example, contracted a secret marriage with Arabella Stuart, the cousin of James the First, and the persecution of the half savage King far surpassed in its coldblooded cruelty the previous malignant oppression of the virgin Queen. The unhappy tale of Arabella Stuart need not be repeated here. It is sufficient for our purpose to state that, so long as the incarcerated victim lived, Lord Hertford was a banished man, and after her death continued under the marked displeasure of King James and King Charles, from both of whom, according to Lord Clarendon, "he received many and continued disobligations," every possible care being taken "to discountenance and lessen his interest." It is not to be wondered that, when in the 50th year of his age, Lord Hertford quitted his retirement to take part in public affairs, he should side at once with the men who had combined to restrain the tyranny of the Crown; but it is worthy of note that his high soul shrank from revenging personal affronts, and from the first resolved to abet no attempt against the King's established and prescriptive rights. When he was appointed Governor to the Prince of Wales, it was a joy to the whole kingdom, but he fulfilled his office as one scorning to avail himself of popular favour in order to carry out the nation's wishes in opposition to a father's natural claims. He protected Strafford, whom he was known not to love, and he remonstrated fearlessly with his master, for whom at any time he would cheerfully have laid down his life. Lord Hertford followed the King to York, and in his 54th year raised cavalry for the Royal service. He was soon appointed LieutenantGeneral of all the western parts of the kingdom; but

too quickly was superseded in his command by Prince Maurice, the King's nephew, and one of the two great curses that afflicted the cause of King Charles from the first hour of his rupture with the British Parliament. To say that King Charles was unworthy of the heroic devotion of his brave adherents, is to repeat a truism; but to know that the mad endeavour was made to coerce the people of England, burning under a sense of injury and wrong, into obedience and duty by the swords of foreign Princes, whose greed of slaughter was equalled only by their indifference to the cause for which they took up arms, is to be conscious of a fault than which none greater is to be met with in the universal history of kings. Englishmen, commanding for their sovereign, might still have fought mercifully enough, to prove to the people their paramount desire for peace. The foreign hirelings knew no higher duty than to burn and slay; and Charles in his wisdom preferred the slayers to the pacificators, and insisted upon self-destruction the wider the door opened for honourable escape.

Lord Hertford, recalled from his command in order to make room for the King's nephew, retired from military service, but still kept near the person of the King to render such other service as his means afforded. The time was rapidly advancing when fidelity could do nothing and duty must be dumb. The Parliament was at the mercy of the army-the army at the bidding of one man. The mock trial and the dreadful expiation over, Lord Hertford proffered to the dead the respect which had been forbidden during the last hours of the living. A more affecting or instructive scene than that

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in which Lord Hertford performed his final act of loyal service is not to be found. After the execution of Charles leave was given to Lord Hertford and three others to attend the funeral of their master; but they were not permitted to accompany the corpse out of town-for it must be privately conveyed to Windsorand church prayers at the grave were strictly forbidden. In silence and in secresy the body was deposited in its tomb. No words were uttered, no unmeaning and hollow Court ceremonial was performed, and nothing but the tears of the few true-hearted mourners consecrated the earth which was thrown over the coffin and the black pall that constituted the sole funeral decoration. Singular that the King, who suffered so much in life, and quitted it more ignominiously than any other British monarch, should have been privileged so far beyond his fellows as to receive the unbought homage of true affection at his tomb-to have his grave moistened with real human sorrow, and gently covered over by the hand of actual human love!

After the death of Charles, and during the exile of his son, Lord Hertford contributed liberally to the necessities of the latter, and steadily resisted every attempt made by Cromwell to wean him from his allegiance. When Charles the Second landed at Dover the old lord hastened to meet him at Canterbury, and he who had been persecuted by James, and ungenerously treated by the first Charles, was among the first to pay homage to their descendant, whose disgraceful reign, happily for him, he did not live to witness. Before his death, Lord Hertford was created Duke of Somerset a title of which his family had been unfairly

deprived in the time of Edward VI.; but he did not long enjoy it. On the 24th of October, 1660, in his 73d year, the Duke breathed his last, and transmitted his dignities and his fortune to a child—his grand

son.

The histories of the three great men whose characters we have briefly given-members of "that band of enlightened reformers who earliest expressed their sentiments on the overgrown power of the Crown, and were among the last to uphold its dignity and just prerogative"-are told with simplicity and truthfulness by Lady Theresa Lewis, who states the case between the Parliament and the Crown both fairly and intelligently. Lives more instructive cannot be perused; for deep interest they are not to be surpassed, inasmuch as they contain matter that will never cease to have freshness and flavour for the English reader and for all who would learn how constitutional liberty has been won in England, and how a practical people work their certain way to the full enjoyment of their rights. It is to be hoped that the success of the present adventure will be sufficient to induce the authoress to pay another visit to Grove-park, and to remove from a few more of the pictures the dust which time has left upon them.

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DICKENS AND THACKERAY-DAVID COPPERFIELD AND ARTHUR PENDENNIS.

WHAT the epic was to the old world—a continuous narration of stirring events, with linked sweetness long drawn out-that is the romance to the modern world. With the change of matter there has been a change of form; it is no longer the story of "physical force" that absorbs and delights mankind, it is the battle of life,not the encounter of flesh and blood, but the clash of principles and the conflict of passions. The decease of the three volume fiction has often been foretold, but has never come to pass, because it exists as the supply of a want, and a very complex want. All men want amusement; but, more than this, mankind, however civilized, require some stimulus of the simpler emotions; overlaid as these may be by habit, perverted by selfishness or dilapidated by overwear, they are still the chief source of pleasure. That, therefore, must be welcome which awakes them. The novel has, for the unimaginative, incidents, for the student of human nature, character, for the critical ear, vigour or beauty of language,for the theorist, an ample store of cobwebs. It offers love and children to the spinster, red coats and glory to the legal or the literary drudge; and, if it does harm by exhausting the sympathies of some, it does good by exalting and keeping them fresh in sluggish and mecha