on, through a delightful sheaf of letters to his two sons: and out of
which a fine picture rises before us, both of Sir Thomas's own student
life abroad, as well as of the footing on which the now famous physician
and English author stood with his student and sailor sons.

* * * * *

You might read every word of Sir Thomas Browne's writings and never
discover that a sword had been unsheathed or a shot fired in England all
the time he was living and writing there. It was the half-century of the
terrible civil war for political and religious liberty: but Sir Thomas
Browne would seem to have possessed all the political and religious
liberty he needed. At any rate, he never took open part on either side
in the great contest. Sir Thomas Browne was not made of the hot metal
and the stern stuff of John Milton. All through those terrible years
Browne lived securely in his laboratory, and in his library, and in his
closet. Richard Baxter's _Autobiography_ is as full of gunpowder as if
it had been written in an army-chaplain's tent, as indeed it was. But
both Bunyan's _Grace Abounding_ and Browne's _Religio Medici_ might have
been written in the Bedford or Norwich of our own peaceful day. All men
are not made to be soldiers and statesmen: and it is no man's duty to
attempt to be what he was not made to be. Every man has his own talent,
and his corresponding and consequent duty and obligation. And both
Bunyan and Browne had their own talent, and their own consequent duty and
obligation, just as Cromwell and Milton and Baxter had theirs. Enough,
and more than enough, if it shall be said to them all on that day, Well
done.

'My life,' says Sir Thomas, in opening one of the noblest chapters of his
noblest book, 'is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate were not a