mour.

The axe of the executioner terminated the troubled career of Charles I., on the scaffold before Whitehall. A universal groan broke from the multitude assembled upon the sad occasion, at the fatal stroke. A rush was made to dip handkerchiefs in the royal blood as a memento; but the troops put themselves in motion, cleared the streets, and the dismal tragedy ended. This is the testimony of Philip Henry, father of Matthew Henry, the commentator, who was present. The remains were interred at Windsor, in the same vault with those of Henry VIII. and Jane SeyA few devoted cavaliers attended the ceremony, and noticed the coïncidence between the coronation and the funeral of their master. On the former occasion the king chose to appear in a white robe, though this was opposed by his friends as contrary to the practice of his predeces sors and to popular ideas; for purple was considered the color appropriate to sovereignty. He was superstitiously reminded that, of two exceptions to the rule-Richard II. and Henry VI., who wore white satin at their coronations-both had come to a violent end. But Charles persisted in his purpose; the third "white king" was crowned; and he went to the grave in his favorite color. The snow fell heavily at the time, so as to cover the black velvet pall with a silvery mantle, on the passage of the bier from the Castle to St. George's Chapel. All knowledge of the precise place of interment was afterwards lost, till the year 1813, when, in course of making some repairs, the workmen accidentally opened the vault; and, to clear up a doubtful point in history, its contents were examined in the presence of the Prince Regent, Sir Henry Halford, and others. There was a plain leaden coffin discovered, with two more. The former bore the inscription, in large legible characters, on a scroll of lead encircling it, "King Charles, 1648." It contained a wooden coffin, very much decayed, in which was the body, carefully wrapped up in cerecloth. Upon disclosing the face, the skin was found dark and discolored; the forehead and temples had lost little or nothing of their muscular substance; the cartilage of the nose was gone; the left cye was open and full, in the first moment of exposure, though it vanished almost immediately; and the pointed beard, so

was perfect. The shape of the face was a long oval; and its strong resemblance was instantly recognized to the coins, busts, and especially the pictures of Vandyke, by which it has been made familiar to us. When the head had been entirely disengaged from the attachments which confined it, it was found to be loose, and without any difficulty was taken up and held to view. It bore evident marks of having been severed by a heavy blow, inflicted with a very sharp instrument. The hair at the back was thick, but short, contrary to the prevailing fashion of the time; and had probably been cut off for the convenience of the executioner, or after death, to furnish friends with relics.

Oliver Cromwell departed this life at Whitehall, on the anniversary of the battles of Dunbar and Worcester, two of his greatest victories. A fearful storm raged in England and over nearly the whole of Europe on the preceding night and morn. The unchained winds disturbed the waters from the Baltic to the Bosphorus; the seas were strewed with wrecks from the coast of Norway to those of Italy and Spain; while towns and forests suffered by the hurricane, from the Grampians to the Apennines. The Protector had a state funeral in Westminster Abbey, the cost of which his representatives were afterwards called upon to pay; and, contrary to the maxim that "English vengeance wars not with the dead," his corpse was disgracefully disinterred, for the purpose of being treated with indignity. Contemporary accounts state that the heads of Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw were exposed on the roof of Westminster Hall, and that the bodies were thrown into a neighboring hole, after being suspended on the gallows at Tyburn; but a tradition formerly existed among the inhabitants of Red Lion Square that they were interred in the center of that particular locality. It is proba bly true, and not at all at variance with the other relations, for the gallows was frequently erected at the Holborn end of Fetter Lane, within a short distance of Red Lion Square. Most likely, therefore, the Protector slumbers his last sleep in the locality mentioned. But though discarded from the mausoleum of royalty and igno miniously treated, his name lives in history with far greater honor than that of his spiteful antagonists; and none of our legitimate sovereigns have, like him, been

panegyrized by four such eminent contemporaries as were Milton, Waller, Dryden, and Locke. Richard Cromwell, his son, and his successor for little more than seven months, after a long expatriation spent his last days, under a feigned name, at Cheshunt, where he died peacefully, in the reign of Queen Anne.

The dissolute life and disgraceful reign of Charles II. ended suddenly at Whitehall, and was justly followed by a neglected funeral. "The King," says Evelyn, chronicling the event, "was this night buried very obscurely in a vault, under Henry VII.'s Chapel, without any manner of pomp, and soon forgotten"-an apt commentary upon the wise man's observation: "So I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done." James II., a king for twelve years after his expatriation only in name, surrendered his nominal sovereignty at St. Germain's, near Paris. Vicissitudes, as strange in death as in life, seem to have attended this misguided man. He left his heart to the Dames de St. Marie, at Challiot. He bequeathed his brains to the old Scotch College in the Rue des Fosses St. Victor, in the chapel of which, now leased to a private school, there is a marble monument to his memory. An urn of bronze-gilt, containing the king's brains, formerly stood on the crown of this monument; but it was smashed, and the contents scattered over the ground during the French Revolution. The body itself was interred in the monastery of English Benedictine Monks, in the Rue du Faubourg St. Jacques. Upon the destruction of this building, it was exhumed, and, after being kept for some years in a temporary tomb in the neighborhood, it was transported to the parish church of St. Germain's, where a monument was placed over it by George IV.

William III. and Anne both died at Kensington Palace, and repose in Westminster Abbey. George I., arrested by the hand of death while traveling abroad,

expired at Osnaburgh, on the very same bed on which he was born, and was laid by the side of his ancestors in a vault beneath the Schlosskirche at Hanover. George II. departed this life at Kensing ton, and, under circumstances of some interest, was laid in Westminster Abbey. As a proof of his respect for his consort, Queen Caroline, who had preceded him to the grave, he left directions for their remains to be mingled together. The order was obeyed, by the two coffins being placed in a large stone sarcophagus, when the sides of the wooden coffins nearest each other were withdrawn. This was a tradition merely at the Abbey, till confirmed in the year 1837. At that time the vault was opened, under authority of a Secretary of State's warrant, in order to remove a child of the Duke of Cumberland's, late King of Hanover, which had been buried in it, to Windsor. Dr. Milman superintended the disinterment, which took place by night. In the middle of the vault, towards one end, the large stone sarcophagus was seen, with the two sides of the coffins, which had been withdrawn, standing up against the wall.

Windsor was the scene of the death and burial of the three next sovereignsGeorge III., George IV., and William IV. They lie in the Royal Dormitory, to the east of St. George's Chapel, where all the members of the reigning family, deceased in England, have been placed, since its application to the purpose of a mausoleum, with the exception of the Duke of Sussex, buried by his own desire in Kensal Green Cemetery, and the unhappy wife of George IV., who was removed to Brunswick. Every heart will unite in the wish that long may it be before another crowned head is laid low in that regal sepulcher! and that, whenever the event occurs, a justly-honored and beloved sovereign may come to the grave in peace, as a shock of corn is gathered in its season. These reminiscences of royalty in its ruins emphatically suggest the moral of the poet:

"The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things."

committing them to paper. The knowledge of human nature is a matter of experience and not of intuition; and at least he must have been a diligent reader of men if he had been a careless reader of books. He must, however, have studied these not a little also, for his language in his poetical dialogue is not the language of conversation alone. Nor is there any poet whose effusions bear the impress of more severe thought, which not only impregnates, but sometimes obscures, his "thick-coming fancies." If internal evidence is to be a guide, he, as little as any one, could have dispensed with previous meditation and preliminary discipline.

Wherever prose-writers have been remarkable for some particular quality, it will be equally found that the point in which they have excelled was one upon which they had bestowed commensurate pains. Those, for example, who are distinguished for the beauty of their style have acquired their skill as the artist acquires his power of drawing-not by contenting themselves with the first rude and rapid draught, but by repeated references to better models, by an incessant renewal of their attempts, and by the untiring correction of defects. Every one knows that Pascal wrote each of his "Provincial Letters many times over. The draught of his "Epoques de la Nature" which Buffon sent to the press was the eleventh. The Benedictine editor of Bossuet's works stated that his manuscripts were bleared over with such numerous interlineations that they were nearly illegible. Burke penned his political pamphlets three times at least before they were put into type, and then he required to have a large margin for his manifold corrections. Sterne was incessantly employed for six months in perfecting one very diminutive volume. "I mention this," says Paley, to whom we owe our knowledge of the fact, "for the sake of those who are not sufficiently apprised that in writing, as in many other things, ease is not the result of negligence, but the perfection of art." The proposition that uncommon excellence arises from the concurrence of great talents with great industry is supported by so many examples that they might be produced by the score. The extraordinary effect, indeed, of sustained application might almost seem to countenance the saying of Buffon, that genius was patience." The idle may dream over the fancied possession of in

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tuitive powers which they never display. Those who enter the arena and engage in the contest know that strength can not be put forth without strenuous exertion, nor skill be manifested without assiduous practice.

Of all the attainments which Lord Stanhope, in his graceful and attractive speech, showed to depend upon cultivation, none more needed to be dwelt upon before a body of students than that of oratory. There is no accomplishment which even when possessed in a moderate degree raises its possessor to consideration with equal rapidity, none for which there is so constant a demand in the church, in the senate, or at the bar, and none, strange to say, which is so little studied by the majority of aspirants. Dr. King, in his "Anecdotes of his Own Time," which was written in 1760, complains that the want of a proper power of expression was a universal defect in the English nation. Many admirable scholars whom he had known could not speak with propriety in a common conversation, whereas among the French and Italians he had met with few learned men who did not talk with ease and elegance. The only three persons of his acquaintance among our own countrymen who expressed themselves in a manner which would have been pronounced excellent if every thing they uttered had been committed to writing, were Bishop Atterbury, Dr. Gower,* and Dr. Johnson. That his pupils might acquire the art of speaking with correctness and facility, he used to recommend them to get by heart a page of some English classic every morning, and the method was often attended with complete success. There is still the same disproportion as in his day between the extensive learning of the educated classes and their capability of imparting it. Great pains are taken at our schools and universities to obtain knowledge, but upon the mode of convey. ing it in a way which shall be pleasing and forcible, no pains are bestowed at all. It is as if years should be spent in collecting materials for the construction of a mighty edifice without any attempt to dispose them in an order which would secure beauty, strength, or convenience. Lord Chesterfield was forever impressing upon his son the necessity, if he wished to be listened to, of acquiring an elegant style

*He was Provost of Worcester College, Oxford.