tors, that every motion of the body of a wellproportioned, unaffected person, gave sufficient opportunities for the selection of similar attitudes of equal grace; that he considered himself frequently indebted to the simple and unadorned charity-girl for the best of his attitudes; and that these he had often collected during his walks in the streets, when the innocent objects themselves had been wholly ignorant of his admiration of their positions. I have also often heard him declare, that the most successful of his figures displayed in his Illustrations of Homer, Eschylus, and Dante, were procured from similarly natural and unsophisticated sources."-vol. i. PP. 316-318.

"Whenever Nollekens was asked, in the presence of his wife, if he had any family, she would answer, pointing to his figures, 'A very great family, Sir; all these are Mr. Nollekens's children; and as they behave so well, and never make a noise, they shall be his representatives; at the same time making a most formal courtesy to Mr. Nollekens."vol. i. p. 361.

*

"I have been assured by Mr. Turner, the Royal Academician, that when he solicited Mr. Nollekens for his subscription to 'The Artists' Fund,' he inquired how much he wanted from him; Only a guinea,' was the answer; upon which the Sculptor immediately opened a table-drawer, and gave Mr. Turner thirty guineas, saying, There, take that.' Mr. Bailey, the Royal Academician, was also equally surprised, when he applied to him on behalf of the Artists' Society,' to which he is a subscriber."-vol. i. p. 364.

Does it not seem, therefore, rather hard to pin upon poor Nollekens the title of a miser? Of the roughness of his manners, however, there can be no doubt. The following is a characteristic specimen of them:

"Nollekens being once in expectation of a very high personage to visit his studio, was dressed to receive him; and after walking up and down the passage for nearly an hour, being deprived of the advantage of using his elay, for fear of spoiling his clothes, he at length heard the equipage arrive. According to his usual custom, he opened the street-door, and as the illustrious visiter alighted, he cried out, So, you're come at last! why, you are an hour beyond your time; you would not have found me at home, if I had had any where to have gone to, I assure you!"-Vol. ii. p. 398.

*

"For many years, every summer's morn, Mr. Nollekens was up with the rising sun. He began his work by watering his clay, when he modelled till eight o'clock, at which hour he generally breakfasted; and then, as he entered his studio, would observe to his workmen, that every man should earn his breakfast before he ate it."-Vol. i. p. 407.

Our sculptor is said to have experienced the greatest delight when modelling, for his own amusement, small figures in clay, either singly or in groups. Of these he accumulated a great number as he never sold them, and gave away but a few of them as presents. When

ever he read in the papers the death of any distinguished person, he immediately got his clay ready, in order that he might lose no time in case he should be applied to for the purpose of taking a caste of the face. As he was returning from Putney Common with the mask of Mr. Pitt's face, he exclaimed to a friend, pointing to it on the opposite seat of the coach, There, I would not take fifty guineas for that mask, I can tell ye.' From this mask and Hoppner's picture, he subsequently produced the statue of that distinguished statesman, which is now erected in the senate-house of Cambridge, and for which he received three thousand guineas. He obtained for the pedestal one thousand, and for seventy-four marble busts, and about six hundred casts, of Mr. Pitt, he had eleven thousand more, amounting in all to fifteen thousand guineas. It is a remarkable circumstance, that in consequence of some trifling and unintentional offence, Mr. Pitt always refused to sit to Nollekens. In this respect, however, the late Lord Londonderry was no imitator of his great master. An anecdote is told of his visit to the sculptor's study, which must not be omitted.

"When the late Marquis of Londonderry was sitting for his bust, coals were at an enormous price; and the noble Lord, who had been for some time shivering in his seat, took the opportunity, when the sculptor went out for more clay, of throwing some coals upon the fire. Oh my good Lord, I don't know what Mr. Nollekens will say!' exclaimed Mrs. Nollekens, who was bolstered up and bound to an old night-chair by the fire-side: 'Never mind, my good lady,' answered his lordship; 'tell him to put them into my bill.' Lonsdale, the portrait-painter, who found him one severe winter's evening starving himself before a handful of fire, requested to be perm 'ted to throw a few coals on; and before Mr. Nollekens could reply, on they were. Lonsdale, strongly sus pecting that they would be taken off as soon as he was gone, was determined to be convinced; and when he had reached the street-door, pretended to have forgotten something, re-ascended to the room, and found him, as he suspected, taking them off with the fire-feeder, so strongly recommended to him by the Bishop of St. Asaph; at the same time muttering to himself, shameful! shameful extravagance!' He never left the kind-hearted Lonsdale a legacy; at least, I know of none; though it was his intention to have put him down in a former will for 1000l."-vol. ii. pp. 48, 49.

Mrs. Nollekens died in 1817, in the seventyfourth year of her age. After her death, our sculptor's second childhood commenced. He was confined much to his bed, and became very imbecile. He had in the course of his life three attacks of paralysis, and after much suffering, he departed from this scene of his fame on the 23d of April, 1823.

To the memoirs of his life are added biographical sketches of Roubiliac, Proctor, Zoffany, Gainsborough, and several other artists of eminence. We are happy to observe, that they are untinged by any of that personal ill will which we have complained of as manifesting itself too frequently, and too bitterly, in almost every thing that relates to Nollekens.

From the New Monthly Magazine.

NO MORE.

"There came a sound of song

From the dark ruins-a faint strain

As if some Echo that among

Those minstrel halls had slumber'd long,

Were murmuring into life again.

Ah! where are they, who heard in former hours The voice of song in those neglected bowers? They are gone-they all are gone! 'Tis thus in future hours, some bard will say Of her who sings, and him that hears this lay, They are gone-they too are gone."Evenings in Greece. No more!-a harp-string's deep, sad, breaking tone,

A last low summer-breeze, a far-off knell, A dying echo of rich music gone, Breathe through those words-those murmurs of farewell

No more!

From the New Monthly Magazine. NARES'S LIFE AND ADMINISTRATION OF LORD BURGHLEY.*

THIS is of a good school: by a veteran in literature-familiar with the story of the times in which his hero flourished, and evidently fond of discussing them-bringing to the task he has undertaken, the advantages of long practice and matured experience-accustomed to search and sift, to unravel intricacies, to balance probabilities, and fix results-neither daunted by labours, nor shrinking from difficulties, but boldly diving into the depths of his subject, and bringing forth treasures new and old. His authentic materials were abundant; Lord Burghley was a man of business, carefully gathering papers and documents, and his descendants have religiously preserved them. They have been picked and culled by numbers, but never with the direct purpose of illustrating the merits of the original possessor. Singularly enough, Lord Burghley has never had fair justice done him-his actions have never been fully detected and canvassed-though confessedly the leading counsellor of the whole of Elizabeth's reign, the main spring and support of a successful government of forty years, at a period when society, thrown into a state of disturbance by the fermentation of new opinions and principles, required the very wisest and most watchful management while superintending its subsidence. He has been mixed up, impersonally, with the general government, and has, in a measure, lost some of the individualizing features of the man.

In the common estimate, which after all perhaps seldom very widely misses the mark, Lord Burghley is the very representative of prudence and political sagacity-a man of a Macchiavelian cast, not, apparently, very nice about the means of accomplishing important ends-the protector of Protestantism and the church hierarchy-the persecutor of heretics -the unscrupulous agent of Elizabeth's worst excesses; but, at the same time, the resolute defender of his country's superiority-the seaman who safely conducted the vessel among shoals and quicksands—the pilot that weathered the storm. Let his faults have been what they may, success has thrown a veil over them, and success, with those at least who share the advantages of it, if it be not made the measure of worth exactly, is pretty sure of

* Memoirs of the Life and Administration of the Right Hon. William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Lord High Treasurer of England in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. By the Rev. Edward Nares. D. D. Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. 2 vola, 4to.

a liberal construction. Besides, the depreciators of Lord Burghley were a defeated, we need not add, an oppressed party, and a party notoriously distinguished (we are not speaking with any invidious allusion to existing circumstances) for sticking at no calumnies or corruptions; and therefore the less entitled, and the less likely, in the long run, to fix a lasting stain upon those they desire to asperse.

Nevertheless, looking to the unmitigated facts of Burghley's history-and few do more -the balance is decidedly against him. We know him to have been charged with betraying both Somerset and Northumberland-we know him to have been trusted by the one, and to have acted officially under the other; and we find him successively in the service of Henry, Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth. The bare facts irresistibly suggest the existence of pliancy of principle; and yet the known influence he possessed with one party, permanently and uninterruptedly, shows a sort of confidence which nothing surely but consistency, steadiness, and sincerity, in no common degree, could justify or originate. That he must, however, have submitted to compliances is indisputable-the question will be, how far they were warrantable, how far they were specifically prompted by private interests, or how far they were directed and contributed to the establishment of permanent and pervading good. The end is not to justify the means; but the greatness of the end will nevertheless, in the eyes apparently of the sober and practical moralist, and certainly in the estimate of common observers, excuse occasional obliquity. We are much afraid, if it were even nakedly stated, that his conformity to Catholic rites and practices enabled him to further the interests of Protestantism, few would be found staunch enough to censure him very deeply for conforming; and Dr. Nares, upon due examination, and full evidence of the fact, discovers reasons for justification, evidently, with very little difficulty.

Glancing at the character of the man generally, we must conclude him to have been a very able person-originally well introduced, and closely and early connected with a set of men, scholars and statesmen, who were bent upon introducing the "new learning"-when favoured with opportunities for action, active, prompt, and prudent-useful by these qualities to political leaders-advanced by them to places of trust and confidence, and by his efficiency, gaining at every step new influence when repulsed, never defeated nor disheartened -yielding to the storm, bending till it blew over-when associates and patrons were suffering, himself by dexterity escaping-when thrown out of office by one party, quickly recalled by another from his known experience and promptitude of expedient-and finally, when what was strictly his own party recovered the ascendency, becoming, all competitors being now swept away, their sole and acknowledged leader-a post, which in spite of court favourites and political enemies, in troops, he maintained for forty years-a result which implies, no doubt, extraordinary talent, but also extraordinary pliancy and manage

ment.

Dr. Nares has taken a large and liberal view of the matter, and entered very fully into the chief events of the times, the more fairly and completely to estimate the actions and importance of the subject of his biography. He has successfully traced his agency upon occasions in which he was before scarcely known to have had any share, and has thus been enabled effectively to rebut and remove some calumnies, and alleviate the pressure of others. He finds him to have been a much more influential person in the days of Edward, than he was before supposed to have been, and at a very early period regarded, by the scholars of the day, and the chief of the reformers, as the main pillar, at least politically, of the great cause of Protestantism. From the very extensive range which the author has taken, the biography is brought down, in the very considerable volume before us, only to the death of Mary. This, however, is the period of Cecil's life, with which the public is least acquainted; after Elizabeth's accession, his course is better known; and it is always more interesting, more instructive, to trace the rise of an extraordinary person while fighting his way to distinction, than to contemplate his aftercareer, when the character is fixed, the autho rity established, and all plain sailing. We shall, therefore, glance over this early period, which will enable us to appreciate the author's success-how far, we mean, he has succeeded in one main object of his performance, removing the calumnies which have been penned upon Lord Burghley-effacing the stains which have somewhat tarnished the splendour and purity of his fame.

Cecil was born in 1520, at Bourne, in Lincolnshire, and though not, beyond all dispute, as his admirers eventually asserted, descended in a right line from the Roman Cæcilii, yet undoubtedly of a very respectable Welsh family, the Sitsils. His father was master of the robes to Henry VIII. Young Cecil, at the age of fourteen, according to the custom of those times, was sent from Grantham school to St. John's, Cainbridge, where he was quickly distinguished by propriety of conduct, and extraordinary acquirements. At a period when Greek was but newly introduced at Cam bridge, he entered eagerly into the study of it; and before he was nineteen actually gave volunteer lectures on the language. Greek came in with the "new learning," which in those days meant the new doctrines of Protestantism, and all the early promoters of Greek at Cambridge were either avowedly favourers of them, or laboured under the scandal of being so. Cecil's acquaintance lay wholly among the leading scholars, all of them older than himself, and some considerably soSmith, Cheke, Parker, Ascham, Bacon,-and among them seemed destined for academical

distinctions.

Circumstances, however, not at all developed, diverted him from his course; and at twenty we find him at Gray's Inn, where he had the reputation, with great ardour, of coupling antiquarian researches with his legal studies. These must have quickly met with interruptions, nor indeed is it known that he was studying for the bar. From his father's

position, the court seemed open to him, and a political career the most obvious. Scarcely had he been three months at Gray's Inn when he married a sister of Cheke's; and the same year chance introduced him personally to the King's notice. On some occasion, in the presence chamber, to which his father's office gave him a ready entrance, he got into a dispute with two chaplains in attendance on the great Irish chieftain O'Neale, and by dint of argument fairly reduced them to silence. The dispute had been carried on in Latin, was long and warm, and excited the notice of some of the courtiers, who, by way of chit-chat, told the King young Cecil's victory. The King sent for him forthwith, and after a long talk with him, being exceedingly delighted with his ready and prudent answers, desired his father to find out "a suit for him," which of course was speedily accomplished, and the reversion of Custos Brevium in the Common Pleas accordingly solicited and granted. The dispute apparently concerned the King's supremacy-a subject of deep interest with the King; and Cecil luckily took the right side. The reversion did not fall in till after the King's death, and it is not certainly known that he either obtained any thing else, or ever had another personal interview. But his connexions with the court were rapidly increasing. Cheke, his brother-in-law, was appointed tutor to the young prince; and in 1545-his first wife dying within two years of the marriage he married one of the learned daughters of Sir Anthony Cooke, himself one of the Prince's governors. Cooke's other daughters, being all of them well married, multiplied Cecil's court connexions, and tended of course materially to forward his interests.

Through Cheke apparently he became known also to Somerset (then Lord Hertford) and Cranmer; and immediately on the accession of Edward, he reaped the fruits of these fortunate, or rather, perhaps, well chosen connexions. About this time also the reversion of Custos Brevium fell in, worth then, it appears, 240l. a-year; and among the first acts of Somerset was Cecil's appointment to be "his Master of Requests," a matter of great importance, as bringing him in immediate contact with the Protector. The office, whatever it might really have been, is spoken of as a new one, and Camden, it is stated, asserted that Cecil told him, he was the first who ever held it; but Courts of Requests, if not instituted in the reign of Henry VII., were certainly in existence in that of Henry VIII., for Sir Thomas More had been a master. This office of Cecil's was undoubtedly something quite different, and though represented as destined for the "furtherance of poor men's suits, and for the more effectual speeding them without the delays and charges of law," it seems more probably to have been what in modern terms would have been called the private secretaryship. Still the office was in some degree recognised as a public one, and evidently by the numerous letters still in existence, addressed to him, was considered as the direct and regular channel of communication with the government. The duties, some of them at least, were such as have since merged in those of

the secretary for the home department. The circumstances of the times made it of considerable importance, and more, as Dr. Nares suggests, was certainly done in those days by letter than now-a suitor could not so readily then be whisked from one end of the country to the other.

The same year Cecil accompanied his patron in the expedition to Scotland-"the rough wooing,"-partly in his capacity of "Master of Requests," or private secretary rather, for the office plainly attached him to the Protector, and partly also, apparently, as one of a judge-advocate duumvirate. One Patten, who published an account of the expedition, and the battle of Pinkey, calls himself a judge of the Marshalsea, and speaks of Cecil as his colleague. Robertson evidently understood this to be a military appointment-a sort of provost-marshalship, and accordingly calls him judge marshal of the army; but he may be wholly mistaken, and the office, after all, nothing but a civil one, and connected, as appears from Patten's title-page, with the Marshalsea courts. Dr. Nares, who is probably somewhat too much disposed to magnify Cecil before his time, and on all occasions to find full employment for him, conjectures that he may have been consulted in this new capacity, or actually engaged in penning state papers; but that his quality of private secretary to the Protector, for such we must persist in thinking it to have been, might call upon him to do. Cecil supplied the materials, or at least some part of them, to Patten's "Diarium Expeditionis Scoticæ."

In the meanwhile Cranmer, who had become paramount in ecclesiastical matters, was pushing the progress of the Reformation, or "Restoration," as Dr. Nares would have it called, in every possible way; and, among other changes, the bishops were called upon to take out new commissions, Cranmer himself setting the example-the congé d'élire was suppressed, and a patent substituted, and the office held during pleasure. A royal visitation also was appointed, consisting of civilians and divines, during the exercise of whose functions all episcopal powers were suspended. The first book of homilies was published, and Erasmus's Paraphrase of the Gospels translated and circulated. To all these innovations Gardiner and Bonner were vehemently opposed: Gardiner in particular declared the visitation altogether illegal, and was, in consequence of his intemperate declarations, by the Council committed to the Fleet. He was, however, very soon offered his liberty, on condition of admitting the homilies; but still objecting to the homily on salvation in particnlar, he required a few days to consider, and was remanded. During this interval, Cecil and Dr. Ridley were especially commissioned by the Protector and Craniner to visit and confer with him, and they finally overcame his scruples. The bishop's own account is-the matter, to be sure is, not a very important one, except that Cecil was personally concerned-that he reappeared before the Council at the end of a fortnight, and still persisting in his objections, was committed a prisoner to his own house, and that not till then did Cecil