he also wrote the History of King Richard the Third, which has been published both in Latin and English, with many other pieces now little remembered, as being chiefly in defence of the Romish faith.

from sleep for it's completion. It has been translated into French, Italian, Dutch, and English, and is still justly deemed a masterpiece of art and fancy.

* Upon the usurpation of Richard III., and his murther of his two nephews, Hume says (and with him almost every Eng- · lish historian agrees) "a most luminous ray is thrown by the narrative of Sir Thomas More, whose singular magnanimity, probity, and judgement make him an evidence beyond all exception." Yet has it been excepted against by Buck, a writer in the time of James I., who in his Life and Reign of Richard III.' not only asserts the innocence of that prince, but even denies the extreme deformity of person previously ascribed to him. This however completely invalidating the title of his sovereign, as derived through a daughter of Henry VII., he found it necessary to trace the Stuart line from a more legitimate origin, Margaret, the sister of Edgar Atheling, married to Malcolm Canmore. With Buck, Carte, in his History of England,' agrees; and Mr. Walpole, in his Historic Doubts,' has illustrated the subject with many new and ingenious arguments. More recently still, Mr. Laing. (See Appendix to Henry's History of England,' vol. XII.) has explored it with his characteristical minuteness and accuracy, and draws from his inquiries the four-fold conclusion:

1. That Richard must be exculpated from the crimes attributed to his early youth-the murthers of Henry VI., and his son Prince Edward, and perhaps of Clarence;

2. That, instead of a perjured traitor, he must be recognised as the legitimate sovereign of England;

3. That the account of the murther of the young princes is false; and

4. That Perkin Warbeck was a genuine Plantagenet, the real Duke of York.

In this disquisition, he finds that More derived his documents not from the traditionary authority of Richard's contemporaries,

66

By his first wife he left three daughters, and one son, John; "in virtue and learning," saith Roper, brought up from their youth; whom he would often exhort to take virtue and learning for their meat, and play for their sauce." Margaret, his favourite child, married William Roper; Elizabeth married John Dancy; and Cecilia married Giles Heron. They all left issue. John was one of the heroüm filii, says Jortin, who are seldom equal to their fathers. More indeed told his wife, she had prayed so long for a boy, that she had produced one at last, who would be a boy as long as he lived.' Margaret however, in particular, appears to have enjoyed every advantage of an understanding strong by nature, and cultivated with peculiar attention. Costerius, in his notes on Vincentius Lirinensis, gives us one of her emendations of Cyprian, which is not unworthy of the ablest critic. She also wrote two declamations in English, which both she and her father subsequently translated into Latin with so much eloquence, that it was difficult to pronounce which of them deserved the preference. She drew up a Treatise likewise on the Four Last Things,

but from a Latin History of that prince composed by Archbishop Morton, his early patron, which was preserved in the last century by Roper, one of More's descendents. But though to the materials thus supplied he superadded an ornamental and classical varnish, he must be acquitted, under this view of the matter, from the imputation of having propagated deliberate falsehood.

Mr. Cayley, it ought to be added, after taking a careful view of the subject, observes, that " our judgements have not been convinced by flippancies; and Richard still remains the monster he was." (Life of More, I. 263.) So difficult is it, to draw truth from her well!

which More declared to be better than one of his own composition. Erasmus complimented her, in a letter, for her learning still more than for her virtue or her manners; and when Cardinal Pole read one of her Epistles, he could not believe that it was written by a woman. She, in her turn, was not less attentive to the education of her own children. Her daughter Mrs. Basset, one of the ladies of Queen Mary's privy-chamber, translated into English a part of her grandfather's Exposition of our Saviour's Passion in a stile so like his own, that many believed the version to have been made by himself. She wished indeed to have had Ascham, as he himself informs us, for their preceptor; but he could not be prevailed upon, at that time, to quit the university.

At this period, when education so justly engrosses a considerable portion of the national attention, as female education both admits and requires some improvement, an additional page or two may not disadvantageously be occupied by one of his letters upon the subject addressed to Gonellus, their tutor.

'I have received, my dear Gonellus, your letters, full as usual of elegance and affection. Your love of my children I see by your letters, your diligence I gather from their own; for each of their letters pleased me. But especially was I delighted, that Elizabeth behaved herself with a decency of demeanor in my absence, which few children observe in the presence of their parents. Give her to understand, that that circumstance gratified me more than could all the learning in the world. For I prefer the learning, which is united with virtue, to all the treasures of kings; and if we separate from it propriety of conduct, what more doth the fame of letters bring us

than a kind of infamy in notoriety? This applies peculiarly to the female sex. Their proficiency in literature being something new, and a kind of reproach to the sluggishness of men, most men will be ready to attack them, and to expend their natural malice upon their learning. Nay, they will call their own ignorance a virtue, when compared with the faults of these learned. On the other hand, if a woman (which I wish may be the case with all my girls, and in which I have the greatest confidence under your auspices) to high excellence of character unites even a moderate portion of learning, I deem her possessed of more real good, than if she had the wealth of Croesus and the beauty of Helen.

And this not for the sake of fame, although fame pursues worth as the shadow the body: but because the reward of wisdom is more substantial, than to be borne away on the wings of riches, or to fade with beauty; as it places it's dependence on rectitude of conscience, not on the tongues of others, which abound in folly and evil. For as the avoiding of infamy is the duty of a good man, so the laying himself out for fame is the part not only of a proud, but also of a ridiculous and contemptible one; since that mind must of necessity be ill at ease, which ever fluctuates between joy and sadness from the opinions of others. Of the great benefits however, which learning confers upon man, I really deem none preferable to the instruction which letters afford us, that in the attainment of them we regard not the reputation they bring us, but their utility. Which precept, although some have abused their learning, like other good possessions, by hunting only for vain glory and

popular fame, yet has it been delivered by all the most learned, and especially by the philosophers, those moderators of human life.

6

I have enlarged the more on this subject of vain glory, my Gonellus, because of the expression in your letter, that you think the elevated cast of my daughter Margaret's mind ought not to be lowered. I agree with you in this opinion. But in my mind, and I doubt not in yours also, he seems to lower the noble disposition of his mind, who accustoms himself to admire what is vain and base. And he, on the other hand, to elevate it, who esteems virtue and true good; who, by contemplating sublime objects, looks down as from on high, with disregard on those shadows of good, which almost every one in ignorance greedily catches at for the substance.

'As this seemed to me the best way, I have requested not only you, my dear Gonellus, whose strong love to all mine would have led you, I know, to have done so of your own accord; or my wife, to whom (as I have often witnessed) her true maternal piety is a sufficient impulse; but frequently almost all my friends also, to admonish my children, that avoiding the precipices of pride, they walk in the pleasant meads of modesty; that the sight of riches overcome them not; that they sigh not for the want of that in themselves, which is erroneously admired by others; that they think no better of themselves for being well dressed, nor worse for being otherwise; that they spoil not the beauty which nature gave them by neglect, nor endeavour to increase it by vile arts; that they esteem virtue the first, and letters the second good; and that of these they deem those the best,