, but requiring little labour of a man's
own, and all this supported by large revenues and attended with
considerable secular honours." Boyse could hardly say the same in
these days, true, no doubt, as it was in his own. Still, that
even an Irish House of Lords should have seen fit to burn his
sermon makes one think that the political extinction of that body
can have been no serious loss to the sum-total of the wisdom of
the world.

The last writer to incur a vote of burning from the House of
Commons in Queen Anne's reign was William Fleetwood, Bishop of
St. Asaph; and this for the preface to four sermons he had
preached and published: (1) on the death of Queen Mary, 1694; (2)
on the death of the Duke of Gloucester, 1700; (3) on the death of
King William, 1701; (4) on the Queen's Accession, in 1702. It was
voted to the public flames on June 10th, 1712, as "malicious and
factious, highly reflecting upon the present administration of
public affairs under Her Majesty, and tending to create discord
and sedition among her subjects." The burning of the preface
caused it to be the more read, and some 4,000 numbers of the
_Spectator_, No. 384, carried it far and wide. Probably it was
more read than the prelate's numerous tracts and sermons, such as
his _Essay on Miracles_, or his _Vindication of the Thirteenth of
Romans_.

The bishop belonged to the party that was dissatisfied with the
terms of the Peace of Utrecht, then pending, and his preface was
clearly written as a vehicle or vent for his political
sentiments. The offensive passage ran as follows: "We were, as
all the world imagined then, just entering on the ways that
promised to lead to such a peace as would have answered all the
prayers of our religious Queen . . . when God, for our sins,
permitted the spirit of discord to go forth, and by troubling
sore the camp, the city, and the country (and oh! that it had
altogether spared the places sacred to His worship!), to spoil
for a time the beautiful and pleasing prospect, and give us, in
its stead, I know not what--our enemies will tell the rest with
pleasure." Writing to Bishop Burnet, he expresses himself still
more strongly: "I am afraid England has lost all her constraining
power, and that France thinks she has us in her hands, and may
use us as she pleases, which, I daresay, will be as scurvily as
we deserve. What a change has two years made! Your lordship may
now imagine you are growing young again; for we are f