historical learning. He appeared in the national council not so much the representative of the contemporary inhabitants of a particular city, as of all the people of all past ages; concerning whom, and whose institutions, he was deemed to know whatever was to be known, and to be able to furnish whatever, within so vast a retrospect, was of a nature to give light and authority in the decision of questions arising in a doubtful and hazardous state of the national affairs.'

'After all,' says one of his biographers, 'the most endearing part of Mr. Selden's character is elegantly touched by himself in the choice of his motto:'

mum mere good that are actors in the

super. Character in a Laugh.-How much of character is there in a laugh! You know no man till you have heard him laugh-till you know when and how he will laugh. There are occasions-there are humours when a man with whom we have been long familiar shall quite startle and repel us by breaking out into a laugh which comes manifestly from his heart, and which yet we had never heard before. Even in fair ladies with whom I have been much pleased I have remarked the same thing. As in many a heart a sweet angel slumbers unseen till some happy moment awakens it, so there sleeps often in gracious and amiable characters deep in the back ground a quite vulgar spirit which starts into life when something rudely comical penetrates into the less frequented chambers of the mind.-Blackwood's Magazine. to yo

The Infidel in a Gale.-During the late gale on Lake Erie, the steamer

On hoard

BEING THE DISCOURSES OF

JOHN SELDEN, ESQ :

OR HIS SENCE OF VARIOUS MATTERS OF WEIGHT AND HIGH CONSEQUENCE, RELATING ESPECIALLY TO RELIGION AND STATE.

Distingue Tempora.

LONDON:

Printed for E. Smith, in the Year M DC LXXXIX.

TO THE HONOURABLE

MR. JUSTICE HALES,

ONE OF THE JUDGES OF THE COMMON PLEAS:

AND TO THE MUCH HONOURED

EDWARD HEYWOOD, JOHN VAUGHAN,

AND

ROWLAND JEWKS, ESQUIRES.

MOST WORTHY GENTLEMEN,

WERE you not Executors to that person, who, while he lived, was the glory of the nation; yet am I confident any thing of his would find acceptance with you, and truly the sense and notion here is wholly his, and most of the words. I had the opportunity to hear his discourse twenty years together, and lest all those excellent things that usually fell from him might be lost, some of them from time to time I faithfully committed to writing, which here digested into this method,