Then draw thy forces all up to thy heart,
The strongest fortress of this earthly part,
And on these three let thy assurance lie,
On faith, repentance, and humility,

By which, to heaven ascending by degrees,
Persist in prayer upon your bended knees :
Whereon if you assuredly be stayed,

You need in peril not to be dismayed,

Which still shall keep you that you shall not fall, For any peril that can you appal:

The key of heav'n thus with you you shall bear, And grace you guiding, get your entrance there; And of those celestial joys possess,

you

Which mortal tongue's unable to express.

VIRTUE NOT HEREDITARY.

THAT height and god-like purity of mind,
Resteth not still where titles most adorn,
With any, nor peculiarly confined
To names, and to be limited doth scorn:
Man doth the most degenerate from kind,
Richest and poorest both alike are born;

And to be always pertinently good,
Follows not still the greatness of our blood.

Pity it is, that to one virtuous man
That mark him lent, to gentry to advance,
Which first by noble industry he wan,

His baser issue after should enhance,

And the rude slave, not any good that can,

Such should thrust down by what is his by chance:

As had not he been first that him did raise, Ne'er had his great heir wrought his grandsire's praise.

You that but boast your ancestors' proud style, And the large stem whence your vain greatness

grew,

When you yourselves are ignorant and vile,
Nor glorious thing dare actually pursue,
That all good spirits would utterly exile,
Doubting their worth should else discover you,
Giving yourselves unto ignoble things-
Base I proclaim you, though derived from kings.

Virtue, but poor, God in this earth doth place,
'Gainst the rude world to stand up in his right,
To suffer sad affliction and disgrace,

Nor ceasing to pursue her with despite :
Yet when of all she is accounted base,
And seeming in most miserable plight,

Out of her power new life to her doth take;
Least then dismayed, when all do her forsake.

That is the man of an undaunted spirit,
For her dear sake that offereth him to die;
For whom, when him the world doth disinherit,
Looketh upon it with a pleased eye;

What's done for virtue thinking it doth merit,
Daring the proudest menaces defy;

More worth than life, howe'er the base world rate him,

Beloved of heaven, although the earth doth hate him.

SIR HENRY WOTTON.

BORN 1568; DIED 1640.

THE various accomplishments of SIR HENRY WOTTON, and the vicissitudes of his life, have been made familiar to most readers by the pleasing narrative of Isaac Walton. His active occupations, as a traveller, a secretary, a diplomatist, and, finally, as provost of Eton College, probably left him but little leisure for the labours of authorship. He has, however, bequeathed to posterity some curious prose tracts,-of which the chief are, "The State of Christendom," and a treatise "On the Elements of Architecture"-with a few poems, of sufficient merit to have survived to our times, though connected with a name less celebrated in its day, than that of Wotton.