MARY RICH, COUNTESS OF WARWICK 149 



manner of Puritan theology, her mind is much occu- 

 pied with thoughts of death and eternity. " I was 

 much comforted," she says, "with thoughts of my 

 eternal rest ; " or " God was pleased to awaken my 

 heart with the serious thoughts of death and of 

 eternity and of the day of judgment." 



Among the volumes of Lady Warwick's manuscripts 

 in the British, Museum are no less than twelve little 

 books of what she calls Occasional Meditations. The 

 titles or themes of these compositions, of which nearly 

 two hundred remain, reveal in a striking manner her 

 appreciation of nature. The sights and sounds of 

 country life are to her allegories of things unseen and 

 eternal. They furnish her with subjects from which 

 she draws the most telling spiritual analogies. A 

 " sudden surprising storm," a lark singing, a snail on 

 the garden path, a bank of anemones, a hen flying 

 undauntedly at a kite, then common in Essex, "that 

 came to get the chickens from her " ; the decoy pond 

 in the Park, still remaining ; her " little bitch " after a 

 rabbit, her pet linnets, a dead fish floating down the 

 stream, " My Lady Essex Rich's pet hen," these and 

 similar subjects form the texts of her meditations. 

 The most pathetic of these compositions, suggested 

 by the cutting down of her beloved " wilderness," 

 deserves to be quoted, revealing as it does the great 

 sorrow of her life: "This sweet place that I have 

 seen ye first sprouting, growth, and flourishing of for 

 above twenty years together, and almost daily taken 

 delight in, I have also now to my trouble seen by my 

 Lord's command ye cutting down of, in order to its 

 after growing again thicker and better, tho' I have 

 often interceded with him to have it spared longer. 

 This brought to my remembrance afresh ye death of 



