LIBRARY OF OLD AUTHORS. 297 



ductions to some of them are enough to make us thiuk 

 that -we are lallen to the necessity of reprinting our old 

 authors because the art of wi-iting correct and graceful 

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

 Lincoln's Inn, Barrister at La^v, says, for instance, in his 

 Introduction 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 

 with 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 

 manner, for six years, pursued, with very great success, 

 the objects of his mission, when these w^ere 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, succvimbed 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, who 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. 

 Speaiving of the "Providences," Mr. Offbr says, that 

 "they faithfully delineate the state of public opinion 

 two hundred years ago, the most striking fcatiu'e being 

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

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