their Constitution, their Laws, and their Religion; trained and educated as your Royal Highness has been, by your illustrious Father, in the love of that Constitution, in a strict veneration for those Laws, and well instructed in the purest principles of the Christian Faith, the British nation have the best assurance, that as you have early imbibed the principles and the attachments which such an Education was well suited to produce, so you will cherish them, as long as you live. In times so eventful as these, when the conduct of Princes may determine the fate of empires, the inhabitants of this great nation, take a deep interest in the conduct of every branch of that illustrious Family which surrounds the throne; and in the character of your Royal Highness, they recognize a bright emanation of those virtues, which for nearly half a century, have shone with such distinguished splendour, in the life of our most gracious Sovereign; virtues, which may have been the means of securing to this nation the favour of Heaven, amidst the alarming convulsions of the earth.

That your Royal Highness may long adorn that elevated rank in human society, which you are destined, by Divine Providence to fill, and benefit mankind by your talents, by your virtues, and by the exemplariness of your life, is the earnest prayer of him, who, with every sentiment of respect and veneration, subcribes himself,

SIR,

Your Royal Highness's

Most dutiful and obedient Servant,

November 1806.

JAMES CUMMING.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE Editor first became acquainted with the Resolves of Owen Felltham in the year 1804. They appeared to him to abound with valuable lessons of instruction on the most important and interesting subjects of human life and conduct, applicable to all ages and conditions, and conveyed with great force and beauty of expression. In them, he thought, he beheld, "imagination and knowledge equally suc

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cessful in their exertions; this, as the contributor of truths, and that, as opening her affluent ward"robe for their dress; one like the Earth, throwing "out of her bosom the organized forms of matter, " and the other like the Sun, arranging them in an "endless variety of hues*."

The pleasure and profit which he derived from the perusal of them, induced him to recommend them to the attention of others; who purchased the book, and became as great admirers of it, as himself. It was then known but to a few persons who were

* Preface to Lord Bacon's Essays.

curious in a knowledge of the old writers; and it was sold for little more than waste paper, and easily to be procured. It had, in truth, lost the reputation it once possessed, and had nearly sunk into total oblivion; but a demand for it arose, and it soon became difficult to obtain a copy of it. This latter circumstance, and a desire to bring again into general notice a work, which, he conceived, could be read by no one without improvement, suggested to the Editor the idea of a republication: an idea, which he was encouraged to carry into effect by those who were too eminent and respectable in the department of moral and religious learning, to suffer him to hesitate, as to the prosecution of his design. Had, however, any hesitation remained in his mind, it would have been effectually removed, by the invitation held forth to him by one, whose sanction of such a work as the present, could not but be regarded by him as a very strong reason in itself for sending a new Edition of it to the press. "It certainly con"tains," said he, in a letter to the Editor," an as

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stonishing treasure of moral and religious truth,— "a mine in which you may dig for ages, without

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exhausting it. When pruned of a few impurities,

and a little curtailed, it will be a vast addition to "the stores of English Literature.”

A new Edition of the Resolves was accordingly

presented to the public in the year 1806, in which the Editor availed himself of the judicious suggestions of the learned person to whom he here alludes. The impurities consisted of expressions, allusions, and conceits, which are not unfrequently to be met with in the writers of Felltham's time; and which, though by no means of a licentious or immoral cast, are nevertheless offensive to the delicacy of modern refinement. Besides curtailing the chapters where this could be done without injury to the effect of the argument, or train of thought, the Editor exercised a discretion in giving only a selection of Chapters. This selection, however, contained the far greater part of the original work. He, in that Edition, took some further liberties with the text of Felltham, the nature of which, he deems it proper here to state. For such obsolete words and quaint phrases as might not be intelligible, except to those conversant with the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or might not carry with them a ready signification to the minds of readers at large, he substituted others which appeared to him better adapted to convey the Author's meaning; and he ventured, occasionally, somewhat to modernize the dress in which the writer had clothed his thoughts; a freedom which he sparingly, and, he trusts, cautiously exercised. He also adopted the orthography