By the Rev. A. R. Buckland, M.A., Morning Preacher at the Foundling Hospital.

In this democratic age the birthday of Sir Edward Coke (February 1st, 1551-2) can hardly be passed over. We remember him, not so much as the rival of Bacon and the prosecutor of Raleigh, as for his share in drawing up the Petition of Rights. Of his works, one part of his "Institutes of the Laws of England," long known as "Coke upon Littleton," has a place amongst the few classical law books which are familiar by name to the general public. Coke married for his second wife a daughter of Lord Burghley and grand-daughter of the great Cecil, who, in this same month, was raised to the peerage by Elizabeth on the suppression of the northern rebellion. His descendant, the present Marquis of Salisbury, belongs also to this month, for he was born on February 3rd, 1830. This is not the place in which to discuss a living statesman: let us pass to other names.

"Bob, you dog, if you're not Prime Minister, I'll disinherit you." That, we are told, was the way in which the father of Sir Robert Peel stimulated the political ambitions of his son. He became Prime Minister, and is not likely soon to be forgotten. His Corn Importation Bill is one of the pieces of legislation which mark an epoch. In London, too, he will be remembered for his creation of the present police system. Possibly there are many now who, hearing a police constable called a "peeler," forget that the name carries us back to the remodelling of the London police by Mr. Peel in the year 1829.

The same month may speak to us of a statesman who helped to bring the nation through a crisis of another kind. On the last day of February, 1856, Lord Canning disembarked at Calcutta, and within five minutes after touching land proceeded to take the customary oaths as Governor-General of India. It fell upon him to deal with so appalling a crisis as the Indian Mutiny; he met it, as one of his biographers reminds us, in a way that "places him high on the list of those great officers of State whose services to their country entitle them to the esteem and gratitude of every loyal Englishman."

February is not a great month in ecclesiastical anniversaries. But it was on February 9th, 1555, that John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, was burnt just outside his cathedral, where a monument to his memory now stands. It was in this month that Robert Leighton, sometime Archbishop of Glasgow, died in London in the year 1684. His commentary on the Epistles of St. Peter is still numbered amongst standard homiletical and expository works.

February has some pathetic associations with the foreign missionary work of the English Church. It was on February 24th, 1861, that J. C. Patteson was consecrated at Auckland first Bishop for Melanesia. The story of his martyrdom is one of the most moving incidents in the history of modern missions. His successor, J. R. Selwyn, was consecrated in the same month in 1877.

On February 8th, 1890, there died at Usambiro, at the south end of the Victoria Nyanza, Alexander Mackay, the simple layman whose work and early death did so much to rivet attention, not only on the Uganda Mission, but also on missionary enterprise in general. No modern example seems to have been more fruitful; but he saw nothing of the wonderful development of Uganda. The pioneer often does not live to look on the results of his own enterprise.

There are some who tell us that people do not read Dickens now. More is the pity! Yet the flat stone over the grave of Dickens in Westminster Abbey so often has a flower upon it, while others of no less famous men are bare, that the man must still be remembered as well as his books. He was born in this month in the year 1812, and died in June, 1870. Much of his character might be summed up in the benediction he put into the mouth of Tiny Tim, "God bless us every one." In the same month of February, in the year 1881, there died an author and philosopher of another type—Thomas Carlyle, one of the most striking figures in English literature, and one of those whose reputation was world-wide. "When the devil's advocate has said his worst against Carlyle, he leaves a figure still of unblemished integrity, purity, loftiness of purpose, and inflexible resolution to do the right, as of a man living consciously under his Maker's eye, and with his thoughts fixed on the account which he would have to render of his talents."

On February 23rd, 1807, Wilberforce's Bill for the abolition of the foreign slave trade was carried by a majority of 283 to 16. Sir Samuel Romilly contrasted the feelings of Napoleon with that of the man who would that night "lay his head upon his pillow and remember that the slave trade was no more." There was still, however, much to do; but Wilberforce lived to hear the news that the nation was willing to pay twenty millions for the abolition of slavery.