University of Virginia Library

BOOK I.

Akenside.

1. CHAPTER I.

“But even as you will, fair sir—even as you
will! Though, an' you ride for Huntingdon this
night, and wish not, ere it be two hours the later,
that you had tarried here at the White Dragon,
then am not I called Walter Danforth, nor have I
drawn good ale in Royston these forty years and
better.”

With this prophetic sentence did the lord of cup
and can wind up a long narration of roads impassable,
and bridges broken, and “all the moving accidents
of flood and field,” with which, according
to time-honoured usage among the heroes of the
spigot, he was endeavouring to beguile the lated
wayfarer. In the present instance, however, it
would seem that the ominous warnings of the worthy
Boniface were destined to be of none effect,
for with a cheery smile the traveller answered—

“'Tis like enough, good host of mine—'tis like
enough—so all the cates of the White Dragon
vie with this puissant Bourdeaux;” and, as he
spoke, he proffered to the landlord's grasp the
mighty flagon of bright pewter, which, despite his
eulogy, he had left still mantling with its generous

liquor,—“but, were the venture deeper, I must on
to-night; and, in good sooth, too often have I jour
neyed through the midnight passes of the wild Abruzzi,
and the yet wilder Pyrenean hills of Spain,
to ponder gravely on a late ride or a sprinkled
doublet among these chalky wolds of Hertford
shire.”

“Ay! were that all—” returned the other,
heaving a long breath after the potent draught
with which he had exhausted the flagon, and eying
wistfully the coins which had dropped with so
sweet a jingle into his greasy palm,—“Ay, were
that all—but there are worse customers on Ermine-street
than darkness, or storm either, though the
clouds be mustering so black in the west yonder,
over the woods of Potton. Wise men ride not
forth nowadays an hour after sundown, nor earlier,
save in company.”

“Then must Old England be sore changed since
last I left her,” replied the traveller, a shade of
thought or sorrow, for it might be either, crossing
his features, and not entirely effaced by the frank
smile which followed it. “And if she be—” he
paused, unwilling, as brave men ever are, to utter
sentiments which might, however justified by the
occasion, sound boastfully.

“And if she be?” inquired the interested Walter,
seeing that his guest hesitated to complete his
sentence, “and if she be sore changed?”

“Why, then hath brown Bess borne me though
worse frays than I am like to meet, I trow, on this
side Huntingdon; nor will it be small peril that
shall arrest her now; and so good e'en, fair landlord.”

“A bold bird and a braggart!” muttered the disconcerted
publican, as the horseman, giving the
spur to the highbred mare of which he had just

spoken, rode briskly off. “But if he meet with
those I wot of, he may yet crow craven.”

Who those were to whom his words so pointedly
alluded, is not perhaps a question of more than
ordinary moment, unless it be from the vast conception
of their prowess which appears to have
been entertained by the landlord of the White
Dragon; for, in truth, the gentleman who had
earned his ill-will merely by a natural reluctance
to tarry in Royston when his occasions called him
elsewhere, was of very different mould from one of
whom it would be said that he was like to fall an
easy or unresisting prey to any who should dare
dispute his progress. Removed alike from the
greenness of inconsiderate youth and from the inactivity
of an advanced age, the rider might be
looked upon as exhibiting a specimen of manhood,
in the full vigour of its endowments, both mental
and corporeal, as fair as is permitted by the imperfections
of humanity. Considerably above the ordinary
height of men, broad-shouldered, deep-chested,
and thin-flanked, he sat his charger with
an ease and firmness resulting more from natural
grace and flexibility of limb than from the practised
art of the manége. His eye was clear and
even quick, though thought and calmness seemed
to belong, rather than energy or fire, to its general
expression,—qualities belied neither by the broad
imaginative forehead, nor by the firm and slightly
compressed outline of his chiselled lips. He wore
a small mustache, but neither beard nor whiskers,
although both these were common in the last years
of the unhappy monarch who at that time swayed
the destinies of England. His hair, as was the
wont among the higher classes of society, flowed
in loose curls, trained with peculiar care, far down
the neck and over the collar of the doublet, while

a single ringlet, longer and more assiduously cherished
than the rest, seemed to indicate that the
wearer was not of one mind with the pamphlet
lately published by the notorious Master Prynne
on the “unloveliness of love-locks.” The dress
of this cavalier, a loose velvet jerkin of that peculiar
shade which, from being the favourite colour of
the greatest painter of his day, has been dignified
with the immortal title of Vandyke, was slashed
and broidered with black lace and satin; tight
breeches of buff leather, guarded with tawny silk,
high boots, and massive spurs, completed his attire;
all save a broad-leafed hat of dark gray beaver,
with one black ostrich feather drooping from the
clasp which held it over the left eyebrow. His
military cloak of sable cloth and velvet was buckled
to the croup of his war-saddle, while from
beneath the housings of the bow peered out the
heavy pistols, which had not long before supplanted
the lance as the peculiar weapon of the horseman.
A long rapier, with its steel scabbard and
basket-hilt of silver delicately carved, hung from a
shoulder-scarf of the same colour with his doublet,
matched by a poniard of yet more costly fabric in
his Cordovan leather girdle.

When it is added that the mare which he had
styled “brown Bess” was an animal that might be
pronounced unrivalled for the rare union she displayed
of strength and beauty, of English bone and
high Arabian blood—the latter manifested in the
clean limb, full eye, and coat glancing like polished
copper to the sunlight—naught will be wanting to
the picture of the traveller who was now journeying
right onward, undismayed, if not incredulous of
all that he had heard, across the bleak and barren
hills which skirt the southern verge of Cambridgeshire.

The season was that usually the most delicious
of the English year—the bright and golden days
of early autumn—when the promises of spring and
summer are fulfilled in the rustling harvest-field
and the rich orchard, and before the thoughts of
change, decay, and death are forced upon the mind
by the sere leaf and withered herbage. The day
had been mild and calm, and, though evening was
far advanced, the sun was still shooting his slant
rays over the rounded summits and grassy slopes
of the low hills through which the ancient Roman
way holds its undeviating course. Ere long, however,
the clouds of which the landlord had spoken
as gathering so darkly to the westward, though at
that time visible only in a narrow streak along the
edge of the horizon, began to rise in towering
masses, until the light of the declining day-god
was first changed to a dark and lurid crimson, and
then wholly intercepted. After a while the wind,
which had been slight and southerly, veered round
and blew in fitful squalls, now whirling the dust
and stubble high into the air, and again subsiding
into a stillness that from the contrast seemed unnatural.
Such was the aspect of the night when
the sun set, and the little light which had hitherto
struggled through intervals of the increasing storm-cloud,
waned rapidly to almost utter darkness. To
render the traveller's position yet less enviable, he
had already passed the open country, and was now
involved in the mazes of scattered woodland, which
in the seventeenth century overspread so large a portion
of that country. The way too, which had thus
far been firm and in good order, now running between
deep hollow banks, resembled rather a water-course
deserted by its torrent than a public throughfare;
so that his progress was both slow and painful
until he reached the banks of the Cam—at that

place, as throughout much of its course, a strong
and turbid stream, wheeling along in sullen eddies
between shores of soft black loam. Here daylight
utterly deserted him, its last glimpse barely sufficing
to show that the bridge had been carried away,
and that the river was apparently unfordable; since
a miry track wandered away from the brink to the
left hand; as though in search of a place where it
might pass the current, and resume its natural direction
to the northward. While he was considering
what course it would be most advisable that he
should pursue, a few large heavy drops of rain
plashed on the surface of the gloomy stream, warning
the stranger to hasten his decision. Then, as
he turned to follow, as best he might, the devious
and uncertain path before him, the windows of the
heavens were opened, and down came the thick
shower, pattering on the thirsty earth, and lashing
the river's bosom into a sheet of whitened spray.
Thoroughly drenched, and almost hopeless of recovering
the true direction of his journey until the
return of daylight, it was yet not a part of that
man's character to hesitate, much less to falter or
despair. Having once determined what it would
be for the best to do, he went right onward to his
purpose, though it oftentimes required the full exercise
of spur and rein to force the gallant animal
which he bestrode against the furious gusts and
pelting storm. For a weary hour or more he plodded
onward, feeling his way, as it were, step by
step, and guided only by the flashes of broad lightning
which from time to time glared over the desolate
scene, with an intensity that merely served to
render the succeeding gloom more dreary. At
length, by the same wild illumination, he discovered
that his path once more turned northward, sinking
abruptly to the verge of that black river. Of
the farther bank he could distinguish nothing; and
though for many minutes he awaited the return of
the electric light before attempting to stem the unknown
ford, with that singular perversity which
even things inanimate and senseless at times seem
to exhibit, the flashes returned no more. Still no
word of impatience or profanity rose to his lip, as
he spurred the reluctant mare resolutely down the
steep descent, holding his pistols, which he had
drawn from their holsters, high above his head. At
the first plunge, as he had well expected, all foot-hold
was lost, and nothing remained but a perilous swim,
not without considerable risk of finding an impracticable
bank at the farther side; but whether it was
the result of skill or of fortune, or, more probable
than either, a combination of the two, after a few
rough struggles and a scramble through the tenacious
mire, horse and man stood in safety on the
northern verge. Not yet, however, could the adventures
of that night be deemed at an end; for,
having once deviated from it during the hours of
darkness, it was no easy matter to recover the line
of the high road. The storm, it is true, after a
while abated; and the by-path into which he struck
was sufficiently hard to enable the cavalier to travel
at a pace more rapid than he had tried since quitting
Royston; but notwithstanding this, so much
time had been lost, and so small did the prospect
seem of reaching his destination, or indeed any
other village at which to pass the night, that the
merciful rider was beginning to occupy himself
in searching for such temporary shelter as a cattleshed,
or the lee-side of some lonely haystack might
afford, when his eye was attracted by a distant
light—now seen, now lost among the young plantations,
or scattered stripes of forest which checkered
everywhere the scenery. It required but a moment's
pause to discover that the light was in motion,
and at a smaller distance than he had at first
conjectured; and though there might have been
grounds for suspicion and distrust to the weak or
timid in the place and manner of its appearance,
quickening his pace to a gallop, and somewhat altering
his course, he rode straight for the object.
Five minutes brought him to a bank and ditch,
evidently skirting the road of which he was in
quest; the clatter of the horse's hoofs as he leaped
the trifling obstacle, and landed safely on the rough
pavement of the Roman way, was, it should seem,
the first intimation of his approach that reached the
bearers of the light; for ere he could distinguish
more than the figures of two or three rude-looking
countrymen, one of them bearing on his shoulders
what resembled the carcass of a deer, it was either
extinguished altogether or suddenly veiled from
sight.

“They are upon us,” cried a hoarse voice,
“shoot, Wilkin!” and instantly the clang of a steel
crossbow, and the whistle of the heavy bolt, as it
narrowly missed the rider's ear, showed that the
mandate was complied with as promptly as delivered.

“Hold! hold your hands!” he shouted, “or ye
will fare the worse. Ye know me not, nor care I
aught for ye.”

“Fare the worse, shall we?” interrupted the
other,—“that shall we see anon. Come on, brave
boys, and down with this proud meddler!” and
with a loud fierce cry, some six or seven ruffians,
as he judged from the sound of their footsteps,
rushed against him. In the moment which had
elapsed since the first outrage, he had prepared his
weapons, and was already on his guard; but it was
not destined that he should this time need their service;

for just as he reined up his steed, and parried
the first blow aimed at him with a crowbar or a
quarterstaff, the quick tramp of coming horsemen
was heard upon the road behind him; and with
their swords drawn, as if excited by the shout of
the ruffians, two or three persons galloped rapidly
to his assistance.

“What knaves be these?” inquired a loud and
dissonant voice from the foremost of the new-comers,
as the cavalier fell back toward his welcome
rescuers. “What knaves be these that raise this
coil on the highway?”

“Down with the thieving Girgashites!” shouted
another of the riders, ere an answer could be rendered
to the querist; and, at the word, he fired a
petronel at random, its momentary flash displaying
the marauders struggling, as best they might,
through a strong blackthorn fence, which parted the
road from a wild tract of coppice, glade, and woodland.
“Deer-stealers, Master Oliver,” he continued,
reslinging his now useless weapon, “after the
herds of my Lord De la Warr. But I have scared
them for the nonce!”

“More shame to thee, Giles Overton,” cried the
same voice which had first spoken, “and more sin
likewise, to use the carnal weapon thus in causeless
strife; setting the precious spirit of a being
like to, or it may well be better than thyself, upon
the darkling venture of chance-medley, and bartering
a human life against the slaughter of a valueless
and soulless beast. Go to, Giles Overton, see
that thou err not in the like sort again! But art
thou hurt, good sir?” proceeded the speaker, turning
in his saddle toward the traveller, for whose
safety he had come up so opportunely,—“or have
we, by the mercy of the Lord, who may in this—
if it be not presumptuous in me, considering how

unprofitable I am, and the mean improvement of
my talent, so to judge of his workings—vouchsafe
to preserve thee for a chosen vessel. Have
we, I would say, come in season to protect thee
from these sons of Ammon?”

“Thanks to your timely aid, fair sir,” replied
the cavalier, not a little astonished at the strange
address of his preserver; for he had but recently
returned to his native land after protracted absence,
and, at the time of his departure, the reign of the
saints had not yet commenced on earth—“I am
uninjured; and now, I pray you to increase yet
farther this your kindness, by informing me the
straightest road for Huntingdon; it cannot be, I
do suppose, far distant.”

“Good lack—a stranger, by your questioning,”
answered he who had been called Oliver; “Huntingdon
do I know right well—ay! even as one
knoweth the tabernacle of his abode, and the burial-place
of his fathers; but I profess to you that it is
distant by full thirteen miles, and those of sorry
road. But ride thou on with me to Bourne, some
three miles farther, and I will bestow thee at a
house where thou mayst tarry until morn—the
Fox Tavern, I would say—Phineas Goodenough,
my glove hath fallen; I pray thee reach it to me—
a clean house, truly, kept by a worthy man—yea,
verily, a good man, one that dwelleth in the fear
of the Lord alway.”

“A stranger am I doubtless,” returned the other,
“else had I not inquired of thee that which I then
had well known; and, of a truth, I know not now
that I can do aught better than to accept your proffer
frankly as it is made!”

“Be it so!” was the ready answer. “Will it
please you to ride somewhat briskly; for myself, I

am bound an hour's ride farther to worshipful Master
Pym's, nigh Caldecote!”

“Ha! Pym, the friend of Hampden and John
Milton—I knew not he lived hereabout,” exclaimed
the cavalier.

“And what knowest thou, so I may ask it,”
queried Oliver, “of Hampden or John Milton?
Truly, I took thee for a carnal-minded person;
but, of a surety, it is not for a man to judge!”

“For what it liked your wisdom to mistake me,
I know not; nor, to speak frankly, do I care greatly,”
replied the other; “but, to satisfy your question,
of Hampden I know nothing, save that the
mode of his resistance to that illegal claim of ship-money
hath reached my ears, even where the
tongue of England would have sounded strangely.
John Milton, if it concerns you any thing to hear
of him, was, and that too for many months, my
chosen comrade of the road, and my most eloquent
tutorer in the classic lore of Italy!”

“In Italy, saidst thou? In Italy, and with John
Milton?” answered Oliver, after a long and meditative
pause; and, as he continued, his own voice had
lost much of its harshness, and his manner not a
little of its offensive peculiarity. “A better comrade
couldst thou not have chosen than that pure-minded
Christian, that most zealous patriot. Verily,
I say to you, that, in consorting with that sanctified,
elected vessel, you must needs have imbibed some
draughts more worthy than the profane and carnal
lore of those benighted heathens, whose bestial
and idolatrous rites are even now to be found corrupting
with their accursed stench the faith which
claims to be of Jesus, even as the stinking fly
poisoneth the salve of the mediciner. Verily I
will believe that he hath opened unto you the door
of that wisdom which is alone all in all! Ay! and

as I find you here returning hard upon his heels,
even as he hath of late returned from the city of
her that sitteth on the seven hills, clothed in the
purple of the harlot, may I not humbly hope—I
would say—confidently trust, that you will also
draw the sword of truth to defend this sore-aggrieved
and spirit-broken people from the tyrannous
oppression of their rulers, and the self-seeking
idolatries of those that sit in the high places of
the land!”

“Fair sir,” replied the cavalier, “you question
somewhat too closely; and converse, methinks, too
freely for a stranger. That I come, summoned
homeward by the rumour of these unhappy broils
between our sovereign and his parliament, is not
less true than that I care not either to conceal or to
deny it! Beyond this—what part soever I may
play in that which is to come—pardon my plainness,
sir, I do not deem it wisdom to discourse
with a chance customer. Nor have I yet indeed
decided what that part shall be, until I search more
narrowly the grounds, and so find out my way
'twixt over license on the one hand, and, as it
seems to me, intemperance on the other, and too
fiery zeal!”

“Edgar Ardenne,” returned the puritan, his
naturally harsh voice subsiding into a hollow
croak, “Edgar Ardenne—for I do know you,
though, as you have truly spoken me, a stranger—
I tell you now, this nation totters on the brink
of a most strange and perilous convulsion! We
are the instruments—vile instruments, it is true,
but still instruments—in the hands of Him who
holds the end of all things. Watched have we,
and prayed; yea, wrestled with him in the spirit
for a sign, and lo! a sign was sent us. It may be
we shall achieve deliverance for our country—freedom

from corporeal chains and spiritual bondage!
It may be we shall fail, and, failing, seek the shelter
of that New Jerusalem beyond the Western
Ocean, wherein there be no kings to lord it o'er
men's consciences, and to compel them how to
worship God! But fail we, or succeed, the sign
hath been given to us from on high, and therefore
shall we venture! and fail we, or succeed—mark
my words, Edgar Ardenne, for thou shalt think on
them hereafter—thy lot is cast with ours! Thy
spirit is of our order, thy heart is with us, and thy
tongue shall be, yea, and thy sword likewise!”

“How you have learned my name, I comprehend
not,” answered Ardenne, for so must he be
styled henceforth, veiling whatever of suspicion or
annoyance he might feel beneath the semblance of
a cold and dignified indifference; “but, were it
worth the while, I could assure you that, in learning
this, you have learned all! What part you play
in this wild drama,—whether you be hypocrite or
zealot, patriot or traitor, I care nothing; but, if we
meet hereafter, you will learn that neither sophistry
nor canting can affect my head, nor the dark phrensy
of fanaticism reach my heart!”

“We shall meet,” answered the stranger; “we
shall meet again, and shortly! and then shall you
too learn if I be saint or hypocrite—if I be patriot
or traitor!—and, above all, then shall you learn if,
in these things that I have spoken, I be a lying
prophet or a true! But lo you now—this is the
Fox at Bourne, and here comes honest Langton, to
whose good offices I do commit you!”

As he spoke, they drew up their horses before
the door of the little wayside hostelry, a low and
whitewashed tenement, imbosomed in deep woodlands,
and nestling, as it were, amid the verdant
foliage of jessamine and woodbine; while, warned

already of their coming by the clatter of hoofs and
the sound of voices, the puritanic person of mine
host, bearing on high a huge and smoky flambeau,
which poured its red light far into the bosom of
the darkness, stalked forth to meet them. On his
lean and starveling form, however, Ardenne cast
but a passing glance, being employed in serutinizing,
by the wild illumination which streamed full
upon them, the features of his singular companion;
who had paused for a moment to allow his horse to
drink, and to hold a whispered conversation with
the landlord. There was, however, nothing familiar
to him, though he probed his memory to its
lowest depth of youthful recollections, in that
manly yet ungraceful figure, or in those lineaments,
harsh and ill-favoured to the verge of downright
ugliness. Ill-favoured was that countenance
indeed, with its deeply-furrowed lines and its sanguineous
colouring; its sunken eyes, twinkling
below the penthouse of the heavy matted brows;
and its nose, prominent, rubicund, and swollen.
Yet was there a world of thought in the expansive
temples and the massive forehead—an expression
of firmness that might restrain an empire in the
downward curve of the bold mouth—and a general
air of high authority and of indomitable resolution
pervading the whole aspect of the man. The head
of this remarkable-looking individual, at a period
when the greatest attention was lavished on the
hair by all of gentle birth, was covered with coarse
locks, already streaked with gray, falling in long
disordered masses on either cheek, and down the
muscular short neck, from underneath a rusty
beaver, steeple-crowned and unadorned by feather,
loop, or tassel. Instead of the cravat of Flanders
lace, he wore a narrow band of soiled and
rumpled linen; and his sword, a heavy iron-hilted
tuck, was not suspended from a scarf or shoulderknot,
but girt about his middle, over a doublet of
black serge, by a belt of calf-skin leather, corresponding
to the material of his riding-boots, which
were pulled up above the knee to meet the loose
trunk hose, fashioned, as it would be supposed, by
some ill country tailor from the same unseemly
stuff with his cloak and doublet. The only part of
his appointments which would not have disgraced
the commonest gentleman was his horse, a tall
gray gelding of great power and not a little breeding;
yet even he was badly accoutred with mean
and sordid housings. Such was the appearance of
the person whose conversation had not been listened
to by Edgar Ardenne without deep interest;
and now—even while he confessed to himself that
the man's frame and features entitled him to no
regard as a person of superior caste or bearing—
there was still something in his air which produced
an indescribable effect on the mind of the cavalier,
forcing him, as it were, despite his senses, to admit
that he was in somewise remarkable, above, and at
the same time apart from, ordinary mortals, and not
unlike to one who might be indeed the mover of
great changes in the estate of nations.

While he was yet gazing on him with ill-dissembled
curiosity, the stranger, in his loud hoarse
notes, bade him adieu, and, striking at once into a
rapid trot, was swallowed up with his companions
in the surrounding gloom. Edgar, after a fruitless
effort at ascertaining from the saintly and abstracted
publican the name and quality of his late companion,
applied himself to creature comforts, as the
landlord termed them, of a higher order, and to a
bed more neatly garnished, than he could have
augured from the lowly exterior of the village inn.

2. CHAPTER II.

Two days had elapsed, and the third was already
drawing toward its close, since the encounter
of the cavalier with his saintly ally; for the
sun, scarce elevated thrice the breadth of his own
disk above the horizon, was now almost perceptibly
declining in the west, though he still darted
long pencilled rays of light athwart the landscape
from between the folds of gauze-like mist which
veiled his splendours from the eye. One of these
straggling beams—while others might be discerned
shedding their bright intelligence upon some
verdant slope or twinkling waterfall, thus rescued,
although miles away, from the hazy indistinctness
that steeped the distant hills, and rendered prominent,
like epochs marked by fame amid the gloom
of ages else forgotten—one of these straggling
beams had found its way into a nook as sweet as
ever poet sung or fairy haunted. It was an angle
in one of those broad green lanes which form so
beautiful a feature in the rural scenery of England.
Carpeted with deep unfaded verdure, through
which meandered a faint wheel-track; bordered by
hedges so thick and tangled as to resemble natural
coppices rather than artificial fences; imbowered

by the fragrant honeysuckle, and spangled with the
dewy flowers of the yet sweeter eglantine; decked
with the golden blossoms of the broom, the fringe-like
brachens, and the flaunting bells of the white
and crimson fox-gloves; canopied by the dense
umbrage of the broad-leaved sycamore, the gnarled
and ivy-mantled oak, or the lighter and more
graceful ash; and watered by a tiny brooklet, that
stole along, now on one side, now on the other, of
the rarely-trodden path—here tinkling over its
many-coloured pebbles with a mirthful music, there
silently reflecting the tufted rushes and the mossy
log that spanned its surface with a sylvan bridge—
that solitary nook might well have furnished forth
a tiring-room for Shakspeare's wild Titania. Nor,
though the days of Puck and Oberon were already
numbered with the things that had been, did that
lone bower lack its presiding genius; for on a
trunk, cushioned with hoary lichens, and overlooking
a crystal basin formed by the rill which undermined
its tortuous roots, and had, perchance, in bygone
ages, caused its decay and ruin, there sat a
female form, loveliest among the lovely, gazing, as
at first sight it seemed, Narcissus-like, upon her
watery image, but in truth so deeply buried in her
own imaginings that she was no less ignorant of
all she looked upon than was the senseless stump
on which she leaned so gracefully. She was a
girl perhaps of twenty summers; for, looking on
her, it had been impossible to reckon save by summers,
so sunny was the style of her young beauty.
On either side of her white and dazzling forehead,
ringlets in rich exuberance of the deepest auburn
—so deep that, saving where they glittered gold-like
in the sunshine, they might have been deemed
black—fell off behind her ears and wantoned down
her swan-like neck; while, in the luxury of calm
abandonment, her velvet hat, dropped by her side,
lay on the grass, its choice plumes ruffling the
mirror of the pool. Her eyes were bent so steadfastly
upon the waters at her feet, that it was by
the long dark lashes only, pencilled in clear relief
against the delicate complexion of her cheek, that
they could be judged large, and suited to the character
of her most eloquent features. Of an almost
marble paleness, with scarce a rosy trace to tell of
the pure blood which coursed so warmly through
those thousand azure channels that veined her neck
and bosom, there was yet a transparency, a glowing
hue in her fair skin that spoke of all the lively
elasticity of health; while, to remove a doubt, if
doubt could have existed, the sweet curve of that
small mouth, wooingly prominent, was tinged with
the rich hue of the dark red carnation. Though
Grecian in their chiselled outlines, there yet was
more of intellect and energy in the expression of
her features than of that poetical repose which
forms the general character of the classic model.
Her shape, as she reclined along her rustic couch,
though of voluptuous roundness, was rather slight
than full; and the ankle, displayed somewhat too
liberally by the disordered draperies of her satin
riding-dress, was slender as a sylphid's limb, while
her dimpled chin was propped, in attitude of busy
thought, on so diminutive a hand as would alone
have proved her pedigree from the unconquered
race of Normandy. Nor was the attitude belied
by aught of consciousness or coquetry, for all betokened
the deep hush of natural and unstudied
meditation. A beautiful white palfrey, with decorated
rein and velvet housings, which stood unfettered
at her side, awaiting, docile and gentle creature,
the pleasure of his mistress, would stamp and toss
his head till the silver bits rang audibly, and uttered
once or twice a tremulous impatient neigh, unheeded
at the least, if not unheard. A vagrant
spaniel of the Blenheim breed, with soft dark eyes,
and ears that almost swept the ground—one from
a number that had followed the fair girl, and now
dozed listlessly upon the grass around her—had
been for some time rustling among the dewy bushes,
and now sent forth a shrill and clamorous yelping,
as pheasant after pheasant whirred up on noisy
wings into the higher branches, whence they crowed,
with outstretched necks, defiance to their powerless
assailant. Still there was no sign in the demeanour
of the lady to indicate that she had marked
the sounds, harmonizing as they did with the
spirit of the place and hour, and blending naturally
with the low of the distant cattle, the cawing of
the homeward rooks, and the continuous hum of
the myriad insect tribes which were still disporting
themselves in the September sunset, not the less
merrily that their little glass of life had already run
even to its latest sands. But anon a noise arose,
which, in itself by no means inharmonious, was
not so much attuned to the rural melodies around
but that it jarred discordantly on the ear. It was
the clear and powerful voice of a man, venting his
feelings as he rode along—for at times the tramp
of a horse might be distinguished, when his hoof
struck upon harder soil than common, mingling
with the measured tones, as, perhaps unconscious
of his occupation, the rider recited aloud such passages
from the high poets of the day as were suggested
to his memory by all that met his senses.
At first the accents were indistinct from distance,
and their import quite inaudible; then, as the
speaker drew so nigh that his words might partially
be understood, the voice ceased altogether;
but after a brief pause it again broke forth in the
pure poetry of Drummond.

As the words passed his lips the horseman turned
the last angle of the winding lane; and for the first
time discovering that the free outpourings of his
spirit had found a listener, Edgar Ardenne—for the
moralist was no other—paused in his sonnet and
checked his steed by a common impulse, and, as it
seemed, a single movement. His eyes flashed
joyfully as they met the large and violet-coloured
orbs which the fair girl had raised at first in simple
wonderment, but which now lightened with a
gleamy radiance that he was not slow to construe
into delighted recognition.

“Sibyl—sweet Sibyl!—”

“Edgar, can it indeed be you? Welcome, oh
welcome home!”

At once, without a moment's interval, the words
burst forth from either as they hastened—he with
impetuous hurry from his charger, she gathering
her ruffled robes about her, and rising from her rustic
throne with the unblushing ease of conscious
modesty—to manifest their pleasure at this unexpected
meeting. Were they friends; or kindred,
or more dearly linked than either by the young ties
of holy, unsuspicious, and unselfish love? They
met; the formal fashions of the day would scarcely
have allowed the gallant to fold even a sister to his
bosom; Edgar clasped her not, therefore, in the
arms that evidently yearned to do so; but with a
polished ease, belied by the flushed brow and frame
that quivered visibly with eagerness, himself ungloving,
he raised her white hand to his lips, which

dwelt upon it even too fervently for brotherly affection.

A deep blush, glowing the more remarkably
from its contrast to her wonted paleness, over brow
and cheek, and visible, though with a fainter hue,
even upon her neck and such brief portion of the
bosom as might be descried between the fringes of
rich lace that edged her bodice, she yet expressed
not aught of wonder or of reluctance to his familiar
greeting. Though the small hand trembled in
his grasp with a perceptible and quick emotion, it
was not withdrawn; nor, while he gazed upon
those eloquent eyes as steadfastly as though
through them he would have read the inmost feelings
of the soul that so informed them, did she
shrink from his evident though chastened admiration.
A moment or two passed ere either again
spoke; it might be that their passionate feelings
were better to be interpreted from silence than expressed
by words—it might be that their hearts
were full to overflowing, and that so they dared not
to unlock those secret channels lest they might be
led—he into such betrayal of his feelings as is
deemed weak and womanish by the great mass of
men, themselves too calculating or too cold to feel
at all—she into such disclosure of her soul's treasured
secret as oftentimes is censured, and not perhaps
unjustly, as at the least impolitic, if not immodest
or unmaidenly. It was, however, Sibyl
who, with the delicate and ready tact peculiar to
her sex, first broke the silence, which had endured
so long already as to become almost embarrassing;
and as she spoke, her words explained their relative
position, although it might even then be doubted
whether the full extent of their connexion was
as yet divulged.

“I can hardly,” she said, in those low and musical

notes which are indeed an excellent thing in
woman—“I can hardly trust my eyes, dear cousin,
when they tell me, truant as you are and traitor,
that you stand bodily before me. So long have
our hearts been rendered sick by hope deferred—
so often have we gazed, from peep of morn till the
sad close of evening, for your expected, for your
promised coming, and gazed but to be disappointed—that
now, when you have truly come, we had
ceased, not to hope, indeed, and pray, but surely to
expect.”

“Oh, Sibyl, did you know how many an anxious
thought, how many a bitter pang these wearisome
delays have cost me, you would pity rather than
upbraid.”

“Fair words, good cousin Edgar,” she replied,
with an arch glance, and a light thrilling laugh;
“fair words, and flowery all! and with such, you
lords of the creation, as in your vanity you style
yourselves, deem you can wipe away the heaviest
score of broken vows and perjured promises from
the frail memories of easy and deluded damsels.
But, in good sooth, I marvel not that you should
slight poor me, when you have questioned nothing,
and that too after a three years' absence, of your
noble father; and when you stand here dallying
within a scant mile of his presence, rounding
your false excuses into a credulous lady's ear. For
shame, sir! for my part, if I felt it not, then would
I feign at least some natural affection.”

“Wild as thou ever wert, fair Sibyl,” answered
Edgar, a beautiful smile playing over his grave
features, and revealing a set of teeth even and
white as ivory; “I hoped, when I beheld you so
pensive and so melancholy, musing beside yon
lonely pool, that years growing toward maturity
might have brought something of reflection to tame

those girlish spirits—but, in good faith, I should
have known you better. But am I not assured,
were it but by your being here so blithe and beautiful,
that all goes well at home?”

“Well parried, if not honestly,” still laughing
she replied; “and for your taunts on my demeanour,
I defy you! But help me to my horse, sir loiterer,
and we will homeward; for I do believe, despite
your manifold enormities, that you would fain
see those who, to your shame be it spoken, will
feel more joy to greet you, than you have shown
alacrity to do so much as ask of their well-being.
I warrant me, if you had met Sir Henry first, you
had not once inquired whether poor I were in existence.”

In another moment the lady was mounted on her
white palfrey, and, with the cavalier beside her
bridle-rein, rode toward her home more joyously
than she had done for many a month before. Not,
however, in loud mirth, nor even in the sprightly
raillery which she had adopted on their first meeting,
was her happiness divulged to common ears;
but her soft eyes, dwelling fondly on the features
long unseen of her accepted and acknowledged
lover, though they were lowered modestly so often
as they caught his answering glances—with the
subdued and quiet tones of her melodious voice as
they conversed of old home scenes and sweet familiar
recollections, more endeared to them, all
trivial as they were, than loftier memories—were
confirmations strong as an angel's voice of her unchanged
affection. After a short ride, rendered
shorter yet to them by the enjoyment for so long a
time unused, though not forgotten, of each other's
converse; by the sweet consciousness of mutual
love; and by the full expansion of their feelings,
unrestrained by the cold formalities of that most

heartless intercourse which men have styled society,
and untrammelled by any chains save those
instinctive bonds of pure and delicate propriety
which noble natures ever wear about them in the
guise of flowery garlands, gracing, while they dignify,
the motions which they in no respect impede—after
a short ride through the windings of
that verdant lane—here rendered almost gloomy
by the shadows of occasional woodlands which it
traversed; here running past the door of some secluded
cottage, its thatched porch overhung with
bowering creepers, and its narrow garden gay with
tall hollyhocks and ever-blooming peas; and here
looking forth from intervals in the tall hedges over
some sunny stubble-field, on which the golden
shocks stood fair and frequent, or some deep pasture,
its green surface dotted with sleek and comely
cattle—they reached a rustic gate of unbarked
timber, woven into fantastic shapes, and through it
gained admittance into a demesne, as rich as ever
was transmitted by its first winner of the bloody
hand to a long line of undegenerate posterity. Even
to the wandering and homeless stranger there is a
calm and quiet joy in the stately solitude of an
English park,—in its broad velvet lawns, sloping
southwardly away, studded with noble clumps, or
solitary trees more noble yet, down to the verge of
some pellucid lake or brimful river,—in its swelling
uplands, waving with broom and brachens—
sweet haunt for the progeny of the timid doe—
whence glitter frequently the white stems of the
birch or the red berries of the mountain ash,—in
the wild belling of the deer, heard from some rock-ribbed
glen, where they have sheltered during the
hot noontide,—in the cooing of the pigeon, or the
repeated tap of the green woodpecker,—in the
harsh cry of the startled heron, soaring on his
broad vans from the sedgy pool before the intruder's
footstep,—in the lazy limp of the pastured
hares, and in the whirr of the rising covey. What
then must be the feeling summoned by the same
picture to the heart of one who hears in every rural
sound, and witnesses in every sylvan scene, the
melodies that soothed his earliest slumber, and the
sights that nursed his youngest meditations? To
him these stately solitudes are peopled with a
thousand holy recollections; the step, perchance, of
a departed mother still roams beneath those immemorial
trees; her musical voice still speaks to his
heart audibly, and in the very tones his childhood listened,
when all its cares were hushed;—to him each
bosky bourn and twilight dingle has its memory
of boyish exploit, each chiming rill of boyish revery.
Home—home—hackneyed as is the thought
and time-worn—what a world of treasured sweetness
is there in that one word Home! The humblest
as the highest—in sorrow as in mirth—to the
needy exile as to the successful adventurer—for
ever dear, for ever holy. Crowded out perhaps
from the selfish spirit by the bustle, the tumult,
the conflict of the day—but still returning with undiminished
force when the placid influence of night
and slumber shall have stilled the fitful fever, and
restored to the sullied heart, for one short hour, the
purity it knew of yore. Oh! if there be on the
broad face of earth the wretch that loves not, with
an unquenchable and ever-living love, the native
home—curse him not when ye meet, he is accursed
already. Vindictive men have warred against,
ambitious men have sacrificed, and sordid men
have sold their countries; but these, ay, each and
all of these, if we could read their souls, have had
their moments of repentant thought, their moments
of triumphant fondness. What then must be the
feelings of a mind like that of Ardenne—a mind
coupling the severe and disciplined philosophy of
schools with the warm and wild romance of a poetic
fancy—a mind which had learned wisdom
without learning vice, amid the fierce pleasures and
the fiercer strife of a licentious world—a mind no
less unselfish than it was reasoning and regular—
a mind, filled with the beautiful principles of that
universal love, which is honour, and patriotism,
and every shape of virtue—virtue, not cold in itself,
as the wicked say, and chilling all things that
it touches, but genial, and enlivening, and warm
with every generous aspiration? What must have
been the feelings of a man, endowed with such a
mind, returning to his unforgotten home from years
of restless wandering, in pursuit—not of the idol
mammon, not of the phantom fame, but of that
high philosophy which is derived from the perusal
of men, not books; which is learned, not in the
solitary chamber nor by the midnight lamp, but on
the tented field and in the dazzling court; at the
banquet and the masque; amid the treacheries of
men and the wilier fascinations of beauty;—riding
by the bridle of his own betrothed, through the
very fields in which he had won, years before, her
virgin heart;—hastening to the embrace of a father,
whom, much as he revered and honoured him, he
loved yet more? Who may describe that wonderful
and deep sensation, that tincture of joy and sorrow,
of bitterness and pleasure, which must be
mingled to make up the draught of human happiness,
exhibited no less in the gushing tear than in
the glittering smile—in the choked voice and suffocating
spasm, than in the flashing eye and the exulting
pulse? Enough—he was for the moment
happy, absolutely and—if aught mortal may be
called perfect—perfectly happy. The antiquated
hall burst on his vision as he passed a belt of sheltering
evergreens, its tall Elizabethan chimneys
sending their columns of vaporous smoke far up
into the calm heaven; its diamond-paned oriels
glowing like sheets of fire to the reflected sun; its
hospitable porch yawning to admit stranger or
guest alike with kindly welcome; its freestone terraces,
with a group of lazy greyhounds basking on
the steps, and a score or two of peacocks perched
upon the balustrades, like the ornaments of an
eastern throne, or strutting to and fro on the broad
flag-stones in all their pride of gorgeous plumage.
He saw—he had no words—but his gentle companion
might perceive his nether lip to quiver with
strong emotion, and a tear, unrestrained by selfish
pride, to trickle down his manly cheek. A heavy
bell rang out; there was a bustle, and a rush of
many servitors, badged and blue-coated men, with
hoary heads and tottering limbs—the heir-looms of
the family, transmitted, with the ancestral armour
and the ancient plate, from sire to son. With difficulty
extricating himself from the familiar greeting
of these domestic friends, he hurried up the
steps; but, ere he crossed the threshold, a noble-looking
man, far past the prime of life—as might
be seen from his long locks, already streaked with
wintry hues of age, but vigorous still and active—
fell upon his neck with a quick shrill cry, “My
son! my son!” the hot tears gushing from his eyes
—not that he mourned, but that he did rejoice—to
borrow the magnificent words of the Greek lyrist
—as he beheld his chosen offspring, the stateliest
of the sons of men.

3. CHAPTER III.

It was a beautiful and tranquil evening; the
broad bright hunter's moon was riding through the
cloudless firmament, bathing the whole expanse of
heaven with a radiance so pervading, that the
myriad stars were wellnigh quenched in her more
lustrous glory. It was one of those evenings on
which we cannot gaze without comparing the pure
and passionless quiet of the world above with the
fierce solicitudes, the selfish strife, the angry turmoil
of the world around us—one of those evenings
which at any time must infuse a sentiment of
peaceful melancholy into every bosom, even of the
wild and worldly; but which has at no time so
deep an influence on the spirit as when contemplated
from the near vicinity of some large city
The contrast between the chaste paleness of those
celestial lamps, and the ruddy glare of the terrene
and lurid fires glancing from many a casement,—
between the perfect calm alert, unbroken save by
the gentle murmur of the wind, and the confused
uproar below, rife with the din of commerce, the
dissonance of mingled tongues, and now a distant
scream, and now a burst of unmelodious laughter,
must needs impress more strongly on the mind

than aught of homily or lecture, that loathing of
the mortal world, and the base things its tenants;—
that ardent and inexplicable yearning after something
of truer and more substantial happiness than
we can here conceive,—that wish for “wings like
a dove, that we might flee away and be at rest,”—
which constitutes perhaps the most essential difference,
as exhibited on earth, between ourselves and
the yet lower animals, content to fatten and to
perish. Such was not improbably the strain of
thought into which the aspect of the night had led
one—a man, not yet advanced beyond the prime
of life, of elegant though low proportions—who
stood gazing heavenward as he leaned against the
low wall of a pleasant garden, which, girt about
with its tall hedges of clipped box or hornbeam, its
gay parterres, and its pleached bowery walks, a
fair suburban villa; situate in what was then, as
now, termed Aldersgate, though at that period not
a densely-peopled thoroughfare, but a long straggling
street, half town half country, with leafy
elms lining the public way, and many a cultivated
nursery and many a grassy paddock intervening
between the scattered dwellings of the retired
trader or the leisure-loving man of letters. The
countenance of this person, as it was directed
upward with a pensive wistful gaze toward the
melancholy planet, receiving the full flood of its
lustre, was singular for softness and attraction.
He wore no covering on his head, and his luxuriant
tresses of light brown hair, evenly parted on
the foretop, hung down in silky waves quite to his
shoulders. The hues of his complexion, delicately
coloured as a woman's, and the somewhat sleepy
expression of his full gray eye, accorded well with
the effeminate arrangement of his locks, and indeed
entitled him to be considered eminently handsome;
for there was so much of intellect and of imagination
in the forehead, low but expansive, and so
many lines of thought about the slightly-sunken
cheeks, now faintly traced and transient, but which
would, with the advance of years, increase to furrows,
that the softer traits, while adding to the
beauty, detracted nothing from the dignity and
manhood of his aspect. His form, though low
and small, was yet compact and muscular, affording
promise of that powerful agility which is paramount
even to superior strength in the use and skill of
weapons. Neatly clad enough in a loose coat of
dark gray cloth, with vest and hose of black, cut
plainly without lace or fringe; and, above all, not
wearing even the common walking-sword, at that
time carried throughout Europe by all of gentle
rank, the meditative loiterer would have excited
little or no attention among the greater body of
mankind, ever caught by the glitter, and deluded
by the glare, but careless as it is undiscerning of
true merit, when harbingered to its opinion by
naught of pride or circumstance. He might have
been an artisan or merchant of the city, but that
the slouched hat, lying with a staff of ebony beside
him on the wall, distinguished him from the flatcapped
dwellers to the east of Temple Bar; while
his hands, which were delicately white, and tender
as a lady's, showed that they had never been exercised
in the ungentle labour of a mechanic calling.
But, stronger even than these tokens, there was
that vivid and inexplicable impress of exalted
genius, that looking forth of the immortal spirit
from the eyes, that strange mixture of quiet melancholy
with high enthusiasm, pervading all his features,
which must have made it evident to any
moderately keen observer, that figure or decoration
could be but of small avail when considered as the
mere appendages to such a mind.

He stood a while in silence, though his lips moved
at intervals, perusing the bright wanderers of heaven
with a gaze so fixed and yearning as though his
spirit would have looked through them, the windows
of the firmament, into the very tabernacle and
abode of the Omnipotent. At length he spoke articulately,
in a voice deep, slow, majestic, and melodious,
but in the unconscious tones of one who
meditates or prays aloud, without reference or
respect to aught external.

“Beautiful light,” he said; “beautiful lamp of
heaven—what marvel that the blinded and benighted
heathen should ignorantly worship thee? What
marvel that a thousand altars, in a thousand ages,
should have sent up their fumes of adoration unto
thee the mooned Ashtaroth, unto thee the Tauriform
Diana, unto thee the nightly visitant of the young-eyed
Endymion? What marvel that to those who
knew not, neither had they heard of the One, Uncreate,
Invisible, Eternal, thou shouldst have seemed
meet Deity to whom to bend the knee,—thou firstborn
offspring of his first-created gift—thou blessed
emanation from his own ethereal glory—when I,
his humble follower, his ardent though unworthy
worshipper,—when I, an honest though an erring
Christian, do strive in vain to wean my heart from
love of thee; indoctrinating so my spirit that I
may kiss the rod with which, I am assured too
well, HE soon will chastise me, in changing the
fair light, that glorious essence in which my soul
rejoiceth, for one black, everlasting, self-imparted
midnight? Yet so it shall be. A few more revolutions
of these puissant planets,—a few more mutations
of the sweet-returning seasons,—and to me
there shall be no change again on earth for ever!

No choice between the fairest and the foulest! No
difference of night or day! No charm in the rich
gorgeousness of flowery summer above the sere
and mournful autumn! No cheery aspect in the
piled hearth of winter! No sweet communion
with the human eye compassionate! No intercourse
with the great intellects of old, dead, yet
surviving still in their sublime and solid pages!”
He paused for a space, as though he were too
deeply moved to trust his thoughts to language;
but, after a moment, drawing his hand across his
eyes—“But if it be so,” he continued, “as I may
not doubt it will—if his fiat be pronounced against
me of dark corporeal blindness, what duty yet remains?
What—but to labour that the blindness
be not mental also? What—but to treasure up
even now, during my brief-permitted time, such
stores of hoarded wisdom as may in part suffice,
like to the summer-gathered riches of the industrious
and thrifty bee, to nourish and to cheer me
at the coming of my senseless season? What—
but to profit, even as best I may, by those good
opportunities which his great mercy hath vouch-safed
to me; to sow the seed even now, during the
fertile autumn, that by his blessing it may swell
and germinate during the brumal darkness of the
approaching winter, and in his good time give forth
to light a crop improved and gloriously surpassing
that from which it sprung? What—but to give
thanks alway, and to praise the tender-heartedness
and love of Him, to whom it were no harder task
to plunge the mind in lunatic and senseless stupor,
than to seal up the fount of light to the poor eye.
Of Him, who, giving all the thousand blessings I
enjoy, judges it fitting to deprive me but of one,
haply that from its single loss others may fructify,
and bear good harvest to my use? Wherefore, oh
merciful and mighty One, be it unto me as thou
willest, and thou only. And oh! above all things,
be it unto me, as now, so alway, humbly to cry,
and happily, Thy will be done.”

Even as the pious scholar brought his meditations
to a close, the footsteps of one advancing,
though still unseen, through the mazes of the
shrubbery, were heard upon the crisp and crackling
gravel; and, ere he had resumed his hat,
which was steeple-crowned and of the puritanic
fashion, the intruder made his appearance, in the
guise of an humbly-clad and grave-eyed servingman,
who announced, in phrase ungarnished by
much form of reverence toward his master, the
presence of three gentlemen within, praying to
speak with him.

“In faith,” returned the other, “in faith, good
Andrew, 'tis an unseasonable hour for visitants!
Who be these gentles?”

“Master Cromwell is among them,” answered
the attendant; “but of the rest I know not, save
that I heard the name of St. John pass between
them. They await your coming in the summer
parlour.”

Without farther query or reply, the scholar, as
if satisfied that his presence was indeed required,
traversed the garden with quick steps; and entering
the house, a small but cheerful dwelling,
through an entrance hung round with maps and
charts of statistics or chronology, passed to the
chamber in which his guests expected him. It
was a pleasant room, with a bay-window looking
upon the garden, but cheaply decorated with
hangings of green serge, to which a splendid organ,
by the first maker of the day, and a choice
collection of rare books, several of the number
being papyri of great worth, afforded a remarkable

contrast. In the recess formed by the window
there stood a reading-desk, curiously carved in
old black oak, with cushions of green velvet,
somewhat the worse for wear, supporting a noble
folio Bible in the Greek text of Geneva. The
table was loaded with a heterogeneous mass of
books and papers, an original manuscript of the
Bacchæ of Euripides, reposing on a Hebrew copy
of the Septuagint, and a stray duodecimo of Petrarch's
sonnets, marking the place at which the
reader had closed the pages of a huge tome of
controversial divinity; while, on a marble slab
opposite the chimney, lay a couple of foils, with
their wire masks and gloves, partially hidden by
the draperies of a threadbare mantle of black velvet;
a violin, a guitar, some written music, and,
peering out from beneath the whole, the iron basket-hilt
and glittering scabbard of a heavy broadsword.

In this the student's sanctum, he found the three
gentlemen who had been announced, evidently engaged
in whispered conversation of deep import,
for they did not perceive the presence, till he had
stood for a moment or two almost beside them, of
their host; who had thus ample opportunity of
examining their persons, by the light of a brazen
lamp of antique form, with several burners, which
hung from the ceiling immediately above the abstracted
group. Nearly opposite the door, with
his searching eyes fixed upon another of the company,
who was speaking with considerable emphasis,
though in an under tone, stood the same
individual who had assisted Ardenne on the night
of his adventure near to Royston; wearing the
very garb in which he had appeared on that occasion,
save that, for his riding-boots, he had substituted
a pair of coarse gray woollen stockings,

drawn tight to the mid-thigh, with ill-blacked
shoes of calfskin, laced to the instep, and bearing
neither rose nor buckle. The speaker, to whose
words he lent so careful heed, was a tall and slender
person, handsomely, though gloomily, attired
in a full suit of black, with silken hose and velvet
cloak to match, a mourning rapier hanging at his
side, though evidently worn for fashion rather than
for use. His countenance, though not of pleasant
favour, much less such as could be termed handsome,
was nevertheless one from which men could
not easily withdraw their eyes, possessing attributes
of unquestionable talent, though accompanied
by an expression which none so dull but they would
wish to fathom. His eyes, which were large and
black, had a bright and flashing glance when
under influence of excitement almost painful to
the beholder; while a continual, and, as it would
seem, involuntary sneer, sat on his thin and writhing
lip. His hair, black as the raven's wing, was
long and curling, though not worn after the flowing
fashion of the cavaliers; but the most remarkable
trait of his aspect was the immoveable gloom
which overshadowed his dark saturnine features
with a cloud so constant, that it has been recorded
of him, that seldom, even in his moments of hilarity,
was he beheld to smile. The remaining person
of the trio was a finer and more comely man than
either of his comrades; fairly proportioned, though
not above the middle height, with a brow rather
full than lofty, a quick and penetrating eye, and an
intelligent expression, thoughtful rather than grave,
and with no touch of sternness or morosity on his
noble features, lighted up, as they were from time
to time, by a smile of singular and cheerful sweetness.
He was habited as became a gentleman, in
a rich garb of marone-coloured velvet, his costly
sword suspended from a scarf of good white taffeta,
and a white feather in his beaver; the whole—
though plain enough, if compared with the luxurious
bravery of the cavaliers, whose dresses would
oftentimes have been too cheaply rated at a year's
income of their patrimony—conveying an idea of
absolute magnificence, when viewed beside the
simple habiliments of his fellow-visiters. After he
had surveyed this group for a few moments' space,
satisfied apparently with the survey, the master
of the house stepped forward, startling them slightly
by his motion, and cutting short their converse.

“Give you good evening, Master Cromwell,” he
said, addressing himself to the most slovenly-apparelled
of the company; “it shames me to have
caused you wait my coming.”

“Not so, good sir,” returned the other; “it is
we rather who have trespassed on your studies,
coming thus at an hour surely unseasonable. But,
of a truth, I had forgotten—I pray you, Master
Milton,” for it was no other than the immortal
poet, who had deplored, in such heartfelt yet unrepining
language, the advent of that dread calamity,
which had already been predicted to him by
the first physicians of the day as the sure consequence
of his persisting in his arduous and unremitted
labours,—“I pray you, Master Milton,
know these most worthy and God-fearing gentlemen!
This,” motioning with his hand toward the
taller and more gloomy figure, “this, my good
friend, Master Oliver St. John; and this, my well-beloved
and trusty cousin, honest John Hampden.”

“Of a truth, Master Cromwell,” replied the
poet—in those days better known by his magnificent
and stately prose, for a controversial writer
of unequalled power, than by the slight though
beautiful effusions of poetry which hitherto he had

cast forth merely as the erratic sports of leisure
moments, stolen from graver studies, and not yet
as the sublime continuous soarings of his unrivalled
genius,—“of a truth, Master Cromwell, I owe
you more of thanks than I am wont to offer, that
you have brought to my poor dwelling these, the
most constant and the noblest cultivators of that
fair vineyard, to the renewal and reform of which
I too, an humble fellow-tiller, have devoted my
unworthy labours!” And he turned to the companions
of his friend, esteemed already by all the
worshippers of freedom as the wisest, the purest,
and the best of her adorers!—as the pilots, who
might alone be trusted to hold the shattered helm
of state aright, amid the terrors, the confusion, and
the storm of the approaching crisis!—as the champions,
who had already reared the banner of undaunted
opposition to all that was corrupt, or bigoted,
or arbitrary, in religious or in civil rule!—as
the leaders, who, above all others, were endowed
with the talent, and the worth, and, more than
these, with the unflinching energy to wring the
iron sceptre of usurped prerogative from the high
hand that wielded it with such despotic sway!
He greeted them with words savouring more of
courteous deference than of that plain-spoken and
uncompromising brevity, on the use of which his
party prided themselves so deeply in their intercourse
of man with man. There was, however,
nothing of vain or worldly adulation, much less of
that fawning sycophancy, that low servile man-worship,
for which the courtiers of the day were
so deservedly contemned by the stern puritans, in
his frank though reverential bearing.

After a few seconds spent in civilities, which
were accepted, as indeed they were intended, for
the befitting homage of one surpassing intellect to

others, though in a different sphere, of not inferior
merit—homage, degrading not the giver, while it
added to the real dignity of the receiver,—the party
fell into the ordinary demeanour of men familiar,
if not with the persons, at least with the minds and
principles each of the other; and the conversation
flowed as quietly on the accustomed topics of the
time as though the speakers had been in the
daily wont of mingling in the same social intercourse.
There was, however, not only naught of
levity or license, but naught of common import or
every-day occurrence, in the interchanged ideas of
those high spirits, devoted, one and all, to the
same pursuit of patriotism, and equally engrossed
in the quick-succeeding incidents of fearful and
pervading interest, which rendered every hour of
that eventful year a great historic epoch.

“Have ye received aught new from Ireland,”
inquired the poet—“ye of the lower house, touching
this perilous and damnable rebellion?”

“Ay, of a surety have we!” answered Cromwell,
“full confirmation—full, ay, and overflowing
all that we had heard before!”

“All Ulster is in one light blaze,” cried St. John,
his dark eye flashing with indignant fire; “the
forts all captured, and that most subtle villain, Phelim
O'Neil, wading knee-deep—with thirty thousand
fanatic and phrensied papists—knee-deep in
Protestant and English gore! Connaught and Leinster
revelling in red-handed massacre, and the five
counties of the Pale, arrayed by the lords-justices
to quell the insurrection, united to their brother
rebels!”

“None may conceive the horrors—none may
enumerate the sufferings—or recount the wretched
sufferers,” continued Hampden, a deep shade of
melancholy settling down on his fine lineaments;

“at the least reckoning, twenty thousand of our
brethren, men, women, and children, yea, the very
infants at the breast, have porished! No insult,
no atrocity, that Romish perfidy could plan, or
fiendish cruelty perform—no last extremity of
famine, cold, or torture, has been spared to their
defenceless victims by the barbarian Irish—the
very priests setting the torch of midnight conflagration
to the planter's dwelling, and hounding on
their furious followers to massacre and havoc!”

“But of the king, fair sirs?”

“Well hast thou said, John Milton,” interrupted
the harsh voice of Cromwell before the other
had concluded his inquiry; “well has thou said
and truly! 'tis of that man of Belial! ay, root and
branch of him, and his self-seeking carnal cavaliers!”

“It is, we fear, too true—” said Hampden, in reply
to the bewildered looks of the anxious auditor;
“it is, we fear, too true! O'Neil, in his dark proclamation,
boasts openly his own authority from
the great seal of Scotland. Sir William St. Leger,
trusty alike and brave, hath, as we learn, dismissed
his levies, and laid down the arms he had
assumed on the first outbreak of the rebels, at
sight of a commission, with Charles Stuart's manual
sign, held by that murderous bigot Lord Musquerry.”

“And last, not least,” sneered Oliver St. John,
“Mac Mahon hath confessed, at shrewd solicitation
of the rack, that the original scheme of this
rebellion was brought to Ireland, from our gracious
king and governor, by Dillon and the members
of the late committee.”

“Of a truth,” said Cromwell, in reply to the
words of his milder cousin, “of a truth, there may
be cause for fear, ay, and for grief—yet wherefore?

Verily 'tis a hard thing to rejoice, to rejoice
in the midst of slaughter and abomination!
Yet who shall deem or boast himself to know of
that which is to come, save He that holdeth the
end, I say the end and the accomplishment of all
things, in the hollow of his hand? But I will tell
ye this—yea, but mistake me not,—this will I
avouch to ye, that I fear not, but do rejoice! 'Tis
a sad thing, in truth, that an anointed king, even a
king in Israel, should arm his hand against his
people, and turn away his countenance from the
well-beloved of the Lord, inclining his ear likewise
unto the idolatries of the beast, and unto the
charmings of the Moabitish woman; yea, and
pour out the vials of his wrath upon the heads of
the sons of righteousness! But, of a surety, it is
not for a man to judge save thus—for I will speak
even as it is put into my mouth,—save thus—that,
to a man foreweaponed and forewarned, less dangerous
is an open enemy—yea, if he be mightier
by tenfold,—than one who lurketh privily beneath
the vesture of a friend, looking in secret whom he
may devour!”

“Forewarned indeed ye are,” replied the poet,
musingly, “and your own fault 'twill be if ye be
not foreweaponed likewise; for, in good sooth, I do
believe the lives of none are safe—the lives and liberties
of none who dare uplift their voices in defence
of England's constitution or the church's purity.”

“And is it not to this end,” cried Oliver, “and is
it not to this end that we are watching, even now,
with our loins girded, and our lights burning,
watching unto the protection of those that are defenceless,
and unto the enlightening of those that
sit in darkness? And is it not to this end that we
have now come to thee, John Milton, trusting to
gain a strong ally—even a valiant, and a heart-whole,

and a spirit-serving soldier!—seeking to
learn form thee—so far as it is for man to learn
of man, yet neither confident in worldly wisdom,
which is ignorance before the Lord, nor relying
altogether on the judgment of a fellow-worm, how
excellent soever he may be in the gifts of carnal
knowledge,—seeking, I say, to learn from thee
the character and principles of one with whom
we do believe that you so long have communed as
to know the thoughts of his heart, ay, and to interpret
the workings of his inward man!”

“Such is indeed our object,” continued Hampden,
while St. John fixed his searching eye upon
the beautiful features of the listener with keen
and interested scrutiny; “such is indeed our object
in this untimely visit. We have but now received
intelligence of the decease of that shrewd
counsellor and honest patriot, Elias Chaloner, the
fellow-townsman of my worthy cousin Cromwell,
and lately member for the godly town of Huntingdon;
and, with this same intelligence, the great
charge has been laid upon us, by the zealous
burghers of the place, of commending to their
choice a person who shall honourably fill the post
of him that is departed.”

“And how? you would ask, John Milton,”
Cromwell broke in, “for I can read the query on
your brow—how, you would ask, can you assist
us in this matter? Verily thus—for it hath been
suggested to our souls when we were seeking out
the Lord in prayer, yea, wrestling with him in the
spirit, that he should guide us to a sure election,—
it was,—I tell you truth, I do profess,—borne in
upon the ears of our minds, as with an audible and
spoken voice, `Ye shall call to aid the man—
even the young man—Edgar Ardenne—”'

“With whom,” interrupted St. John, evidently

weary of the prolix, verbose haranguing of the
other, “with whom, as we are well assured, you,
Master Milton, have mingled much in foreign
travel, having thereby good opportunity to judge
of his opinions and to learn his heart. We would
hear from you, therefore, worthy sir, whether this
gentleman of high extraction, born of a race devotedly,
I had wellnigh said slavishly, loyal—whether
this gentleman be indeed, as we would wish to
find him, a firm, uncompromising lover of his
country—one who would pledge himself, and
keep his plight religiously, to advance the views
and serve the interests of our party! May it
please you, tell us fully what of yourself you
know, and what may be your judgment of this
your fellow-traveller—and, above all, whether he
may be wrought, and by what means, to further
our purposes!”

“For years,” replied the poet, after a moment's
pause, “for years have I been wont to read the
living minds of men with even more of study than I
have expended on their embalmed and written
thoughts—for years!—and never—I can say it
honestly and freely, for I do believe I know his
inmost aspirations even as I am conscious of my
own—never have I found, or even read of such a
head, combined with such a heart, as that of Edgar
Ardenne. A worshipper of wisdom, of liberty, of
truth—purer and far more fervently devoted than
the great spirits of the old republics! A scholar
in the study, and that too of the ripest—an orator
in the forum, strong, stirring, and persuasive—a
soldier in the field, well tried, and as well proven!
An adorer of all that is beautiful, but one who sees
no beauty save in virtue! A Christian, fervent
and sincere, yet tolerant, and of much charity!
Ambitious—but ambitious only to do good! If

ever there was born a man wholly unselfish, that
man is Edgar Ardenne. Such—and on my judgment
well may you rely—such is the man whom
you would take into your counsels. Gain him,
then—gain him, if ye may—for certainly as Edgar
Ardenne could achieve aught to benefit his
country, though every hope, every feeling, every
passion of his soul were listed to oppose it, so certainly
would he tread hope, feeling, passion, into
the very dust beneath his feet. He has a head so
clear, he cannot fail to see the right—he has a
heart so true, he would not fail—though at the
price of all he holds most dear—to follow it. Beware,
however,—beware, if ye decide to gain him,
how you show aught of doubt, much less suspicion!
—proffer to him the seat for Huntingdon untrammelled!
say not a word of party—not a word of
opposition to the court—make ye not one condition—ask
not one pledge!—for had ye heaven
itself to tender him, and were to tender it, so bribing
him—ay, were it even to act well—my life!
he would refuse even heaven! If, therefore, ye
can resolve unpledged to trust him, seek not to
sound his views—for as well might ye assay to
fathom the most central depths of ocean;—seek not
to bind his actions—for as well might ye go forth
to chain the subtle and pervading lightning;—but
proffer to him, in plain terms, the seat—at the free
choice of the burghers—and if he do accept it, as
well I trust he will, be sure there is no man in
England that better knows the duties of a member
in the commons House of Parliament, or trulier will
discharge them!”

“You have described,” replied the calm and
meditative Hampden, “you have indeed described
a man, such as there are but few this side
the grave! Your words, too, tally well with

the surmises I have formed from his known
actions!”

“And would you then,” asked the moody St.
John, “would you then set so great a matter on
the casting of a die? Do you not know that even
now we have but a majority—not over-strong nor
over-certain?—that many have been already won
or put to silence—that Hyde and his moderate partisans
daily gain strength, and only lack occasion
to join the court in open and unblushing servitude?
Know you not that Falkland wavers, and that, if
he go over, ten votes at least will instantly apostatize?
and would you then elect this cavalier, for
such in truth he is, on vague hopes and uncertain
indications?”

“I said not so,” replied Hampden, quickly; “I
said not so! but only that I believe him wise and
honest! Farther I will say now, that—if, on any
terms, we shall decide to recommend him to the
choice of the electors—my voice is for so doing
with nothing of restriction! If he be honest, it
needs not to bind him by a promise—if otherwise,
'twere madness to suppose that promises will bind
him! But on this matter we will speak more
anon—we have already trespassed over long upon
the leisure and the patience of our honourable
host.”

St. John replied not; and Cromwell, who had
perhaps made up his mind already, had fallen into
a long and rambling exposition of some doctrinal
point, wholly remote from the subject in question,
to which Milton listened with a tranquil smile playing
about his well-turned lip, and with the aim apparently
of discovering what was the meaning, if there
indeed were any, of the wild and ill-digested oratory
of the member for Cambridge, at this time just
beginning to attract the notice of the house, though

no one could perhaps assign a cause for his increasing
influence. For a short space the others
spoke apart, warmly, though in an under tone—
Hampden, as it seemed, urging on his grave confederate
some dubious or unpalatable measure; the
energy of his manner gradually rising, while the
opposition of his friend waxed fainter, until the
habitual sneer departed from his lip, and the accustomed
cloud partially yielded to an opener and more
cheery aspect. “Be it so!” he said at length, raising
his voice, as the discussion was finished by his
assent; “be it so, if you will—and, in faith, I believe
you are in the right on't! Now, Master
Cromwell,” he continued, turning toward him as
he spoke, “it lacks but a scant hour of midnight,
and our host's oil, I trow, is wont to lend its light
to purposes of more importance than our farther
converse! Give you good night, fair sir,” he
added, with a short inclination to the poet, as,
gathering his cloak about him, he led his comrades,
after brief ceremony, into the moon-lit
streets; while he whom he had last addressed
applied himself, in solitary diligence, to the exercise
of his pen, slight instrument of mightiest powers,
whether for good or evil, and, in the hand of
the philosopher, prime mover of more potent revolutions
than its dread rival and confederate—the
mortal sword!

4. CHAPTER IV.

Catullus. —Free Translation.

None know, but those who have for years been
wanderers from the paternal roof, whether of choice
or of necessity it matters not,—who have for years
been sojourners, not dwellers, on the broad desert
earth,—who, in the midst of friends almost as dear
as those, who girt as with a magic cestus the unforgotten
fireside of their childhood, have craved,
with an insatiate and yearning appetite, the well-known
aspect of the old home-places,—who have
languished for a father's blessing, a mother's wistful
eye, a sister's holy kiss,—who have felt, with
the patriotic Syrian, that “Abana and Pharpar,
rivers of Damascus,” are truly to the exile “better
than all the waters of Israel;”—none know, but
these, the deep calm happiness of being once again
the centre of that sweet domestic circle; of receiving
the fond welcome of every living thing—
ay, even to the household dog, or superannuated
horse, that yelps or whinnies in the fulness of his
recognition; of lying down to rest beneath the very
curtains, and on the very bed, which had so often
wooed them to repose before they knew the bitterness
of sin or sorrow.

Fully indeed, and far more sensibly than it is
tasted by the common pilgrim of life's journey, did

this impression of tranquil bliss pervade the breast
of Ardenne, as he leaned, gazing upon the familiar
landscape, from out the open casement of his chamber;—that
chamber, which had never for a moment
faded from his memory, with its oaken wainscoting
and faded tapestries,—its angular recesses, peopled
by his youthful fantasy with lurking shapes of
terror,—its pleasant seats in the deep bay windows,
—its brazen-handled cabinets of quaint device—its
bed with sculptured tester and dark hangings,—and,
more than all, its ebon desk, with the velvet-bound
and silver-studded Bible, whence his long-lost and
long-regretted mother had lessoned him so lovingly
while he was yet a boy.

The moonlight lay upon the velvet park and
tufted elms, as though it loved to sleep among
that peaceful scenery; and if, at intervals, it shone
reflected from the surface of some quiet water, it
lingered even there with a half-shadowed lustre,
not flashing out with the bright gleams of gorgeous
sunshine, but calmly harmonizing with the spirit
of the place and hour. So clear, however, was the
mellow light, that the graceful attitudes of the
slumbering deer might be distinguished on the
open lawns, while the pinion of the gliding owl
was seen to glance against the massy shadows of
the surrounding forest. Yet now, although he
gazed upon all that was most beautiful of natural
scenery,—all that was most endeared to him by
boyish recollections,—although he was surrounded
by the very objects that he had most earnestly desired
to see,—although he was at the very point which
he but yesterday would have esteemed the summit
of fruition—he was not happy. It is true, that he
had found in her on whom his mind had dwelt most
fondly and most frequently during his absence, the
very being he had loved so fervently of yore—bearing

no traces of the years which had elapsed, save
in the ripening of her mind to excellent maturity,
and in the rounding of her sylph-like figure into
the exquisite proportions of young womanhood!
It is true that the father, whom he had honoured
and obeyed with that old-fashioned filial reverence,
which—ill betide the change—has long since passed
away, together with the diamond-hilted rapiers, and
the somewhat formal courtesy of our progenitors,
had welcomed him to his affections, a man yet in
the prime of intellectual vigour! It is true that
he had brought back to his native land a heart untainted
by the follies and the sins of foreign countries;
a mind well satisfied, not by the baseless
arguments of boyish prejudice, but by the strong
convictions of experience, that his own earth-fast
island was indeed the home best calculated for the
seekers of that sweet domestic quietude, that fireside,
church-going happiness—that calm enjoyment
of the duties, the labours, and the pleasures
of a country life, blent, as these ever are, with a
romantic taste for the green fields and slumbering
woodlands, the gentle river and the smooth hill-side—which
have at all times formed a feature so
distinctive in the English character! But it is no
less true that, even at the moment when his hand
might have been said to grasp all that his soul desired,
his spirit was disturbed, and his heart ill at
ease.

It were perhaps the wisest, as it surely were the
happiest course, for mortals to obey the dictates
equally inculcated by the disciples of two schools,
which, seemingly the most at variance with each
other, are nevertheless in truth as similar in not a
few essentials, as it is possible for creeds to be in
other points so diverse as those entertained by the
followers of Epicurus and—with reverence be it

spoken—of the Saviour,—both recommending—
nay, both strenuously urging the necessity, and in
words almost identical, that we “take no heed for
the morrow.” Yet, in a mortal sense, obedience
to this injunction is perhaps impossible—impossible
at least to any man endowed with enough of
intellect and mental vigour to perceive the connexion
between present causes and eventual effects—to
foresee with prescient sagacity the crop which will
spring up to-morrow from the seed laid in the
ground to-day!—For who could sit at ease, appreciating
the full quality of each delicious viand,
pleasantly debating on the flavour of each fragrant
wine, knowing that the sword of Damocles was
swinging by a single hair—and that, too, yielding at
every instant to the weight—above his head? Had
it not been for this—had it been possible for Ardenne
to seal up his eyes and close his ears against
the evidence of what to-morrow must bring forth—
had he lacked the wisdom to discover the future
destinies of England, her vitals even now convulsed
by the first throes of the incipient earthquake—or
the patriotism to sympathize with the
afflictions which, as that wisdom taught him, must
ere another year befall his country—he might have
surrendered himself to momentary pleasure, careless
or ignorant of the approaching wo. And—so
rare of occurrence, and so brief when they do occur,
are the periods during human life even of
comparative happiness—perhaps, had he so done,
he had been able to look back in after days to
more of sunny hours than he could count among
the strange and mingled incidents of his eventful
life. But, constituted as he was, it was not in his
power to fix his gaze on the bright present aspect
of the things around him, without observing the
huge melancholy clouds which were rising up on
the political horizon, threatening to overshadow
with their gloomy pall, and perhaps to overwhelm
in the wild tempest they must soon discharge, the
feeble shallop of his fortunes, together with the
stronger vessel of the constitution.

At an early period of his life a visiter of southern
lands—where he had wandered, not to mark
alone the sunny skies and desolated fields, the ruined
temples and the beautiful cascades, but to
muse on the condition of the nations once so powerful
and so degraded now; to ponder on their rise
and fall; to draw deep lessons of the future from
the contemplation of the past; he had learned to
cherish liberty the more from having witnessed, if
not himself endured, the wrongs, the misery, and
the oppression of unlimited authority. Summoned
of late by rumours rife throughout the world of
present disagreement and of coming strife between
the king and parliament of his own country, he had
returned to England at the instigation of his natural
sense of duties, which forbade him to expend his
energies of heart and hand in the service of a foreign
prince, when both might be required to aid the
better cause of liberty or loyalty; no less than at the
dictates of those natural affections which, sooner or
later, will point, as surely as the magnetic needle
to the north, toward the home of childhood. While
on the journey, all his thoughts had been of joy—
of that serene and moderate happiness which
makes the days flow onward like a broad and tranquil
river, fertilizing some fair plain, rich with the
hopes of thousands—beautiful, but with an indescribable
and unromantic beauty—presenting none
of those wild charms, those scenes at once sublime
and lovely to the eye, which mark the course
of far-famed torrents amid the savage glens of
moorland, moss, and mountain—but leaving on the

mind a mingled sentiment of gratitude and bliss
that will be fresh and vivid when the sterner memory
of its rivals shall have yielded to oblivion. His
spirit had looked forward to a long perspective of
sunshiny years—years not to be degraded by the
selfish sloth of luxury; not to be wasted in the
mere sports of the field, which, useful, ay, and ennobling
in their tendencies, when partaken but as
a relief to grave and solid duties, so surely brutalize
if they be exalted to a daily occupation; not to
be dreamed away in apathetic musings and would-be
philosophy; but to be dignified by high and
patriotic labours—by the cultivation of the sciences
and arts—by the promotion of public virtue and
domestic worth—to be enlivened by the gay communion
of the noble and the good—to be softened
by the sweet charities, the endearing ties, the holy
sympathies that clasp within their pale the members
of a happy family—and to be closed at length
by a calm death-bed amid weeping friends, and by
a grave beneath the elms of the ancestral church-yard,
still to be decked with flowers, and pointed
out to far posterity as the long home of one whose
life had been a course, to which death had but
brought the consummation, of unbending honour.
Such, when the chalky cliffs loomed white and
lofty, such were the fond anticipations, the imaginations,
never perhaps to be realized, which poured
their gilded halo round his heart; and when he
felt his foot once more securely planted on the parent
soil, when all those gushing influences of mingled
ecstasy and tenderness swept in an overwhelming
torrent over his every sense, he deemed
that all his hopes were on the point of being gratified—that
he was indeed about to be the happiest
of men. The rumours of evil seemed to fade
away; the menaces of political discord, perchance
even of civil strife, to mutter only at a distance, if
not unheard, at least unworthy to create solicitude;
the fears that would at times arise unbidden, clouding
with darker shades the bright hues of his mental
painting, were all forgotten; and when he arrived,
as he had done that evening, at the dear home
of his boyhood; when he perceived the mighty
pleasure that lightened forth from every feature of
his admiring father; when he found himself revelling
in the manifest affections of his destined
bride, and knew that she partook of the same rapture,
and in no less degree, he for a while abandoned
his whole soul to the tide of feeling; he suffered
himself to be carried away by his enjoyment
of the present, careless and fearless of the future;
he felt, perhaps for the first time of his life, during
those brief hours that elastic buoyancy of temper
which seems to tread the earth with winged steps,
about to soar aloft, insensible to aught that may
depress, reckless of all that may oppose—that rapt
intoxication of the spirit, which is succeeded so invariably
by the contrary extreme of listless, sad
despondency, that, in the northern parts of Britain,
it has given rise to a pervading superstition, to an
undoubting creed, that such is the forerunner and
the omen, not of a causeless gloom,. but of a coming
evil. However this may be, it nevertheless is
certain, that scarcely had he retired from that delicious
intercourse to the seclusion of his own apartment,
ere the exhilaration, which had almost surprised
himself while he indulged it, gave place,
first, to an uncertain sense of restlessness—then to
a consciousness of some impending evil, increasing
in distinctness moment after moment, till it assumed
at length the shape of an anxiety, if not a fear,
positive, well-defined, and, alas! but too well
grounded. Nothing, indeed, but the whirl of mingled
sensations, leaving room for naught of serious
meditation, could have, even thus far, blinded Ardenne
to the difficulties and the dangers of his future
course. The boasted loyalty of his forefathers—their
fond devotion, stronger almost than
life, to the king, not as a person, but as a portion,
and that the most important, of the state—their
orthodox and sturdy zeal, condemning all as sectaries
and fanatics who differed in the least from the
established canons of the church—their prejudiced
affection for all that was antique, even for antique
error!—their holding up all those who would improve
or alter, with the most diffident and sparing
hand, as innovators on the good old times, as levellers
of rank and order, as iconoclasts of the holy
constitution, as traitors to their monarch, to their
country, to their God! All these, he could not
but remember, had been the principles impressed
upon his dawning intellect as the very elixir of political
wisdom—as the examples which must point
the steps of every Ardenne—as the dogmata for
the maintenance of which he must, if ever called
upon to do so, rejoicingly expend his fortune and
his blood! All these, he could not but foresee,
must still, according to all human calculation, be
the favourite maxims of his father, who—as he felt
in contradiction of those hopes, which, even in
spite of hope, he knew unfounded—would be too
like to deem the slightest deviation from the footsteps
of his idols as the worst apostacy!—the most
respectful opposition to the arbitrary will of the
misguided sovereign as flat rebellion!—the most
moderate interference in behalf of liberal views
and privileges of the people as a banding against
the legitimate aristocracy of the land with all that
was low, and sordid, and degraded!—too like, in
short, to deem the part which Edgar felt already to
be the only one he could in honour or in honesty
espouse, a base abandonment of his natural position—a
shameful dereliction from the principles
and virtues of his race—a crime not to be atoned
for, even by exclusion from his heart and expulsion
from the home of his fathers! And had he been
able even heretofore and at a distance to close his
eyes against this fatal certainty, he must indeed
have been both blind and deaf of heart had he not
marked the words of blasting sarcasm, of fierce
and fiery hatred, which flashed forth as oft as any
casual mention intervened of those who had stood
forth to check the headlong declination of the English
Church toward dreaded popery, or the more
rapid increase of prerogative toward absolute and
autocratic sway. But they had not escaped him.
Although unnoted, or at least unremarked, amid the
free and flowing conversation of that first evening,
and unable for the time to dash his most unusual
exuberance of animal spirits, they had sunk deep
into his heart;—and now they rose in long array
against him, ghastly and gloomy shapes, reproaching
him with his unnatural and foolish joy, and
pointing to an endless course of tribulation and of
sorrow. Nor was this all!—though this had been
enough to overshadow a temperament more sanguinely
inclined than that of Edgar Ardenne, determined
as he was to follow that which he himself
should deem the wise, the upright, and the honourable
way of action, though such should be avenged
by the prostration of all his fancy's idols—by the
ruin of his fortunes—by the blighting of his nearest
and dearest aspirations—and, more intolerable far
than all beside, by the forfeiture of that high opinion
which his merit had induced, and the frustration
of that just expectance which his promise had excited
in the bosoms of his friends and kinsmen.
Nor was this all! For, as he pondered now in
the lone stillness of the night, as he reviewed with
a dispassionate, keen-sighted judgment the occurrences
of the past day—as he recurred to every
word that had fallen from the lips to which he
looked for love, and life, and every thing—to every
expression which had wreathed in smiles, or
clouded with disapprobation, the soul-fraught lineaments
of Sibyl—he could not bless himself with
the conviction, scarce even with the hope, that she
was not, although in a less stern degree, a holder
of the same ancestral prejudices—a worshipper
of the same creed, hallowed as it was by much
that naturally would call forth the sympathies of a
mind imbued with all the poetry of feudal recollections,
not as yet faded from the earth—by the
high chivalrous devotion—the noble and unselfish
confidence—the enthusiastic valour—the unsullied
memory and cloudless glory, of the days when
kings were loved as second only to the gods—when loyalty was regarded as a virtue among
men, in the same rank with piety toward Heaven.
Whither then—whither had fallen his exulting fancies—whither
had flown his visionary prospects
of a useful and a happy life, of an honoured and
regretted end—if the paths of happiness and honour
were destined to run diverse? If—his heart burning
with the pure and hallowed flame of liberty,
his head clearly appreciating the miserable and
abhorred aims of the rash man who wore the
crown of England, his whole soul glowing with
patriotic ardour—he must either prostitute his energies
to make what to him seemed the worse appear
the better cause—must either lift his voice
to justify and to defend time-honoured wrong and
new-devised oppression—must either edge the
weapon of the despot with all the powers of his
arm—or, following the dictates of his own conscience,
ranking himself among the vindicators of
the constitution to its early purity, among the assertors
of a legitimate and tempered freedom—as
far removed from the wild anarchy and license of
falsely styled republics, as from the forced obedience
and intolerant rule of arbitrary governors—
must be content to sacrifice all that his heart held
worthy its acceptance! if, in short, he must act a
part dishonest and unworthy, so to gain those ordinary
means of happiness, to which none so lowly
but they do aspire; or must surrender every hope,
nay, every possibility of earthly bliss, at the inflexible
commands of duty and of honour? These
were the dark reflections into which the mind of
Ardenne had relapsed, as he stood alone, gazing
from the lattice of his chamber into the bosom of
the night, profiting by, if not enjoying, the first
moments of calm solitude, the first opportunity for
quiet and heart-searching meditation, that had fallen
to his lot since he had been numbered once
again among the dwellers beneath the oaken
shades of his paternal Woodleigh. Nor, as the
hours of night passed, not unheralded by musical
chimes from the old belfry, and the moonlight
waned in the peaceful sky, did his wild thoughts
and sad forebodings give way to aught of weariness;
the more he pondered, and the less able did
he seem to find the slightest clew to guide his
footsteps through the gloomy labyrinth of the
future—the longer he sat gazing on the pallid
stars, and the less he felt disposed for slumber—
till at length, the spirit moving, as it were, too
rapidly, and the blood coursing through his veins
too fiercely to permit the body to remain inactive,
he arose, scarce conscious that he did so, and
paced the oaken floor, backward and forth, with
swift irregular steps, the livelong night. Gradually
the coming of the early twilight dappled the
darkness of the eastern sky; a bird or two, of
those which had securely roosted under the ivy-curtained
eaves, awaking with a lively chirp, gave
notice of the dawn; and anon the calm and colourless
light of an autumnal morning crept into Ardenne's
chamber, dispelling from its every nook
the massy shadows which had nestled, like unholy
spirits, in those deep recesses, beneath the partial
influence of the moon. But all unnoted by its
occupant had those successive changes circled the
firmament; and when the sound of voices and of
footsteps, passing to and fro the corridors, announced
the return of those bright hours allotted to so
much of human toil and sorrow, he absolutely
started in surprise, and almost doubted whether it
could indeed be morning, that had stolen on his
waking dreams, and found him still a watcher.
With something like a smile at his own thoughtful
carelessness, he turned to change and alter his
discomposed attire; and as he dashed the pure cold
water over his throbbing temples, and bathed his
feverish hands, he perceived that its refreshing
coolness pervaded not his body only, but calmed
and soothed his mind; and when the merry bell
summoned its hearers to that most unrestrained
and sociable of meetings, the morning meal, he
descended the old staircase, gazing on its walls,
decked with time-honoured banners, and glittering
with starry groups of weapons—and on its landing-places
guarded by complete panoplies of steel,
standing erect with advanced arms and lowered
visors, as if still tenanted by the strong frames
that had supported them of yore amid the din of
battle, if not with a heart at ease, at least with a
countenance that bore no traces of the conflict still
at work within. On entering the summer parlour,
as such rooms were termed in the quaint language
of the time, wherein meet preparations for a breakfast,
far more solid than are used in these degenerate
days, had been already made, he found his
destined bride alone, in a projecting oriel window,
seated on the broad-cushioned ottoman which circled
the recess, with a light frame before her, filled
with a gorgeous Indian silk, on which her art had
traced some fair embroideries, yet incomplete—
but, though the many-coloured skeins assorted
within reach, and the well-filled needle between
her taper-fingers, showed that she had commenced
her feminine and graceful occupation, the thoughtful
attitude of her head, languidly propped on her
left hand, while the right lay motionless on the
rich texture, belied her fancied industry. So
noiselessly had Edgar's step fallen on the soft
Turkey carpet that she had not perceived his entrance;
and so beautiful was the picture of still life
which she afforded to her lover's gaze, that he lingered
for a moment ere his voice should rouse her
into animation. A flood of morning lustre streamed
downward with a golden hue, caught from the
teinted panes, upon her glossy hair and pure complexion,
cireling her entire form with a halo of
rich light, not unlike that with which the painters
of the Romish school are wont to dignify their
female saints and martyrs. The outlines of her
beautiful shape were mellowed, as it were, and
shrouded partially by the hazy beams of sunshine
which fell in oblique lines between her person—
simply arrayed in a close bodice, accurately fitted
to her fine bust, and a full robe of white—and the
observer's eye. Her luxuriant tresses folded plainly
about the contour of her small and classic head,
without ornament or gem of any kind, and the exceeding
repose, if it might not be termed melancholy,
of her sweet features, giving, together with
the accidents of light and shade, a madona-like
and sainted aspect to her figure, which would
have enchained an artist with no less of fascination
than it exercised, from different reasons, over
the mind of Ardenne. As he approached, her
delicate ear detected him; she turned her head,
and springing to her feet,—“Dear Edgar,” she exclaimed,
her eye discovering with instinctive quickness
the trace of melancholy left upon his lineaments,
however faintly, by his nightly musings;
“Dear Edgar—you are ill at ease—nay, smile not
—'tis a ghastly smile, not of your own expression!
—you are ill at ease—have passed a sleepless
night—”

“Sweet Sibyl,” he replied, with a wan smile, and
gently pressing her extended hand, “you are indeed
a keen observer; too keen, believe me!—
How should I be but well and happy, surrounded
thus by all I love most tenderly?”

“How indeed, Edgar?” she answered, even
more sadly than before. “How indeed—if you
do love so tenderly?—But ill at ease you are, and
have been sleepless! All night long have I heard
your heavy strides upon the chamber floor, and
those not regular and measured as your wont, but
fitful and uncertain. So do not pass the happy
their first night beneath the roof that saw their
birth.”

“If I do love, Sibyl,—if!” he exclaimed, with
deep, almost reproachful energy; “but, in good
truth, I am a poor dissembler, and could scarcely
feign, were it to win even thy heart, Sibyl—and,
for it seems I must confess me, I am somewhat,
though slightly, ill at ease—”

“I knew—I knew it at a glance,” she interrupted

him; “and wherefore then conceal it?—
Good Dr. Masters, though somewhat past his
prime, still ministers, and skilfully, to his familiar
patients—an hour will have him here—” and she
moved hastily toward a silver hand-bell, which
stood, with books, and drawings, and a lady's lute,
upon a fairy-looking cabinet of tortoise-shell and
marquetry.

“Nay! nay!” he cried, gently arresting her,
“I meant not so!—Be not alarmed, dear Sibyl,—
mine is a robust frame, not oft or easily affected
by aught of feebleness or ailment. My mind hath
been of late somewhat overwrought—but a few
days, consumed in the enjoyment of home-happiness
and the delights of your society, shall speedily
restore me. Look not so grave—so sad—I do beseech
you.”

“Oh, Edgar,” she interrupted him again, “tell
me, if you do love me, tell me all! long years have
we been parted—parted, as I have hoped—as, from
your kind and fervent letters, I have well believed
—in body, not in soul! and is it now—oh, is it to
be thus? Are we to be but more divided when
we are more together? Have we but met to be
more widely and more coldly severed! Oh! if
you love me, let me know your griefs! Who before
me should know?—or who, as I, would share
them?”

“All—all,” he answered, in the hollow voice of
one who struggles vainly with his feelings, forcing
a smile as faint as a December's sunbeam,—“you
shall share all—grief—happiness—life—death—
eternity!—All, all, sweet Sibyl, if that indeed you
be so minded! From you I have had—I will
have no secrets—but now, I do assure you, I am
not in grief—how should I? Something of gloomy
thought may have come over me—something of

moody sadness—causeless and senseless—such as
will float at times across the brains of all who
think—as I do—deeply. But no, Sibyl, no; I
am not unhappy! Not for the proudest station
upon earth would I exchange this fond proximity to
thee—not for the universal blast of the world's approbation
would I barter that bright tear—shed for
me, Sibyl—or that yet brighter smile that chases
it. Cheer up, my own own love; we will talk
more of this anon—for lo! there comes my father!”

And as he spoke, attired in hunter's garb of
green, booted to the mid-thigh, with bugle-horn
and wood-knife usurping the place of rapier and
of poniard, and with two gallant stag-hounds at his
heel, the noble veteran entered.

“Alert—alert!” he cried, with a gay smile;
“you of young blood! Methought I was myself
full early stirring, but here are ye, in rising as in
all else, beforehand with me. What ho! ye loitering
knaves—hurry our breakfast! 'Tis a rare
morning, Edgar—a soft mild wind, a heavy dew
last eventide, and the clouds gently rising. Old
Stavely tells me he has harboured a right hart of
grease—a stag of ten!—and I have sent out riders
these four hours agone to rouse the country. The
Outrams will be here anon—you mind the Outrams,
boy, your college mates of yore, and now
right noble gallants—and Atherstone, of Ashstead
Hall—and old Lord Middleton, with his brave sons!
Friends all—true friends, thought some of them, I
doubt, forgotten! But, 'fore George, we will make
a day of it!”

Thus the old man ran on, overlooking in his
light-hearted cheerfulness the evident abstraction
of his listeners, although they rallied up enough of
animation to maintain some sort of conversation
during their hasty meal, which scarce was ended,

ere Sir Henry started from his seat. “See! see!”
he cried, as a fair cavalcade swept past the windows,
their plumes waving in the light west wind,
spurs jingling, and steeds curvetting—“see! they
be here, even now; and lo! the pack!” As—with
their attendant huntsmen and half a score of prickers,
splendidly mounted on blood horses, in forest
jerkins sumptuously laced, round caps, and huge
French horns encircling their shoulders—restrained
by many an echoing shout and many a clanging
lash, some twenty couple of tall northern blood
hounds came trotting slowly up the lawn, in all
that accuracy of condition and perfection of detail
which has, in every period of her history, been so
distinctive of the field-sports of England!

“Fly, Sibyl—fly, my fairy,” cried the impatient
veteran. “Do on your riding gear right speedily.
Ariel is champing on his bits even now to summon
you! Edgar and I meanwhile will look to our
guests in the great hall. Dally not, girl, I pray
you—the sun is shrouded even now, and the scent
will lie most bravely. I would not, to be Prince
of Wales, lose such a morning! What ho! my
jovial roisters,” he continued in a louder tone,
striding into the huge vaulted hall through one
door, as his fair niece vanished at the other.—
“What ho! my jovial roisters,” addressing the
laughing group who waited his arrival. “Here
have ye an old friend, whom some of ye perchance
have not as yet forgotten.” And with a prouder
air and more exulting smile, he introduced his gallant
son, unseen for many a year, to his admiring
friends. A short half hour flitted pleasantly away
in heartfelt greetings and gay converse of light
moment, but lively, joyous, and sincere. Then
every high-plumed hat was doffed, and every
voice was lowered, as Sibyl Ardenne, with her attendant

maidens, meetly equipped for the field, entered
the hall! “To horse! to horse!” and the
ladies were assisted to their velvet selles by favoured
cavaliers, and the gallants vaulted to their
saddles, and threw their chargers on their haunches
by dint of curb and spur, and drew their forms to
the most graceful attitude, as with courtly merriment
and sylvan music they swept away through
shadowy avenues and over shaven lawns, to the
wilder coppices and more secluded glades of chase
and forest.

5. CHAPTER IV.

The hunt was at its height! The noble stag—
which had been harboured on the previous night in
a deep swampy thicket, situate at the extreme
western verge of the chase, and adjoining a wild
tract of semi-cultivated moorland—disdaining to
seek refuge in the recesses of the devious woodland,
had broken covert gallantly, as the first crash
of deep-mouthed music burst from his stanch pursuers;
and clearing by a gigantic effort the rough
park-palings, had taken to the open country, crossing
hill and dale in a line scarce less direct than
the crow's flight, and at a pace that, ere an hour
had passed, reduced the number of those who followed
the now mute and panting hounds from a

score or two of fearless horsemen to a scant half-dozen
of the boldest and best-mounted riders. The
ladies of the party had long since been thrown out,
scarcely indeed having cantered a half mile along
the nearest road, after the hounds had left the confines
of the park; but still the foremost of the field,
with all the hair-brained courage of a boy, and all
the deep sagacious foresight of a veteran sportsman,
rode old Sir Henry Ardenne; his manly features
flushed with the excitement of his healthful
exercise, and his gray hair floating in the current
of air created by his own swift motion, as, cap in
hand, he cheered the laggards of the pack with a
voice that had lost nothing of its full-toned roundness.
At length, in a sequestered dell, clothed on
each hand with a dense growth of underwood
feathering its rocky and precipitous declivities,
down which a sandy road wound in short toilsome
curves, and watered by a bright and brawling rivulet,
hard pressed and weary, the brave quarry turned
to bay. The deep note of the leading hound
changed to a shrill and savage treble as he viewed
his prey, and at the same instant the loud death-halloo
rang from the exulting lips of the old baronet
as he caught and comprehended the import of
that sharp yell. Another minute brought him to
the brink of a wide pool, embayed between rough
cliffs of sandstone, and overlooked by a gnarled and
leafless oak, on the highest branch of which a
solitary raven sat, unmoved by the fierce clamour,
and expecting, with a sullen croak, its share of the
after-carnage. In the farther corner of this basin,
clear as the virgin crystal in its ordinary state, but
turbid now and lashed to foam by the wild conflict
of the animals, the stag had turned on his pursuers
—nor had he turned in vain; for one, a brindled
bloodhound, the boldest of the pack, unseamed
from shoulder-blade to brisket by a thrust of the
terrible brow-antler, lay underneath his stamping
hoofs a lifeless carcass; while others bayed at a
distance, reluctant, as it seemed, again to rush
upon an enemy who had already left such painful
evidences of his strength and valour on their gored
and trampled limbs. Nor, though his velvet coat
was clogged and blackened with the dust and
sweat, and though the big tears—tokens of anguish
in its expression wellnigh human—rolled down
his hairy cheeks, did he exhibit aught of craven
terror at the approach of his inveterate pursuers;
but, as the veteran advanced upon him, with the
glittering wood-knife bared and ready, leaving the
dogs, as if beneath his notice, he dashed with a
bold spring against his human persecutor, eye,
hoof, and horn, in perfect concert of quick movement.
The slightest tremour in the huntsman's
nerves, the most trifling slip or stumble, might
have well proved fatal; but, although seventy winters
had shed their snows upon his head, his muscles
had been indurated so by constant exercise in
his beloved field-sports, that many a younger arm
had failed in rivalling their powerful though unelastic
firmness. When the despairing deer made
his last effort, cluding by a rapid turn his formidable
front, Sir Henry struck a full blow as he passed,
completely severing the tendons of the hinder leg—
hamstrung and crippled, the gallant brute plunged
headlong forward, and received in the next instant
the keen point in his gullet—one short gurgling
bleat, and two or three convulsive struggles of the
agile limbs—the full eye glazed, and in a moment
all the fiery energy, the bounding life, that had so
rately animated that beautiful form, was utterly extinct
for ever. Then came the thundering shouts,
and the long cadences of the French horns, their
joyous notes multiplied by the ringing echoes, and
sent back from every heath-clad knoll or craggy
eminence,—the merry narrative of harmless accidents,—the
self-congratulations of the select and
lucky few, who, from the start to the death, had
kept the hounds in view,—the queries for the absent,—the
praises of some favourite horse or daring
rider,—the stingless raillery,—the honest unfeigned
laughter!

“Who hath seen Ardenne? What chance hath
hindered Edgar?” suddenly inquired one of the
younger of the party.

“Edgar not here!” exclaimed his father, for the
first time discovering his absence; “Edgar not
here! 'Fore George! but he must bide the jest
for this!”

“'Tis strange, Sir Henry—passing strange,
though!” interposed an old gray-headed forester.
“None here can match the master's horsemanship;
and that brown mare hath the pace in her, and the
bottom too. Pray Heaven he be not hurt.”

“I fear he may—I fear he may be hurt,” exclaimed
another. “He was beside me just before
we crossed the northern road. I marked him
charge the Hartley burn right gallantly, and noticed
the mare's stride—nigh thirty feet, I warrant
it.”

In a moment or two the wonder had increased
until it might be called anxiety—excitement—the
more so, as at intervals the laggards of the chase
came straggling in, with mud-stained garb and jaded
horses; yet none brought tidings of the absent
cavalier. At length, sounding their horns from
time to time, they turned their horses' heads toward
home, asking for tidings of their missing
comrade from every traveller or peasant they en
countered. Naught did they learn, however, till

they had reached the park, when an unlucky groom,
leading his lame and weary hunter by the rein, informed
them that the young master had been accosted,
as he crossed the great north road, by a
passing stranger—a marvellously sour-looking
knave, the servant said, with a cropped pate and
puritanic garb; that he had curbed his horse to listen
to him, and on the receiving of some packet or
despatches, he knew not whether, had ridden slowly
homeward in deep converse with the bearer.

“St. George! and with a puritan!” cried one of
the young Outrams, a hair-brained, light-hearted
cavalier—“a rascally, starved roundhead!”

“He must be strangely altered then, I trow,”
muttered the aged huntsman, who perhaps had
taught him when a boy to ride so well, “an' he be
gone home with a musty beggar—the hounds running
breast high, too, o'er the vale of Bardsey!”

“Tush! tell me not; he is too true an Ardenne,”
cried his father, almost angrily, “that he
should e'er consort with base and brutal fanatics,
Heaven's curse upon them!”

It was true, notwithstanding—the report of the
fallen rider—to its most minute particular of circumstance;
for as he leaped the fence into the
road, and pulled upon his rein to spare his horse's
feet on the rough pavement, a strange-looking man
—gaunt, grim, and tall, with an affected air of
sanctified austerity on his pinched features, wearing
his coarse and foxy hair shorn close to the skin,
and clipped into small peaks alike unseemly and ridiculous,
with a tall steeple-crowned hat, and a sad-coloured
doublet, threadbare and travel-worn, presenting
altogether an appearance as dissimilar as
possible to that of a gentleman—called to him in
a pert shrill voice—

“Canst tell the distance hence to Woodleigh,

the residence of Ardenne—him men call Sir Henry;
cumbering their tongues with vain distinctions,
titles alike unsavoury and profitless?”

“A brief three miles,” frankly returned the cavalier.
“But you may spare yourself even that
short distance, an' you list. There rides Sir Henry—he
on the chestnut horse! I will o'ertake and
stop him, an' your business may not tarry!”

“Nay, friend,” returned the other, “my call is
not with the old, vain-minded, carnal cavalier, but
with his son—a godly youth, men say—honest and
sanctified! yea, one of the elect—”

“A truce to thine impertinence, sir knave!” Edgar
replied, in a quick angry tone; “a truce to
thine impertinence, an' thou wouldst not receive its
wages; nor deem thy fulsome flattery toward myself
shall anywise excuse thy ribald scoffing at
my father! Begone, sir; tempt me, an' you be
wise, no farther!” and he had already touched his
mare with the spur in order to regain his place beside
the hounds, which had gained on him some
two fields' width during the interruption, when the
puritan reined his hackney short across the path,
crying out in a voice somewhat diminished of its
self-importance, “Nay! no offence!” he said; “for
if thou be'st the man, 'twere worth thy while to
tarry. I am the bearer of a letter! yea, of two
letters, for the good youth, Edgar Ardenne. I pray
thee to relieve me of the charge.”

“Begone, sir! To your duty!” again vociferated
Ardenne, in a tone yet sterner than he had
used before. “Begone to Woodleigh and await
my leisure. When I return, 'twill be, I warrant
me, right soon enough to look to these despatches.
I know not who should write to me by such a low
and scurvy comrade, that I should lose my sport
to minister to his convenience!”

“Well, be it as thou wilt,” muttered the puritan;
“but, an' John Milton's—worshipful John Milton's
letter meet with no better treatment, I had as well
wend back again to Huntingdon!”

“Milton! ha!” answered Ardenne, who had already
moved to some considerable distance before
he caught the name; “Milton! why saidst not so
before, perverse and insolent? Dally with me no
farther, thou wert best, but give at once thy missives,
and follow me direct to Woodleigh.”

Ere he had finished speaking he received the
packets—the one a large and cumbrous parcel,
wrapped in a skin of thick discoloured parchment,
and fastened by a triple band of flaxen thread, with
a huge seal stamped with armorial bearings, charged
on a broad municipal escutcheon—the other a
small neatly—folded letter of smooth white vellum,
secured by a skein of delicate sleave silk and drop
of wax impressed with a superb antique—the stern
and rigid features of the elder Cato. The former
was addressed, with cramped mercantile penmanship,
to “Edgar, son of the worshipful Sir Henry
Ardenne, knight banneret, and baronet of Woodleigh,
nigh to Buxton, in the good shire of Derby,
with haste and diligence, post haste!” The
latter was directed, in a beautiful but bold and
manly hand, “To the noble youth Edgar Ardenne.”
This was the first he opened, and a
pleasing smile played over his fine features as he
perused the well-turned periods of his already celebrated
friend.

“I much rejoice to hear,”—thus did the letter
run—“most excellent and esteemed sir, that you
have now accomplished, with no hurt or detriment,
your long looked-for return to England; and, what
redounds so vastly to your credit, that you have
come—weaning your thirsty soul from those delicious

draughts of pure Parnassian waters in which
you have so bathed of late your fancy, and casting
aside your delectation in those Italian cities wherein
you have so profited by cultivating high pursuits
of literature and conversations of the learned—to
turn the complete vis and vigour of your intellect
toward the miserable strait in which our native land
lies struggling,—
a strait so fearful, that she wellnigh has lost, not
only the fruition, present and temporal, of her liberties,
both civil and religious, but the very hope
of their redemption. And yet more earnestly do
I rejoice that you are called so suddenly, and with
so honourable circumstance, to take your place in
that high council of the nation, for which your
genius and your talents so excellently do befit you.
I would not wish you in so much to ponder on the
character and principles of them that have united
in this tribute to your worth, if they should be in
aught—although good patriots and true—distasteful
to your feelings; as on the mighty services you
well may be an instrument to render, and on the
duty paramount which should enforce you so to
render them, in that most glorious and free assemblage
on which hangs every hope of England.
But, with respect to this, without attending my injunctions;
you have an admirable monitor, a very
entire and pure guide, in your own sense of right,
which to obey is to be virtuous and wise, and in
obeying which you shall at once fulfil the wishes
of your oppressed and lamentable country, and give
the highest pleasure to your well-wisher and friend
constantly,

John Milton.
“From my villa, Aldersgate, Oct. 12, 1641.”

The calm deliberation with which the cavalier
had opened and applied himself to read the familiar
letter of his trusty fellow-traveller, gave way,
long ere he had concluded, to manifest and restless
eagerness; and if he read it through before he tore
asunder the fastenings of the larger packet, it was
rather that he hoped within itself to find a clew
whereby to solve its mystery, than that he was indifferent
to learn what was the nature of the call
to which his friend alluded. But when he closed
it, still in ignorance of that which it behooved him
most to know, his colour went and came, and his
heart beat quick as he turned hastily to the sole
remaining source of information. The paper that
first caught his eye on opening the packet was a
fair document, in large clear characters, engrossed
on vellum, and purporting to be an invitation from
the freeholders of the good town of Huntingdon
to Edgar Ardenne, that he would present himself
a candidate to fill the seat as member for their
borough in the most worshipful the commons
House of Parliament, lately made vacant by the untimely
death of their regretted and right trusty delegate,
Elias Chaloner. The second was a brief
explanatory statement, signed by the mayor and
several of the leading burghers of the town, assuring
him, that all he had to do in order to secure
election was to make known to them his willingness
to serve in parliament, as no other candidate
was in the field; nor, if there were, could any have
the smallest chance of coping with success against
a nominee so universally admired and approved by
every class of voters. No pledge was asked—no
line of conduct indicated, to which it was expected
that he should adhere—no query hinted at, concerning
his attachment to either of the parties, between
which the whole of England was at that

time divided. They were sufficiently assured, the
letter stated, of the integrity, the wisdom, and the
constancy of him on whom their choice had fallen;
so well assured, that they were perfectly content,
without condition specified or question asked, to
place their interests, their hopes, their fortunes,
and, if need were, their lives, at his disposal. In
mute astonishment he read successively these several
documents; and still, the more he read, the
more his wonder and his doubts increased. That
he, who had been absent from the land of his fathers
almost from the day on which he first wrote
man—that he, unstamped by any public act or private
declaration; uncommitted to any party or
opinion, nay, undecided, for aught that the world
knew, in his own mind as to which cause he should
espouse in the approaching contest, foreseen by
him as by all men endowed with ordinary prescience
of events—that he should be thus summoned,
within two weeks of his arrival in his native
country, and that without a pledge, to fill a
place the most conspicuous to which a private individual
can well aspire—that he should be thus
eminently trusted, and by men whose very names
were strangers to his ears; whose town he had
never even entered save as a passing traveller;
whose principles, but from the somewhat formal
and affected plainness of their style, together with
the unseemly garments and austere demeanour of
their messenger, he had no means of so much as
conjecturing; and who, so far as he could comprehend,
must be still more at a loss to judge of the
parts or principles of him, to whom they had so
confidently offered the representation of their interests,
the proxy of their united voices;—all this
was indeed sufficiently embarrassing, nay, unaccountable
at any time; and the more so at a period
when political intrigue and treachery were rife, beyond
all precedent, among the men reputed as the
leaders in the councils of the nation. That such a
call was flattering, and that in a degree not trivial
or accustomed, could not be doubted or denied,
but while he felt that sweetest, most ennobling of
sensations, the conviction that his character was
understood and his worth appreciated by his fellow-citizens,
mingled with a high consciousness that
his eloquence, his learning, and experience might
indeed minister not smally to the welfare of his
country, Ardenne was yet perplexed, anxious, and
doubtful.

Nor did it seem that he was destined easily or
by any effort of his own to extricate himself from
this uncertainty; for when, after musing long and
vainly on the import of the letters, he turned for
information to the messenger, that worthy, doubtless
resenting with all the rancour of a petty mind
the merited rebuke of Edgar, wrapped himself up
in such a veil of real or pretended dulness as defied
every species of cross-examination applied to
wring from his fanatic obstinacy the reluctant truth.

He had been sent, he said, an hired messenger,
to carry certain missives, not to expound enigmas,
nor to illuminate the darkness of those whom, it
might be, Jehovah had for their sins involved in
the dark night of ignorance. He knew not aught
of the matter; nor, if he had known, should he
have deemed it fitting to reveal that which those
worthy persons, his employers, had found it meet
to leave uncertain. The burgh of Huntingdon, he
answered, when Edgar varied the subject and the
manner of his investigation—the burgh of Huntingdon
was a true town and godly—its late member,
good Elias Chaloner, a man learned beyond
his fellows, not in the vain and carnal lore of the

idolatrous and God-defying heathen, but in the pure
and sanctifying wisdom of the gospel! Of its politics
he knew not any thing, nor cared. Some cavaliers
there were—debosht rakehelly profligates—
such as the Knight of Hinchinbrook, uncle of worthy
Master Cromwell, now sitting in the commons
house for the right saintly town of Cambridge, and
others not a few. But of a truth the citizens,
craftsmen, and artisans, ay, and the mayor and
council, were pious and God-fearing men, seeking
the Lord alway, day and night, in prayer and meditation.
For the rest, if it were so that they had
summoned Master Ardenne to be their deputy in
parliament, verily theirs was the power to do so—
ay, and they knew right well the wherefore! They
were not men, he trowed, to leap i' the dark and to
repent at leisure. If Master Ardenne thought it
good to suit himself to this promotion, his, as was
very fitting, would be the honour and advancement.
If not, the men of Huntingdon would be at little
trouble to elect as good if not an abler statesman
to represent their voices.

In this unsatisfied and dubious state of mind
Edgar, with his uncourtly comrade, arrived at the
park gates; and, quickening his pace, rode hastily
along the noble avenue of elms to the main entrance,
flung his rein to a groom, and consigning
his companion to the attentions of the gray-headed
steward, passed with a hurried and irregular step
to his own chamber; there, in undisturbed and silent
solitude, to ponder on his singular position.
An hour fled by, as with his head propped on his
hands, and his eyes fixed on the characters of
which his mind however took no note, he racked
his brain with almost hopeless efforts to conjecture
who might be the secret movers in this matter.
That his friend Milton had ever been an ardent

votary of liberty, in its most liberal and extended
sense—a dreamer of those bright utopian visions
concerning perfect commonwealths and absolute
equality of man, which, in whatever age or country,
never have been—never can be realized—a modeller
of constitutions excellent in contemplation, but
untested by experience; or, if tested by the self-styled
republics, but real aristocracies, of early
Rome or earlier Greece, proved only to be fickle,
changeful, and unstable, Ardenne well knew;—and
often with delighted ears had listened, and with
a mind that yielded to the inthralling grandeur of
those theoretic dreamings, while it perceived their
fallacy, to the deep-souled and burning eloquence
with which he loved to advocate his wild but
splendid projects. He had moreover heard, that
subsequently to his return from Italy, the sage enthusiast
had devoted himself with stern and self-denying
application to the maintenance of the
most rigid puritanic forms of Protestant morality
and doctrines against the laxer customs of the
Church of England, at that time assimilating itself
daily more and more, through the bigoted obstinacy
of its reckless monarch, and of that most
dangerous of all his counsellors, the haughty and
half papish Laud, to the detested ritual and creed
of Rome. Nor could he doubt, well as he was
informed of the almost inseparable league between
puritanism in religion and the love of freedom in
the state, that the already celebrated author of
“Reformation in England,” and “the Reason of
Church Government,” was no less strongly interested
in opposition to that extension of prerogative,
already stretched to the very verge of absolute and
irresponsible autocracy, than his illustrious admirers
and associates, Hampden and Pym. Still he
could not easily give credence to the fancy, that
Milton only—for to him alone, of all those patriots
with whom his spirit sympathized so warmly in
their devoted struggles in behalf of England's constitution,
was he personally or intimately known—
should have possessed the power to procure him
that untrammelled offer of a seat, which individuals
of far greater eminence might have been proud to
occupy. Amid these painful meditations too there
ran a mingled strain of deeper, because more
personal, disquietude—an agonizing apprehension,
amounting almost to a certainty, that a seat in parliament,
entailing on him, as it necessarily must,
the highest of all moral obligations—binding him,
with fetters stronger a hundred-fold than the poetic
adamant, to the upholding of that cause which his
mature unbiased judgment should deem right—
must set him on the instant in direct unnatural opposition
to his father; and yet worse, must sever
him from her whose love he surely prized above
all mortal blessings. It was in vain that he attempted
to shake off the leaden weight of this
dark apprehension—it was to no purpose that hope
whispered to his bosom how all might yet be well
—it was to no purpose that he strove to reconcile
the diverse paths of duty and of pleasure. A dozen
times he took his pen in hand to write an answer
to the perplexing invitation; and as often threw it
from him in utter inability to frame a single sentence.
Once, at suggestion of his warmer passions,
and yielding to the persuasion of that single
grain of selfishness, which must still lurk in every
bosom, even of the best and purest, his fingers
traced three lines of absolute denial; but, ere the
clause was finished, the juster sense returned, and
the torn sheet was in an instant shrivelling amid
the logs that crackled on the hearthstone. “No,
no!” he cried aloud, in the low husky tones which
tell so fearfully of inward agony. “No, no—my
country—never will I betray thee at thine utmost
need!—What though my heart be broken in the
strife—what though I lose all things that make this
earth a paradise and not a hell—what though I perish—or,
yet worse, live homeless, friendless, fatherless,
deserted—hated by whom I most adore, and
cursed by whom I bless—what though I, I, one
man and for one little life, must bear all anguish
that a life can compass,—shall I for this shrink
back, knowing that England needs the voice, the
hand, the soul of every son she has, to save her
from destruction—to redeem her living millions—
her millions yet unborn—from countless centuries
of servitude and sorrow! The cup—the cup is
filled! God grant me strength to drain it—ay, to
the very dregs!” And with a calm unfaltering
hand he drew a brief but full acceptance of the
trust so proffered to his choice,—pledging himself
to act, so long as he should represent their voices,
so, and so only, as his own heart should dictate.
“I would,” he wrote, “before investing myself
with the great and onerous responsibility you wish
to impose upon me—I would that you should
clearly know and apprehend my principles and
rule of action. All party I disclaim—all preconceived
opinion from my soul I disavow! To hold
the freedom of our land inviolate—of our religion
pure, I do esteem the first of duties. But the
freedom which I look to—I do pray you mark me
now, so shall there be no blame hereafter—is the
freedom of our British Constitution, not the licentious
anarchy of democratic innovation—and the
religion which I will maintain is the religion of my
fathers—the reformed church of England, equally
aloof from the debasing superstitions of the Romish
creed, and from the stern fanaticism of Lutheran
or Calvinistic sectaries. If, then, on knowing these
my tenets both of church and state, ye make it
your election still to go forward in this matter, I
shall so labour—with such powers both of mind and
body as God in his good wisdom has assigned
me—as I may deem the fittest to secure unto ourselves,
and unto our posterity for ever, the blessings
of a government at once liberal and firm—of a religion
pure, no less than tolerant and free. If, on
the other hand, ye doubt in aught my motives, or
disapprove my principles as stated heretofore—if
ye do look that I should yield at any time, or under
any circumstance, my own conviction to the
opinion or the prejudice of others—even of yourselves,
my own constituents—then make at once a
fresh selection, choosing a man more suited to
your purposes; accepting in meanwhile my high
consideration of the honour ye have done me, in
thus summoning me, as yet a stranger, to the highest
station of your trust.”

Scarcely had he concluded his epistle, ere a
quick heavy footstep sounded through the corridor
—approached his chamber door, and paused beside
it, followed by a short firm tap upon the oaken panel.
“Now comes the crisis of my fate,” inwardly
muttered Ardenne, as, recognising on the instant
the footstep of his father, he hurried to admit
him.

“So studious, Edgar?” cried the veteran;
“plunged to your very neck in parchments!—The
matter must, I trow, be all-important, that should
have won you homeward from such music as was
ringing in your ears, when you this morning left us
in the Vale of Bardsey! 'Fore George, but he ran
gallantly and straight, poor dapple!—turned him to
bay in the Witch hollow beneath Leader hill—gored
brindled Mortimer to the death ere I came up with

him, and hurt some six or eight of the others.
What in the fiend's name called you home? What
clouds your face even now so darkly? Speak, Edgar,
hast ill tidings?”

“Not ill, sir, not ill tidings, but of weighty import,”
answered Ardenne, as his father threw himself
upon a massive settle in the chimney corner;
“and such as have urged on me much grave thought
ere I might answer them!” and, as he spoke, he
tendered to his hand the invitation from the burgh
of Huntingdon. “Here, if my visage be o'ercast,
here shall you find the cause—and this, when you
shall have perused the first, contains my answer.”

With deep anxiety did the eye of Edgar dwell
upon the keen intelligent features of the aged man,
fitfully lighted up by the uncertain gleams from the
piled hearth—for evening had crept on them unperceived,
and the sky was growing dark apace—as
he read the letters by the firelight. Changes there
were indeed upon the broad unwrinkled forehead,
chasing each other over it in quick succession—
now a deep frown corded the muscles of the brow,
but more perhaps from the effects of thought than
from disgust or anger—anon it was relaxed, and a
more bland expression played around the mouth,
and the full open eye shone cheerfully. Again
the glance was clouded, and the lip curled in scorn,
till every hair of his mustache worked as it were
instinct with life.

“The roundhead scurvy villains!” he exclaimed
at length, striking the extended parchment forcibly
with the forefinger of his right hand; “the base
mechanical burghers!—I marvel they should dare
pollute a gentleman's ear with their accursed puritanic
cant. You have refused them, Edgar—indignantly
hurled back their most insulting proffer in
their teeth! Is it not so?—now, on your life, say
ay!”

“I see it not in this light, sir,” Edgar replied,
respectfully but firmly; “I see it not at all in this
light—nor is there aught, to my poor comprehension,
either of cant or insult in this invitation.”

“Doubtless you have accepted it—this flattering
invitation!” interrupted the old man, with an expression
of the most bitter irony; “doubtless you have!”

“I have accepted it,” calmly returned his son;
“I have indeed accepted it, nor can I possibly
conceive—”

“You have not, Edgar Ardenne,” his father
almost shouted, as he sprang to his feet, spurning
the footstool from beneath them to the farther corner
of the room; “you have not dared to do so!
You! you! an Ardenne—heir to some twenty
generations of high-minded, noble, loyal cavaliers
—you blend yourself with the foul puddle blood of
craftsmen and pinched beggarly mechanics—you
band yourself with hypocrites and traitors against
your church, your country, and your king!—No,
no!—it can not be!”

“Indeed! indeed! it could not,” replied Edgar,
in tones almost femininely soothing; “indeed it
could not be, that I should ever mix myself with
aught degenerate or base, much less with aught
unprincipled or traitorous. But, of a truth, my
father, I apprehend not any thing—though straining
to the utmost of my understanding—I apprehend
not any thing here written to imply aught
that can by any means be tortured into treason or
fanaticism. Nay, for my part, I find not aught that
would restrain me, if I should be so minded, from
degrading loyalty, even as the member for this
very borough, into most prostrate oriental slavishness—from
bartering our reformed religion for
Romish superstition! A seat is proffered to me
freely—without condition, pledge, or hint of any

interference. Nay! the constituents aver that
they refer themselves in all things to my judgment
—submit themselves to absolute dictation of my
individual will. Now, sir, it seems to me—I pray
you so far pardon me as to permit me speak to
the end—it seems to me, if—as I see no cause to
deem them such—these men of Huntingdon be
fanatics and traitors, there cannot be a better mode
of frustrating their ill intentions, than that I, who
most assuredly am neither, should accept their
offer, and represent their bigoted and treasonable
voices by a most tolerant and patriotic vote!”

Sir Henry's passions had displayed their progress
on his features during his son's rejoinder
even more strongly and with more definite changes
than before. At the first, every line and feature
was inflamed almost to bursting with fierce and
fiery indignation—varying as Edgar proceeded to
that air of obstinate unwilling coolness with which
a man resigns himself to some infliction which he
may not avoid. Then, as the truth of what was
said impressed itself by slow degrees upon his
senses, he listened with attention approaching
somewhat to respect, till, when the last sentence
fell upon his ear, and he fancied that the full policy
of his son was there disclosed to him, the mighty
satisfaction flashed from his whole face as he exclaimed—

“Excellent! I was dull indeed! excellent!
Edgar; and so `hoist the knave engineers, e'en
with their own petard!' 'Fore George but you
surpass, not your old father's talents only—that
you did ever—but his uttermost wishes! And so,
when the fool puritans would have you rob the
church and manacle the king, vote like a loyal
cavalier!—Now out on me for an old superannuated
dolt that would not hear or comprehend!”

“Nay, sir; but even now,” said Edgar, not a
little astonished by this ebullition of mistaken
pleasure—“even now you do misapprehend me
somewhat. I have accepted this same seat in the
Commons, giving the men of Huntingdon to know
that I will hold myself responsible to no authority
save that of my own conscience. Party, or place,
I hold not to, nor covet. In all high honour and in
all accordance with my own sense of just and right,
will I vote ever!—If these men should dare propose
to me, or hint that I should swerve one hair-breadth
from the course of truth and honour—then
would I surely disobey them—spit at them, and
spurn them. But, if they should prove honest, as
surely will I compromise no tittle of their interests
or their opinions; and so far am I from suspecting
aught of this, that I do well believe that my constituents
will prove right honest men and true—else,
under favour be it spoken, I deem it most unlikely
they should have fixed their choice on me—a man
perhaps not altogether void of some repute of honour,
and—if unknown myself—at least a scion of a
family that has not ever stooped to fraud or to disgrace!”

“Enough said! Edgar; enough said! I was a
fool to doubt thee;” and the old man grasped his
hand with warm affection as he answered, while a
tear slid down his withered cheek; “I was a fool to
doubt thee—for thou wert ever true and noble, as I
was ever over-choleric and rash. Some things too,
in good sooth, there are, that might be well amended!
This ship-money I like not altogether—nor these
violent forced subsidies—yet less like I the sordid
puritanic knaves who do oppose them, not that
they know or understand the evil of the measures
which they rail at, but that they would embarrass
and annoy, and, if their means were mated to their

will, perchance o'erturn the government from which
those measures emanate—not that they love their
country, but that they hate their king—because,
being base themselves, they loathe the very name
of what is high, or generous, or noble—because,
having naught to lose even in England's ruin, they
may gain all in the midst of uproar and confusion.
But enough said!—you shall receive their offer,
since so you will it, although I hold a promise of a
borough from my Lord of Middleton awaiting your
acceptance, for which—I speak it in all candour—
I would far rather have you member than for this
beggarly psalm-singing body corporate of Huntingdon.
But enough said!—Bear with me, Edgar, for
I am old, and choleric withal, and hasty! And now
to supper! For John, cook, will be foaming an
his goosepie be burnt, or his beef boiled to rags
—as with o'erflowing eyes he swore to me they
were last night, and all through fault of mine!”

6. CHAPTER VI.

Time journeyed onward—and with a flight as
rapid, when every day and hour was charged with
tidings of some great event, with some terrific rumour,
or some perilous foreboding, as though it had

ebbed noiselessly away in peace and in obscurity.
The golden days of autumn had already flown—
the last slow wain had dragged its freight to the
piled threshing-floor—the last flower had shed its
petals scentless and colourless upon the frosted
grass. The leaves, that had for many weeks
clothed grove and forest in a rich garb of many-coloured
splendour, now detached themselves one
by one from the sere branches, and fell whirling
slowly in the heavy atmosphere, like hopes blighted
before accomplishment, to the dank steamy
earth—the glimpses of the sun were rarer and
more pallid than their wont, and often in the depth
of night the mighty winds went forth, wailing as if
in sorrow over the faded glories of the year. Nor
were the signs of the times less gloomy than the
tokens of the season. All England was in confusion
and dismay, and both these hourly increasing,
till the one half of the people was wellnigh
maddened by its fears, the other by the excitement
of its own fierce and stormy passions. To-day a
rumour was abroad of mighty armaments levied beyond
the sea; and even now preparing to pollute
with foreign weapons the free soil of England, and
to erect the power of her monarch, already stretched
beyond all limits of constitutional sway, into absolute
and self-controlling tyranny. On the next, a
tale was rife that Pym, the champion of the people's
cause and king of their affections, had been
assailed, perhaps even murdered, by the hired
emissaries of a sovereign stern and cold by nature,
and rendered merciless and cruel by the extremity
of terror. Then came the one great accusation,
swallowing up in its atrocity all lesser charges, all
inferior crimes, as the sunshine drinks up and blots
from heaven the fainter lustre of the stars!—The
one great accusation, at that time generally credited
by men of every class except perhaps a few of the
most confiding and most generous cavaliers—and
since those days confirmed almost beyond the
possibility of doubt—that the Irish rebellion, with
all its horrible features of midnight massacre and
midday conflagration, was the premeditated, coolly
calculated, work of Charles and Henrietta! The
one great accusation, penetrating every breast, in
every rank of persons, with mingled sentiments of
pity, horror, hatred, and disgust; imbittering still
more against him the foes of the misguided sovereign,
and alienating from his side many of those
devoted and enthusiastic spirits, that never would
have swerved from their allegiance, so long as they
had sense or being, had he but shown himself in
the most trivial circumstances constant, not to his
faithful servants, but to his own true interests, or
even to himself. In the Commons house the minds
of men were even more unsettled than in the world
at large—parties ran daily higher, and with a greater
share of virulence and private animosity than at any
previous period; and, indeed, it seemed that the
king himself was labouring as earnestly to the advantage
of his enemies, the puritans, as they themselves
could wish. At the first meeting of the
parliament, a committee had been appointed “to
draw up a general remonstrance of the state of the
kingdom, and the particular grievances it had sustained;”
which, after its first nomination, had, however,
scarcely ever met, and was almost forgotten.
But now, during the causeless and protracted
absence of the ill-fated monarch in the sister
kingdom—irritated by his apathy with regard to
bleeding Ireland—appreciating fully his dishonest
motives in lingering at a distance from his parliament—and
goaded almost to madness by his
attempt to seize or to assassinate, as many did in
truth believe, Argyle and Hamilton—the party
came to the resolve of reproducing that momentous
question; and, in accordance with their views,
upon Strode's motion, it was carried, that “the
committee of remonstrance be revived, and ordered
without more delay to meet;” and time and
place incontinently were appointed. Within a
few days of this measure, a bill of far more questionable
character, and justified alone—if it might
any way be justified—by the unwonted and most
unbecoming violence of the spiritual lords, who
lent themselves in every instance as willing instruments
to aid the usurpation of the sovereign, and
scrupled not to violate the spirit and the letter of
the laws against the Romish church—was introduced,
ordered by a majority of voices to be read,
and, without any opposition worthy of remark,
transmitted to the lords, for the disabling the
bishops from the exercise of voting in the upper
house, or of any temporal office throughout the
kingdom. Just at this critical and anxious juncture,
with his accustomed rashness and inveterate
obstinacy, Charles deemed it fitting to collate five
preachers of undoubted eminence and learning, but
known as well for principles of state the most obnoxious
as for their talents, to as many sees vacant
by death or by translation—in absolute defiance, as
it seemed, to the desires of the popular branch of
legislation, and contrary to the advice of his most
trustworthy and valuable counsellors. In the midst
of the tumults—for to an extent which scarcely can
be designated by a less forcible word was the violent
struggle carried between the upper and the
lower houses—consequent upon this doubtful measure,
tidings arrived in London, that on a day appointed,
having arranged all matters in that kingdom
to the general satisfaction, his majesty intended
to depart from Scotland on his homeward progress;
and straightway the committee offered the report
of their proceedings, together with a draught of the
remonstrance, to the house; which instantly, although
divided much in sentiment, and, as many
thought, in general opposed to this decisive stroke,
proceeded to discuss it with a degree of bitterness
and fury perhaps unprecedented except in the
debates upon the case of Strafford. In the meanwhile
an answer had been returned to Ardenne by
his constituents of Huntingdon, agreeing fully to
the terms he had proposed, whereon to serve them
in the Commons as their representative and member;
and urging him, so soon as it might be consistent
with his leisure, to betake himself to London;
there to assume his seat. All preparations had
been made for his departure; chambers secured
for him in Westminster; his retinue and horses
sent before him; nay, even a day fixed whereon
again to leave, after so brief enjoyment of its
serene and tranquil pleasures, his paternal home.
He felt not, it is true, that terrible sensation of
passionate and overwhelming sorrow which drowns
the hearts of the young at their first setting forth
into the wide and cheerless world, from the dear
roof that saw their birth!—much less that sullen
and collected bitterness with which the exile gazes,
ere he turn from them for ever, upon the scenes
never before so beautiful or so beloved!—but he
did feel a heavy and continual gloom clouding, he
knew not wherefore, all his anticipations of the
future—an ominous and all-engrossing sense of
coming evil—a prophetic fear, that it would ne'er
be his again to cast away the burden of his sorrows,
and be, as it were, once again a child in spirit,
beside that old domestic hearth—a fear not justified,
perhaps, by any clear perception, nor founded
upon any evidence of judgment; but still oppressing
his mind, no less than the influence of a coming
thunder-storm is often seen to agitate the lower
grades of animal creation, when not a speck of
cloud is visible as yet above the clear horizon.
As far indeed as regarded any real or well-founded
apprehensions, Ardenne had every following day
less cause to dread a rupture with his father in
consequence of any difference in politics; for so
completely had the old man taken up the notion
that his son intended to apply his nomination by
the puritanic party to the advancement of the
royal interests, that Edgar fruitlessly endeavoured
to apprize him of the error, and to convince him
of his own sincerity and singleness of purpose.

“Right! right! boy,” he would cry; “never betray
your counsel!—and in good sooth thou hast a
perilous part to play, and a politic—best vote a
few times with the canting knaves—so better to
throw dust i' their eyes, that they discover not thy
game ere it be fit time to disclose it, husbanding
so thy powers as to aid our gracious master in his
real straits, an' it should come—which God avert—
to such an issue!”

For a time, indeed—so utterly abhorrent was
the smallest shadow of deception to his ingenuous
mind and rigid sense of honour—he strenuously
and sincerely strove to make Sir Henry comprehend
his principles—his entire devotion to the laws
and constitution of his country, as established by
the precedent of ages, not as interpreted by the
corrupt and pensioned lawyers of the court—his
firm attachment to the privilege of Parliament, as
opposed to the prerogative of the crown—and,
over all, his absolute disgust at the late proceedings
taken by the king in relation to the claim of
ship-money especially, and to the infringement of

the anti-Catholic statutes;—but finding all endeavours
vain to overturn his preconceived opinion, he
abandoned altogether the ungracious task, in an uncertain
state of mind, bordering at one moment on
hope, at another on its opposite extreme, despair;
arguing within himself, when brighter thoughts
prevailed, that, as his father's violence of loyalty
was even now so greatly modified as to permit
him to allow the participation of corrupt men, and
the existence of evil measures, in the councils of
his kingly idol, his own course might so far tally
with his views, or, at the worst, might differ from
them only in so small particulars as to call forth no
very strenuous or lasting reprobation;—and again,
when giving way to gloomier though perhaps more
probable imaginations, foreseeing that the obstinate
determination of the sovereign to dispense with
parliaments; to recognise the laws of the land but
so far as they should further his own imperious
wishes; to rule, in short, as an absolute and arbitrary
monarch—and the noble stand assumed by
the delegates of the people in defence of the people's
rights—would by no means ever be composed
or reconciled except by arbitration of the sword;
and farther, that in such a case, as certainly as he
should be himself found warring in the ranks of
freedom, so surely would Sir Henry arm to buckler
the time-hallowed names of church and king,
although the former should be almost Romish, and
the latter utterly despotic.

Thus was the mind of Edgar balanced during
the interval which elapsed between his first acceptance
of the proffered honour and his departure for
the metropolis—its moods as various as the changes
of an April day, now bright with sunshiny and azure
skies, now blackened with the scudding rack, and
howling with the stormy gusts. The days, however,

wore onward—the chase in the morning, with
its heart-stirring sounds and high associations, or
the stroll through the highly-cultivated grounds
about the homestead, or the familiar visit to the
independent yeomen or the sturdy peasantry, consumed
the earlier hours; and, when the mid-day
meal was ended, the ramble in the beautiful broad
park, beneath the autumnal trees, with his sweet
cousin—the ramble, finished, as it seemed to them,
almost before it was commenced—beguiled the
hours till twilight, when the lamps would all be
lighted, and the guests assembled in the lordly hall,
or the smaller circle gathered about the parlour fire,
to cheat the evening with lay and legend, or with
sprightly converse, more pleasantly than with loud
minstrelsey and the gay dance. The days, however,
wore onward—and although none else perceived the
constant cloud that dwelt on Edgar's brow, Sibyl
had marked and understood it; and, as if in sympathy,
her own transparent skin showed less and less
the healthful hues of her elastic blood—and her
deep eye was always dimmer than its wont, and
often tearful, as it would dwell unnoticed on the
overshadowed features of her lover, now constantly
absorbed, as he had rarely been of yore, in fits of
meditation, abstracting him entirely from the business
or the pleasure of the moment. After the
morning following his return to Woodleigh, although
on other topics there had been no reserve
however trivial, no hesitancy or concealment of
action, thought, or motive, neither had again
alluded to the subject of their interrupted conversation—he
shunning it, not merely because he
could have naught agreeable, but because he had
naught definite which to communicate, and therefore
was unwilling, needlessly perhaps, to cloud
her prospects with certainly a distant, and not improbably
a causeless, terror!—and she not pressing
it, because, relying with a pure and holy confidence
upon her promised husband—a confidence inferior
only to her trust in her Creator!—because seeing,
that, be his secret sorrow what it might, he felt it
not his duty at that time to impart it to her ear!—
and because she would have scorned herself could
she have entertained the thought but for a moment
of obtaining that from his fondness, which his judgment
would not warrant his bestowing!

It was not long, however, before Sibyl had
another and a surer reason for her silence; for,
with that wondrous shrewdness which a woman's
heart possesses in divining and discovering any
thing that may affect it in its own particular
province, she fancied herself ere long to be the
mistress of the causes of his hidden grief. She
saw the struggle in his heart between his love for
her and for his father, and his devotion to his country.
She knew that in the heart of such a man the
struggle could last but for a single hour ere it must
be decided—she suffered no diminution of her self-respect,
no fretting of her vanity, as she acknowledged
that her own claims to his affection must
surely yield to the overruling amor patriœ—and,
while she sorrowed with the deep sincerity of a
true and loving heart over the election which, she
was assured, he had already made, she yet thought
she hardly could desire that he had decided otherwise!—And
even yet there was another cause!—
a lingering hope—that she might yet have been in
error—that she might falsely have interpreted the
outward workings of his mind—a fear of banishing
that lingering hope, by questioning of that which
she most yearned to know—a dread of learning
that, which even now almost knowing true, she
would have given worlds to know unreal.

The days wore onward, and the last morning
broke, and the last sun arose, which was to shine
on Edgar a dweller in his father's house. It was
a clear, bright, cheerful morning—a slight touch
of frost on the preceding evening had imparted
just enough of coldness to the atmosphere to render
it more pure and bracing, but the sun shone
warmly out, and the dew sparkled laughingly upon
the shrubs and grass, and the rooks clove the liquid
firmament with their exulting wings at an immeasurable
pitch—all nature seeming to rejoice with a
more healthful and elastic joy than in the fullest
flush of summer. It was, in short, just such a
morning as would make the careless and unburdened
heart sit lightiler on its throne—as would
impel the mounted traveller to give his horse the
spur, and let his spirits loose by a free and fearless
gallop—as would swell the pedestrian's chest, and
plant his stride more firmly on the sod, and perchance
unclose his lips with something of a song—
but it was such a one withal as would cause one
departing from some loved and lovely scene, to
need a stronger effort to tear himself away than he
would have been called on to exert had the skies
been lowering, and the day in nearer unison with
his own sad sensations. Accordingly, the tone of
Edgar's feelings were depressed beyond their
wont, even as the aspect of all visible things was
fairer than the promise of the season—his mien
was careworn, and at times it scarcely would have
been too strong a term to call it haggard—his gait
was various and irregular, hasty at times and hurried,
and at times unusually slow—his eye was
often fixed on vacancy, and those who would address
him were compelled to speak their wishes
more than once ere they appeared to reach his understanding.
The earlier hours were consumed in

preparations till high noon came round, and he
sat down to the last meal he was for many a
month to taste in fellowship with those who sat
beside him, while the unwelcome thought would
still intrude itself, that it might be verily the
last. In silence then, if not in sorrow, dinner
went by, until the board was cleared of all save
cup and flagon, and the old servitors withdrew,
and Sibyl vanished—to attend, perchance, her
household duties, or, more probably, to give in private
vent to the gushing feelings which she in
public was compelled to smother—and sire and
son were left without companions. For a while
the old man spoke not, resting his head upon his
hand as if in anxious thought; and, although once
or twice he raised it and made as if about to
speak, he yet seemed at a loss for words—at
length, as if with something of an effort, he
aroused himself, filled up his goblet from the stoop
of Bordeaux wine before him, and, pushing it
toward his son, motioned that he should follow the
example—gazed for a moment wistfully upon the
clouded features that met his eye, and with a nod
and smile that vainly struggled to be lightsome,
emptied his winecup.

“Come, Edgar, come!” he said, “this gloom
will never do!—Cheer up, kind heart, cheer up!—
Thou takest on more sadly now methinks than
when thou left us for thy three years term of service
in the Low Countries! but I can see how sits
the wind—old though I be, and past these toys
this many a winter's day—I mind when I was a
young cavalier, and not—although I say it who
should not—the most unlikely in the court of good
Queen Bess, we ne'er shall look upon her like
again—I mind how I was wont to droop at parting
from—poor Alice!—Sibyl, though passing fair, is

naught for beauty to what she was!—Well—too
well! do I mind it.”

Ardenne, who had shaken off his air of abstraction
for a moment as his father drank to him, was
again relapsing into the same listless mood on perceiving
that his words were rather unconnected
musings than such as called for answer or remark
—but when the name of Sibyl caught his ear, his
eye lightened, and the colour rushed to his brow, as
he perceived that his inmost thoughts were about
to be subjected to the keen probe of mental surgery!
“Ay! ay! I can see plain enough how
sits the wind,” continued Sir Henry, without pausing
for a reply; “though why you should be so
cast down, I may not comprehend so readily.
Your cousin Sibyl, I do know right well, has long
possessed your love, and as long too returned it.
That I have in all things approved of this, I need
not tell you now, seeing that you must well conceive,
that knowing this and not prohibiting was
to all needful ends consenting. That you should
be cast down at leaving of so sweet a girl as Sibyl,
is—I gainsay it not—right natural; nathless I cannot
but imagine that you do apprehend some greater
evil than a mere temporary separation. Now, boy,
to the point!—You would espouse your cousin
Sibyl—she says not nay!—and if my interference
be a cause of dread to you, I say but this, that you
have cruelly misjudged your father's heart! My
benison on you both! I know no sweeter balm
for all the manifold griefs of age, than to make,
and to see, the youthful happy. So set your soul
at ease—brave boy—you shall wed Sibyl when
you will; and the more quickly—the more gladly
and more surely shall I witness it. You start for
Westminster to-night; and I have meditated somewhat
often now of late on passing this next Christmas-tide

in London. Sibyl, poor child, hath seen
naught of court-gayety nor of the world as yet, and
this is but a lonesome place in winter—the more
so now that half the gentles of the land will, as it
seems too likely, be detained till spring in the city
by these protracted sittings of the Houses, which
men speak of. I have determined now to give
you a commission—choose me a fitting mansion—
whether to rent or purchase I care not a maravedi
—in the Strand if thou mayst, if not in Westminster
or Charing!—see it right nobly furnished, and
write me when 'tis done. I will bring Sibyl thither
straightway, and, sith you may not spend these
holydays with us, why we will keep them up with
you, I warrant me. And now away to Sibyl; say
to her all that I have said to you, and what beside
seems fitting to your melancholy mood. Thou
needst not me, I trow, to woo her. Fix, if you
may prevail on her, your bridal day at once—
whene'er ye list, 'twixt Christmas-tide and Easter.
Be happy, Edgar, be happy, and let me see you
so—such is my only wish this side eternity,—before
I go to my long home.”

“My good—my generous—my gracious father!”
cried Ardenne, affected to the point of weeping, as
he threw himself upon the old man's neck; “too
good! too generous!”

“Tush! tush, boy!—None of this!” exclaimed
the veteran, hemming away the husky weakness
from his throat; “none of this—but away with
you to Sibyl—she is more fitting object for these
raptures than an old weather-beaten trunk like me.
Away with you! but hark ye—here is the ring
that plighted my departed angel. Let me behold
it on her hand, whom I have loved the best—nay,
I might say, the only one—of women, since my
own Alice left me, to drag out my pilgrimage alone,

without one hope to cheer it save that of meeting
her once more, when it shall be, O Lord, thy merciful
and blessed will.”

It would have been of no avail—so bent was the
old knight on his benevolent design—it would have
been of no avail, even had Edgar been so minded,
to strive to alter or oppose his projects. They were
not such, however, as to leave a possible desire to
his son, which would not be, by their accomplishment,
at once achieved. He had no words to
answer—but the hot blood rushed tumultuously
through his veins—and his strong frame quivered
visibly with the excitement of his spirits, as he
hurried from the hall to seek his beautiful betrothed.
“Once mine, and all beside is nothing!
once mine, there will be no more struggle! Duty
and pleasure will go hand in hand! Once wedded,
and no difference of opinion then may put those
asunder whom God has joined together!” Such
were the thoughts that thronged with irresistible
impetuosity, and with the speed of light, upon his
busy brain—but he had not made six steps beyond
the threshold before reflection changed the prospect.
“Would it be noble—honourable—upright”
—thus did he commune with himself; “would it be
worthy of an Ardenne—the supporter of an unblotted
fame of generations—nay, rather, would it not
be sordid—base—dishonest—and degrading to the
lowliest gentleman, to win a credulous confiding
woman by a fraud—by an implied, if not a spoken,
lie?—To let her wed, believing him she wedded a
supporter of the cause she deemed most holy, a
soldier armed for the warfare which alone to
her seemed just and sacred—to let her wed in
haste, and then find out at leisure that she had
been deceived—vilely deceived—by him she had
just sworn to honour?—Not so!” he cried aloud,

“It shall not be, by Heaven! She shall know all
—all—every thing! Knowing, she shall accept
my hand—or knowing, cast me off, but not at least
—despise me!” And, as his mind arrived at its
mature though swift conclusion, he reached the
door of Sibyl's oriel parlour—with a hesitating
hand he struck the panel, and so slight was the
sound that it conveyed no tidings to the inmate—
at least it was unanswered—again he knocked, and
louder than before—he listened, and still all was
silence. Supposing her he sought to have gone
forth, he had already turned away to follow her,
when a faint noise, as of a person breathing
heavily, or perhaps gently weeping, attracted his
attention; he knocked a third time, and then—
though still unbidden—entered. She was within
—she was alone!—in the prostration—in the absolute
abandonment of feminine and hopeless grief!
Her face was buried in her hands, as she lay
stretched at length on the broad pillowed settle
which encircled the bay window. Her light brown
hair, which had broken loose from the confinement
of her silken headgear, flowed in redundant waves
over the voluptuous outline of her shoulders, trailing
down even to the ground. Her features were,
of course, concealed; but the large pearly tears,
forcing their way one by one between her fingers,
had already left a visible trace of moisture on the
damask cushions, while the convulsive starts that
agitated her entire frame told even more the depth
and anguish of her sorrow than all her weeping.

“Sibyl,” he whispered, stealing with noiseless
steps over the three-piled Persian carpet till he
was close beside her; “my own—own Sibyl!”
there was a deep fond pathos in his musical accents
which no description could express—a liquid,
melancholy tenderness, that sank directly to the

heart; “My own—own Sibyl.” And with the
most respectful delicacy he lifted her from her
recumbent attitude; “and weeping too for me!
but weep no longer, dearest one—I come—I
come! Oh grant it, God, that it may be so—to
wipe those tears away—to make you mine—for
ever!”

She gazed upon him for a second's space,
wildly—distrustfully—then, as she perceived his
earnest air, and marked the hope that kindled in
his smile—then brighter thoughts prevailed; and
with the sudden strange revulsion, abandoning
herself to the full tide of her warm, passionate
feelings, she sank half fainting on the bosom of
her lover.

“Oh grant it, Father of all mercies—grant it,
that this too mighty treasure shall indeed be
mine!” he murmured fervently, as he supported
her, and with considerate expressions of calm
fondness recalled her gradually to her self-possession,
suppressing every sentiment that might embarrass
her returning consciousness—that might in
any wise offend or agitate her girlish sensibilities;
holding her hand in his the while, but with a quiet,
unimpassioned pressure, liker to the expression of
a kind brother's love than to the rapturous devotion
of a youthful suiter; soothing her with the
gentlest tones of his familiar voice, till she was at
the least sufficiently composed to listen to his self-restrained
and self-accusing pleadings.

“Sibyl,” he said at length, as her deeply-drawn
sighs subsided, and her tears ceased to flow in
such unnatural profusion; “Sibyl—dear cousin;
soon—soon, I trust, to be addressed by a far dearer
title, I have much—much that I would say to you
before I go from hence, never unless at your permission
to return!—much from my father—for

myself yet more!—Dry your tears, dearest, dry
them, I beseech you—it is agony to me to look on
them!—dry them, and listen to me, that we may,
if it be Heaven's pleasure, be happy as the happiest
of earth's inhabitants.”

“Say on,” she difficultly faltered forth the words,
“say on, dear Edgar—with my whole soul I do
attend you.”

“Not here,” he answered, “not here, sweet one
—and not yet! But do your mantle on, and walk
forth with me for a little space. You are too
greatly agitated yet, calmly to hear, and freely to
decide on that, which, for your happiness'—for your
life's—sake, you must consider warily and well!
The pleasant sunshine, the fresh grateful air, and,
above all, the peaceful and quiescent scenery, will
tranquillize your mind. Moreover, I would not
that this sun should set unwitnessed by us twain
together. You will go forth, then, dearest—will
you not, Sibyl?”

A smile, exquisitely sweet, glancing from out
her tears, was her sole token of assent, as she disengaged
herself half blushingly from his supporting
arms, and, gathering her dishevelled tresses, folded
them simply, but in the most perfect taste, around
her classically moulded temples.

“Wait for me in the vestibule,” she said—“I
will be there ere you shall have the time to miss
me;” and vanished from the room, leaving a stronger
hope in Ardenne's breast than he had entertained
for many a day. He was assured in his own mind,
beyond the possibility of doubt, that she had
marked the secret conflict of his soul, that she had
penetrated his sole mystery, and was aware already
of his apprehensions, as to the part which it might
ere long be his duty to sustain, whether it should
lie in the grave and subtle forum, or in the lamentable

field of civil strife; and he now listened to
the flattering voice within, which whispered that it
might well be, a maiden so affectionate, so warm,
and, above all, so deeply and devotedly attached,
would overlook the difference in their political
creeds, as counterbalanced, rendered nugatory, and
a thing of naught, by their entire harmony of soul
on every other subject. It might well be, that one
so strong herself in principles of honour and integrity,
would find more to admire in the inflexible
and stern uprightness which will not sacrifice one
particle of conscience—one straw's bulk of that
which it considers duty—before the shrine of its
most intimate and near affections, than to rebuke
or reprobate in the opinions or the principles on
which that duty hinges. But he had not long time
to waste in thought or speculation; for, as he
reached the entrance of the hall, the form he loved
so well to look upon came gliding down the staircase,
wrapped in her walking-robe—fitted above the
waist with accurate precision to the mould of her
unrivalled shape, but full below and flowing—of
dark velvet, furred at the cape and cuffs with the
most costly minever; and wearing on her head a
cap of ermine, its silken crown and lining protruding
from above the border of deep fur, and hanging
gracefully down, with a white ostrich-feather drooping
over it, so as to flush one delicate cheek more
warmly than its sister with a teint borrowed from
its own bright crimson. With a passionate and
fitful light, far different from the calmness of their
wonted radiance, the eyes of Edgar dwelt upon
the finely-modelled person, and the features, not
the less exquisitely fair that they now wore a melancholy,
downcast aspect, of her, on whose acceptance
or denial of his present suit his all of hope
was fearfully suspended. So long, indeed, and
evident was that fixed gaze of admiration, and so
much was she pained by its expression, that the
bashful blood rushed like a torrent to brow, cheek,
and neck, with blushes scarcely natural, so vivid
was their hectic colour. Perceiving instantly the
cause of her confusion, with an air of deep humility
he lowered his offending eyes, and, as he took her
hand to lead her forth, “Pardon,” he whispered, in
low, reverential tones—“pardon me, gentle cousin,
my most unwitting and involuntary fault!—if fault
it be—” he added, with a voice that faltered, and
then abruptly paused, as if he were unable to complete
the sentence. A quiet pressure of the fingers
that yet lingered in his tender grasp, replied at
once, and reassured him; and in the silence caused
by feelings or by thoughts too powerful for utterance—how
widely different from that of apathy or
dulness!—they for the last time wandered forth
into the pleasant solitudes of the broad sylvan
chase.

Throughout the greater part of its extent, this
ornamented tract, although diversified enough by
change of dale and upland to redeem its beauties
from the charge of tameness or monotony, was
rather of a level than a broken character; its
charms were chiefly of that tranquil and composing
cast which is found rather in expanses of deep
meadow-land, carpeted by a sward so fresh and so
luxuriant as to lose little of its verdure even in the
dead months of winter—in the massive foliage
of the scattered clumps, or more continuous groves
of stately timber-trees—and in the sheets of limpid
but unrippled water, than in the features of a scenery,
which, if more romantic, is far less alluring;
if more enchanting to the first astonished glance,
bears not so well the test of daily and familiar observation.
Towards its northern and northwestern

boundaries, however, the ground was swelling and
uneven; the hills heaved up more boldly from the
valleys, which were in places so abrupt and narrow
as almost to deserve the name of glens, or dingles,
and often wore a coronet of gray and rifted sandstone
above the purple heather, that clothed their
flanks with a dark russet mantle wheresoever the
soil was too poor or too shallow to support the
taller growth of hazel, birch, and mountain ash,
which clustered round their bases, or straggled up
their sides where any casual streamlet had worn a
channel to protect them from the western gales,
and afforded by its waters a grateful although
scanty nutriment to their dwarfed and thirsty roots.
Imbosomed in these rugged eminences, at a short
mile's distance from the manor, there lay a little
tarn or mountain lake, scarce larger than an artificial
pool, but so deep that its glassy waters shone
black as polished jet even beneath the azure skies
of June. Narrow, however, as it was, it yet could
boast its islets—two, fringed from the water's edge
with tangled underwood, above which waved some
three or four tall trees; the third, a bold and
barren rock, whereon some feudal ancestor had
perched his solitary fastness, dismantled now and
roofless. On every side but one the hills sank
steeply down to the lake's brink, leaving no space
for the adventurous foot of man, feathered with
coppice springing from every rift or crevice of their
rocky sides; but on that one a turfy glade sloped
gently to the marge, where it was bordered by a
stripe of silver sand, which formed a bright and
sunny frame to the dark mirror it enclosed. Just
where the turf and sand united, a single and gigantic
oak, known as the “friar's tree” for miles
around, reared its short massive trunk, garnished
with limbs as tortuous and forked as the antlers of
the wild herds that loved to rub their budding horns
against it in the early springtide; but supporting,
even in the flush of summer, only a sparse and
scanty garland of green leaves, which rustled now,
all sere and yellow, in the melancholy breath of
autumn. Immediately beneath the shadow of this
forest patriarch, and partly overlapped by the encroachment
of its twisted roots, lay a huge block
of deep-red freestone, bearing the marks of rude
and half-obliterated sculptures, in which some village
antiquarian had traced or fancied a resemblance
to a cowled and sandalled figure, whence
the prevailing appellation of the tree; which, ancient
as that relic evidently seemed, had probably
been in its prime already when there it had been
placed—placed only to survive the memory of the
event or actor it had fondly been intended to immortalize.
It might have been the cover of a tomb
—it might have been a monument designed to celebrate
some great or wonderful achievement—but,
whatever was its pristine use or destination, it
afforded now a pleasant seat, cushioned with soft
luxurious mosses, and sheltered equally from summer
heat and wintry gales by the huge stem and
gnarled boughs that overhung it. A lovely and
romantic spot this was—so still, so lonely, so sequestered
from the eye by intervening thickets,
that, although situate at scarce a bowshot from the
most frequented walks, it yet was rarely visited but
by some passing forester, or some true lover of the
undecorated face of nature. For this cause, perhaps,
it had ever been a favourite haunt of Sibyl,
who, when a fairy maiden of fifteen, was wont to
resort thither with book, lute, or pencil, as the
fancy of the moment prompted, and for no other
reason had it been the usual termination of her
young wooer's wanderings. What was the aim of
Edgar in choosing this fair solitude to be the scene
of that most sacred audience which he had come
forth to demand, he could not have, perhaps, himself
explained. It might be he had formed some
half-confessed and indistinct idea, that here, in the
familiar trysting-place—the home of so sweet recollections,
the shrine of so innumerable hopes—
she would “lean to the soft side of the heart”—would
be more liable to yield herself to fond and passionate
impressions, than to weigh matters with an
equable, calm scrutiny. It might be that habit
merely, and the trick of old association, had conducted
his feet thither, while the mind was far removed
from thought of time or place; or it might
be that, wise and philosophic as his spirit was, there
yet lay dubiously concealed within it one of those
strange superstitious touches—those creeds of the
heart, not of the judgment—from which the bosoms
of so few, even the coolest and most stern inquirers,
can altogether wean themselves—one of those
fancies which we all at times have felt, that some
peculiar spot, or hour, or person, is secretly connected
with the clew and crisis of our destiny—is,
as it were, the hinge whereon the portals of our
fortune turn, opening to our steps the unknown
paths of future good or evil. Whatever were his
thoughts, however, during their silent progress to
the friar's tree, scarcely had he placed her on the
monumental stone, and stretched himself before her
on the dry white sand, ere he poured forth, in a
voice of so sweet harmony as might have well beguiled
the ear and won the heart of the most determined
votary of celibacy, a tide of language fraught
with such eloquence, and yet so practical in meaning—so
deep in sentiment, and yet so pointed in
expression—that few lips, perhaps, but his, could
have delivered it, without incurring some reproach
of studied insincerity, or awakening some feeling
of distrust. He told her of his hopes, his doubts,
his terrors—he told her how a cloud, he knew not
wherefore, had overshadowed his horizon, chilling,
as it were, the very sources of his most permanent
and warm affections; he told her how he valued
her the most of all things earthly—the most of all
things, save his God, his country, and his honour!
How to him her wedded love would be indeed the
all in all—capable of making that which else were
misery the highest and most pure enjoyment;—
how, to win it, he would lay down willingly rank,
name, fame, fortune, every thing save virtue! He
told her that, without that crowning gift, he should,
though wealthier than the wealthiest, bear but a
beggared heart—though girt with myriad friends,
be desolate and lonely—though dwelling in his
very birthplace, be a divorced and home-sick
exile! He told her of the violent and ceaseless
strife between his passion and his conscience—of
his profound devotion to herself, battling and
scarcely to be overcome by his more deep devotion
to his country's weal. “It may be,” he continued
—“it may be that I am but a timorous dreamer—
but a trembling visionary, shaking at causeless and
unreal terrors. It may be that the trials, which I
shudder merely at foreseeing, shall never come to
the proof; but this is what I dread—and what,
though dreading, I may not, if it come to pass,
avoid or shrink from, even to win what were to me
a thousand times more dear than life—the miseries
of intestine war let loose to devastate our smiling
country!—a wild and bloody strife, dividing
brother against brother, sire against son, husband
—sweet Sibyl—husband against wife!—A strife
between a king determined to be absolute, a people
to be free! If these things come to pass—though
my life be barren, and my deathbed deserted—
yea, though my heart be broken in the conflict—
yet must I be for ever the sworn soldier of my
country's freedom. It may however be—Heaven
grant it so!—that I do falsely calculate the signs
of coming wrath; it may moreover be, that, as I
am, so are you a friend to liberty and justice, more
than a worshipper of kings! and, if so, all shall
yet be well. My father, Sibyl, my old, kind father,
hath proffered freely his consent—hath urged me
to obtain your promise, that you will be my own
before this coming winter shall have made way for
spring flowers—hath implored me `that he may see
us happy—such is his only wish this side eternity
—before he go to his long home!' Be mine, then,
Sibyl—oh be mine, ere the fierce storm of war
shall burst, which may divide us, and for ever—
be mine to cheer, to guide, to comfort, and to bless
—be mine for weal and wo—for time and for
eternity!”

While he had spoken, though her lips quivered
often, and parted more than once, as if she would
have interrupted him—though her colour went and
came in brief and fitful flashes—the lovely girl had
never once withdrawn her eyes from his pale face—
pale with the struggle of contending passions—nor
yet relaxed her pressure of his cold damp hand;
and, as he paused from his deep-souled and eager
pleading, she replied at once, though her voice faltered,
and the big tears slid down her cheeks.

“It is, then,” she said, “it is, then, as I dreaded!
and our young hopes have been but as a morning
vision! Oh, Edgar, Edgar—I have thought, I
have hoped, I have prayed that these things might
not be, and yet too—oh, too surely—have I known
they must!” and she hurried onward with her
speech, as if she feared that she should lack the

strength to act up to her resolution. “Men will
say,” she went on, with increasing passion—“men
will say, and say truly—but I care not—that it is
unmaidenly in me to speak in words how madly,
how devotedly I love you. My hope of hopes
has been—you cannot doubt it, Edgar, no! no!
you cannot—to know myself your wife; and now
my hopes are anguish and despair. But think not
that I blame you—that I love you, honour you,
adore you, one thousandth part the less—when I
say—God grant me strength to bear it—when I
say, that we can never—never now—be one.
Your father has to me been as—nay, more—more
than a father. To his heart your defection—such
will he term and feel it—your defection from the
loyalty of your high race will strike a wound, that
but one other blow could aggravate or deepen.
Were I to fall off likewise, he would die, Edgar;
die, and leave to us his sole bequest—a father's
malison. No, no! I must stay with him—must
console the old man in his barren and unfriended
sorrows; must sooth his cares, and turn aside his
anger, lest it wax hotter and more deadly than
you, you, Edgar, shall be able to endure. Nor is
this all. I am a poor, weak girl—a frail, confiding
creature, of a sex whose duty and whose nature is
obedience—obedience to our king, our husband,
our God! I argue not!—I hope not, fancy not,
that I can change your judgment, founded, as it
must be, on firm conviction; nor would I change
it if I could! That which in women is nature,
virtue, may well in men be cowardice and crime!
Your intellect is strong, and wise, and wonderful
—mine womanish and weak! Nor should I love
and venerate you as I do, could you surrender up
your wisdom at the bidding of my weakness.
Then, as I respect your scruples, respect mine
also. The sapling bends, indeed, to the wild blast
that bows it; but, when the hurricane is overpast,
it stands no less erect than the proud oak that
yielded not an inch to the storm's fury. I in my
weakness—you in your strength—we are alike immoveable.
Yours I can not be now—may not be
ever! But of this be certain—wedded or single,
royalist or republican, living or in death, you only
shall I love, you only honour—honour and love
more deeply, that I know you greater in adherence
to that which I must deem fancied and erroneous
duty, than did you think as I. There is one hope
for us! Edgar, my Edgar, one! If this wild
storm pass by—if the green homes of England be
unstained with native blood—and how more fervently
than ever shall I now pray they be so—then
may we yet be happy.”

The blood rushed coldly to his heart as he
heard her out, nor, though he had expected every
word she uttered, was the shock less stunning or
the anguish lighter than if the stroke had fallen on
him unaware. Too well, however, did he know,
and too entirely respect, the principles which
doomed him to eternal and unutterable sorrow, to
speak one syllable in answer or entreaty. “One
kiss,” he murmured, through his set teeth—“one
last kiss, my own lost Sibyl.” And she fell upon
his bosom unresisting, and her white arms were
twined about his neck with a convulsive clasp,
and their cold lips mingled in a long embrace that
had no taste of passion or of pleasure, and their
tears flowed together in that gush of unchecked
misery.

Before an hour elapsed Ardenne had left the
mansion of his fathers. The old knight wondered,
and was grieved, but silent; he saw, at an eye's
glance, that his own hopes—his first-born's happiness—had

been dashed rudely down; but, to imagine
wherefore, conjecture was itself at fault. He
wept upon his neck, blessed him, and sent him
forth! A pale form, indistinctly seen through the
fast gathering twilight, stood in the oriel window
as Edgar slowly mounted—but the burst of agonizing
sobs that followed his departure was distinctly
audible. Enough! Timanthes veiled the
face, on which the extremity of sorrow was engraved
in characters so fearful as to defy the
utmost skill of human portraiture.

7. CHAPTER VII.

Milton, from Euripides.

It was a dark and gloomy afternoon in the latter
days of November, when Ardenne, having already
gone through all the necessary steps preliminary
to his entering on his novel duties, and having devoted
a few days to renewing ancient intimacies,
or forming new relations, with some of the most
leading men of either party, took his way for the
first time toward the honoured precincts of St.
Stephens, around the walls of which—now, alas!
levelled to the ground for ever—the collective eloquence
of ages had shed even then a halo of more
than mortal glory. The house had been some
time in session when he entered, and, to his almost
irrepressible surprise, in passing to his seat,

the object that first met his eye was the ungainly
figure of the stranger who had succoured him near
Royston, habited, as heretofore described, in garments
coarse, unseemly, and ill-made, standing beside
the table, which at times he violently struck
with his clinched hand, and speaking in a sharp,
croaking voice, against delay in the discussion of
some motion then before the house. It did not
seem to Edgar, as he looked hastily around him,
that the members listened with much attention to
the fiery but somewhat involved declamations of
this worthy; but, after a few moments' survey, his
notice was attracted by the bent brows and compressed
lips of a considerable number—gravely-attired
and stern-looking men, who sat apart even
from those who were completely recognised as
favourers of sweeping measures of reform, and
ever and anon responded to the sentiments expressed
by the speaker with a deep hum or sullen
cheer of approbation. He could see, too, that
Hampden, with whom he had advanced already
beyond the earliest steps of friendly intercourse,
was not inattentive to the words of this strange-looking
personage; although at times a smile
would flit across his comely features at some wild,
undigested thought, or strong denunciation fiercely
disproportionate to that against which it was levelled.
He had not, however, much space for observation,
since the orator, who, it seemed, had
wellnigh finished his harangue ere he came into
the assembly, now resumed his seat; and was at
once succeeded by a youthful gentleman, whom
Edgar recognised for Lucius Carey, Viscount
Falkland, of an exterior so prepossessing, that in
another man it would have been the principal attraction,
though in this instance it was but the
goodly shrine of a surpassing soul. His form was
slight, but elegantly framed—his countenance, of
singular and softened beauty, had for its most obvious
traits a low, fair forehead, from which the
waves of his light brown or almost flaxen hair hung
down in natural curls below his cheeks—a full
blue eye, well opened and expressive—a bright
complexion—and a lip, rich, ripe, and wooing as a
woman's. He was clad handsomely, in doublet,
short trunk hose, and cloak of dark blue velvet
slashed and lined with rich white taffeta, and was
in all respects a person whose appearance would
denote a man of birth and bearing. His voice, as
he began to speak, was sweet and tunable, and, although
weak at first, increased in energy and
power as he proceeded, till Ardenne felt that he
had never listened heretofore to any one combining
in so eminent a degree persuasiveness and
strength of language. From the Lord Falkland's
words he quickly gathered that the measure under
consideration was no other than the famous and
much contested bill of general remonstrance, which,
it appeared, had been at this late hour brought forward
by the opposition party, when the morning
had been wasted in minor and unprofitable questions,
with the hope of smuggling it, as it were,
through the house, during the absence of many, its
most known opponents. The speech of the young
nobleman was luminous, though brief; and touching
in no respect on the principles or object of the
bill, went clearly and directly to the point, asserting
that it should not, at that irregular and most
indecent hour, be forced upon the assembly, unprepared,
at least, if not reluctant to consider it.
Loudly applauded by the moderate party, as well
as by the open antagonists of the measure, throughout
the whole of his speech; and not less warmly,
though more sparingly, at times by its impartial
and sincere espousers—Hampden, and Pym, and
Hollis—he concluded with a motion that the house
should presently adjourn, and that this question
“should be entered upon the next morning at nine
of the clock, and every clause debated, the speaker
in the chair.” As he sat down, a dozen members
rose at once on opposite sides, and for some minutes
all was clamour and confusion, trampling of
feet, loud cries of “Question!” “Order!” and “Go
on!” mixed with vociferated names of favourite
orators, called on to utter their opinions. At length,
however, Lenthal, the speaker of the house, with
his clear, sonorous voice, enforced obedience to the
chair, and quiet was again restored. Lord Falkland's
motion instantly was seconded by Hampden,
in a few words, forcibly but simply urging the necessity
that this great question should be freely discussed
and openly, by all who might decide to take
a part therein. The house was cleared for question,
and the adjournment carried with few dissenting
voices. There was but little tarrying within
the body of the house; but, as they passed into the
lobby and down the parliament stairs, men fell into
little knots of two or three, discoursing, some on
the occurrences of the discussion just concluded,
and some on matters of more general and varied
interest. It was at this moment, just as Edgar fell
into a group in which he had observed the figures
of Hyde—in after days more celebrated as Lord
Clarendon and Chancellor of England—St. John,
Lord Digby, Colepepper, and Hampden, all spirits
in some sort congenial to each other; all being
favourers, ostensibly at least, though differing in
mode and measure, of reform, both in the church
and state—that the orator, whom he had judged at
the first sight to be Lord Falkland, passed by so
closely as almost to brush his person with his
cloak, deeply engaged in conversation with his
mysterious fellow-traveller. This latter cast a
glance of recognition toward him, accompanied by
a short, unceremonious nod, though without making
any pause, or breaking off in his discourse, which
he continued in such tones as reached the ears of
Ardenne.

“But verily,” he said, “but verily, I see not
wherefore you would have it thus put off—for this
day would right quickly have decided it.”

“There would not have been time enough,”
replied the other, shortly; “for it would sure take
some debate.”

“A very sorry one! a very sorry one, my lord,
if any,” answered the puritan, who was already
passing out of sight, when Edgar touched the
shoulder of John Hampden, whom he had previously
addressed. “I pray you, of your courtesy,”
he whispered, “Master Hampden; I pray you,
tell me, who is yon slovenly and clownish-looking
man in converse with my lord of Falkland? for I
do see he is on your side, by his warm speech
to-day.”

“That sloven,”[1] answered Hampden—and, in
after days, when the undaunted breast of him who
spoke was mouldering in its bloody cerements, not
the least noble victim of that lamentable strife, his
auditor remembered those prophetic words—
“whom you see before you, hath no ornament in
his speech. That sloven, I say, if we should ever
come to a breach with the king, which God forbid!
in such a case, I say, that sloven will be the greatest
man in England.”

“Indeed!” said Ardenne, thoughtfully, “indeed!
I had not thought of him so highly. And yet, I do
believe, nay, I am well assured, I have encountered
him before. His name—”

“His name is Cromwell,” replied the patriot;
“Oliver Cromwell—member now for the good
town of Cambridge, and little known as yet, or listened
to, save by a few austere religionists; yet
of great parts! unwearied diligence—undaunted
courage—penetration, that intuitively reads the
wariest hearts, and perseverance, that will yield to
nothing human! That you have met him I can
well believe—at leastwise he doth know, and reckons
of you highly! You will be here to-morrow,
Master Ardenne,” he continued, after a momentary
pause; “you will be here to-morrow—and with us,
I trust! If we should lose this bill, it will, I fear
me much, go hard with England's liberties.”

“Here I shall be, past question,” answered Edgar.
“I scarce should hold myself an honest
man were I to quit my station in the crisis of the
storm; although,” he continued, with a smile, “although
that station be a new one, and its occupant
but strange and inexperienced. Here shall I be,
but more you must not ask of me. How I shall
vote, or if indeed at all, till I have heard both reasons
and objections, I may not easily decide.
Wherefore, good Master Hampden, if you do care,
in truth, for the assistance of my vote, you were
best call to aid that eloquence and depth of reasoning
whereof I hear men bear such testimony; and
so convince me that my country's weal requires it
at my hand! Give you good-night, fair gentlemen,”
he added, with a courteous motion toward
the company; “we meet again to-morrow.”

“If you be not in more than common haste,”
said Hampden, laying a slight detention on his

arm as he turned round to leave the lobby, “I
will entreat you tarry, while I speak ten words
with my Lord Digby. Your lodging lies, if I
mistake not, this side Charing; and my road is
the same. If you can wait on me five minutes at
the farthest, I will rejoice to have your homeward
company; and will upon the way, I do assure you,
exert what reasons I possess to win you to conviction.”

Ardenne assented. Nor did the minutes which
elapsed while that high-minded patriot remonstrated—as
it would seem by his quick, energetic
whispers—with the tergiversating noble, pass heavily,
as he conversed with the distinguished men
who seemed to give—desirous each, perhaps, of
winning to his respective faction a partisan so like
to prove of weight in the then equally poised state
of parties—that eager and respectful heed to every
word he uttered, which cannot fail to please the
minds even of those the least accessible to ordinary
adulation. With a glance pregnant of meaning,
and an admonition strongly urged, although its
import could not be distinguished by the by-standers,
Hampden turned from Lord Digby and announced
his readiness to walk, flinging his cloak
in several folds over his left arm, and bringing
round his rapier's hilt to meet his grasp if needed
—precautions not uncalled for in those times of
fierce and virulent commotion.

As they passed down the stairs, the men in
waiting recognised their masters, and fell at once
into their places; two moving on in front with
lighted links or flambeaux, necessary in those days,
when the most frequented thoroughfares of the metropolis
could boast few lamps but those which
graced the residence of some great noble—and
two stepping along three paces in the rear, their

eyes warily moving to and fro, and watching with
keen scrutiny the air of every passenger who met
or overtook them; and their hands in frequent contact
with the pommels of their swords. For, notwithstanding
the eulogium passed some years before
by a French resident of high distinction on the
orderly and peaceful regulation of the English capital,
in honourable contrast to the debauched and
dangerous turbulence of Paris, party spirit at this
time ran to such a height, and tumults were so constant
between the factions recently accommodated
with distinctive titles of cavaliers and roundheads—
tumults in which much blood was spilt and even
some lives lost, the sturdy citizens resisting with
their bats and cudgels the rapiers of the disbanded
officers and other desperadoes ever to be found
about the palace of Whitehall—that few, whose
purses could maintain such followers, esteemed it
safe to walk the streets by night without their
armed attendance; particularly such as were obnoxious
to assault, or insult at the least, in consequence
of party eminence or of political renown.
At a few steps distance from the house they encountered
a stout body of the train-bands, well
equipped with muskets, swords, and bandoleers,
forming a portion of the guards which, on the
news of the attempt against Argyle and Hamilton,
the commons had required to be detailed for their
protection by the Earl of Essex, at that time general-in-chief
on this side Trent; and to this it might
perhaps in some degree be owing, that during their
walk homeward no circumstance of annoyance or
attack occurred to interrupt the converse of these
high-minded men; who, though but newly and imperfectly
acquainted, already felt, each for the
other, that reverential admiration which is often
the precursor to familiar friendship. At Ardenne's
lodging door, with feelings of increased respect,
and with renewed promises of a meeting on the
morrow, they then parted—the one hastening to
some nightly conclave, there to deliberate with his
associate patriots on measures rife with England's
weal—the other to stretch his limbs upon a sleepless
couch, and ponder the effects of his accession
to the popular party on his own fate and fortunes.
Kind sleep, however, came at last, to seal up for a
little space the sources of his deep disquietude, and
to allay, until another sun should wake him to fresh
struggles, fresh anxieties, the feverish tumults of
his bosom. Still, so engrossing was the subject
which last had occupied his mind before he sunk
into slumber, and so powerful the operation of his
spirit even while the body was buried in what
seemed absolute oblivion, that scarcely had the
earliest indications of the wintry twilight crept
through the fogs of the near river ere he awoke,
and, starting instantly from his bed, began to do his
garments on, summoning the while his sluggard
followers to prepare his morning meal. But, notwithstanding
all his haste, so gloomy was the
dawning, and so late, at that drear season, the uprising
of the sun, that he had scarce the time to
snatch a hasty morsel before his horses were announced
to bear him to St. Stephen's, and, almost
at the self-same instant, two gentlemen to speak
with Master Ardenne!—and, with the word, John
Hampden entered the apartment, accompanied by
a person of most “unusual” and forbidding aspect.
Austere, fanatical, and gloomy he might have been
pronounced at the first sight by any person moderately
skilful at deciphering men's characters from
the expression of their features. His dress would
not, perhaps, entirely bear out the charge—for such,
and a most grave one, was it deemed by the wild
cavaliers—of puritanism; for, although uniform
and rather grave in colour, it yet was cut with attention
to the prevailing mode, as well as to the
setting off a person infinitely less ungainly than his
countenance was harsh and extraordinary. His
hat, too, which he carried in his hand, was decorated
with a feather, and his sword hung from a
shoulder-knot adorned with fringe and tassels. Before,
however, Edgar had well surveyed the stranger,
he was addressed by his companion of the previous
evening. “We have, I fear, intruded somewhat
on your privacy,” he said, “at this unwonted
hour, I and my good friend, Harry Vane the younger;
whom I beseech you, Master Ardenne, know as
such; right soon, I trust, to stand in similar relation
to yourself; but we were both desirous of your
company this morning to the house, and I would
fain propose that you shall for the present occupy
a seat nigh mine. Till you shall be in some degree
accustomed to the usages and method of the
house, it may be my experience shall in somewhat
profit you; and I fear not to make this offer, seeing
that, should you find hereafter that your conscience
may not justify your being one of us, I
shall provide that none may look on you as a defaulter
from our party—and I have heard and seen
enough, methinks, already of your character and
bearing to know that, even should you differ from
us as to the quality or manner, you are not like to
be against us as to the needfulness of some reform;
so that to be seen companying one so hateful to the
courtly faction as John Hampden, shall in no sort
prevent you of advancement.”

“Most thankfully,” said Edgar, after exchanging
courtesies with Vane, “do I accept your offer;
the rather, that as yet I know not, though I fain
would learn, the persons of many among your famous

orators—and for the rest, my vote will not,
nor my opinion either, be affected anywise by sitting
in this place or that. But now, if I mistake
not, time is urgent, and we should be on our way.
Ride you, fair gentlemen? My horses wait even
now; but if you walked thus far I shall dismiss
them—”

“We came on horseback, and it is indeed full
time we were at the house; the bells rang nine
some time ere we arrived,” replied Sir Harry.
“We will, if it so please you, get us at once to
horse.”

The pace at which they rode, when they had
mounted, prevented the possibility of any serious or
connected conversation, and but few minutes were
consumed in the brief gallop that brought them to
the low-browed portal of St. Stephen's. The privates
of the civic guard on duty at the door presented
arms, as if to some high officer, as the patriot
leaders passed them; and it was not long ere
they were seated all together in the body of the
house, at no great distance from the speaker's chair.
The galleries were crowded, as it seemed, wellnigh
to suffocation, not with the ordinary idlers who resorted
thither only to dissipate the tedium of an
hour not otherwise employed, but with men whose
anxious faces, and limbs that almost trembled with
excitement, announced the deep and painful interest
they took in the debate, which had commenced
already; and with a spirit so unusual at the opening
of a measure as might be held a sure prognostic of
the fiery and determined ardour with which it would
be carried on ere it might come to question. At
the moment when they entered, Hollis was on his
legs, urging with logical and beautiful precision the
absolute necessity of fixing, and on grounds so sure
that they should never more be moved the limits

between right constitutional prerogative and absolute
despotic power—pointing out the gradual and
successive innovations by which the ruling monarch
had encroached on all the liberties, both civil
and religious, of the English people—the tampering
with jesuited papists—the evident dislike to
parliaments—the most illegal levyings of money
by violent and arbitrary contribution—the billeting
of irresponsible and lawless soldiery on private
householders—the imprisoning of members contrary
to privilege of parliament, for words or sentiments
expressed therein—“One of whom,” he proceeded—“one
noble, and eloquent, and wise, and
loyal—than whom no better subject breathed the
breath of life within the girt of the four seas that
compass Britain—DIED—miserably died—for want
of natural refreshment! Whose blood,” he added,
in loud and pealing tones, that woke an echo in the
breast of every free-souled man—“whose blood
of life, untimely and unrighteously dried up, still
cries—cries even from the dungeon-walls wherein
yet lies the mouldering clay whence persecution
drove the free and fearless spirit—still cries, I say,
to every English heart—cries, trumpet-tongued,
for vengeance!” Wildly and fiercely rose the
mingled shout—for it was nothing less—of approbation
and disgust. “Eliot!” exclaimed one bolder
than the rest, making aloud the application which
all had tacitly perceived; “Eliot! the murdered
Eliot!” while the hall rang with diverse cries of
“Treason!” “Vengeance!” “Order!” the latter
word prevailing gradually, even as the rest subsided,
till the orator again obtained a clear field for
his manly elocution. With a lower voice and less
impassioned manner, he proceeded to recount a
train of grievances that seemed to defy enumeration—the
new and unfair tax of ship-money—the
seas ill guarded, and the mariners left naked to the
violence of Turkish pirates—the depopulating of
the city, so to raise enormous fines—the seizing
of the merchants' money in the mint—the shameless
project of brass coinage—the barbarous and
reckless censures of self-constituted courts—“with
their imprisoning and banishing—their stigmatizing,
gagging, scourging, and mutilating—ay! I
said mutilaling!” he went on, with energy befitting
well his subject—“mutilating the free limbs
of uncondemned and unoffending Britons! And I
say this,” he cried, louder and clearer yet, “I say
this, not of an Ottoman Divan—not of a Spanish
Inquisition—but of an English Chamber!—of a
Star Chamber HERE! Here, in the land of Magna
Charta!—Here, where the code of Alfred is not as
yet forgotten or extinct! A chamber judging not
by law, and trying not by jury! A chamber
forcing men to yield their substance to be wasted
in the raising armies and equipping fleets—for
what?—what, but to compel their fellows, their
Protestant and pious brethren, to worship Him
who made them, according, not to conscience nor
to faith, but to the will of painted potsherds!—
scarlet iniquities!—hoary and venerable sins!—
wolves in sheep's clothing!—faithless and hireling
shepherds, hounding the dogs upon the flock which
they should guard and cherish!—prebends, and
deans, and bishops!” And, amid a tumult of applause,
the popular and weighty orator resumed his
seat, while Hyde uprose—not, as it seemed, to answer,
but to palliate, to palter, to procrastinate; for
not once did he summon courage to question or
deny that which no earthly wit or wisdom could
disprove. And fiercely as the measure was discussed,
it was yet most remarkable that not one of
the royal partisans, maintaining, as they did most
resolutely, the debate from morning till past midnight,
spoke so much as a word to the denial of
these charges—urging alone the wantonness of
representing with such sharp reflections things,
some of which already were amended, and others
in fair state of promise toward adjustment—the
impolicy of alienating more the good-will of the
king, now well disposed to gracious reformation—
or, above all, the wickedness of thus infusing jealousies,
and strife, and discord into the bosom of a
state at this time flourishing, as some had the audacity
to add, beyond all previous precedent in the
fair growth of freedom. All this made forcible impression
on the clear mind of Ardenne, as he listened
with enthusiastic feelings, it is true, but still
with calm discrimination, to the successive bursts—
sometimes of eloquence, thrilling, sublime, and almost
superhuman in its majesty—sometimes of
coarse, fanatical, and phrensied ravings—while Glyn
and Maynard, Cromwell and Pym, and lastly, the
unrivalled Hampden, advocated this great measure
—equals all, if not in perspicuity of argument or
vividness of torrent elocution, if not in talent or
ability, at least in truth and fervour, and in that single-minded
earnestness which proved past doubt
their genuine and deep sincerity. At first he waited
with strong interest the rising of some champion
who should turn, or at the least dispute, the triumph
with the speakers of the liberal party; then,
as one after one they took their places at the table,
and spoke their speeches, varied in vigour and in
brilliance, but monotonous in argument, or rather in
the want of it, a sense of disappointment overcame
him; and by slow degrees the strong conviction
gained, that the cause must be indeed vicious and
feeble for which its most devoted favourers, wise,
eloquent, and witty as confessedly they were, had
nothing to advance beyond what he had that day
heard with mingled feelings of contempt and wonder.
Hours flew past like moments; and, before
Edgar knew that it was noon, evening fell dark on
the discussion; then, neither party willing to adjourn,
candles were called for, and the strife of
words went on, waxing more wild and fierce as
each successive speaker added his mite of fuel to
the fast-kindling blaze. Meantime the house grew
thinner, as the weary and the weak, the delicate in
health or frail in years, reluctantly departed, actually
worn out by the lassitude that succeeds ever
to unnatural excitement; and the arena of the mental
gladiators became more open to their virulent
contention. And still, at each succeeding pause,
the liberal party seemed to gain in strength—the
mighty hum of approbation rose more audibly at
every bold and popular sentiment; while the cheers
of the diminished royalists now failed to rouse their
flagging and disheartened orators. So wondrous
was the prevalent excitement, that it drove even
the calm, dispassioned blood of Ardenne dancing
through all his veins like streams of liquid fire;
and he found himself ere long lending his breath
to swell the shout of admiration that followed every
sentence uttered by the latter speakers. At length
the house divided on the passing of the bill; and
however certain the result had seemed while distant,
so thickly mustered the opponents of the
measure, that many an honest heart fluttered in
doubt, and many a face of England's noblest sons
was dark as midnight with despondency. During
the moment of confusion which always must occur
at such a crisis, a whisper fell upon the ear of Edgar—a
low, stern whisper, not addressed to him,
nor at that instant comprehended—uttered, as he
fancied, in the sneering tones of St. John. “Look
now!” it said—“look now, friend Oliver, to your
most promising recruit!” The answer came,
though he saw not the speaker, in the harsh voice
of Cromwell—“Nay, verily! but do thou look—
and thine eyes shall see the truth of that I told
thee!”

All, at the time, passed with the speed and nearly
with the tumult of a whirlwind; nor, although afterward
he sometimes deemed the words had reference
to himself, did they then penetrate beyond his
outward ear. Without a momentary doubt, a
thought of hesitation, Edgar stepped forth, and
sealed the downfall of his private fortunes by the
vote which he recorded in the cause of England's
liberty. A small majority of but eleven voices
passed that eventful bill, the loss of which would
have exiled hundreds—the best and wisest of the
land—driving them forth to seek, amid the snowclad
wilds of the New-England shore, what they
had then despaired at home—“freedom to worship
God.”

Scarce had the hearty cheering which followed
this announcement ended, ere Hampden rose again,
to move “that there might be an order entered for
the present printing of it”—and straightway, as if
all that had preceded it were but the prelude and
slight skirmish which so generally leads to a pitched
battle, a debate—if that which was all animosity,
and virulence, and fury can be called debate—ensued,
which speedily effaced all recollection of the
previous struggle, and had wellnigh steeped the
hands of the contending factions in each other's
gore. Hyde started to his feet the first, praying
that he might have permission to enter his protest
—believing, as he said, such printing of the bill,
without concurrence of the lords, to be alike unprecedented
and illegal; and, ere he had well ended,

up sprang Jeffry Palmer, a member of high
standing in the house for wisdom and experience,
no less than for distinguished talent, with flashing
features and a voice that quivered with hot passion,
moving “that he likewise might protest!” The
mildest and most stately of demeanour among the
assembled counsellors might be seen with bloodshot
eyes, and tones husky and cracked with clamouring—and
the more sullen and fanatical sitting
with teeth hard set, and hands upon their hilts, as
if but waiting for a voice to cry “The sword of the
Lord and of Gideon,” or some other text of warlike
and blood-thirsty import, before they should betake
them, in their own language, to the carnal weapon.
So critical, indeed, was the conjuncture of affairs,
and to such lengths had private pique and public
animosity been carried, among men all armed in
token of their gentle birth, that, writing coolly in his
journal after the heat and passion of the contest
had gone by, Sir Philip Warwick has recorded,
“that when they voted it I thought we had all sat
in the valley of the shadow of death; for we, like
Joab and Abner's young men, had catched at each
other's locks, and sheathed our swords in each other's
bowels, had not the sagacity and great calmness
of Mr. Hampden, by a short speech, prevented
us, and led us to defer our angry debate until next
morning.” And so in truth it was; for at two of
the clock past midnight, when he saw that nothing
could be hoped in the then temper of the house,
that wise and upright statesman moved an adjournment
until two of the next afternoon, prescribing
motives so replete with good sense and good feeling,
that none so stubborn as could, with any show
of right, gainsay him.

Worn out and wearied, body and mind alike,
with the protracted contest, men of both parties

mingled hurriedly as they flocked homeward; and
again it was the chance of Ardenne strangely
enough to be ear-witness to a conversation between
Cromwell and Lord Falkland. The former
he had joined, hard by the foot of the great
staircase, desiring in some degree to cultivate relations
with a man whose words and aspect had imbued
him with a feeling which he could not well
account for or define, but which in after days he
mentioned as a prophetic awe, for that he was in
presence of a spirit mightier than his own. The
latter overtook them suddenly, and was passing
onward at the first without addressing either, till
he caught the eye of Cromwell. “Ha!” he said,
with a quiet smile, not wholly free from irony—
“Ha! Master Cromwell, think you there hath been
a debate to-day?”

“Another time,” replied the puritan—“another
time, and I will take thy word—but verily, I say to
you—verily, as the Lord Jehovah liveth, had this
remonstrance been rejected, then had I sold mine
all of worldly substance on the morrow—ay! and
had taken up my staff, and girt me with my sword
upon my thigh, and never had seen England any
more!”

“Nor you alone, perchance!” answered the
youthful noble, after a moment of reflection. “Methinks
I have heard others named for a like resolution!”

“Perchance!—Me no perchance!” cried Oliver,
with a triumphant smile. “Had the malignants
carried it, I tell you that their victory had robbed
old England of her trustiest spirits! But now, my
lord, mark well my words!—and you too, friend—
if that you be, as I do partly think you are—and if
you be not, and I be in error, then may the Lord
enlighten and amend you—a friend to liberty, mark

well my words! There shall be no stint more, nor
let, nor hinderance! Papists and tyrants in this
soon-to-be-regenerated land shall no more hold dominion!
The name of Englishman, now scorned
and scoffed at throughout Europe—you, Edgar
Ardenne, you do know the truth of that which I
aver—shall be as far and wide revered as ever was
the name of antique Roman! For verily I tell ye
—and I tell ye truth—that now the Lord's good
time hath come, when he shall choose him out a
MAN! I say not whom—nor were it meet that I,
the vilest and most worthless of his instruments,
should judge whom the Lord listeth to appoint—
but verily, I say, a MAN, who shall bring mighty
things to pass in Israel!”

8. CHAPTER VIII.

After that mighty trial of the strength of parties—the
bill of general remonstrance—had passed
through the house, there followed a short pause—a
lull, as it were, in the loud tempest of commotion
—a breathing-space snatched from the midst of
battle. With the exception of a short and somewhat
turbulent debate on the day following that of
the main question, originating in a wish on the part
of the puritanic leaders to punish those who had

protested on the previous night, but resulting merely
in a penalty of form inflicted on one person, Jeffry
Palmer—the commons seemed to relax in the vigour
of their defensive warfare against the crown.
The bill for regulation of the militia and prevention
of forcible impressment, unless in case of actual
invasion, was, it is true, brought forward, but without
any of that inveterate and rancorous spirit
which had signalized their earlier measures. The
king, on his return from Scotland, was received—
chiefly in consequence of the exertions of Sir Richard
Gourney, the lord mayor of London, an active
and uncompromising loyalist—with loud, if not sincere,
manifestations of welcome and affection—was
feasted at the Guildhall with more than ordinary
splendour, and hailed, as he passed to and fro the
city, with thundering acclamations by the wavering
and worthless populace. A farther triumph still
awaited him in the address presented at his residence
of Hampton Court, by aldermen deputed
from the city, requesting him to take up his abode
among them, and to hold his court, as heretofore,
in his palace of Whitehall. This loyal and well-timed
address—reputed, as it was, to be distasteful
in no small degree to parliament—was graciously
accepted; the deputies all knighted, and the request
granted joyfully. The bills, moreover, most obnoxious
to the king—that principally which would
exclude the bishops' votes—made but slow progress,
and, even should it pass the commons, was
not expected to receive the sanction of the lords.
Falkland and Colepepper, heretofore active members
of the reforming party, although moderate and
wary, now having taken office openly—the former
being secretary of state in lieu of Vane, the latter
chancellor of the exchequer—held nightly conferences
at the house of Hyde for the well and
wisely ordering the shaken and dismantled principles
of government; and would, as it seems probable,
have met with eminent success in their beneficent
and patriotic measures, had it not been for
secret influences and the prevalence of counsellors
behind the throne, unseen and unsuspected, but exercising—and
for ends most infamous and selfish—
a power, to which, unhappily for him and for his
kingdom, the mind of Charles, easily led, and prone
to arbitrary counsels, though obstinate and inaccessible
to aught of argument unsuited to his own
opinions, yielded complete obedience. Such was
the state of matters—things gradually looking
brighter and more bright for the royal party, and
the remonstrant leaders, Hampden especially, not
only becoming less violent in their opposition, but
beginning to judge more favourably of the king's
motives and intent—when the insane and childish
protest of the bishops, instigated to it by the proud
and angry Williams, was sent forth, declaring “all
laws, orders, votes, resolutions, and determinations
already passed, or such as shall hereafter pass,
during their absence from that most honourable
house”—compulsory, as they affirmed it—“null
and of none effect.” The consequence was an
immediate and almost unanimous vote, both of the
lords and commons, for the committal of the prelates
to the tower—one solitary member only so far
opposing it, as to declare that he believed them utterly
insane, and therefore recommended Bedlam,
rather than the tower, as a fit place for their detention.
Then came reports of plots—rumours of aggressions
meditated on the lower house—doubts,
and despondencies, and wrath, and panics! It was
believed on all sides, that, without confident assurance
of support, the bishops had not dared to rush
to such extremities. Petitions were poured in from
every quarter! One from the city, setting forth
that, since their loyal gratulations on his majesty's
return had been misconstrued as though they would
disown the doings of the parliament, they now declared
their full resolve to live and die with them
for the good of the commonwealth. Addresses
multiplied, and were accompanied, even to the palace,
by such crowds, that, in a message to the common
council, the king complained of the tumultuous
assemblages daily increasing, to the disturbance of
his palace of Whitehall. On the same day the
parliament petitioned him to grant to them a guard,
commanded by the Earl of Essex—that detailed
for their protection during his absence in the north
having been instantly disbanded on his late return
—on account of a malignant party now daring
openly to threaten them with violence. To this
request, reasonable as after events proved it to have
been, the self-willed monarch returned a negative,
though offering that such a guard should wait on
them—under a leader of his own choice, utterly
subservient to his will—“as he would be answerable
for to Almighty God!” This proposition they
of course declined, perceiving, doubtless, that the
guard so ordered would be more like to militate
against their liberties, if not their persons, than to
defend them from external outrage. It was upon
the very day that followed this insidious offer—for
such it must be deemed—that, urged by his worst
counsellor, the false and faithless Henrietta, to that
most rash and headlong step which rendered his
affairs for ever irretrievable, and reconciliation with
his subjects hopeless—elated still by his reception
in the city, and heedless of the daily proofs of public
feeling and opinion, he went on to commit his
last and desperate aggression on the privilege of
parliament—an aggression! which, had they tamely
borne, his throne would have been fixed for ever
on the firm basis of despotic rule, and England
would have lain a fettered captive at his tyrannous
footstool. It was on the next day, while the protestation—that
he would be answerable to Almighty
God for the safe-guarding of their liberties and persons—was
yet fresh on his lips, that he struck that
blow at the very existence of parliaments, which,
had it fallen as intended, must have destroyed them
root and branch. For, on the afternoon of that
eventful day, Herbert, the king's attorney-general,
entered the house of peers, then sitting, and, drawing
out a paper in the king's own writing, read it
aloud; by which the Lord Kimbolton, present there
and then—and of the commons, Denzil Hollis, and
Sir Arthur Hazlerig, Pym, Strode, and Hampden,
stood each and all accused of treason, as conspirators
against the king and constitution. The peers
sat actually panic-stricken and aghast at this tremendous
stroke of folly and misgovernment, hearing
in sullen silence the grave accusation, while
Kimbolton, springing to his feet, with eloquent and
strenuous indignation, professed his total innocence;
nor was there any lord so hardy to so
much as move for his committal on his majesty's
behalf, Meanwhile the commons' house was entered
by the king's sergeant, demanding that the
speaker should deliver up the bodies of the members
named above, to answer to a charge of treason—bearing
no warrant or authority from magistrate
or counsellor, but acting solely at the king's
behest, and without intervention of the law. News
came at the same instant that the private lodgings
of those members had been visited by royal messengers,
their trunks and studies sealed up, and
their papers violently seized. With bold and masculine
resolve, well suited to the peril of the crisis,
did the house meet this haughty and high-handed
insolence! The sergeant, having gone through his
message, was desired to avoid the chamber; but
word was sent the monarch by a deputation, assuring
him those members should be instantly forthcoming
so soon as any legal charge should be preferred
against them—the house declaring, by a powerful
vote, those violent acts of seizure breaches
of privilege, audacious, and illegal!—empowering
their members to resist; calling on all men to abet
and aid them in resisting such attempts upon their
liberties as freeborn Britons; and instantly adjourning
for the night until the wonted hour on the
morrow.

It was at a late hour in the evening of this
fatal day that several ladies of the court, richly
and splendidly attired, might have been seen collected
in a proud saloon, decked with the master-pieces
of Vandyke and Rubens, with tapestries of
Gobelins and Arras hangings, with cabinets of buhl
and marquetry, buffets of antique golden plate and
yet more costly porcelain, and all those priceless
luxuries which mark a royal dwelling. Among
this glittering group, and seemingly its principal,
was one—a lady of low, slender stature, and a
shape slightly awry, though, by skill of her tire-woman,
this defect was so disguised as to be scarce
perceptible. Her hands were delicate, and gemmed—as
were her ears, her neck, the bosom of her
robe, and the rich volumes of her jet-black hair—
with Indian brilliants. Her features were agreeable
and sprightly, yet such as could not properly
be praised as regular or beautiful; a pair of bright
black eyes and a coquettish smile forming their
chief attraction. Her conversation, lively, and perhaps
even brilliant, though flippant and unguarded,
was listened to by her attendant ladies, and by the
only cavalier admitted to the presence—a man of

noble bearing, easy yet dignified, and withal in
person eminently handsome—with an attention so
profound that it denoted—even without the bended
knee and the averted back—the speaker to be one
of royal rank. Music and cards were in the chamber,
and a most lovely girl, of some seventeen or
eighteen years, was dancing to the amatory strains
of some concealed musician, in a style which would
be now esteemed far too voluptuous, if not absolutely
meretricious, to be performed by the chaste
limbs of ladies, or looked upon by modest eyes.
Yet neither lansquenet, nor the soft melody, nor the
exciting graces of the beautiful dancer, appeared
sufficient to banish some uneasiness which lowered
over that fair company. The brow of Henrietta,
for she it was, was dark and gloomy, much against
its wont, and her ill-humour had been so far contagious
as to affect her bright companions with all
the outward signs of discontent and sorrow. While
she was talking earnestly to the Lord Digby, now
—since the flight of Jermyn, her adulterous paramour—her
most beloved and trusty counsellor, a
short and hasty step was heard without, accompanied
by a slight bustle, as if some more distinguished
personage had suddenly and by surprise
come on the unexpectant chamberlains and pages,
sole inmates of the antechamber. The door of
polished oak flew open, and, bearing evident marks
of discomposure in his lip depressed and overshadowed
brow, a gentleman of graceful presence entered
the apartment. Of that time of life when the
rashness and the fire of youth are tempered by the
sedateness of increasing years, although the face
has lost no trait of its attraction, nor the limbs of
their alert and agile motion, Charles Stuart—for the
new-comer was no other—was of a middle height,
but strong and well proportioned, excepting that
his legs were triflingly bowed outward, a circumstance
which, while detracting somewhat from the
grace and symmetry of his appearance, was favourable
more than otherwise to his accustomed exercise
of horsemanship—to which, indeed, it might
have been in some sort owing. His visage, of a
just and oval form, was pleasing, although dark-complexioned;
his features regular and comely,
with a full dark eye; gentle, and somewhat dull in
its expression, unless its owner were aroused to sudden
anger, when it could kindle up and flash as
brightly as the keenest; he wore mustaches, somewhat
unusually large and curling upward, with a
small pointed beard of that precise and formal cut
which is so often met with in the portraits of Vandyke.
The most remarkable trait, however, of his
whole appearance, was that continual cloud of mild
and softened melancholy from which his dignified
and stately aspect rarely or never brightened; for,
even when he smiled, it was a faint and transient
flash, scarce clearing up the gloom of that accustomed
sadness which brooded over his countenance—although
his disposition was cheerful more
than otherwise, and, if not buoyant, certainly neither
mournful nor despondent—and which, as fanciful
and superstitious men have oftentimes imagined,
is ominous of an untimely end. His dress,
of plain black velvet, slashed and lined with satin,
differed in nothing—save that upon the left side of
his cloak glittered the diamond star belonging to
the order of the garter—from the garb of any private
gentleman. He wore his hat above his sable
hair, long-curled and flowing, and in his hand he
carried a strong cane or ferule, with a crutch head
of gold, which he struck passionately upon the carpet
as he entered.

“The undutiful, disloyal varlets!” he exclaimed,

in tones of strong excitement. “The false, rebellious
knaves!—to deal thus with their sovereign!”
—and for several moments he paced to and fro the
room, regardless of the eager entreaties of his affrighted
wife to speak the cause of his distemperature.

“A message!” he burst forth at length, but in
a voice broken and faltering with passion. “To
me! to me a message! I tell you, Marie, an' they
have their will, I may indeed be called your majesty—be
served upon the knee—be waited on bareheaded—but
I shall be no more a king—nay, ten
times less the master even of myself, than the most
lowly gentleman in all my wide dominions. But
so shall it not be!—No! By God—never!” and
in a few disjointed sentences he told her how he
had demanded of the parliament the bodies of six
members, on a charge of treason against himself
and them—and had received, not prompt obedience
to his orders, but a message!

“And is it possible,” she cried, artful and evil
woman that she was, in feigned astonishment and
indignation—“and is it possible, my lord, that you
—you, heir to such a line of mighty sovereigns—
you, monarch of Great Britain—will be thus braved
and thwarted—will be controlled, defied, and trampled
on by such a scum of low and scurvy fellows
as this parliament? That you will brook to
have your crown robbed of its brightest jewels of
prerogative—your sceptre wrested from your hands
without one struggle? Would—wretched princess
that I am—oh, would to God that I had tarried in
my own glorious France, or that I had been wedded
to a MAN!”

“Madam, go to!” the king retorted sharply—
for, all uxorious as he was, and prone to hold her
slightest words as mandates to his will, his temper,
naturally hasty and unpliant, was aggravated now,

even beyond its wont, by the commingled influence
of anger and irresolution. “Be silent—and dare
not impugn our energy and courage. England and
you shall know, and that right speedily, that neither
will Charles Stuart brook insolence at home,
nor usurpation of his rights abroad! And for these
—rash and reckless rogues—they too shall learn
that I am yet a king!”

“Well said!—well said, my gracious sovereign!”
exclaimed Digby, with an exulting voice
and an elated eye. “Better to crush at once this
spawn of venomous and vicious serpents in the dark
den wherein they have engendered, than one by
one to scotch them, when they shall have crawled
forth to pollute the blessed daylight, and swelled
from grovelling reptiles to the full growth of rampant
dragons!”

“In this,” cried Henrietta—“in this most noble
wrath, again I recognise the worthiest, the most
high-souled of men! To-morrow shalt thou pull
these vile rogues by the ears from out their infamous
cabal! Else never look me in the face
again!”

“Brave girl,” replied the facile king, ruing already
his late burst of anger—“Brave, brave Marie,
and beautiful as brave!” and, throwing one arm
round her waist, he led her to a sofa at the farthest
end of the saloon, where, seating himself at her
side, he hung, with all the manifest and ardent passion
of a boy-lover over the wily Delilah, who—
prodigal in secret to another than himself of her
voluptuous charms—had yet the perfidy, and with
it too the power, to woo him, by a scanty and reluctant
show of public fondness, to measures, her
only interest in which was to bring back a banished
lover to her guilty arms—how ruinous soever they
might be, she recked not, to her too trusting husband.

9. CHAPTER IX.

During the first part of the night which followed
this aggression of the monarch, the city was all tumult
and confusion—men running to and fro, in
crowds or singly, conversing eagerly with white
and panic-stricken visages—women, increasing,
with their shrill and anxious voices, the wild din—
and children, long hours past the wonted time
when they should have been sleeping peacefully in
their warm chambers, wandering to and fro, with
looks of frightened and inquiring wonderment cast
upward toward the agitated features of their parents;
but the necessity of rest will conquer even
the quickest and most moving causes of excitement;
and ere the stars began to pale in the cold,
frosty sky, the thoroughfares of the metropolis
were quiet and deserted as though no turbulence
of party strife had ever interrupted their security
and silence. The morning broke in its due season,
and the only thing observable in the demeanour of
the groups who gradually filled the streets, passing
this way or that, as men engaged in their accustomed
avocations—in their pursuits of profit or of
pleasure—was an air of general and pervading

sternness—not merely gloom, but resolute and
dark determination. There was no light or trifling
conversation! no jests! no laughter! Whatever
of discourse seemed absolutely needful was
couched in brief and pithy sentences, and uttered
in a tone not puritanic nor morose, but sad, and at
the same time full of energy, grave, and severe,
and wellnigh awful in its character. Then, as the
day advanced, the members of the lower house
might be seen hurrying toward St. Stephen's—
some mounted, some on foot, but all accompanied
by at least one retainer; and these were greeted
severally by the multitude with shouts of approbation,
or with groans of censure and reviling, accordingly
as they were known for men of popular
or loyal principles. Meanwhile, in a small chamber
of the palace at Whitehall, richly adorned with
painted walls and splendid oaken carvings, and
overlooking, from its lofty casements, the street
through which the crowds were flowing toward the
parliament, sat Henrietta, with a single lady, and
a page awaiting, near the door of the apartment,
the pleasure of his royal mistress. A frame filled
with embroidery stood before her, at which it seemed
she had but recently been occupied; though now
she held a volume of some French romance, from
which, however, her eyes glanced so often toward
the windows, attracted by the mingled clamours of
applause and hatred, rising at times even until they
penetrated her reluctant ears, as to denote that little
of her mind was given to the wild, witty author
who apparently engaged her. Her eyes were full
of bright and keen excitement; a hectic flush glowed
in a spot of vivid crimson high up on either
cheek, and her hands trembled with a visible and
nervous agitation. Her conversation, also, if the
light and frivolous sentences that fell from her lips
at intervals merited such a title, was broken, interrupted,
and evidently embarrassed by some internal
conflict which she hesitated to disclose. For
a considerable time she struggled to maintain a
semblance of composure; but, as the hours passed
onward, her trepidation became more and more apparent.
At every step that sounded in the long corridors,
at every closing of a distant door, she started;
and once or twice, when the rattle of a carriage
or the clatter of a horse's hoofs appeared to
cease before the gates, she actually hurried to the
balcony and gazed abroad into the town, exposing
herself, as if unwittingly, to the rude stare of the
transient multitudes, who failed to greet her with
the smallest tokens of affection or respect. Twice
or thrice, ere the bells chimed ten, the page in
waiting was despatched to learn whether no tidings
had arrived from parliament—and each time he returned
the bearer of a negative, a peevish exclamation
of disgust escaped her, not unnoticed by the
lady who attended on her privacy. At length, peal
after peal, the steeples rang forth ten, and then,
with an exulting smile, as though she could contain
herself no longer—“Rejoice!” she cried, in
high, triumphant tones—“Rejoice, my Carlisle—
for ere now the king is master in his states—ay!
and his enemies are all in custody!”

“His enemies, your grace?” exclaimed the patriotic
lady, to whom, with indiscretion equalled
only by that of the rash, doting husband whom she
thus betrayed, she had divulged her secret—“His
enemies?”

“His enemies, said I?” returned the queen, in
accents sharper than before. “In truth, then, I
spake wrongly! His traitors, rather! His false,
rebellious, and blood-thirsty traitors—by God's
help, now his captives—Hampden, and Pym, and

all their rabble rout!” And, as she spoke—sweeping
across the room with such a port as would have
well beseemed a Britomart striding upon the prostrate
necks of Romans, in their turn subdued and
humbled—and entering again the balcony, she cast
a wistful glance down the long avenue. But
scarcely had she turned her back before the high
born lady whom she had addressed hastily tore a
leaf from out her tablets, traced on it some half
dozen words, and pleading, on the queen's return,
some casual indisposition, quietly left the chamber.
Ten minutes had not well elapsed ere she re-entered
it—nor would the change in her demeanour
have escaped the close and subtle watchfulness of
her imperial mistress, had not that royal lady been
herself perturbed too deeply to investigate the
mood of others. The Countess of Carlisle's features,
cast in the purest and the calmest mould of
conscious aristocracy, had worn throughout the
morning an expression of grave feminine anxiety,
and her broad, placid eye had followed, with a
quiet yet observing scrutiny, every unwonted
movement, every nervous start, and every change
of colour that had resulted from the queen's excitement;
nor had she tardily discovered that some
dread crisis was at hand—though what that crisis
was, not having been a party to the councils of the
regal circle on the previous night, she might not
even guess. The thoughtless words, however, of
the fickle-minded Henrietta had given her at once
the clew, which her quick apprehension followed,
as it were, intuitively through all its labyrinth;
and she at once availed herself of the discovery she
had made with a degree of cool and present courage,
that, even in that age of prompt and daring
action, failed not to wake the admiration which it
merited. Now, however, when the hardening excitement
had passed over—when the nerves, which
had been strung so tensely to the performance of
her duty, were no longer kept in play—when she
knew that her trusty messenger was on his way,
and past the palace gates already, bearing the
tidings of approaching insult—outrage—and peril
—to the liberties of England's parliament, the majesty
of England's laws, she for the first time trembled,
not for herself, but for her country! She for
the first time began to fear that she might be too
late, and that the blow might have already fallen,
ere her warning should arouse the destined victims
to perception of their danger. Her face was paler
than its wont, and her blue eye, so tranquil in its
usual expression, was slightly anxious. Yet it was
but a little while that her uncertainty continued—
for, ere an hour had elapsed, the queen, whose passions
became more and more enkindled with every
moment of suspense, sending another messenger
to learn whether the houses were in session still,
received for answer that they had just adjourned
until one of the clock, and that the members even
now were passing to their lodgings.

“Heavens!” cried Henrietta, almost in despair
at this unpleasing and most unexpected news—
“Just Heavens! can it be that he hath failed me!”
and casting herself down at length upon a couch,
covered her head with a thick veil, and waited, in
an agonized and speechless fit of mingled hope and
terror, the result of her intriguing machinations.

In the meantime the house, which had assembled
at the usual hour, not altogether unexpectant
of some farther outrage on their privileges, had indeed,
on receiving the well-timed announcement
from the Countess of Carlisle, upon the instant
voted an adjournment; that they might better so
concert plans of resistance to that lawless violence

which they were now too well assured their sovereign
had resolved to perpetrate. It was at this
moment, when all were hastening homeward, that
Ardenne observed Cromwell hurrying to and fro
among the leading favourers both of the popular
and puritanic principles, and whispering to one a
word or two, then passing to another—and, as he
gazed upon his compressed lip, and eye flashing
with almost savage pleasure, he felt, even more
strongly than at any prior moment, the conviction
that this wily person was indeed engaged more intimately
in directing the important springs of party
action, than could have been supposed from the inferior
part which he was wont to play in its ostensible
and open movements. He knew not at the
time, any more than four fifths of the house, what
were the secret news which had so suddenly produced
adjournment; and had, indeed, himself voted
against a measure which he could not comprehend,
although the private hints of Oliver and Hampden
had not escaped his notice; nor could he now conceive
the meaning of the strong excitement which
kindled all who listened to the words of Cromwell,
as it were, with an electric spark. Not long, however,
was he destined to remain in ignorance; for,
with his harsh features even more than commonly
inflamed and ruddy, the puritan approached him.

“Ha!” he said, in a loud, sharp whisper—“Ha!
Master Ardenne; how is this, that you, to whom we
confidently looked for succour, should, in this strait
and peril, have turned against us, consorting with
the men of Belial?”

“I know not, Master Cromwell,” Ardenne replied—“I
know not, in good truth, to what you do
allude; nor have I heard of any strait or peril. I
saw, indeed, that you and Master Hampden were
desirous I should vote for this adjournment; but

seeing no cause wherefore, nor being, so far as I
knew it, your follower or pledged supporter, assuredly
I deemed it best for mine own honour to
abide by the poor dictates of mine own opinion.”

“Call it you then no strait,” asked Oliver, with
a dark sneer upon his lip—“no strait nor peril, that
Charles Stuart should dare come hither with his
accursed cavaliers—with his lewd yeomen and
rakehelly pensioners—seeking out whom they may
devour—having their swords new-whetted, and
their hearts a-fire, to shed the blood of the saints—
should dare come hither—hither, within these privileged,
time-honoured walls—to lay his violent, tyrannical
hands on those with whose salt only we
are savoured?”

“What mean you, sir?—speak out!” cried Ardenne.
“Will he indeed do this? Can he be so
infatuated—so insane?”

“Will Charles Stuart dare it?” said the other;
“say rather what he will not dare, if we, the watchers
and the guardians sitting on the tower, yea! on
the house-top, to give note of coming wo, blow not
the trumpet through the land. Yea! will he come,
and that right shortly—yea! will he come, and if
our hearts be not the stronger—and our arms too,
if need there be—will trample down the liberties
of England unto everlasting!”

“Never! no, never!” exclaimed Edgar, vehemently
moved—“No, never shall he do so! never
while I—if none beside—have sword to wield, and
hand with which to wield it.”

“Ay! is it so?” returned the other, his whole
face blazing out with a triumphant ecstasy—“Ay!
is it so? and would you draw the carnal sword if
it were needed?”

“Would I?” cried Ardenne—“would I unsheath
the sword to guard these holy walls from desecration?

Would I uplift my arm against the hireling
ministers of lawless and despotic violence?—ay,
were those ministers ten thousand sworded spirits!”

“Then fare thee well,” cried Oliver—“then
fare thee well, and hold fast to thy good resolve,
while I go wake the rest to a like sense; above all,
be thou in thy place when we again assemble, and
then call thou me fool and liar, an' thou see not
great things!”

The interval passed speedily away, consumed
in wise and seemly preparation. Notice was despatched
to the lord mayor and corporation of the
threatened danger; the citizens were all admonished
to stand upon their guard; and members
were sent down to the Temple and the Inns of
Court to warn the students that the house was well
aware how they had been already tampered with;
and to command they should not come, on any plea,
to Westminster; and, ere the time appointed, the
house was crowded. Edgar was in his place
among the first; and as he saw the five obnoxious
members calmly resume their seats, as though no
peril threatened them, a mingled sentiment of admiration
and regret thrilled to his heart at the idea,
that, if indeed the king, with his wild, dissolute attendants,
should forcibly attempt to seize them,
they surely would resist, and but too probably be
slaughtered on the very spot which they had made
to ring so often with their proud, patriotic eloquence.
As he thus thought, a new impression
shot with the speed of light into his mind—“If
they be absent—if they be absent when he come—
the fearful consequences may be perchance averted,
which otherwise must, beyond doubt, result
from letting loose a band of reckless soldiery to
rush in, sword in hand, on gentlemen armed likewise,

and almost unanimous to guard their liberties
with life.” And on the instant he arose, and
in a few words, powerful and manly, moved that
the house should grant permission to those members
to withdraw themselves, lest tumult, and perhaps
even worse than tumult, fall of it. “I second
it,” cried Cromwell, starting to his feet—“I second
the most honourable member's motion. Let them
withdraw them straightway to the city until this
tyranny be overpast.” Without a single voice or
vote dissentient, the question then was carried;
and the house gave permission that they might retire;
and, at solicitation from their friends, they instantly
departed. Scarce had the hurry and confusion
consequent on their withdrawal ceased, ere
a dull, trampling noise was heard without, as of a
powerful band of men; a word to halt was given,
and for a while the sound was hushed, the members
sitting stern and silent in their places, disdaining
to show any sign either of wrath or terror.
Again the sounds were heard ascending the great
staircase; and now the clink of steel, as the broad
blades of partisan or halberd clashed together—and
now a shout, “Fall on! Fall on!” mixed with the
shuffling tramp of feet, the jingling of scabbards,
and all the bustle that accompanies a sudden and
disordered march. Nearer and nearer came the
tumult—the lobby was already filled, to judge from
the increasing clatter, with armed intruders; and
now the din of grounded arms rang audibly upon
the ears of the undaunted counsellors. Then for
the first time was a show of passion manifested
among the younger gentlemen—a dozen, at the
least, impetuously started to their feet, and not a
few grasped, with an energy that proved how fearlessly
they would have used them, the hilts of the
long rapiers which all of gentle birth at that time
carried. A single word, however, from the speaker
of the house—a single cry of order, sufficed to bring
them peacefully into their places. But there they
sat, with eyes that actually lightened with strong
indignation, and with that fiery aspect of the gladiator,
which marked how rapturously they would
have plunged into the fiercest conflict. At this instant
was the door thrown open, and a messenger
sent in, who reverentially enough informed the
house that the king was at the door, and that the
speaker was commanded to sit still, with the mace
lying on the board before him. Still not one word
was spoken—not a whisper—not a breath, nor
murmur, through that spacious hall!—and every
man sat fast, with head unmoved, and eyes fixed
sternly straight before him; as if they did not so
much as vouchsafe to cast a glance, still less a
thought, toward the violator of their rights. Had
there been aught of riot or confusion—had there
been aught of armed and passionate resistance—
nay, had there been any fear, or doubt, or wavering,
it then had been an easier task for the misguided
king to carry out his frantic and destructive
purpose. But hard it is, and most revolting to all
human feelings, to outrage and assault where there
is neither terror nor resistance. It was perhaps a
minute after the messenger retired, before aught
new disturbed the silence that prevailed unbroken
beneath the vaulted roof—a minute, fraught with
the thronged sensations of unnumbered years—a
minute, that seemed longer than a life to every patriot
seated there, as gravely steadfast as those senators
of early Rome, who waited in their robes of
dignity, and on their curule chairs, the moment
when the Gallic horde should pour out on their
white, unshrinking heads the cups of massacre
and vengeance. Then came a quick, irregular
tread, that readily betokened, by its uncertain time,
the irresolution and anxiety that were at work
within the breast of him who was approaching.
“Enter not, any of ye, on your lives!” was uttered
in the harsh voice of the king, before his person
came in view—an order understood by all who
heard, as it was doubtless meant by him who uttered
it, to be words, empty words, and spoken for
effect! Then, leaning on the shoulder of the palsgrave,
Charles Stuart advanced! Those who stood
nearest to his person might have seen a momentary
pause—a brief, involuntary hesitation—a reluctance,
hardly, perhaps, acknowledged to himself, to cross
what was to be the Rubicon of all his future fortunes;
but so short was the pause, so small the
effort it required to conquer that reluctance, that it
would seem indeed as if—according to the classic
proverb—destined already to destruction, he were
deserted by his sanity of intellect. Perhaps he had
expected fear—abject and tame submission!—had
supposed that he should stride in triumph, unopposed,
and sued to on the bended knee, through
that magnificent assemblage! Perhaps he had
expected anger, indignation, and defiance! But
now, as he looked up those lines of crowded
benches, and met no glance of recognition—encountered
no full front either of wrath or scorn—
but caught alone, row behind row, those stern and
masculine profiles, composed, severe, and passionless—profiles,
averted less in resentment than in
proud, contemptuous sorrow—his wayward spirit
for a moment's space recoiled, and he half wished
the perilous step untaken. It was but for the
twinkling of an eye, however, that his rash mood
of obstinacy failed him; for, without a quiver of
his nerves, a change of his dark features, he strode
across the threshold, about a pace before his foreign
kinsman. The Earl of Roxborough, a tall
and powerful man, armed, somewhat more than
commonly, with a long military sword and heavy
poniard at his belt, had followed close upon his
master's footsteps, until he also stood upon the
threshold; he crossed it not, however, but stood
there, leaning with his whole weight against the
door, which opened outwardly, so that it would
have been impossible for any from within the house
to close it—his right hand resting, as if carelessly,
upon the pommel of his war-sword, and his left
twirling, with a gesture of unbridled insolence, his
long mustaches—while many a fierce, licentious
countenance might be seen glaring from behind
him on the conservators of their country's freedom
with a wild and wolfish aspect of malignant hatred.
The king himself, attired as usual in a plain garb
of sable velvet, wearing no weapon but an ordinary
walking-sword, and carrying in his right hand, together
with his staff, the dark-plumed beaver which
he had doffed on entering, stalked coolly up the
house—the palsgrave following slowly, and, as it
seemed, with a half timid and reluctant step. Still
all was silence!—silence so profound, that, save the
heavy footsteps of the monarch, not a sound could
be perceived—unless it were when from without
some weapon-clang was heard, or some rude threat
or grisly imprecation was muttered in the antechamber
by the desperate attendants of a Lunsford
or a Digby. The face of Charles, grave and even
sorrowful by nature, was something paler than its
wont; but with that sort of paleness which conveys
no thought of cowardice or trembling, but of resolve
immoveable and icy. His mouth was firmly
closed, but not compressed, nor showing aught of
effort! His eye, calm, searching, cold—but keen
and hard as iron! His nostril only of his features
gave token of emotion, or of any feeling hotter than
determination; for it was dilated, wide, and slightly
quivering! Yet was his hand steady as the columns
which upheld the roof above him, and his
stride, now that he stood among his lieges—however
it had been irregular and hasty ere he entered
—was measured, long, and equal.

As he advanced along the floor, he turned his
head from side to side, perusing, with deliberate
and steady glance, the lineaments of every member
whom he passed; and if when at a distance not
one eye had sought him, so when he now stood
close beside them not one eye avoided him. Each,
as Charles came into his line of direct vision, met
his hard gaze with an unblenching and unloving
brow; for not one man—even of those the most devoted
to his will, of those who would have served
him at that moment, who afterward did serve him
with their whole hearts and lives—but was disgusted,
angered, full of deep sorrow, almost of despair.
Little there was, however, of the stronger
and more stormy passions painted upon the brows
of those who sat thus fearlessly, braving the temper
of a king whose wrath was no less lasting and
vindictive than it was hot and sudden. The expression
that prevailed most largely was of mingled
aspect, half pity, half defiance. But when
the tyrant—for that action, if that only, justified
the title—approached the seat of Cromwell—perhaps
at that day scarcely known by name to the
proud sovereign—and his glance fell upon those
grim, ungainly features—then Ardenne witnessed
—for his eye was still attracted, why he knew not,
with a strange sense of fascination toward the puritan—then
Ardenne witnessed that which in after
times he often called to mind, and never without
awe and wonder—a dark conflict—for such it

might indeed be termed—a conflict of eye, countenance,
and bearing, between those men so eminently
thrown together, and blended in their spheres
of good or evil action. The glance of Charles,
when first it fell upon the coarse and most unpleasing
lineaments of Oliver, was instantly averted;
but averted merely as men ever turn the eye
away from objects naturally hateful or unseemly.
At that point of time the face of Cromwell was as
tranquil, as immoveable, as that of his great future
rival; but the tranquillity was no less different, than
is the stillness of a hushed volcano and the peaceful
calm of heaven. The swollen and corded veins
upon the temple—the eyebrows lowered and contorted—the
balls gleaming beneath them with a
fixed and baleful light—the nostril rigidly distended,
and the lips pressed so tightly that they alone
of his whole aspect were of a livid whiteness!
Ere Edgar had the time to think, had there been
any matter yet for thought, the eye of Charles
stole back, half timidly as it appeared, toward that
tiger-like and glaring face. Then, as it met the
sinister and ominous stare of fierce defiance, it
brightened also—vivid, and keen, and with a falcon-like
and noble splendour. For some short
space they gazed—those two undisciplined and
haughty spirits—into each other's very souls—
mutually, as it seemed, conscious at a glance of
irremediable and desperate hostility. The king's
look, quiet, although high and angry, and most unutterably
proud!—Cromwell's, sarcastic, bitter, furious,
and determined—and withal so savagely triumphant,
so mirthful in its dire malignity, that
Ardenne thought he never had beheld a countenance
so fiendishly expressive! And Charles
Stuart's aspect—after a fixed encounter of ten
seconds' space—Charles Stuart's haughty aspect
quailed beneath it; and, as he passed along—for
the whole occurred in less time than were needful
to recite it—he gazed no more around him, but
went directly onward, looking—and that, too,
gloomily—upon the ground, toward the speaker's
chair. But the stern democrat, as conscious that
his genius had prevailed, cast his eyes round him
with an air of loftier and more sublimated feeling
than Edgar had as yet observed him wear. It was
a trifle at the period when it passed, and none but
he have noticed or recorded it; but after times and
after deeds stamped it, no more to be erased, upon
the tablets of his inmost soul. Meanwhile the
king had reached the chair; and Lenthall, the bold
speaker, who had hitherto sat still, as proud and
far more placid than his visiter, arose, and stepped
out stately and cold to meet him. Then the king
mounted to his place, and stood upon the step, but
spake not, nor sat down; and there he stood,
gloomily gazing on the house, with a dark look
of sullen anger, for many minutes—and after he
had looked a great while—“Gentlemen,” he said,
in a high voice, clearly audible, though neither musical
nor pleasing, to the most distant corner—
“Gentlemen of the Commons, I am sorry for this
my cause of coming to you. Yesterday I did send
a sergeant to demand some, who, by my order,
were accused of treason. Instead of prompt obedience,
I received—a message!” and he uttered
the last word with the most concentrated scorn
and insolence—“I must, then, here declare to you,
that though no king that ever was in England could
be more careful of your privileges than I have been
—and shall be—yet, I can tell you, treason hath
no privilege!—and therefore am I come to tell you
that I must have these men, and will, wherever I
may find them!” And, as he spoke, he looked
around the hall with a deliberate air, scanning the
faces of all present, if he might find his men; then,
raising his voice higher yet, he called aloud, till the
roof rang again—“Ho! I say, Master Hollis!—
Master Pym!” No answer was returned, nor any
sound; save an increased and angry tumult in the
lobby, with a brandishing of partisans and a producing
of concealed but ready pistols, so that some
members thought to see the soldiers instantly rush
into the chamber. After a little pause, finding he
got no answer, he turned to the speaker—“Say,”
he exclaimed—“say, Mr. Speaker, be any of these
men here present?” For a moment Lenthall
paused, as doubting whether to hurl his own defiance
and that of the assembled commons into his
very teeth; but, ere the echoes of the monarch's
voice had ceased, he had resolved upon the wiser
and more prudent part, and bending, with most
deferential courtesy, his knee—“I have, sir,” he
replied, “nor eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in
this place, save as this house, whose servant I am
sworn, shall order me. And therefore must I pray
your majesty to pardon me that I return no farther
answer!”

“Ha! sir,” returned Charles, sharply, and with
incipient fury—but a moment's thought convinced
him that the humble answer of the speaker defied
at once and rendered hopeless any charge or violence
against him. “Ha! sir,” again he said, but
in a milder tone—“I do believe my eyes are to the
full as good as yours, and I do see my birds are
flown; but this I tell you, and so look ye to it—I
hold this house to send them to me! Failing of
which, I shall myself go seek them! For, sirs,
their treason is most foul, and such as you shall
thank me, all of you, now to discover. And I assure
you—on a king's word I assure you—I never

did mean any violence, and they shall have fair trial
—I meant not any other!” He waited not for
farther words; perchance he doubted what reply
he might receive to this last false asseveration
—palpably, unquestionably false—for wherefore
brought he his disbanded soldiery, his rude and
ruffian bravoes, with rapier, partisan, and pistol,
into the very precincts of the house? Wherefore,
unless he had designed to hale the accused members
violently forth by the strong arm of tyrannous
authority?

Stepping down from the chair, he walked, uncovered
still, but at a quicker pace than that with
which he entered, toward the lobby; but now, as
he departed, his looks were not turned haughtily
from side to side, but sadly bent upon the floor;
nor was his passage silent as before—for member
after member started up as Charles went past him,
with bent brow and clinched hand; and groans
both loud and deep saluted him. As he came nigh
the seat of Cromwell, the king raised his visage,
haggard now and pale, as with an anxious curiosity
to look upon the man before whose eye he felt himself
to have recoiled—and, as he met it, Oliver
sprang upon his feet, his long tuck rattling in the
scabbard as he rose, and, stamping on the floor
with fury, shouted aloud, in tones not mild nor
measured, the word “Privilege!” A dozen voices
took it up, though not so loudly nor with so marked
defiance as the first daring speaker, and the whole
house was in the wildest and most uncontrolled
confusion. Delightedly would the despotic prince,
had he but dared it, at that moment have cried ON!
—have given the word, expected by his myrmidons,
for massacre and havoc—have bid the swords,
which were already thirsting in their scabbards,
leap forth and drink their fill of that most noble

blood of England. But, thanks to Heaven, he
dared not! There would have been no object
worthy of the risk—no gain to justify the detestation
he would have so heaped upon his head! He
did not dare; and therefore, smothering for the
time his virulent and vengeful fury, he departed—
the door rang heavily behind him; and with no
muttered curses on the head of him who lacked
the spirit to perform what he and they yearned
equally to execute, frustrate of their desired vengeance,
unsatisfied and balked, his hireling desperadoes
filed out from the venerable walls their presence
had so shamefully polluted.

10. CHAPTER X.

The night fell dark as Hades, and tempestuous
withal. The winds wailed mournfully at intervals,
at intervals shrieked out with savage fury; and as
the giant clouds were driven reelingly across the
firmament, blotting the faint light of the winking
stars, fierce bursts of hail and rain came dashing to
the earth, and ceased as suddenly as they commenced.
And ever and anon the thunder growled
remotely, but with a sullen rolling that seemed almost
continuous, such was the length and frequency
of the strong peals—and lightnings flashed on

every side the heaven, now in broad, quivering
sheets of ghastly light, that transiently displayed
the ragged edges of each fleeting storm-cloud in
distinct relief, and now in wavy lines of most intense
and life-like fire, rushing athwart the rack
from zenith to horizon. Yet, turbulent as was the
night aloft the city, and ominous as showed the
gathering of the elements, still more alarming was
the turbulence that reigned in the full streets, and
more portentous was the concourse of the armed
and angry citizens. The train-bands had been
mustered in the early evening, with arquebuse and
pike, their lighted matches gleaming on all sides
through the murky darkness, and the heavy trampling
of their companies everywhere audible, as
they marched to and fro, vainly desirous to allay
the tumult which had arisen instantly on the arrival
of the accused members, seeking protection in
the guarded precincts of the city. From sunset
until dawn the mayor patrolled the streets with
his assistant magistrates, vainly endeavouring to
quell the terrified and savage populace, with whom
each court and alley, from the purlieus of Alsatia
quite to the Tower, was blockaded and beset—all
armed as chance had ordered it, some with the
perfect implements of modern warfare, others with
weapons obsolete and strange, brown-bills, and
glaives, and maces. Chains were made fast
athwart the most frequented avenues; and barricades
of stone and timber, heaped rudely but effectively
together, above which yawned the mouth
of many a ponderous cannon, would have presented
no small obstacles to any who should dare invade
the sacred limits of the city. Huge bonfires
blazed in every quarter, torches and flambeaux
streamed and wavered in each gust of wind, casting
a singular and ruddy glare upon the pallid faces
and unusual weapons of the unwashed artisans who
formed the bulk of the assemblage; though they
were mingled here and there with grave and well-attired
burghers, their morions and gorgets wildly
at variance with their civic garbs and golden chains
—with young and ruffling templars, to whom aught
savouring of frolic or of fight was most congenial
—and with sad-visaged and morose soldadoes, in
suits of buff, tarnished and soiled by service, girded
with broad-swords of unwieldy length, fresh from
the German wars or the Low Countries, then, as in
every after age, the battle-field of Europe—all
keeping up, throughout the livelong night, a dissonance
of tongues as loud and jarring as ever rent
the air around the heaven-defying Babel. At times
a sudden panic would run through the crowd, none
knowing whom to trust or whom to flee—a cry
would ring above the mingled din—“The cavaliers!
The cavaliers! Fly! Fly! The king and his
wild cavaliers are up to fire the city!” and, without
waiting to inquire or to hear, the mob would
rush they knew not whither, trampling the aged
and the feeble under foot, and turning oftentimes
the very weapons they had belted on to guard their
liberties against each other in the blind and reeling
rout. And now, with words of fire and gestures
of defiance, some bolder spirit would brave the
panic-stricken throng, and rally it and lead it back,
with brandished arms and inflamed features, to
meet the foemen who existed only in their imaginations,
maddened with terror and excitement.

Nor was the panic and confusion slighter within
the royal palace. Between the hapless king and
his perfidious consort, distrust—recrimination—
wrath—followed by feigned repentance on the one
hand—uxorious pardon on the other! Among the
counsellors, dismay and doubt—high words, and

mutual reproaches, and all the vehement disorder
that ensues on the adoption and discomfiture of evil
counsels! Digby and Lunsford wearying Charles,
faint-hearted now and dubious, for permission to
assail the city gates, and drag the impeached traitors
forth from their stronghold at point of partisan
and pike!—Others deploring the rash steps already
taken, and protesting against farther violence!—
and some, the nobler and more upright spirits—
Falkland, and Hyde, and their associates—holding
themselves aloof in deep, resentful sorrow, that all
their wisdom had been wasted, and themselves distrusted
and deceived. Never a longer night was
followed by a sadder morning; for, although daylight
calmed the terror and the tumult, it allayed
nothing of the concentrated wrath, diminished nothing
of the jealous apprehensions entertained by
either party. After a short debate, the parliament,
both lords and commons, adjourned for several
days, appointing a committee to sit constantly,
mornings and afternoons, at Merchants' Hall, within
the city walls, where they might be secure from
farther outrage, and free to devise means for vindication
of their members, and safeguard of their violated
rights. Edgar, informed of the commotions,
and anxious for the safety of the city, called for his
horse the moment after the adjournment, and, with
some six or seven followers, well mounted and
equipped, rode up the Strand—a scattered street
at that day, occupied by the suburban dwellings of
the rich and noble, with terraced gardens sloping
downward to the Thames—full of calm resolution,
and intending instantly to volunteer his aid for putting
down the riots, and establishing some governance
of law. When he reached Temple-Bar the
gates were closed with bolt and chain, a powerful
band of musketeers, with gun and bandoleers, manning
its loops, and mustering at every window that
overlooked the area before it. But, at announcement
of his quality and name, the bolts were drawn,
the heavy leaves unfolded, and he entered amid
presented arms and muttered greetings of the sentinels.
With a pleased eye he saw at once that
order was restored; suspicion still prevailed, and
vigilance, but tumult and confusion had given way
to wise and watchful regulation. The shops were
shut, and business was suspended, it is true, and
all men who went forth wore weapons; but the
trained-bands patrolled the streets, with magistrates
at the head of every company, no less to enforce
internal quiet than to resist external force. Scarce
had he ridden twenty yards within the gate ere a
fresh summons roused the wardens, and a king's
messenger, after some parley, was admitted, and
conducted by a file of infantry to hearing of the
aldermen, then sitting at the Guildhall. The business
on which Ardenne came directing him to the
same quarter, and strong anxiety to learn the future
movements of the court still farther prompting him,
he at once wheeled to the rear of this small band,
and, passing onward with them, was ushered in
without delay to the mayor's presence, and, in
consideration of his place in parliament, accomodated
with a seat whence he might witness the
proceedings of the day, and lend his counsel, if
need were, to these the magnates of the city. To
his astonishment, as to that, indeed, of all, the messenger
announced that his majesty was already entering
his coach to wait upon the mayor, when he
had left Whitehall; and that he prayed that dignitary
to call a common council on the instant. Sir
Richard Gourney, the then holder of that office,
although inclined not slightly to the principles of
the decided royalists, disclaiming, as did all the
wiser of the party, any participation in, or knowledge
of, a course which, now that it had failed,
they all professed to disapprove, was careful to
display no symptom of subserviency; perhaps, indeed,
he truly felt that wrong had been committed,
and was sincere, as he was evidently faithful to his
trust, in the determination to maintain inviolate the
privileges of which he was the guardian. The
council was at the time in session, and scarcely
had the messenger withdrawn before the king arrived—not
with the armed and dissolute attendants
who had convoyed him to the halls of parliament,
but with some two or three lords only, and those
of the most moderate among his partisans. The
shouts that ran like wildfire along the crowded
streets, mingled with groans and yells—the cries,
“Privilege! Privilege of parliament!”—announced
his presence at the doors of the Guildhall before
he had alighted from his coach, and clearly proved
the temper of the now thoroughly-aroused and fearless
multitude; while, as a token of the perfect
mastery of the law even at that moment of tremendous
and wellnigh unparalleled excitement, a
daring pamphlet-writer, who had thrown into the
monarch's coach a paper, bearing inscribed the
scriptural watchword, “To your tents, O Israel,”
was instantly committed for contempt. The city
dignitaries rose indeed from their seats on the
king's entrance; they tendered to him all—all, to
the most minute particulars—that was his due of
reverence and ceremonial greeting; but there was
no heart-inspired applause—no loyal, spirit-stirring
cry, “God save the king!”—no smile—no welcome!
Strange it may seem, yet he had hoped indeed, infatuated
man, that he should now succeed in gaining
the authorities to yield their honoured guests
to his demand; and so commenced what he esteemed
a mild, conciliatory harangue, requiring
their surrender—full of false statements of his veneration
and regard, in all past time, for England's
laws and liberties—of his affection for the Protestant
religion—of his enforcement of the penal statutes
against the dreaded papists—and no less full
of promises, unmeaning, insincere, and empty, concerning
his intentions for the future. Little applause
and no obedience followed! Baffled a second
time, and yet more deeply mortified, he left
the Guildhall—but, desirous still of pleasing, and
imagining, short-sighted and deluded prince, that,
by a slender show of condescension, he could efface
the recollection of so many arbitrary acts against
the corporate and individual interests of the city,
he vouchsafed to one—the worse affected toward
his person—of the sheriffs the honour of dining at
his house;—was served, together with his retinue,
with more than courtly luxury—with all respect
and honour, paid, not to himself, but to the station
which he so ill occupied—but with no semblance
of that glad alacrity, that honest and ungrudging
heart-service, which is well worth a world of bended
knees and hollow ceremonial;—and in the evening—harassed
in spirit and fatigued in body, irritated
by the reproachful hootings of the multitude
that jarred, at every instant of his homeward progress,
on his reluctant ear, and hopeless now of compassing
his tyrannical ends—retired to his palace,
there to give impotent and childish vent to his indignant
spleen, by publishing a proclamation against
all men who should presume to harbour or conceal
the persons whom he had previously denounced as
traitors. Days passed away; each marked by
some bold resolution of the commons — by increased
tokens of the deep respect and admiration
entertained by the great bulk of the metropolis toward
the vindicators of its rights—and by some
weak and useless aggravation of his former measures
on the part of the misguided and wife-governed
monarch. A week had scantly rolled above
their heads, before the house, conscious of its own
strength, and knowing the entire impotence of the
king's party, determined to bring back their members
to Westminster, as being men against whom
no legitimate or constitutional charge was pending;
and preparation of unwonted splendour and extent
was made for reconducting them in triumph to
their seats. The news might not escape the ears
of Charles, bruited as it was all joyously abroad
through every class of persons, and pleasing as it
was to nearly all—for not a few, even of those who
heretofore had backed him with their voices and
opinions in all his troubles, and who in after days
as faithfully assisted him with life and fortune,
were not entirely sorry for the occurrence of a
marked reverse, which might, they fondly hoped,
avail to check him in his inordinate and reckless
cravings—cravings which, to their own eyes, they
could not now disguise or palliate—for power, unconstitutional
at least, if not tyrannical and absolute.
Bitter—most bitter—were his feelings, as
he went, ungreeted by one loyal acclamation—his
absence unlamented by one loyal tear—forth from
the palace of his fathers—almost alone in actual
fact, but absolutely so in sentiment—the queen, for
whose sake mainly he had embroiled himself with
his true-hearted subjects, ungratefully and spitefully
upbraiding him, not for the folly of his measures,
but for his failure in their execution—his
courtiers, who had urged him on to every fresh
aggression, and lauded every new caprice, now silent
and dejected—and the very guards who rode
before his coach dispirited and crest-fallen.

Bitter—most bitter—were his feelings; but it
was not with the bitterness of manly and upright
repentance—not with the bitterness upspringing
from the sense of wrong committed, and resulting
in a promise of amendment—but with the bitterness
of discontent and disappointment, of unholy
wishes frustrated, and merited reverses sullenly
remembered. Such were the feelings of that bad
monarch and unhappy man as he drove forth—that
so he might avoid the triumph of his disaffected
subjects—after the shades of early evening had already
gathered dark and cold about the misty
streets, toward Hampton Court, as virtually exiled
from the metropolis of his oppressed and
groaning country, and from the jeoparded, dishonoured
throne of his forefathers, as from the hearts
of his once loving subjects.

But the sun rose upon a nobler and more glorious
spectacle—a spectacle rife with great blessings
for the present, and brilliant omens for the future
—the spectacle of a vast people, free and united!
victorious, not by the sword, nor over slain and mutilated
carcasses—but by the strength of popular
opinion, founded on the broad base of justice—animated
by the deathless love of liberty—and directed
by such a knot of patriots as England in no
other age had witnessed! On came the fair procession,
marshalled by loud, triumphant music, and
the yet louder shouts of honest and exulting myriads;
gay with a thousand flags and banners flaunting
to the wintry sun, which wore, on that proud
morning, his brightest and most gorgeous aspect;
guarded by all the sober strength of civil discipline,
and all the orderly and bright array of the well-trained
militia of the city; not fluttering, indeed,
with tasselled scarfs or many-coloured plumes,
but well equipped with morions of steel, polished

till they shone out like silver, and stout buff-coats,
all service-like and uniform—with their puissant
pikes thick as a grove of pines, their broad heads
glinting back the sunbeams — and arquebuses
clearly burnished as when they left the armory.
Fifty in front they marched, in close and serried
order, striding along with regular and sturdy steps,
rank after rank, each as a single man—with that
erect, undaunted bearing which belongs only to the
free; and with the tranquil eye and calm though
proud expression which mark the disciplined, law-loving
citizen, and not the fierce, unruly democrat.
The companies were all arrayed beneath the civic
banners of their respective wards, and headed by
their captains, mounted well on strong and serviceable
chargers, and gallantly equipped in scarlet
cassocks and steel corslets. Behind this stately
host, preceded by the bearers of his mace and
sword, and all the glittering insignia of city pomp,
Sir Richard Gourney rode along, curbing a splendid
courser, whose footcloth, blazoned with rich
armorial bearings, almost swept the ground, sorely,
as it would seem, against his will, to slow procession
pace; then, two and two, in flowing robes of
scarlet, with chains of gold about their necks, and
tall white feathers floating above their velvet bonnets,
the sheriffs and the aldermen advanced!—and
then, received by acclamations that were heard for
many a mile around, clad in their ordinary garbs,
and wearing in their grave demeanour no tokens
of undue importance or unfitting exultation, the denounced
patriots rode steadily along; and, headed
by their speaker, the whole house of commons followed.
No banners waved above them—no gorgeous
dresses pointed them for public admiration
—no high assumption called the eye to them—yet,
as they swept slowly forward, a band of gentlemen
—mostly of noble, all of reputable birth—chosen
for worth and wisdom to be the delegates of a great
people—of a people the most manly, and intelligent,
and free of the wide universe—they could
not but have attracted the eye and fixed the untaught
admiration of the most stolid or most slavish;
what then must they have done when they
were passing before those whose liberties they had
asserted at the risk of all that men hold dear?

Close trooping in the rear of these another strong
battalion of the train-bands marched—several brigades
of field artillery, huge, cumbrous iron guns,
with tumbrils following and matches lighted, rattled
and groaned over the rugged pavements, and
a long train of well-appointed horse of each denomination
then in use—the heavy cuirassiers, with
helmets, breast and back pieces, poldrons and taslets
of bright polished steel, bearing long two-edged
broad-swords, and pistolets with barrels full
two feet in length—mounted arquebusiers, with
short but ponderous matchlocks and formidable rapiers—lancers,
with no defensive arms save morion
and gorget, and no weapons save their spears of
fifteen feet and light curved sabres, in imitation of
the Polish horse, already celebrated in the German
wars—a splendid cavalcade, brought up the rear.
While thousands and tens of thousands—strong
men and tottering children, matrons and hoary-headed
sires, and maidens delicate and tender—
the vast population of the city and its suburbs
poured out to meet their champions, hindering
their progress by their living masses, and clinging
even to the horses they bestrode, with fervent
prayers and blessings, and with tears of holy
joy, and waving kerchiefs, and exulting shouts, to
greet the people's friends; and with wild curses
on the king and on his cavaliers, concerning whom

they oft and sneeringly inquired, “Where be they
now, and whither have they fled?” Meanwhile
adown the Thames another pomp was floating, toward
the stairs at Westminster, second, if second,
only to the landward show—hundreds of lighters,
pinnaces, and long-boats, dressed up with waist-cloths
and with streamers, laden with musketry
and ordnance, manned by a host of British mariners,
whose meteor flag even then “had braved, a
thousand years, the battle and the breeze,” furrowed
the broad and placid river; while ever and
anon the salvos of their cannon, thundering above
the din and clamours of the mighty concourse, announced
to the disheartened monarch, even in his
sad retreat at Hampton, the failure of his insolent
aggressions, and the triumphant testimony borne by
his indignant subjects to the untiring efforts and
undaunted resolution of those noble spirits, whom
his oppressive madness had converted, step by step,
from the most steady guardians to the most constant
foemen of his person and his crown.