Isaac Basire, who had been chaplain to King Charles and to the Bishop of Lichfield, and who had held a Prebendal stall and a Rectory, being deprived of all his preferments, found refuge in Rouen, his native city, whilst his wife and children were encompassed by pecuniary difficulties at home. After travelling with pupils in Italy and elsewhere, he visited the islands of the Mediterranean, and also the shores of Greece--where he preached, by invitation of the Metropolitan, before his bishops and the clergy. He visited Naples and Sicily, where he officiated for some weeks on board ship. He went also to Aleppo and Jerusalem, had conferences with the Greek and Latin clergy, and interested himself in the Coptic Churches: at the same time he aimed at reforming the Eastern Christians, and endeavoured to promulgate the doctrines and formularies of English Episcopalians.[338] We are perfectly ready to honour a man who, in the hour of his spiritual mother's humiliation, and when driven from her altars, vindicated her priesthood, maintained her ritual, and diffused her principles; but we must add, that Basire attached most unjustifiable importance to certain ecclesiastical matters, and went beyond bounds in his episcopalian zeal, betraying, at the same time, a strong hatred to those who in England held the reins of government. [Sidenote: _Jeremy Taylor._] Let us return to our own country, to trace other and more illustrious Episcopal confessors in their various retreats. Jeremy Taylor, after submitting to the drudgery of school-keeping in a Welsh village, found for a while a congenial and charming home at Golden Grove. There--to use some of his own richly-coloured words--as the highest branches of the wood stooped, and made a smooth path for the winds on the top of all its glories--and as the sun so gloriously opened the little eye of heaven and sent away the spirits of darkness, and called up the lark to matins, and gilded the fringes of a cloud, and wept great and little showers; and as the images of the trees hung over the water, and were reflected from the bottom, and as the lark rose from his bed of grass, and climbed above the clouds, and was beaten back with the loud sighing of an eastern wind--the great poet-preacher gathered images for his discourses. And again, as he heard the faint echo of a distant valley, and watched the little bee that feeds on dew, and pried into the ivy creeping at the foot of the oak, he found lessons of instructive piety to delight mankind. Looking at what Taylor there worked up into his marvellous imagination, it may be truly said, "the gold of that land was good;" but his temporary sojourn in a paradise-like retreat was followed by imprisonment in Chepstow Castle, and afterwards in the Tower of London, in consequence of incautious language which he used in reference to his Puritan oppressors, and because of a "superstitious" engraving of our Saviour at prayer, prefixed by his