her servant, reason her companion and honour her mistress.  She is a blessing in Nature and a beauty in reason, a grace in invention and a glory in action.  She studies no plots when her platform is set down, and defers no time when her hour is prefixed.  She stands upon no helps when she knows her own force, and in the execution of her will she is a rock irremovable.  She is the king’s will without contradiction, and the judge’s doom without exception, the scholar’s profession without alteration, and the soldier’s honour without comparison.  In sum, so many are the grounds of her grace and the just causes of her commendation, that, leaving her worth to the description of better wits, I will in these few words conclude my conceit of her:—­She is the stoutness of the heart and the strength of the mind, a gift of God and the glory of the world.

HONOUR.

Honour is a title or grace given by the spirit of virtue to the desert of valour in the defence of truth; it is wronged in baseness and abused in unworthiness, and endangered in wantonness and lost in wickedness.  It nourisheth art and crowneth wit, graceth learning and glorifieth wisdom; in the heraldry of heaven it hath the richest coat, being in nature allied unto all the houses of grace, which in the heaven of heavens attend the King of kings.  Her escutcheon is a heart, in which in the shield of faith she bears on the anchor of hope the helmet of salvation:  she quarters with wisdom in the resolution of valour, and in the line of charity she is the house of justice.  Her supporters are time and patience, her mantle truth, and her crest Christ treading upon the globe of the world, her impress Corona mea Christus.  In brief, finding her state so high that I am not able to climb unto the praise of her perfection, I will leave her royalty to the register of most princely spirits, and in my humble heart thus only deliver my opinion of her:—­She is virtue’s due and grace’s gift, valour’s wealth and reason’s joy.

TRUTH.

Truth is the glory of time and the daughter of eternity, a title of the highest grace, and a note of a divine nature.  She is the life of religion, the light of love, the grace of wit, and the crown of wisdom:  she is the beauty of valour, the brightness of honour, the blessing of reason, and the joy of faith.  Her truth is pure gold, her time is right precious, her word is most gracious, and her will is most glorious.  Her essence is in God and her dwelling with His servants, her will in His wisdom and her work to His glory.  She is honoured in love and graced in constancy, in patience admired and in charity beloved.  She is the angel’s worship, the virgin’s fame, the saint’s bliss, and the martyr’s crown:  she is the king’s greatness and his counsel’s goodness, his subject’s peace and his kingdom’s praise:  she is the life of learning and the light