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variably tamed, ruled, kept in abeyance; our likeness to God consisting in this solitary and lordly will. Hence he became something of a moral idealist, straining the power of the will, both in theory and in practice, beyond its true limits. He held up to himself a conception of duty that necessarily made his religious faith seem one of mere aspiration-a restless striving after an "ideal," instead of a quiet trust in the mighty arm of God. He wanted, in order to complete his type of faith, an adequate belief in the divine capacity of the involuntary side of human nature-an adequate trust in the life and conditions of feeling imposed upon the will, as well as in the freedom which those conditions circle. He needed to believe that God's life as well as his love runs through these natural channels; that likeness to him does not consist in becoming as near as we may to pure creative wills; that the divine Word unites and inspires not only our human natures, but our human natures on their human side. This was Channing's difficulty in finding a social character for his religion. He thought, in common with his Unitarian school, that religious union came only from the infinite side; that it was the common arch bending over us all, and that alone, which rendered common worship natural. Once take that view, and it is impossible not to deprecate secretly the limitations of humanity; not to think we were meant for something diviner than than those limitations; not to strain at an assimilation to God on the free and voluntary side. But those who believe that the Word could really become flesh, and that the same Word does really still perennially penetrate with life and draw together into unity the individual souls of men, are not in danger either of laying too heavy a burden on the individual will, or of deprecating the binding power of social, even though they seem purely human, ties. They believe that the will of man, free as it is, is not meant to guide, but only freely to follow guidance; and that the less it strives to carve out its own path, the more quickly and freely it will ascend.

The defect we have pointed out in Channing's type of faith shines out especially in his doctrine of humility, which genuinely humble as the man himself was-is the meagerest and falsest in effect VOL. XLIV.-NO. III.

of any part of his teaching. "Humility," he said, "is the virtue of an enlightened understanding." It "has its foundations in a correct estimate of our characters..... It is to be formed not by fixing our thoughts exclusively on the worst parts of our conduct, and ascribing the guilt of these to our whole lives, but by observing our whole lives impartially, surveying the good and the evil in our temper and general deportment, and in this way learning to what degree we are influenced by the various dispositions and principles which enter into our character." Now had this been the description of the mode of truly estimating what our characters are like what are our tendencies and dangers-it would be true enough; but pride consists in the desire to reject assistance, to undervalue the assistance we have received, to stand alone where our nature is not capable of standing alone. Humility has nothing to do with "enlightened understanding," it is a willingness to see our need of help-to recognize to the full the reality and amount of the help we have received. The clearest vision is consistent with pride-for we may discern, but discern most reluctantly, how little we are. It is in the desire to claim a power we have not, not in the mistake of claiming it, that the sin against humility lies. Nor could any question of measuring present dispositions, and weighing out individual temper arise in such a case. It is of course no humility to affect a lower estimate of ourselves than we really have; but it is not a question of estimate at all; it is rather whether we are inclined to credit ourselves with powers and dispositions which have been formed in us by no power of our own. Those who feel that right consists in simply not resisting the divine life in us-in declining to make a false choice-and that no higher power than this is within the limits of human freedom, must feel that humility has more to do with the willing recognition of the divine life and Word in us, than with any microscopic attention to our own charac ters. In fact, the duty of estimating our own characters accurately is seldom a duty at all. If we are really eager to recognize the Light that shines into us, we shall have no need to catalogue the dark lines in the spirit on which it falls.

20

From the Leisure Hour.

THE BONES

O F OUR

SOVEREIGNS.

however, the care of a monk preserved in his chamber. Here they continued till a subsequent insurrection, when the whole abbey was plundered, and the remains were lost, except one of the thigh-bones, which was reinterred, and a monument raised over it in 1642. Even this relic has disappeared, for the revolutionists of 1793 rifled the spot, and disposed of the fragment as if the last vestige of a dog. The furious democrats were not wise in their generation, for the fleshless remnant of the limb might have been preserved as an impressive memorial of the fate of royalty; and a veritable thigh-bone of the dreaded conqueror would now fetch a handsome price in the London market, where all things odd and rare are readily disposed of to collectors who have more cash than brains.

As a hunter gay, William the Red King entered the New Forest on a bright August morning. He had slept the previous night at a lodge within its precincts.

In spite of his firm tramp, brawny arm, | up and emptied of its contents, which, and stalwart frame, the Norman conqueror was at length conquered, and retired from the field of battle to succumb to the last enemy in the monastery of St. Gervais at Rouen, the church of which is now reputed to be the oldest structure in the city. The closing scene was a melancholy spectacle. Robert, his first-born, to whom he bequeathed Normandy, was away prosecuting crusading adventures. William, the second son, staid only to hear himself nominated to the crown of England, and then left his father to get through his last agony as he could, galloping off to the coast, eager to secure his prize. Henry, the third son, lingered sulky and grumbling, till his ready-money legacy was declared, when he departed likewise, hurried to the treasury, carefully weighed the silver, and placed it under iron locks and bindings. No sooner did the fatal event occur, about sunrise on a September day, than nobles, knights, and priests decamped, to look after their own interests, while servants set to work to plunder, and the body of the once potent monarch lay stripped and deserted, till the charity of an obscure individual provided for its conveyance to a resting-place at Caen, according to the wish of the deceased. But there was some difficulty in effecting the funeral, as one of the bystanders, a man of low degree, claimed property in the site of the grave; and the service for the dead was not allowed to proceed till sixty sous had been paid down as an installment of his rights. A plain gray marble slab before the high altar in the church of St. Stephen now marks the sepulcher of William the Conqueror; but not an atom of him lies beneath it. In 1542 the tomb was opened by the Bishop of Bayeaux, when the body was found in good preservation, justifying by its appearance the reports of chroniclers respecting his tall stature. But thirty years later it was violated during an insurrection, when the coffin was dug

"The Red King lies in Malwood-keep;
To drive the deer o'er lawn and steep;

He's bound him with the morn.
His steeds are swift, his hounds are good;
The like, in covert or high wood,

Were never cheered with horn."

None more rigorously enforced the laws of the chase than he, or more cruelly punished an infringement of them. It was some consolation to the poor Saxons contemptuously to style him "a wood-keeper and no king;" at the same time firmly believing that their oppressors were not always allowed to disport themselves with impunity, the Evil One sometimes interrupting their recreations in the hunting grounds, and marring revelry with sore disaster. The event of the day strengthened this popular superstition, for the lifeless body of the Ked King was soon stretched upon the green-sward by the chance arrow of an attendant. Henry,

his brother, left him to his fate, and put- with the Loire. Courtiers who had tremting spurs to his horse, rode off to Win-bled at his word took a hurried departure, chester, to seize the royal treasury. The and personal retainers followed the examinvoluntary author of the deed fled, fear-ple of their superiors; but not before ing the consequences; and the barons they had stripped the dead man of every each departed to his residence, to put it rag, and the apartment of every article of in a posture of defense, as the succession value. After some delay, charity found might have to be decided by the sword. a winding-sheet for the body, and it was Towards evening, a man named Purkiss, removed for interment to the neighboring on returning home through the forest abbey of Fontevraud, then one of the from his daily occupation of charcoal- wealthiest ecclesiastical establishments in burning, found the abandoned corpse ly- France, situated at the head of a little reing on the turf, which was saturated with tired and wooded valley. Here, previous blood. Ignorant of his quality, he placed to the funeral, the corpse was laid in the the slaughtered man in his cart and con- church, when, according to legendary veyed hin to Winchester. Rufus found a story, it shuddered convulsively at the grave in the cathedral, and was interred approach of Richard, an undutiful son, as in the center of the choir with little cerc- if condemning and abhorring his unnatural mony, none grieving. The fall of a tower conduct. Richard I., the conqueror of in the following year, which covered his Saladin and hero of a hundred fights, retomb with its ruins, was commonly inter-ceived his death-wound before the castle preted as a sign of the displeasure of of Chaluz in the Limousin, the petty forHeaven that he had received Christian tress of a vassal, and was laid by the side burial. Speed relates that his bones were of his father at Fontevraud, where also afterwards taken up, and, being laid in reposed his mother, Queen Eleanor of a coffin along with those of Canute, were Guienne, and afterwards Isabella d'Anreplaced. A plain monumental stone now goulême, the queen of his brother John. marks the spot. It is singular that, after Recumbent effigies of these personages the lapse of eight centuries, cottagers of were placed upon the tombs one of the the name of the charcoal-burner still re- earliest instances we have of this interestside in the New Forest, and that a wheel ing sepulchral relic of the middle ages. of the identical cart descended, to a re- The abbey remains, but it has been concent date, as an heirloom from father to verted into a prison-Maison Centrale de son, till used for fuel during an inclement Detention-one of the largest in France. winter. The church is also entire as to the outside, but the interior is wholly changed. Nor are the royal tombs in their original position. They were torn up and rifled by the Vandals of the Revolution, who sig nalized their hatred of royalty by scattering the ashes of the dead, and mutilating the statues, which are now stowed away in a dark corner of the south transept. The effigies, though sadly defaced, still retain some of the coloring with which they were ornamented, and are of great interest from the evident marks they bear of being portraits. Both kings are represented in royal robes, without armor. Cœur de Lion's figure is remarkable for its broad forehead and tall stature, six feet and a half. It has been frequently sug gested that application should be made to have these monuments of the first Plantagenets transferred to Westminster Abbey as a fitting asylum, now that no fragment of the dead remains in connection with them; a concession which would doubtlest be immediately granted by the French

Henry I., like his father the Conqueror, died abroad, on a December midnight, of a disease brought on by his fondness for lampreys. This was at Lions-la-Forêt, now a small town approached through the remains of a forest in the vicinity of Rouen. His remains were interred in the abbey of Reading, Berkshire, one of his foundations, a structure which has passed away, and no man knoweth of his sepulcher. Stephen terminated his troubled reign at Dover, and found a resting-place by the side of his queen and son at the monastery of Faversham, in Kent, which he had founded. There his corpse remained till the dissolution of the abbeys, when, for the possession of the leaden coffin, it was exhumed, and its contents thrown into the sea.

The restless and fiery Henry II. breathed his last at the castle of Chinon, the French Windsor of the Plantagenet kings, now an imposing ruin on a commanding height, near the junction of the Vienne

government, in return for having received the body of Napoleon from St. Helena, and his will from Doctors' Commons. The worthless John was seized with mortal sickness in the fens of Lincolnshire, after seeing the sumpter-horses that carried his money drowned in the marshes, and taking an immoderate quantity of peaches or pears and new cider to console himself under the misfortune. With great difficulty, he successfully reached the castles of Sleaford and Newark, in the last of which he ended a disgraceful career, and was removed at his own desire to be buried in Worcester Cathedral. His tomb there, in the center of the choir, has a full recumbent effigy, the first memorial of the kind executed in England for an English monarch. It was opened in 1796, when the corpse was found nearly entire, after an interment of five hundred and eighty years. His son, the feeble Henry III., died at Westminster, and was the first of our sovereigns interred in its Abbey-church since the Saxon times, an edifice which he rebuilt from the foundation. The Pell Records contain an entry of payment to two chaplains for divine service being performed at the hermitage of Charing on the occasion of his decease, at present one of the busiest sites in the metropolis, forcibly reminding us of the different character of the spot in the thirteenth century. The tomb exhibits his effigy, finely executed in brass, and cast at the same time as the adjoining effigy of Queen Eleanor. Edward I. expired at the village of Burgh-upon-Sands, near Carlisle, within sight of the Scotland which he had vowed to subdue. But although he is said to have left express orders for his bones to be carried at the head of the army till the purpose was accomplished, they were quickly deposited in Westminster Abbey by an unwarlike son, where the body was found comparatively undecayed in 1774. It was arrayed in royal robes, with crown and scepter, and measured six feet two inches; hence the soubriquet of Lonkshanks was not inaptly bestowed. The obsequies are said to have been performed with great splendor. In the accounts of his executors we have, among other entries, one of £100 paid "for horses purchased for knights to ride in the king's armor before his body, between the church of the Holy Trinity, London, and Westmin

ster."

The effeminate and deposed Edward II.,

foully murdered in Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire, by order of Mortimer, the infamous paramour of his infamous queen, was hurriedly conveyed to a grave in Gloucester Cathedral. Deplorable degradation marked the last hours of Edward III., at Shene Palace, afterwards called Richmond, for the practice of abandoning royalty in the article of death was adopted in his case. Before the old man's breath left him, ministers and courtiers. went off to his successor; the vile hag whom he had cherished deserted him likewise, after stealing the ring from his helpless finger; and his other personal attendants quitted the chamber to plunder the house. The ashes of the mighty victor at Crecy repose in the same tomb with those of his wife, in the Confessor's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, according to her request on her death-bed.

The dethroned Richard II. perished violently in Pontefract Castle, Yorkshire; but a more than usual degree of mystery rests upon the horrid transaction. "How Richard died," says Froissart, "and by what means, I could not tell when I wrote this chronicle." He then, in a naïve and touching manner, contrasts his former splendor and miserable fall; for never, says he, had king of England spent so much money in keeping up a stately household. "And I, John Froissart, canon and treasurer of Chimay, saw it and considered it, and I lived in it a quarter of a year, and good cheer did he give me; and when I departed from him, (it was at Windsor,) on my leave-taking he gave me a silver goblet, gilt, and having within one hundred nobles, therefore am I much bound to pray God for him." Richard was most probably dispatched by starvation.

"Close by the regal chair,

Fell Thirst and Famine scowl
A baleful smile upon their baffled guest."

The corpse of the unhappy king was brought to London, and exhibited in St. Paul's as a public certificate of death, which was doubted by some, then removed to Langley in Herts for interment, and finally to Westminster Abbey. His supplanter, and perhaps murderer, Henry IV., met a long expected death in the Jerusalem Chamber, and was entombed in Canterbury Cathedral, by the side of his first wife, the only one of our sove

reigns buried in that city. Henry V. expired at Vincennes, near Paris, and was brought with mournful pomp to his native country for the last rites. Bishops in pontifical attire, mitered abbots, and a vast inultitude of all ranks, met the body as it approached the capital. The churchmen chanted the service for the dead as it passed over London Bridge and through the streets of the city; the obsequies were performed at St. Paul's in presence of the whole Parliament, and the remains were interred in state in Westminster Abbey. A headless and otherwise mutilated figure of the king, carved in oak, and originally covered with silver, marks the tomb, above which are the saddle, helmet, and shield, supposed to have been used at Agincourt.

The imbecile Henry VI. died a captive in the Tower, probably by violent means, and was first interred at Chertsey Abbey, Surrey, then removed to Windsor, by order of Richard III. His successor, Edward IV., ended his days of pleasure and profligacy at Westminster, and was exposed on a board after death, naked from the waist upwards, in order that people might see he had not been murdered-an act strikingly illustrative of turbulent times. He was then buried in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, the exquisitely beautiful edifice which he founded. A steel tomb, executed by Quintin Matsys, marks the spot. The body was found undecayed, the dress nearly perfect, as were the lineaments of the face, in 1789, after a period of three hundred and six years. The boyking, Edward V., and his younger brother, the Duke of York, atrociously murdered in the Tower, were privately buried within its walls by the assassins, at a spot which long remained unknown. But in the reign of Charles II., while some alterations were making near the White Tower, the workmen found, about ten feet in the ground, the remains of two striplings, which, on examination, appeared to be those of two boys of the ages of the princes, thirteen and eleven years. They were in a wooden chest, and were reïnterred in a marble urn in Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster Abbey. A Latin inscription gives the commonly received account of the sad tragedy: "Here lie the relics of Edward V., King of England, and Richard, Duke of York, who, being confined in the Tower, and there stifled with pillows, were priyately and meanly buried, by order of

their perfidious uncle, Richard, the usurp er. Their bones, long inquired after and wished for, after lying one hundred and ninety-one years in the rubbish of the stairs, were, on the 17th of July, 1674, by undoubted proofs discovered, being buried deep in that place. Charles II, pitying their unhappy fate, ordered those unfortunate princes to be laid among the relics of their predecessors, in the year 1678, and the thirteenth of his reign." Richard III., the author of this foul deed, slain in the battle of Bosworth Field, was unceremoniously thrown across a horse, and conveyed behind a pursuivant-at-arms to Leicester. There the corpse was buried in the church of St. Mary's, belonging to a monastery of the Grey Friars. His conqueror placed over him a tomb adorned with his statue in alabaster, where it remained till the dissolution of the abbeys, when the monument was utterly destroyed, the grave rifled, and its human remains ignominiously cast out. The stone coffin was made a drinking-trough for horses, at the White Horse Inn, Leicester.

The first of the Tudors, Henry VII., died at Richmond Palace, and was laid in the magnificent chapel which he had built, and which bears his name, appended to Westminster Abbey. The tomb of black marble stands in the center, inclosed in an admirably executed chantry of cast brass, ornamented with statues. The brutal Henry VIII. went to his account at Westminster, not aware, till the last moment came, of his true condition, none caring to tell him, as several persons had been put to death at various times for saying that the king was dying, or likely to die. He found a grave under the choir of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, where a leaden coffin was observed, supposed to be his, upon the vault being opened in the year 1813. It measured nearly seven feet in length, and appeared to have been beaten in by violence about the middle, as there was a considerable opening in that part of it, exposing a mere skeleton of the inmate. Some beard remained upon the chin, but there was nothing to discriminate the person, and no exterior inscription. The four next sovereigns-Edward VI., who died at Greenwich Palace, Mary at St. James's, Elizabeth at Richmond, and James I. at Theobalds in Herts-were all committed to the earth in Westminster Abbey. A stately monument marks the grave of Elizabeth, the last of our mon

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