experienced all that in acknowledging it to God’s glory and to the unburdening of his own heart, so richly loaded with God’s benefits.  And, how a man of Samuel Johnson’s insight, good sense, and pious feeling could have so missed the mark in this case, I cannot understand.  All the more that both the chapter so complained about, and the whole book to which that chapter belongs, are full of the same thankful, devout, and adoring sentiment.  ‘The world that I regard,’ Sir Thomas proceeds, ’is myself.  Men that look upon my outside, and who peruse only my conditions and my fortunes, do err in my altitude.  There is surely a piece of divinity in us all; something that was before the elements, and which owes no homage unto the sun.’  And again, ’We carry with us the wonders we seek without us.  There is all Africa and all its prodigies in us all.  We are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely learns, in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.’  And again, ’There is another way of God’s providence full of meanders and labyrinths and obscure methods:  that serpentine and crooked line:  that cryptic and involved method of His providence which I have ever admired.  Surely there are in every man’s life certain rubs, and doublings, and wrenches, which, well examined, do prove the pure hand of God.  And to be true, and to speak out my soul, when I survey the occurrences of my own life, and call into account the finger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and a mass of mercies.  And those which others term crosses, and afflictions, and judgments, and misfortunes, to me they both appear, and in event have ever proved, the secret and dissembled favours of His affection.’  And in the Christian Morals:  ’Annihilate not the mercies of God by the oblivion of ingratitude.  Make not thy head a grave, but a repository of God’s mercies.  Register not only strange, but all merciful occurrences.  Let thy diaries stand thick with dutiful mementoes and asterisks of acknowledgment.  And to be complete and to forget nothing, date not His mercy from thy nativity:  look beyond this world, and before the era of Adam.  And mark well the winding ways of providence.  For that hand writes often by abbreviations, hieroglyphics, and short characters, which, like the laconism on Belshazzar’s wall, are not to be made out but by a key from that Spirit that indited them.’  And yet again, ’To thoughtful observers the whole world is one phylactery, and everything we see an item of the wisdom, and power, and goodness of God.’  How any man, not to speak of one of the wisest and best of men, such as Samuel Johnson was, could read all that, and still stagger at Sir Thomas Browne holding himself to be a living miracle of the power, and the love, and the grace of God, passes my understanding.