“Death which hateth and destroyeth man is believed; God which hath made him and loves him is always deferred.  It is, therefore, Death alone that can suddenly make man to know himself.  He tells the proud and insolent that they are but abjects, and humbles them at the instant; makes them cry, complain and repent; yea, even to hate their fore-passed happiness.

“He takes account of the rich, and proves him a beggar; a naked beggar which hath interest in nothing but in the gravel that fills his mouth.  He holds a glass before the eyes of the most beautiful and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness, and they acknowledge it.

“O eloquent, just and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none have dared thou hast done; and whom all the world have flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words—­hic JACET.”

Sir Walter Ralegh was born only a few miles down below Ottery St. Mary, in the same beautiful valley from which you and I, Antony, and the poet have come.  The peal of bells in the old church tower at Otterton was given by him to the parish; and when “the lin lan lone of evening-bells” floats across between the hills that guard the river Otter, it should fall upon our ears as an echo of the melody that strikes upon our hearts in Ralegh’s words.

Your loving old
G.P.

4

MY DEAR ANTONY,

In looking through some very old Acts of Parliament not long ago I was rather surprised to find that in those old times our forefathers drew up their statutes in very stately English.

In our own times Acts of Parliament frequently violate the simplest rules of grammar, and are sometimes so unintelligible as to need the labours of learned judges to find out what they mean!

But it seems that in the great days of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth Acts of Parliament were often written in resounding periods of solemn splendour of which the meaning is perfectly clear.

In the twenty-fourth year of the great Henry, the Act denying and forbidding any jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome in England was passed.

This Act, depriving the Pope of all power in England, marked a turning-point in history.

It is headed with these words:—­

    The pre-eminence, power, and authority of the king of England.
    1532.