JAMES HARRINGTON, eldest son of Sir Sapcotes Harrington of Exton, in Rutlandshire, was born in the reign of James I, in January, 1611, five years before the death of Shakespeare. He was two or three years younger than John Milton. His great-grandfather was Sir James Harrington, who married Lucy, daughter of Sir William Sidney, lived with her to their golden wedding-day, and had eighteen children, through whom he counted himself, before his death, patriarch in a family that in his own time produc

JANOTTI, the most excellent describer of the Commonwealth of Venice, divides the whole series of government into two times or periods: the one ending with the liberty of Rome, which was the course or empire, as I may call it, of ancient prudence, first discovered to mankind by God himself in the fabric of the commonwealth of Israel, and afterward picked out of his footsteps in nature, and unanimously followed by the Greeks and Romans; the other beginning with the arms of Caesar, which, extinguis

OF this piece, being the greater half of the whole work, I shall be able at this time to give no further account, than very briefly to show at what it aims. My Lord Archon, in opening the Council of legislators, made it appear how unsafe a thing it is to follow fancy in the fabric of a commonwealth; and how necessary that the archives of ancient prudence should be ransacked before any councillor should presume to offer any other matter in order to the work in hand, or toward the consideration to

WHEREAS my Lord Archon, being from Moses and Lycurgus the first legislator that hitherto is found in history to have introduced or erected an entire commonwealth at once, happened, like them also, to be more intent upon putting the same into execution or action, than into writing; by which means the model came to be promulgated or published with more brevity and less illustration than are necessary for their understanding who have not been acquainted with the whole proceedings of the Council of

FOR the rest (says Plutarch, closing up the story of Lycurgus) when he saw that his government had taken root, and was in the very plantation strong enough to stand by itself, he conceived such a delight within him, as God is described by Plato to have done when he had finished the creation of the world, and saw his own orbs move below him: for in the art of man (being the imitation of nature, which is the art of God) there is nothing so like the first call of beautiful order out of chaos and co

OCEANA is saluted by the panegyrist after this manner: “O the most blessed and fortunate of all countries, Oceana! how deservedly has nature with the bounties of heaven and earth endued thee! Thy ever fruitful womb not closed with ice nor dissolved by the raging star; where Ceres and Bacchus are perpetual twins: thy woods are not the harbor of devouring beasts, nor thy continual verdure the ambush of serpents, but the food of innumerable herds and flocks presenting thee, their shepherdess, with