Prudence installed as virtue, instead of being employed as one of her indispensable handmaids, and the products of this exemplified and illustrated in the life of Archbishop Williams, as a work, I could warmly recommend to my dearest Hartley. Williams was a man bred up to the determination of being righteous, both honorably striving and selfishly ambitious, but all within the bounds and permission of the law, the reigning system of casuistry; in short, an egotist in morals, and a worldling in impulses and motives. And yet by pride and by innate nobleness of nature munificent and benevolent, with all the negative virtues of temperance, chastity, and the like,--take this man on his road to his own worldly aggrandizement. Winding his way through a grove of powerful rogues, by flattery, professions of devoted attachment, and by actual and zealous as well as able services, and at length becoming in fact nearly as great a knave as the knaves (Duke of Buckingham for example) whose favor and support he had been conciliating,--till at last in some dilemma, some strait between conscience and fear, and increased confidence in his own political strength, he opposes or hesitates to further some too foolish or wicked project of his patron knave, or affronts his pride by counselling a different course (not a less wicked, but one more profitable and conducive to his Grace's elevation);-and then is 'floored' or crushed by him, and falls unknown and unpitied. Such was that truly wonderful scholar and statesman, Archbishop Williams. Part 1. s. 61. 'And God forbid that any other course, should be attempted. For this liberty was settled on the subject, with such imprecations upon the infringers, that if they should remove these great landmarks, they must look for vengeance, as if entailed by public vows on them and their posterity.' These were the Dean's instructions, &c. He deserves great credit for them. They put him in strong contrast with Laud. Ib. s. 80. Thus for them both together he solicits:--My most noble lord, what true applause and admiration the King and your Honor have gained, &c. All this we, in the year 1833, should call abject and base; but was it so in Bishop Williams? In the history of the morality of a people, prudence, yea cunning, is the earliest form of virtue. This is expressed in Jacob, and in Ulysses and all the most ancient fables. It will require the true philosophic calm and serenity to distinguish and appreciate the character of the morality of our great men from Henry VIII to the close of James I,--'nullum numen abest, si sit prudentia',--and of those of Charles I to the Restoration. The difference almost amounts to contrast. Ib. s. 81-2.