ame; and with great
spirit asserts his honourable claim: "Something, I think, was due to me
for the great number of plants and seeds I have annually procured from
abroad, and you have been so good as to pay it, by giving me a species
of eternity, botanically speaking; that is, a name as long as men and
books endure." Such is the true animating language of these patriotic
enthusiasts!

Some lines at the close of Peacham's Emblems give an idea of an English
fruit-garden in 1612. He mentions that cherries were not long known,[68]
and gives an origin to the name of filbert.

The Persian Peach, and fruitful Quince;[69]
And there the forward Almond grew,
With Cherries knowne no longer time since;
The Winter Warden, orchard's pride;
The _Philibert_[70] that loves the vale,
And red queen apple,[71] so envide
Of school-boies, passing by the pale.

USURERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

A person whose history will serve as a canvass to exhibit some scenes of
the arts of the money-trader was one AUDLEY, a lawyer, and a great
practical philosopher, who concentrated his vigorous faculties in the
science of the relative value of money. He flourished through the reigns
of James I., Charles I., and held a lucrative office in the "court of
wards," till that singular court was abolished at the time of the
Restoration.[72] In his own times he was called "The great Audley," an
epithet so often abused, and here applied to the creation of enormous
wealth. But there are minds of great capacity, concealed by the nature
of their pursuits; and the wealth of Audley may be considered as the
cloudy medium through which a bright genius shone, and which, had it
been thrown into a nobler sphere of action, the "greatness" would have
been less ambiguous.

Audley lived at a time when divines were proclaiming "the detestable sin
of Usury," prohibited by God and man; but the Mosaic prohibition was the
municipal law of an agricultural commonwealth, which being without
trade, the general poverty of its members could afford no interest for
loans; but it was not forbidden the Israelite to take usury from "the
stranger." Or they were quoting from the Fathers, who understood this
point, much as they had that of "original sin," and "the immaculate
conception;" while the scholastics amused themselves with a quaint and
collegiate fancy which they had picked up in Aristotle, that interest
for money had been forbidden b