mother and the Princess, in a letter to the Duke of Buckingham:

"Here I entreated I might weary her Majesty no further, but take the liberty she had pleased to give me in entertaining Madam with such commandments as the Prince had charged me withal to her. She would needs know what I would say, 'Nay, then, (smiling, quoth I,) your Majesty will impose upon me the like law that they in Spain did upon his Highness.' But the case is now different, (said she), for there the prince was in person, here is but his deputy.'