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his character in a holy war, he went to fight against the Pagans in what was then called Spruce, and was there slain,* leaving an infant son. That son deserved and enjoyed the good opinion of Henry V., and held the office of Butler at the coronation of his Queen. He was bound by articles to carry over to the French wars two hundred men-at-arms, consisting of three knights, forty-seven esquires, and an hundred-and-fifty archers; one-third of them on foot, the rest horsemen; the knights were to be allowed two shillings a-day, the esquires one, the archers sixpence, Clifford himself four shillings. In the flower of his age he was slain there, at the siege of Meaux, by a quarrel from a crossbow. Then ensued the civil wars, in which the old Lord Clifford, so called† when

* His father-in-law, Lord Ross, crusading in a different direction, died the same year, on his return from the Holy Land," in the city of Paphos, in the isle of Cyprus."

To the mistake, into which this has misled Shakspeare, we are indebted for a beautiful passage:

"Wast thou ordain'd, dear father,

To lose thy youth in peace, and to achieve

The silver livery of advised age;

And in thy reverence, and thy chair-days, thus
To die in ruffian battle?"

The old play, which Shakspeare follows, calls him

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aged pillar of all Cumberland's true house,"

but has not the farther inaccuracy of representing him as hav

only forty years of age, because he had a son who was in the field, fell at St. Albans; and that son, to whom Shakspeare has given a worse renown than he* deserves, at Ferrybridge.

How often must that sweet strain of melancholy reflection, which Shakspeare has so beautifully expressed for Henry VI., have past through the mind of the Shepherd Lord, in his humble state, when thinking of his ancestors, and comparing his own consciousness of perpetual dangert with the security of his lowborn associates!

ing grown old in peace. This Lord Clifford was far from having past a peaceful youth. He had done" brave service in the wars in France, at the assault and taking of the strong town of Pontoise, when and where he and his men were all clothed in white by reason of the snow, and in that manner surprised the town. He also valiantly defended the same town against the assaults then and there given by the French King Charles VII."

* Rutland was in his eighteenth year, and barbarous as it was to refuse him quarter, there is a wide difference between killing a youth of that age in the field, and butchering a boy of twelve years old. Hall has misled Shakspeare and the author of the old play here.

"I can say in the presence

+ Cromwell had this feeling. of God," said he in one of his speeches, " in comparison of whom we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth, I would have been glad to have lived under my wood side, to

"O God! methinks it were a happy life
To be no better than a homely swain;
To sit upon a hill, as I do now,

To carve out dials quaintly, point by point,
Thereby to see the minutes how they run;
How many make the hour full complete,
How many hours bring about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live.
When this is known, then to divide the times;
So many hours must I tend my flock;

So many hours must I take my rest;
So many hours must I contemplate;

So many days my ewes have been with young;
So many weeks ere the poor fools will yean;
So many months ere I shall shear the fleece;
So minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months and

years,

Pass'd over to the end they were created,

Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave.'

have kept a flock of sheep, rather than have undertook such a government as this is!" Mr. Towell Rutt (to whom English history is indebted for the publication of Burton's Journal) calls this " one of the Protector's favourite common-places." I do not doubt that Oliver Cromwell often felt as he then expressed himself, and that the tears, which accompanied the expression, came from a deeper source than hypocrisy can reach.

171

PART II.

PRIVILEGED ORDERS.-THE AMERICAN
GOVERNMENTS.

I HAD passed upon Blencathra one of those days which provide a pleasure for remembrance, till time and mortality, in their sure course, sadden our blithest recollections. Our talk had been of the Shepherd Lord and of his house; and I was still ruminating upon the history of that family, and the days in which a noble birth so frequently led to a violent death, when Sir Thomas entered the room, and put an end to my musings. The change of times, said I, has been favourable in all respects to one class of men at least: our nobles enjoy all the advantages of their rank in this age, without any of the dangers which formerly environed it. Their rivalry with each other expends itself at elections, where they bleed in purse instead of person; engage in political parties or factions as passionately as they will, their stake extends not now beyond an official appointment, or a feather in the cap; and none among them for

the last three generations can even have dreamt of leaving his head upon Temple Bar to be looked at for a halfpenny through a spy-glass*;.. or of being buried with it under his arm.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

And yet in these your days, noble and royal heads, which were as little troubled on their pillows with such anticipations before the danger surrounded them, have been laid under the engine! Pestilences of every kind, Montesinos, even when they move slowly, travel far; and their morbific principle, though it may long lie dormant, quickens into sudden and fatal activity at last. This plague began near at hand,.. close upon your shores. Ucalegon's house has been burnt,..it is smoking still, and the sparks have been carried among your combustibles and dry timber! Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?" States have their seasons of tranquillity, and that with which this kingdom has been blest has been of unusual duration; but no state will ever be secure from political tragedies till that kingdom come, for the coming

"I have been this morning," says Horace Walpole, "to the Tower, and past under the new heads at Temple Bar, where people make a trade of letting spying-glasses at a halfpenny a look."-Letters, vol. i. p. 151.

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