Mr. Trollope has given good translations of several of these beautiful sonnets. The following prayer for faith is one in which every pious heart can join:

"Grant to my heart a pure fresh ray, O Lord,

Of that bright ardent faith, which makes thy will
Its best-loved law, and seeks it to fulfill
For love alone, not looking for reward;

That faith which deems no ill can come from thee,
But humbly trusts that rightly understood,
All that meets eye or ear is fair and good,
And heaven's love oft in prayers refused can see;
And if thy handmaid might prefer a suit,

I would that faith possess that fires the heart,
And feeds the soul with the true light alone;
I mean hereby that mighty power in part,

Which plants and strengthens in us the deep root,
From which all fruits of love for him are grown."

"Here we have," says Mr. Trollope in commenting upon the following sonnet, "the doctrine of sudden and instantaneous conversion and sanctification, and that without any aid from sacrament, altar, or priest."

When by the light whose living ray both peace
And joy to faithful bosoms doth impart,

The indurated ice, around the heart
So often gathered, is dissolved through grace,
Beneath that blessed radiance from above
Falls from the dark mantle of my sin;
Sudden I stand forth pure and radiant in

The garb of primal innocence and love.
And though I strive with lock and trusty key

To keep that ray, so subtle 'tis and coy,

By one low thought 'tis scared and put to flight.
So flies it from me. I in sorrowing plight

Remain and pray that He from base alloy

May purge me, so the light come sooner back to me."

The following lines her biographer quotes as containing "a very remarkable bit of heresy on the vital point of the confessional:" "Confiding in His just and gentle sway

We should not dare, like Adam and his wife,
On others' backs our proper blame to lay;

But with new-kindled hope and unfeigned grief,
Passing by priestly robes, lay bare within

To Him alone the secret of our sin."

The following sonnet has a gentle, serene sweetness which at once

finds its way to the heart:

"Ofttimes to God through frost and cloud I go
For light and warmth to break my icy chain,
And pierce and rend my vail of doubt in twain
With his divinest love and radiant glow.
And if my soul sit cold and dark below,

Yet all her longings fixed on heaven remain,
And seems she 'mid deep silence to a strain
To listen, which the soul alone can know—
Saying, Fear naught! for Jesus came on earth,
Jesus, of endless joys the wide deep sea,
To ease each heavy load of mortal birth.
His waters ever cleanest, sweetest be
To him who in a lonely bark drifts forth

On his great deeps of goodness trustfully."

The sonnet with which we will conclude our quotations is written on the anniversary of the Saviour's crucifixion, and is translated by Mr. Trollope as "certainly one of the best if not the best in the collection." It is chosen from its own merit; not selected, as the previous extracts have been, to prove the Protestantism of Vittoria, to show that, though she lived and died in the Catholic Church, she strongly sympathized with Protestant principles:

"The angels to eternal bliss preferred,
Long on this day a painful death to die,
Lest in the heavenly mansions of the sky
The servant be more favored than his Lord.
Man's ancient mother weeps the deed this day,

That shut the gates of heaven against her race,
Weeps the two pierced hands whose work of grace
Refinds the path from which she made man stray.
The sun his ever-burning ray doth vail;

Earth and sky tremble, ocean quakes amain,
And mountains gape, and living rocks are torn,
The fiends, on watch for human evil, wail

The added weight of their restraining chain.
Man only weeps not, yet was weeping born."

One of the most memorable facts in the life of Vittoria is her ten years' friendship with Michael Angelo. She was in her forty-seventh and he in his sixty-third year when they met in Rome, in 1537, and the friendship, which lasted through the remainder of Vittoria's life, exercised a powerful influence on the mind and heart of one of the greatest men of all time-great as a sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, worthy of the four wreaths instead of the three that his countrymen had sculptured on his tomb.

The attachment that existed between them has been well called a "sacred affection," so pure and elevated was its nature, and so free

from earthly alloy. In the five sonnets he addressed to her he expresses his admiration of her noble qualities; but he only alludes to her personal attractions after her eyes were closed in death, and he gratefully acknowledges her benignant influence in leading him to a clearer apprehension of Christian truth, and a more heartfelt recognition of its claims. The change in his views is as apparent in his poetry as in her own. Honored and blessed as Vittoria had been in the friends who had enriched her life, this friendship is its crowning glory, and instead of her former saying concerning the ancients, "Ah, happy they who lived in days so full of beauty!" she might well have thanked God with Raphael "that she lived in the days of Michael Angelo."

Five letters written by Vittoria to her distinguished friend are now in the possession of the accomplished head of the Buonarroti family. Written with perfect ease, in a clear, distinct hand, there is no approach to a sentiment any deeper than that of friendship.

How simply the kingly old man turned from the mighty works that made his name immortal on the earth, to the great sacrifice that gave him a blissful immortality in the heavens, may be seen in the beautiful sonnet written in his eighty-third year to Vasari, of which Mr. Harford gives the following translation:

"Time my frail bark o'er a rough ocean guides

Swift to that port where all must touch that live,
And of their actions good or evil give

A strict account, where Truth supreme presides.
As to gay Fancy in which Art confides,

And even her Idol and her monarch makes,
Full well I know how largely it partakes

Of error; but frail man in error prides;

My thoughts, once prompt round hurtful things to twine,
Where are they now, when two dread Deaths are near?

The one impends, the other shakes his spear.

Painting and Sculpture's aid in vain I crave;

My one sole refuge is that Love divine

Which from the Cross stretched forth its arms to save."

In 1541 Vittoria left Rome to seek a more retired home, and to escape from scenes of turbulence and violence. Her brother Ascanio had taken up arms in opposition to a salt-tax imposed by Paul III., who raised ten thousand men, subdued the fiery Colonna, and razed his fortresses to the ground.

The death of the Marchese del Vasto, her adopted son and her husband's heir, saddened the last years of her life, which were spent in retirement from the world in the convent of Viterbo. Here she

spent her time most usefully in directing the education of its youthful inmates.

In 1546 she went to the convent of Sant' Anna in Rome, and on being seized with her last illness the following year she was removed to the palace of Giuliano Cesarini, the husband of Giulia Colonna, her only relative in the city. She died at the age of fifty-seven, attended in her last moments by her faithful friend Michael Angelo, who afterward said that he had never ceased regretting that in that solemn hour he had not imprinted a kiss on the marble forehead of the dead.

ART. VI.-WESLEY AS A MAN OF LITERATURE.

[FOURTH ARTICLE.]

ANOTHER bishop now comes out to the attack, Bishop Warburton, and Mr. Wesley publishes "A Letter to the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Gloucester, occasioned by his tract on the Office and Operations of the Holy Spirit." First, he examines what the bishop says concerning himself, and said he was "reciting objections which had been urged and answered a hundred times. But as your lordship is pleased to repeat them again, I am obliged to repeat the answers." Secondly, he tries what the bishop says of the office and operations of the Holy Spirit, and proves that his own belief and writings are in unison with Bishop Pearson, the Prayer-book, the Homilies, and the Scriptures. A good deal of the reply is extracted from his former answers to the same points; but the whole is a close piece of argumentation, and a complete refutation of the bishop. So thought Mr. Wesley himself, for he says: "If Dr. Erskine cannot see that I have answered Bishop Warburton plainly and directly, and so untwisted his arguments that no man living will be able to piece them together, I believe all unprejudiced men can, and are thoroughly convinced of it." (Remarks on a Defense of Aspasio vindicated.) He did not expect a reply from the bishop. "I have answered the bishop, and had advice upon my answer. If the devil owes him a shame he will reply. He is a man of sense, but I verily think he does not understand Greek." (Letter to Charles Wesley, 1762.) The bishop was silent, and so acknowledged his defeat.

In 1771 he replied to an Irish clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Fleury, of Waterford, who at that late time of day had recapitulated some

old objection to the Methodists, and proved that he knew little of them or their writings. He urged that the lay preachers were intruders into the sacred office, and reminded his hearers of the earth opening and swallowing up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Mr. Wesley turns boldly upon him his own words: "Such an intruder are you if you convert no sinners to God. Take heed, lest a deeper pit

swallow you up!"

This reply appears to be the last of Mr. Wesley's formal answers to the current objections to the doctrines and practices of the Methodists. Incidental and occasional replies are to be found in nearly all his works, and were necessary, more or less, as long as he lived. But after the reply to Bishop Warburton, no very formidable attack was made by the clergy or the learned on the Methodists or their founder. Still, a squib or a gun would be occasionally fired. The names of a few poems of 1778-9 will show the spirit of the times. One is, "Perfection; a practical Epistle, calmly addressed to the greatest Hypocrite in England," that is, John Wesley. Another is, "Fanatical Conversation, or Methodism Displayed. A satire, illustrated and verified by notes from John Wesley's fanatical Journal." A third, "Voltaire's Ghost to the Apostle of the Sinless Foundery. A familiar Epistle from the Shades." A few tracts and sermons were also issued against the new sect. But Mr. Wesley, now an old man of seventy, did not trouble himself at any additional work of refutation.

Those who value the Methodist system and belief, ministry or laity, ought to consider not only what a founder was provided by Divine Providence, but what a defender. Rarely has the Church of God seen such a "Defender of the Faith." He was mighty in the use of Scripture, in his appeals to authority, in the calmness of his own spirit, and in his most dexterous use of the art of logic. In these four qualifications no opponent ever was his equal. His method invariably was to cast aside all the extraneous matter, to single out the important points of difference, and then, with all his might, (and usually a blow or two would be sufficient,) to attack each point separate and successfully. Had early Methodism such a defender as George Fox, it could never, humanly speaking, have stood the various and manifold attacks. The anti-Methodistic sermons, charges of bishops, tracts and pamphlets, books and poems, during Mr. Wesley's life are to be numbered by scores and hundreds. William Hogarth even published a painting and engraving to assist the destruction of the sect, and which he called Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism; being a satire on Methodism," 1762. Thus did this great master of caricature ill use his

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