pudence or sottishness; but we knew him only in his decline. John Palmer was before our time. So was

:

Miss Farren and Suett was before our critical days, though we remember him well, with his quaint, thin manner, and his little slippery laugh.

We heard an exquisite anecdote of Suett the other day. It is not much to tell, but it is highly characteristic. Suett, it must be observed, was both one of the drollest and one of the simplest of mankind. His relish of a joke was infinite, but he gave rise to many a one unconsciously; and hung upon the world, in all things, betwixt a laugh and an astonishment. It was he that said when he was dying, "O dear! O dear! Bobby going to die! Here's a pretty job! Was there ever seen the like?"

Suett one day took it into his head, gravely, to teach clergymen how to read the Lord's Prayer! We forget the name of the public house from which his card of announcement was addressed, but it ran in some such manner as the following, and was in perfect good faith:

"Clergymen taught to read the Lord's Prayer, By ROBERT SUETT, Comedian.

Address to the Cat and Feathers, No. 21 Drury Lane."

1831.

CLARENDON'S HISTORY OF THE

H

REBELLION.

AVING been much interested by a re-perusal

of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, I sit down to look through it again with the reader. My object is not to write a criticism, still less to enter into a review of the period to which the book relates, but simply to point out and remark a little upon some of the most curious passages. Having felt a pleasure, I wish to impart it, and shall fancy myself in the reader's company as with a friend.

The edition I make use of is a foreign one, printed at Basil, which is not likely to be read in England : so that I can only refer to the number of the books without noticing the pages.

The work opens with an account of Prince Charles's romantic journey into Spain, and the way in which James the First was brought to consent to it. This has been copied by Hume; but though Hume relates the particulars more directly relating to the journey, such as the bullying conduct of Buckingham, and the ridiculous lamentations of the King, who threw himself on his bed, weeping and wailing, and exclaiming that he should lose "Baby Charles," he has omitted one or two passages highly characteristic of the courtiers of those times. I observe, by the way, that Hun represents Baby Charles (who was then a young man in the twenty-third year of his

age) as having tears in his eyes when his father wished him to give up the journey: but this is not mentioned by Clarendon. The appellation of Baby, and the wilful infirmities to which Royalty is subject, appear to have beguiled the historian of his usual precision.

tion:

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Sir Francis Cottington, afterwards Lord Cottington, was a courtier of real courage for that period; yet, see how he behaves at an unexpected proposiCottington," said James, "here is Baby Charles and Stenny" (an appellation he always used of and towards the Duke) —" who have a great mind to go by post to Spain to fetch home the Infanta, and will have but two more in their company. What think you of the journey?" He (Cottington) often protested since, that when he heard the King, he fell into such a trembling that he could hardly speak. But when the King commanded him to answer him, what he thought of the journey, he replied, he could not think well of it, &c. · Book I.

This was the courage of a great courtier. Now see his delicacy. Cottington, to this offence against the Duke, subsequently added another; upon which Buckingham, after his usual open manner, vowed revenge on him. The courtier applied to him to know whether, by a proper obsequiousness, he could not be restored to his Grace's favor; and being answered in the negative, said, he at least hoped that his Grace would not condescend to gain by his loss; and so requested him to return a set of hangings he had presented to him "in hope of his future favor,” and which cost him eight hundred pounds. The Duke

answered "he was right;" and the hangings were restored, or at least the amount of their value; together with some sums of money, which Cottington had laid out, by his order, for jewels and pictures. - Ibid.

Cottington appears to have been bold enough with everybody except his first master; but he knew his men, even when he was most daring. He most likely ventures to behave to Buckingham in this manner, out of a confidence that it was the safest thing he could do to a man of his temper, where his advances were not accepted. It was an avowal of meanness and inferiority, as well as a compliment to the other's spirit; which tended to put him at a pardonable distance from a lofty but not ungenerous temper. After the death of Buckingham, Cottington got into power. There were none of his old masters to overawe him. He felt secure of Charles and his weakness; and having a turn for drollery as well as artifice, did not scruple to play a strange trick upon Laud, whom all the lay part of the government disliked. It was so contrived as at once to turn to their advantage, and disconcert the Archbishop with the King. The whole of the story is worth copying, inasmuch as it involves a Naboth-vineyard anecdote of Charles the First such as Hume does not venture to repeat. King, who was excessively affected to hunting (says Clarendon) and the sports of the field, had a great desire to make a great park for red as well as fallow deer, between Richmond and Hampton Court, where he had large wastes of his own and great parcels of wood, which made it very fit for the use he designed it to; but as some parishes had commons in those

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"The

wastes, so many gentlemen and farmers had good houses and good farms intermingled with those wastes, of their own inheritance, or for their lives or years; and without taking of them into the park, it would not be of the largeness, or for the use proposed. His Majesty desired to purchase those lands, and was very willing to buy them upon higher terms than the people could sell them at to anybody else, if they had occasion to part with them; and thought it no unreasonable thing, upon those terms, to expect this from his subjects; and so he employed his own surveyor and others of his officers to treat with the owners, many whereof were his own tenants, whose farms would at last expire.

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The major part of the people were in a short time prevailed with, but many very obstinately refused; and a gentleman who had the best estate, with a convenient house and gardens, would by no means part with it; and the King being as earnest to compass it, it made a great noise, as if the King would take away men's estates at his own pleasure." [As if he would not! What else was it that he desired to do?] "The Bishop of London, who was Treasurer, and the Lord Cottington, Chancellor of the Exchequer, were, from the first entering upon it, very averse from the design; not only for the murmur of the people, but because the purchase of the land, and the making a brick wall about so large a parcel of ground (for it is near ten miles about), would cost a greater sum of money than they could easily provide, or they thought ought to be sacrificed on such an occasion; and the Lord Cottington (who was more so