Through the whole course of his illness, to the last hour of his life, he was consulted by the senate in publick affairs, and returned answers, in his greatest weakness, with such presence of mind, as could only arise from the consciousness of innocence.

On Sunday, the day of his death, he had the passion of our blessed saviour read to him out of St. John’s gospel, as on every other day of that week, and spoke of the mercy of his redeemer, and his confidence in his merits.

As his end evidently approached, the brethren of the convent came to pronounce the last prayers, with which he could only join in his thoughts, being able to pronounce no more than these words, “Esto perpetua,” mayst thou last for ever; which was understood to be a prayer for the prosperity of his country.

Thus died father Paul, in the seventy-first year of his age; hated by the Romans, as their most formidable enemy, and honoured by all the learned for his abilities, and by the good for his integrity.  His detestation of the corruption of the Roman church appears in all his writings, but particularly in this memorable passage of one of his letters:  “There is nothing more essential than to ruin the reputation of the jesuits; by the ruin of the jesuits, Rome will be ruined; and if Rome is ruined, religion will reform of itself.”

He appears, by many passages of his life, to have had a high esteem of the church of England; and his friend, father Fulgentio, who had adopted all his notions, made no scruple of administering to Dr. Duncomb, an English gentleman that fell sick at Venice, the communion in both kinds, according to the Common Prayer, which he had with him in Italian.

He was buried with great pomp, at the publick charge, and a magnificent monument was erected, to his memory.

BOERHAAVE.

The following account of the late Dr. Boerhaave, so loudly celebrated, and so universally lamented through the whole learned world, will, we hope, be not unacceptable to our readers:  we could have made it much larger, by adopting flying reports, and inserting unattested facts:  a close adherence to certainty has contracted our narrative, and hindered it from swelling to that bulk, at which modern histories generally arrive.

Dr. Herman Boerhaave was born on the last day of December, 1668, about one in the morning, at Voorhout, a village two miles distant from Leyden:  his father, James Boerhaave, was minister of Voorhout, of whom his son [34], in a small account of his own life, has given a very amiable character, for the simplicity and openness of his behaviour, for his exact frugality in the management of a narrow fortune, and the prudence, tenderness, and diligence, with which he educated a numerous family of nine children:  he was eminently skilled in history and genealogy, and versed in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages.

His mother was Hagar Daelder, a tradesman’s daughter of Amsterdam, from whom he might, perhaps, derive an hereditary inclination to the study of physick, in which she was very inquisitive, and had obtained a knowledge of it, not common in female students.