natural and bodily infirmities so that "the more expeditely, with all their strength they might most devoutly serve our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

John Cutcliffe became extremely learned in the Holy Scriptures, and was made a Doctor of Divinity, but at length fell under the displeasure of Rome in consequence of his boldly denouncing many of the errors which had crept into the Church's teaching. When the Pope's Court was at Avignon, Cutcliffe was cited to appear there before two Cardinals appointed to examine him, and it was then that Troissard heard him speak the following very curious parable, or allegory, which is the more interesting to us at this moment from the kind of reference it bears to the present state of the рарасу. The quaint sweetness of the language, too, possesses a certain peculiar charm.

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When, on a certain time, a Bird was brought into the world, all bare and without feathers, the other birds hearing thereof came to visit her; and for that they saw her a marvellous fair and beauteous bird, they counselled together how they might best do her good; still by no means without feathers she might fly or live commodiously. They all wished her to live for her excellent form and beauty's sake; insomuch, among them all there was not one that would not grant some part of her own feathers, to deck this bird withal: so that by this means she was passing well plumed and feathered, and began to fly, at which all the other birds were marvellously delighted. In the end, this bird, seeing herself so gorgeously feathered, and of all the rest to be had in honour, began to wax proud and haughty, having no regard at all to them by whom she was advanced, but instead thereof she pung'd them with her beak, plucked them by the skin and feathers, and in all places hurted them. Whereupon, the birds, sitting in counsel again, called the matter in question; demanding what was best to be done touching this unkind bird, affirming that they gave not their feathers to the intent that she, puffed up with pride, should contemptuously despise them all. The peacock therefore answereth first: "Truly, saith he, for that she is bravely set forth with my painted feathers, I will again take them from her." Then saith the falcon, “And I also will have mine again." This sentence was at length passed by them all; so that every one plucked from her those feathers which before they had given, challenging their own again.

This proud bird, seeing herself thus dealt withal, began to abate her haughty stomach, and humbly to submit herself; confessing that of herself she had nothing, but that her feathers, her honours, and her ornaments, were their gift. Wherefore in most humble wise she desireth pardon, promising to amend all that is past, and not hereafter to commit, whereby she might lose her feathers again. The gentle birds, seeing her so lowly moved with pity, restored again the feathers they so lately had taken away, adding withal this admonition :-"We will gladly," say they, "behold thy flying amongst us, so long as thou wilt use thy office with humbleness of mind, the

chiefest comeliness of all the rest. But this have thou for certain, that if hereafter thou extol thyself in pride, we will straightway deprive thee of thy feathers, and reduce thee to the former state we found thee in." "Even so, O Cardinals, shall it happen unto you, for the Emperors of the Romans and other Christian kings and princes of the earth, have bestowed upon you lands and riches that you should serve God, but you have consumed them in pride, and all kinds of wickedness," &c. &c.

It is said that Cutcliffe foretold that the time was coming when "God would purge his clergy, and have his priests to be poor and godly, faithful feeders of the Lord's flock;" from which I conclude that he was mixed up with the "poor priests of Wiclif."

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When in prison at Avignon, he wrote a book which he addressed to a certain Cardinal, the title of which was, Vade mecum in tribulationem." He was also the author of several other works, one of which, "De consideratione quintæ essentiæ omnium rerum,' was republished at Basle, by Gratarolus, in A.D. 1594. Gratarolus calls it a very notable work, and gives in the preface a fair character of the author. "Though he was by profession no vulgar divine, he was a no less natural philosopher, who penetrated into the arena of physick with no common skill and study."

Nothing further is known of his history, but it is supposed he died in prison at Avignon. So much of his history as there is shows us how early the spirit of the Reformation sprung up in England, and how deep-rooted it must have been thus to lay hold, not only of Wiclif, a parish priest, who would naturally be keenly alive to the abuses of the Papal system as developed by the Mendicant Orders, but even of Cutcliffe himself, to the last (so far as appears) a Friar, and an honest one. There were many such Reformers before the Reformation, and their names ought to be had in honour.

TEARS.

While I am bound candidly to confess that I am not very partial to tears, that I like to look on a smiling face better than on a weeping one, and very much prefer the society of those who are habitually cheerful to that of those who are habitually dolorous, yet neither I nor you can forget that our own experience has borne out the saying of the Wise Man, that there is a time to weep' as well as a time to laugh', 'a time to mourn' as well as 'a time to dance.' Let us then soberly consider for a page or two a subject that will one day come home to us again, as it no doubt has already, and let us for once make a time to talk about tears, even though it may not be actually a time for us to weep.

Magazine.

I am aware that sorrow, disappointment, despondency, and distaste for life, are often unreal, because they are exaggerated with reference to the occasions out of which they arise, and the effect is disproportionate to the cause; and, knowing that there is a great deal of this unreality about half the tears that are shed in the world, I am very far from saying that tears need necessarily command either sympathy or respect. It may be that the weeping Heraclitus was a better philosopher than the laughing Democritus, as assuredly the mischiefs which spring out of the follies of mankind are much more subjects for mourning than for merriment: but yet there is a serenity of mind which is better than either laughter or weeping in most cases, and especially when attended by the honest efforts of an earnest mind to amend the evils of self or the world. Far be it from me to maintain that

"The mind is its own place, and of itself

Can make a heaven of hell; a hell of heaven."

Milton need not have ascribed this sentiment to the chief of the evil spirits in the hour of suffering, in order to show its monstrous and horrible absurdity; man is as much the creature as the creator of the circumstances by which he is surrounded, and cannot always rise above them: nevertheless, the joys of life are much increased and its troubles are much lightened by a meek and cheerful spirit, and while we are bound to acknowledge our obligation to " weep with them that weep," it is yet open to us to think more highly of those who communicate their joys to their friends, and keep most of their troubles to themselves, than of those who pursue an exactly opposite course, as too many do. Human life has its clouds, but they are often rain-clouds which pass away quickly, and leave refreshing influences behind them: and as a man who is always complaining of the weather is neither a pleasant companion nor a very good Christian, it is better to turn the lighter troubles of life to account; it is better to examine how far they are the consequences of our own folly, and may be escaped by pursuing a wiser course for the future; it is better to treat them as warnings mercifully sent in order that we may be spared more heavy blows, than to mourn over them as serious evils. It is said that "" every dark cloud has a silver lining," and even if the proverb be not always applicable, the belief that there is a silver lining will do us no harm at those seasons when the cloud is darkest, and much good when it begins to break.

Tears may be regarded as the expression not of misfortune alone, but of misfortune attended by conscious weakness. In infancy, according to a high medical authority, they are the sign by which the cry of passion is known from that of pain or hunger: but in more mature years they lose this character, and become the sign of helplessness. However this be, in our reserved England they are almost confined to that portion of humanity which is called, not disrespectfully, the weaker sex. Yet there is much of habit in this. In ancient times tears were frequently shed by men; they are not

spoken of reproachfully in Holy Scripture; and Homer did not regard them as inconsistent with heroism. It seems, however, an established axiom among Englishmen, that a man who often sheds tears must either be a person of weak head-piece or a cunning deceiver. For this we may take the popular works of Sir E. B. Lytton and Mr. C. Dickens as containing a firm expression of the general feeling.Mr. Samuel Weller had a low opinion of an acquaintance because, to adopt his original phraseology, the latter gentleman had the main always laid on to his eyes ready for the stopcock to be turned': and in the lectures of that eminent professor of moral philosophy, William Augustus Tomlinson, contained in the Appendix to Paul Clifford, tears are represented as the means by which a man's past misfortunes may be turned into profitable investments. A Frenchman is immortalized, who obtained a valuable legacy from a poet by repeating the bard's verses with streaming eyes. When asked how he could manage to do so, his reply was that when repeating them he always turned his thoughts to his dead father. I much question whether an Englishman would have been able thus to force sorrow, like salad, at will: and as it would not be easy to convey the filial effluvium of comminuted herbs of the genus Allium to the lachrymal glands at the precise moment, Mr. Tomlinson's teaching will probably be thrown away upon us, or, if valued at all, valued only by the inmates of prisons and reformatories. Perhaps, however, the innate stoicism of Englishmen is not wholly to be commended. Women tell us that tears afford real relief to them in time of mental suffering; and probably a fit of weeping would, if we thought right to indulge it, sometimes preserve us from meeting our misfortunes in a manner still more objectionable, by a burst of ungoverned passion or by moody despair. Yet am I not unwilling, even while I make this confession, to look forward to any time when I shall be 'weak' enough to put my philosophy in practice, even though due occasion may arise ? Are not all we proud men anxious to establish the force of Kingsley's words, that

"Men must work, and women must weep;"

and to make believe that we think our own lot the more tolerable of the two? Do we not say, that when misfortune overtakes us we hope we shall have spirit to work in order to deliver ourselves; or if the evil is without remedy, to work in the expectation of more prosperous days? And is it because the sorrows of women cannot often be removed by their own work, that we concede to their gentler sex the prerogative of weeping?

Tears appear to be the fruit rather of mental suffering than of physical pain. When pain is the exciting cause, it operates by means of its influence on the mind. Not pain in itself, but pain considered as undeserved, or unavoidable, or intolerable, is the source of tears. The most frequent cause of tears is the suffering occasioned by bereavement, yet it is not in the first moments of a heavy loss that they

flow most freely: it is when the sufferer thinks over the misfortune, recalling to mind the excellent qualities of the departed one, the winning ways of the young child, the strong love of the life and death partner; and knows that, in this world at least, there is noremedy : it is then that the flood-gates are loosened. And often, too, those flood-gates are opened when no sense of present loss unlocks them, but only the full current of deep human sympathy, mingled with reminiscences of the past, and strengthened by them. How striking it was to observe this lately when the heart of all England bowed as the heart of one man on the day that our Queen's husband was laid to rest at Windsor. In not a few churches, almost the whole of the gentler part of the congregation were moved to weeping. Now no one could attribute this wholly to personal attachment to the departed Prince, or to a sense of the loss sustained by the nation, or even wholly to the really deep feeling which we all had for the august widow. So I enquired of a lady who had confessed to having been one of the weepers, and whom I knew to be free from affectation, what was the train of ideas which passed through her mind. She attributed her tears in part to sympathy for the Queen, but chiefly to the remembrance of a loss which she herself had once sustained, and which the discourse of the preacher was the means of recalling to her mind. No doubt this was a common case; those who have suffered, and only those, are capable of sympathy with sufferers; a very young man or woman will be more inclined to laugh at those who are suffering from disappointed affection than to sympathize with them; a healthy man is prone to despise a valetudinarian; and most prosperous men hear with calm indifference of the struggles which the embarrassed have to undergo: it is only when the sufferings of our friends strike a responsive chord in our own bosom that we hear of them in a proper spirit: at other times we either pass a harsh judgment on them, or (if we may believe the caustic Rochefoucauld) regard them with a certain amount of self-congratulation.

But I find myself gradually diverging from the subject of "tears" into the more general subject of" sorrow." While I have no intention of departing from the statements which were made at the commencement of these reflections, that joy is to be preferred to sorrow, and cheerful to melancholy companions, I am equally bound to admit that sorrow is not only an inevitable lot, but often highly beneficial to the sufferer. While a weak querulousness under suffering is contemptible, patient endurance is at once noble in the eyes of the philosopher, and commendable as an exercise of Christian virtue.

Plato maintains in one of his dialogues that it is better for the offender to suffer the penalty of his crime than to escape it. The paradox has something of Christian truth in it; for even if we pass by the consideration of those sufferings which we bring upon ourselves, to that of those which the man of the world would pronounce unavoidable, and the theologian would attribute rather to our general faultiness than to any single defect or offence, we may observe