of the Begums, exalted him into an inspired prophet as soon as he began to declaim, with greater vehemence, and not with greater reason, against the taking of the Bastile, and the insults offered to Marie Antoinette. To us he appears to have been neither a maniac in the former case, nor a prophet in the latter; but in both cases a great and good man, led into extravagance by a tempestuous sensibility, which domineered over all his faculties. It may be doubted whether the personal antipathy of Francis, or the nobler indignation of Burke, would have led their party to adopt extreme measures against Hastings, if his own conduct had been judicious.

LAUD AND WENTWORTH.

(EARL STRAFFORD.)

age.

Never were faces more strikingly characteristic of the individuals to whom they belonged, than those of Laud and Strafford, as they still remain portrayed by the most skilful hand of that The mean forehead, the pinched features, the peering eyes of the prelate, suit admirably with his disposition. They mark him out as a lower kind of Saint Dominic, differing from the fierce and gloomy enthusiast who founded the Inquisition, as we might imagine the familiar imp of a spiteful witch to differ from an archangel of darkness. When we read his judgments, when we read the report which he drew up, setting forth that he had sent some separatists to prison, and imploring the royal aid against others, we feel a movement of indignation. We turn to his Diary, and we are at once as cool as contempt

can make us. There we read how his picture fell down, and how fearful he was lest the fall should be an omen; how he dreamed that the Duke of Buckingham came to bed to him; that King James walked past him; that he saw Thomas Flaxage in green garments, and the Bishop of Worcester with his shoulders wrapped in linen. In the early part of 1627, the sleep of this great ornament of the church seems to have been much disturbed. On the 5th of January, he saw a merry old man with a wrinkled countenance, named Grove, lying on the ground. On the 14th of the same memorable month, he saw the Bishop of Lincoln jump on a horse and ride away. A day or two after this, he dreamed that he gave the king drink in a silver cup, and that the king refused it, and called for a glass. Then he dreamed that he had turned papist-of all his dreams the only one, we suspect, which came through the gate of horn. But of these visions, our favorite is that which, as he has recorded, he enjoyed on the night of Friday the 9th of February, 1627. "I dreamed," says he, "that I had the scurvy; and that forthwith all my teeth became loose. There was one in especial in my lower jaw, which I could scarcely keep in with my finger till I had called for help." Here was a man to have the superintendence of the opinions of a great nation!

But Wentworth-who ever names him without thinking of those harsh dark features, ennobled by their expression into more than the majesty of an antique Jupiter; of that brow, that eye, that cheek, that lip, wherein, as in a chronicle, are written the events of many stormy and disastrous years; high

enterprise accomplished, frightful dangers braved, power unsparingly exercised, suffering unshrinkingly borne; of that fixed look, so full of severity, of mournful anxiety; of deep thought, of dauntless resolution, which seems at once to forebode and defy a terrible fate, as it lowers on us from the living canvass of Vandyke? Even at this day the haughty earl overawes posterity as he overawed his contemporaries, and excites the same interest when arraigned before the tribunal of history, which he excited at the bar of the House of Lords. In spite of ourselves, we sometimes feel toward his memory a certain relenting, similar to that relenting which his defence, as Sir John Denham tells us, produced in Westminister Hall. This great, brave, bad man entered the House of Commons at the same time with Hampden, and took the same side with Hampden. Both were among the richest and most powerful commoners in the kingdom. Both were equally distinguished by force of character and by personal courage. Hampden had more judgment and sagacity than Wentworth. But no orator of that time equalled Wentworth in force and brilliancy of expression. In 1626, both these eminent men were committed to prison by the King; Wentworth, who was among the leaders of the opposition, on account of his parliamentary conduct; Hampden, who had not as yet taken a prominent part in debate, for refusing to pay taxes illegally imposed.

Here their paths separated. After the death of Buckingham, the king attempted to seduce some of the chiefs of the opposition from their party; and Wentworth was among those who yielded to the

seduction. He abandoned his associates, and hated them ever after with the deadly hatred of a renegade. High titles and great employments were heaped upon him. He became Earl of Strafford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, President of the Council of the North; and he employed all his power for the purpose of crushing those liberties of which he had been the most distinguished champion. His counsels respecting public affairs were fierce and arbitrary. His correspondence with Laud abundantly proves that government without parliaments, government by the sword, was his favorite scheme. He was unwilling even that the course of justice between man and man should be unrestrained by the royal perogative. He grudged to the Courts of King's Bench and Common Pleas even that measure of liberty, which the most absolute of the Bourbons have allowed to the Parliaments of France.

In Ireland, where he stood in the place of the king, his practice was in strict accordance with his theory. He set up the authority of the executive government over that of the courts of law. He permitted no person to leave the island without his license. He established vast monopolies for his own private benefit. He imposed taxes arbitrarily. He levied them by military force. Some of his acts are

described even by the partial Clarendon as powerful acts-acts which marked a nature excessively imperious-acts which caused dislike and terror in sober and dispassionate persons-high acts of oppression. Upon a most frivolous charge, he obtained a capital sentence from a court-martial against a man of high rank who had given him offence. He de

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bauched the daughter-in-law of the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and then commanded that nobleman to settle his estate according to the wishes of the lady. The Chancellor refused. The Lord-Lieutenant turned him out of office, and threw him into prison. When the violent acts of the Long Parliament are blamed, let it not be forgotten from what a tyranny they rescued the nation.

DEATH OF HAMPDEN.

In the evening of the 17th of June, Rupert darted out of Oxford with his cavalry on a predatory expedition. At three in the morning of the following day, he attacked and dispersed a few parliamentary soldiers who were quartered at Postcombe. He then flew to Chinnor, burned the village, killed or took all the troops posted there, and prepared to hurry back with his booty and his prisoners to Oxford.

The

Hampden had, on the preceding day, strongly represented to Essex, the danger to which this part of the line was exposed. As soon as he received intelligence of Rupert's incursions, he sent off a horseman with a message to the General. cavaliers, he said, could return only by Chiselhampton Bridge. A force ought to be instantly despatched in that direction, for the purpose of intercepting them. In the meantime, he resolved to set out with all the cavalry that he could muster, for the purpose of impeding the march of the enemy till Essex could take measures for cutting off their retreat. A considerable body of horse and dragoons