LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 297 



ductions to some of them are enough to make us think 

 that we are fallen to the necessity of reprinting our old 

 authors because the art of writing correct and graceful 

 EngUsh has been lost. William B, Turnbull, Esq., of 

 Lincoln's Inn, Barrister at Law, says, for instance, in his 

 hitroduction to Southwell : " There was resident at 

 Uxendon, near Harrow on the Hill, in Middlesex, a 

 Catholic family of the name of Bellamy whom [which] 

 Southwell was in the habit of visiting and providing 

 w4th religious instruction when he exchanged his ordi- 

 nary [ordinarily] close confinement for a purer atmos- 

 phere." (p. xxii.) Again, (p. xxii,) " He had, in this 

 m.anuer, for six years, pursued, with very great success, 

 the objects of his mission, when these were abruptly 

 terminated by his foul betrayal into the hands of his 

 enemies in 1592." We should like to have Mr. Turn- 

 bull explain how the objects of a mission could be termi- 

 nated by a betrayal, however it might be with the mis- 

 sion itself. From the many similar flowers in the In- 

 troduction to Mather's " Providences," by Mr. George 

 OfFor, (in whom, we fear, we recognize a countryman,) 

 we select the following : " It was at this period when, 

 [that,] oppressed by the ruthless hand of persecu- 

 tion, our Pilgi'im Fathers, threatened with torture and 

 death, succumbed not to man, but trusting on [in] an 

 almighty arm, braved the dangers of an almost un- 

 known ocean, and threw themselves into the arms of 

 men called savages, w^ho proved more beneficent than 

 national Christians." To whom or what our Pilgrim 

 Fathers did succumb, and what "national Christians" 

 are, we leave, with the song of the Sirens, to conjecture. 

 SpeaKing of the "Providences," Mr. OfFor says, that 

 "they faithfully delineate the state of public opinion 

 two hundred years ago, the most striking feature being 

 an implicit faith in the power of the [in-]visible world to 

 13* 



