in the world was ever carried to its close. For the very plain reason, that far more of the real wealth of the kingdom was committed on behalf of the Parliament than at any time remained with the King, sansculottism never got the upper hand amongst us. Stern as were the few forfeits exacted on the scaffold, no blood was ruthlessly or causelessly spilt there. No monstrous innovations disgraced the progress of the struggle, and no infamous proscriptions marked its termination. The palaces of England stood throughout as unrifled as its cottages; and, except where fortified resistance had been offered, the mansions and manor-houses remained as of old, through the length and breadth of the land. While the conflict continued, no servile passions inflamed or disgraced it; and when all was over, the vanquished sat down with the victors in their common country, and no man's property was unjustly taken from him. To disprove all this will require something more than the unsupported assertion of Mr. Bankes.

He says that the history of London, during the year when the Commons impeached and beheaded the most capable minister of the King, and the King made a similar but less successful attempt against the most capable members of the Commons, bears very many points of similarity with the history of Paris, while the guillotine reeked with the execution of the harmless inoffensive King and of the poor fallen Queen, while women and men were taken daily by waggon loads to death, and while the swollen gutters of the wicked city foamed over into the Seine with the best blood of France. We will not insult the sense of the reader by pursuing such a comparison. Yet were there certain points of resemblance, if Mr. Bankes could have had the perception to seize them, that might have served to throw into instructive contrast the still more extraordinary points of difference. Not more surely did those advisers of poor Louis XVI who precipitated his doom, resemble the men whose councils had driven Charles I to the scaffold, than

the frenzied wretches who bore aloft the mangled body of the Princesse de Lamballe, were unlike the calm selfresolute men who fought at Marston Moor. As for the act by the bishops which Mr. Bankes so innocently calls a protestation, as though it had simply protested against unmerited ill-treatment, it was in truth the result of an elaborate and very dangerous intrigue by Archbishop Williams, set on foot after Strafford's execution, in the interest of the King. Such was the impression made by it, that it dwelt in Cromwell's memory long years afterward, and he named it in his last speech to the last Parliament of his Protectorate,' as the most daring and suicidal act of those most arrogant of men. The Declaration which Williams drew up, and induced eleven other bishops to join him in signing, was to the effect that as the bishops could no longer attend their duty in Parliament, they therefore protested against the validity of any votes or resolutions during their absence; and if this had not been rejected, and proceedings at once taken against its authors, the first step to the King's now cherished purpose of revoking all that had been done in the past memorable year, on the ground that Parliament had not been free, would then and there have been accomplished. And let not Mr. Bankes imagine that this instant decision was in any manner swayed by the "organised riots" of a London mob. Authorities less "rare" than Hyde's history, or that book by Rapin which is not quite so liberal as Mr. Bankes describes it to be, would have told

him that the first "mob' who interfered in the matter was the House of Lords; and that the bishops had been voted guilty of breach of privilege in the upper house without a dissentient voice, before they were, with no less unanimity, impeached of high treason in the other. Clarendon himself, indeed, expressly admits that the indiscretion of these bishops, at such a crisis, gave so great scandal and offence to all those even who passionately desired to preserve their functions, that they had no compassion or regard of their persons, or what became of them; insomuch as in the whole debate in the House of Commons there was only one gentleman who spoke on their behalf, and he said he did not believe they were guilty of high treason but that they were stark mad, and therefore desired they might be sent to Bedlam.'

The remark was Falkland's, and is among the many anecdotes recorded by his friend, which, taken with his known course upon such questions as Strafford's attainder, may well suggest some doubt as to the entire correctness of the estimates ordinarily formed of the political character and opinions of this celebrated man. It is but the other day that his example was publicly pleaded by a first minister of the Crown to justify the sincerity with which he might be prosecuting a war in the midst of continual protestations of a desire for peace. We were asked to remember (and this also is the tone adopted by Mr. Bankes), that the most virtuous character in our great rebellion, and the man most devoted to the royalist cause, still murmured and “ingeminated" peace, peace, even whilst arming for the combat. But the allusion was unfortunate in turning wholly on that alleged point in Falkland's career which is most capable of clear disproof. He was by no means devoted to the cause he fought for; and he cried out peace, peace, solely because he detested the war.

1 Hist. ii. 120-1. He further talks of their being so swayed by the pride and insolence of one anti-prelatical archbishop (so he describes Williams) as that in such a storm, when the best

VOL. I.

pilot was at his prayers, and the card and compass lost, they shoull put themselves, without the advice of one mariner, in such a cock-boat, to be severed from the good ship!

N

No doubt, however, he is the man of all others in our civil war who is most generally supposed to have represented the monarchical principle in the conflict; and upon this ground his statue was among those voted earliest for the historical adornment of the new Palace at Westminster. But the real truth we suspect to be, that Falkland was far more of an apostate than Strafford, for his heart was really with the Parliament from the first, which Strafford's never was; and never, to the very end, did he sincerely embrace the cause with which his gallant and mournful death at the age of thirty-four' has eternally connected him. We have no wish to say anything to unsettle the admiring thoughts which must always cluster round the memory of one whom Lord Clarendon has celebrated not simply as a statesman and soldier, but as a patriot, poet,"

1 "Thus fell that incomparable "young man, in the four-and-thirtieth "year of his age, having so much dis"patched the business of life, that the "oldest rarely attain to that immense "knowledge, and the youngest enter "not into the world with more inno

cence. Whosoever leads such a life, "need not care upon how short a "warning it be taken from him.". Hist. iv. 257. For "need not care. the first editors had substituted "needs be the less anxious."

as

2 To the gratitude of the poets themselves, to the eternal remembrance with which such men Ben Jonson, Suckling, Waller, and Cowley, can pay richly back in their loving verse all kinds and degrees of loving service, he rather owes this title than to any achievements of his own. But there are yet a sufficient number of good lines in his occasional poetical pieces to justify Suckling's having placed him in his 'Session of the Poets.' There are many manly verses in his Eclogue on Jonson's death.

"Alas! that bard, that glorious bard

is dead,

Who, when I whilome cities visited,

Hath made them seem but hours

which were full days,

Whilst he vouchsaft me his harmonious lays;

And when I lived, I thought the country then

A torture; and no mansion, but a den."

Falkland puts this into the mouth of Hylas, and it may remind us of what Clarendon says of his own passionate fondness for London. Melybous rejoins:

"Jonson you mean, unless I much
do err
I know the person by the character."

The same speaker continues :
"His learning such, no author, old

or new,

Escaped his reading that deserv'd his view,

And such his judgment, so exact his

test

Of what was best in books, as what books best,

That, had he joined those notes his labours took

From each most praised and praisedeserving book,

and philosopher, in sentences that will be immortal. But it is impossible to become familiar with the details of that period of our history, and with Falkland's share in what preceded the outbreak into open hostilities, and to doubt in what spirit alone he could have taken part in them. Over and over again does Clarendon himself find it necessary to remark of him, that he never had any veneration for the Court, but only such a loyalty to the King as the law required from him; and as often is he constrained to admit, on the other hand, that he had naturally a wonderful reverence for Parliaments, as believing them most solicitous for justice, the violation whereof, in the least degree, he could not forgive any mortal power.

But the friend who has done so much to preserve and endear his fame since his death, had unhappily influence

Whose Politicks no less the mind

direct

Than those the Manners, nor with

less effect,

When his majestic Tragedies relate All the disorders of a tottering state."

It was to be remembered also, Mely bous adds, that of all this old Ben was himself "sole workman "and sole architect," as to which he concludes:

"And surely what my friend did daily tell,

If he but acted his own part as well As he writ those of others, he may boast

The happy fields hold not a happier ghost!"

These are not only good lines, but very valuable notices of rare old Jonson.

1 This passage is of course meant to convey, as Bishop Warburton has remarked, that Falkland thought resistance lawful, which Hyde himself did not. And the same feeling is expressed in other passages, as ii. 94; iv. 244, &c.