against the Scotch was a death-blow to the Parliament: his resignation of the command of the army removed the last barrier between them and the ambition of Cromwell. This memorable man fought and conquered with the certainty and the rapidity of Cæsar. Up to this time he had been the faithful servant of the Commonwealth; whatever his dealings with the King may have been, they never caused the least change in his conduct of the army: he had punished and silenced Ireland, he had subdued Scotland, and extinguished the last hopes of the Royalists. He was now at the head of fifty thousand victorious veterans. The destinies of his country were in his hands, when he was addressed in a strain of magnificent applause and republican freedom, which Cicero never surpassed :— Tu igitur, Cromuelle, magnitudine illa animi macte esto; te enim decet tu patriæ liberator, libertatis auctor, custosque idem et conservator, neque graviorem personam, neque augustiorem suscipere potes aliam; qui non modo regum res gestas, sed heroum quoque nostrorum fabulas factis exsuperasti. Cogita sæpius, quam caram rem, ab quam cara parente tua, libertatem a patria tibi commendatam atque concreditam, apud te depositam habes; quod ab electissimis gentis universæ viris illa modo expectabat, id nunc a te uno expectat, per te unum consequi sperat. Reverere tantam de te expectationem, spem patriæ de te unicam; reverere vultus et vulnera tot fortium virorum, quotquot, te duce, pro libertate tam strenue decertarunt; manes etiam eorum, qui in ipso certamine occubuerunt: reverere exterarum quoque civitatum existimationem de nobis atque sermones; quantas res de libertate nostra tam fortiter parta, de nostra republica tam gloriose exorta, sibi polliceantur; quæ si tam cito quasi aborta evanuerit, profecto nihil æque dedecorosum huic genti atque pudendum fuerit: teipsum denique reverere, ut pro qua adipiscenda libertate tot ærumnas pertulisti, tot pericula adiisti, eam adeptus, violatam per te, aut ulla in parte imminutam aliis, ne sinas esse *. But Cromwell revolved other schemes, and was content to push his fortune as far as it would go. He fomented the license of those turbulent spirits, who attacked the Parliament as seeking to perpetuate an usurped power in their own assembly. He countenanced the demands that were constantly made for a dissolution of the present, and a meeting of another, Parliament. "As for the Members of Parliament," said he to Whitelocke," the army begins to have a strange distaste against them, and I wish there were not too much cause for it, and really their pride, and ambition, and self, seeking, ingrossing all places of honour and profit to themselves and their friends, and their daily breaking forth into new and violent parties and factions, their delays of business, and design to perpetuate themselves, and to continue the power in their own hands, their meddling in private matters between party and party, contrary to the institution of Parliaments, and their injustice and partiality in those matters, and the scandalous lives of some of the chief of them, these things, my Lord, do give too much ground for people to open their mouths against them, and to dislike them." Whitelocke, I am sure your Excellency will not look upon them as generally depraved; too many of them are much to blame in those things you have mentioned, and many unfit things have passed among them; but I hope well of the major part of them, when great matters come to a decision." 66 Cromwell. My Lord, there is little hopes of a good settlement to be made by them, really there is not; but a great deal of fear, that they will destroy again, what the Lord hath done graciously for them and us; we all forget God, and God will forget us, and give us up to confusion; and these men will help it on, if they be suffered to proceed in their wayes; some course must be thought of to curb and restrain them, or we shall be ruined by them." 66 Whitelocke. We ourselves have acknowledged them the supream power, and taken our commissions and authority in the highest concernments from them, and how to restrain and curb them after this, it will be hard to find out a way for it." Cromwell. What if a man should take upon him to be king?" Whitelocke. the disease*.” 66 I think that remedy would be worse than A few months of irresolution intervened. On the 20th of April, 1653, a great meeting was held at Whitehall, touching some expedient to be found out, for the present carrying on of the government of the Commonwealth, and putting a period to this present Parliament." Various propositions were offered. "Cromwell being informed during this debate that the House was sitting, and that it was hoped they would put a period to themselves, which would be the most honourable dissolution for them," broke up the meeting for *Whitel. Nov., 1652. the present; but upon Colonel Ingoldsby returning with the news, that the House were in debate of an act, the which would occasion other meetings of them again, and prolong their sitting," he "presently commanded some of the officers of the army to fetch a party of soldiers, with whom he marched to the House, and led a file of musqueteers in with him; the rest he placed at the door of the House, and in the lobby before it." He then inveighed against them collectively and individually with passionate vehemence, told them, "That they had sate long enough, unless they had done more good, and that it was not fit they should sit as a Parliament any longer, and desired them to go away." He stamped with his armed foot on the ficor; the rough swordsmen of a hundred battles marched within the bar of the House of Commons, the mace was seized by a soldier, the Speaker forced from his chair. Sir Henry Vane rose with outstretched arms and a cry of remonstrance, but he was violently interrupted, and Cromwell was alone heard to exclaim in words of a deep and mingled meaning-" Sir Harry Vane! Sir Harry Vane! the Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane!" He waited till all the members had been driven out, his soldiers preceded him, he left the House the last person, locked the doors, put the keys in his pocket, and walked home to Whitehall. "Thus it pleased God," says Whitelocke," that this Assembly, famous through the world for its undertakings, actions, and successes, having subdued all their enemies, were themselves overthrown, and ruined by their servants, and those whom they had raised now pulled down their masters. An example never to be forgotten, and scarce to be paralleled in any story, by which all persons may be instructed how uncertain and subject to change all worldly affairs are, how apt to fall when we think them highest, how God makes use of strange and unexpected means to bring his purposes to passt." J. H. * Whitel. April, 1653. † Whitel. April, 1653. 393 THE LADY ALICE LISLE. PART II. THE Lady Lisle awoke from the swoon into which she had fallen, in a narrow but lofty chamber. She found herself lying on a small bed; a high-backed arm-chair was placed by the bed-side. Alice thought from its position that some person had been sitting beside her, but at that time all around her was silent. A dark curtain was drawn over the high casement, so that every object appeared indistinct in the dim light. Alice stirred not, as the tide of memory rolled back upon her mind. Overwhelmed with the oppression of her confused thoughts, she lay awhile in a sort of mental stupor, till the sound of trampling horsemen aroused her. She rose up, and hastened to the window. She looked down upon the spot where she had been standing that morning. The immense crowd had scarcely dispersed, and lingered in straggling groups about the street. The troop of horse, whose approach she had heard, appeared; she perceived Colonel Hacker at their head; beside him rode a man enveloped in a large cloak, his head was bent towards the ground, but in the air and carriage of the person she recognised her husband. The curtain which she had held back fell from her hold, and she stood motionless with horror. She could no longer doubt as to the guilt of her husband; but, as if to torture her the more at that trying hour, with the conviction of his guilt came back the remembrance of John Lisle such as he had once been, such as he was to her for the few first years after their marriage, frank and confiding, and warm-hearted. "It is well that I have seen him now," she said to herself, "I shall be better prepared to meet him again." Yet she felt that she would rather have died than seen him in such company, and in that street; she felt that the scenes of that day were deeply imprinted on the calendar of her memory. It pierced her very heart to know that till the hour of her death, she should see before her the troop of horsemen with their leader, and John Lisle riding beside him, with his face bowed to the pavement of that hated street. There was nothing striking about their appearance, and they had passed before her gaze but for a few moments. Yet there are incidents even of a simpler character which fix themselves we know not how, we know not why-deep within the heart; and while the stronger events of life gradually wear away from the remembrance, every little circumstance, every minute association connected with the former, occurs to the heart in all the vivid reality of its first colouring. Alice was yet standing, when the door opened, and an old gentlewoman dressed in deep mourning entered the chamber. Her face was very pale, and she bade the lady welcome in a sad and feeble voice. She had sate by the bed-side of her stranger guest, she said, till within the last half hour, and she feared that her absence might have been felt. Alice was pleased by the mild courtesy of the old gentlewoman, and she thanked her for the attention she had received. "Ah, little “Ah, enough has that been," she replied, "who could do less than feel for a young lady like yourself nearly trampled to death in the immense crowd which hath been assembled without. I could not refuse to take you in, when the old man brought you to the door, cold and senseless as a corpse; and yet you are come to the house of grief, Lady. Two days have only passed away since I followed to the grave a daughter not many years older than yourself. She was my only child. Her children are now orphans. Yet, amid the freshness of my grief for her, I can say that the death of him, who hath been murdered this morning, hath struck deeper to my heart. My poor child was called away by the Lord in his best time; but daring men have forced the spirit of that poor victim to the presence of his God. Surely the sorrows of the royal widow and her children will be visited upon the families of those wretches, The blood they have shed be upon them, and upon their children"-" Stop, do stop," exclaimed Alice, laying her hand on the upraised arm of the old gentlewoman." Your words are too like curses; they fall heavily on my poor heart. If you knew"-Alice checked herself" If you felt as I do for them," she continued with a trembling voice," you would pray for them, you would weep for them and for their children." Alice sat down on the bed, and covering her face with both her hands, she burst into an agony of tears. "Alas!" she exclaimed, after a short pause, striving with the violence of her grief, “I am so wretched that my words must seem wild and strange to you. But tell me, Madam; did you not mention an old man? May I see him? Is he in this house?" He is still here, he awaits your appearance," replied the old gen, tlewoman. "We will leave this melancholy chamber," she said, and taking the hand of her guest she led her from the room. The departure of Alice from her own house was observed by an old servant, named Richard Lucas, who had been brought up in her father's family since his childhood. He knew the |