IS COMMITTED TO THE TOWER.

15

himself to the dignified occupations which have since induced his countrymen to forget the failings that compelled the fortunate seclusion. Coke, having brought his victim to the dust, left him there to linger. He never visited his fallen enemy. The two never met again.

Revenge called for further sacrifice. Coke's fierceness against the Court increased rather than abated. with Bacon's removal. The Chancellorship, which might have made him a Royalist and high churchman again, was bestowed upon another. The shortsightedness of monarchs is even more unpardonable than their crimes. After a struggle against adjournment, led on by Coke, Parliament was adjourned in May to meet again in November. In a letter to the Speaker the King desired it to be made known in his name unto the House, "that none therein shall presume henceforth to meddle with anything concerning our Government or deep matters of state." Coke, leading the opposition, moved "a protestation," which was carried and entered on the journals. The King, with his own hand, tore the protestation out of the Journal Book, and declaring it "an usurpation which the majesty of a King can by no means endure" at once dissolved the Parliament.

Coke for his pains was committed to the Tower, but after a few months' imprisonment was released at the intercession of the Prince of Wales. Before the popular leader was fairly in harness again that Prince was on the throne. Charles's first Parliament was called in 1625, and Coke was returned for Coventry. A motion for supply being submitted, Coke moved as an amendment for a committee to

inquire into the expenditure of the Crown. The amendment was carried, and His Majesty, according to custom in such cases, dissolved the Parliament. Supply being, however, indispensable to monarchs as to meaner men, a new Parliament was summoned, and Coke, now seventy-five years old, was returned without solicitation for Norfolk. This Parliament fared no better than its predecessor, and upon another attempt being made the King suffered the extreme mortification of seeing his unappeasable pursuer returned for two counties. His Majesty opened the session with a stern rebuke. He did not call it a threatening, "for he scorned to threaten any but his equals, but an admonition from him who by nature and duty has most care of his people's preservation and prosperity." Whatever it might be, whether menace or reproof, it had no effect upon the sturdy veteran. "What a word," exclaimed Coke in his speech upon the usual motion for supply," is that franchise! The lord may tax his villein, high or low; but it is against the franchise of the land for freemen to be taxed but by their consent in Parliament;" and the speaker implored his listeners to withhold that consent whilst there remained one legitimate grievance for the King to remedy. Having made his speech he brought forward and carried resolutions that are memorable in the annals of our constitutional history, and which, indeed, were made the foundation of the Habeas Corpus Act fifty years afterwards. His next step was his greatest. He formed the famous Petition of Right, the second Magna Charta, as it has been aptly called, of the nation's liberties. The petition enumerated all the abuses of prerogative under which the

THE PETITION OF RIGHT."

17

country groaned, and after declaring them all to be contrary to law, "assumed the form of an act of the Legislature, and in the most express and stringent terms protected the people in all time to come from similar oppressions." The King attempted to evade the obligation about to be forced upon him, but his adversary was as inflexible as iron, "not that he distrusted the King, but that he could not take his trust save in a Parliamentary way." The Lords passed the bill, but loyally introduced a proviso that completely nullified its operation. "This," exclaimed Coke, "turns all about again,” and at his instigation the accommodating proviso was at once rejected. The Lords agreed "not to insist upon it," and nothing was left for His Majesty but to resort, under the direction of Buckingham, to fraudulent dealing. The trick did not answer. Buckingham was denounced, the Petition of Right, in spite of the King, received the Royal assent in due form, and bonfires throughout London testified to the happiness of the people at the restoration of their liberty. King Charles would never have died on the scaffold had he not violated in later years the solemn pledge he gave on this occasion to his trusting subjects.

With this achievement ended Coke's political career. The Petition of Right was carried in 1628. He was absent from Parliament during the short and violent session of 1629, and before another Parliament was called he had quitted life. He died in 1634, in the eighty-third year of his age and in the full possession of his faculties. What he performed for public liberty is seen; his claims to esteem as a lawyer were recognised in his own time, and are still acknowledged.

His publications are the hand-books of our legal men. His general character may be gathered from our short record. It is further to be noted that he had a sublime contempt for science and literature of every kind. Upon the title-page of his copy of the Novum Organum, presented to him by the author, he wrote,

"It deserves not to be read in schooles,

"But to be freighted in the Ship of Fools."

Shakspeare and Ben Jonson were vagrants, deserving of the stocks; poetry was foolishness; law, politics, and money-making the sole occupations worthy of a masculine and vigorous mind. "For a profound knowledge of the common law of England," says his biographer, "he stands unrivalled. As a judge he was above all suspicion of corruption; yet most men," adds Lord Campbell, "I am afraid, would rather have been Bacon than Coke." We participate in his Lordship's fear. Aware of the lax period in which both flourished, we are willing to attribute many of the faults of both to the age in which their lot was cast. Their virtues and intellectual prowess were all their own; and let us once enter upon a comparison of these, and the lofty, universal genius of Bacon will shine as the noonday sun in the firmament where the duller orb of Coke shall cease to be visible.

May 21, 1851,

THE REVELATIONS OF THE EARTH.

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LAYARD'S LAST DISCOVERIES.

THE veil is gradually falling from one of the sublimest pictures that have been vouchsafed to the inquiring mind of man since he first addressed himself to the investigation of truth in the spirit of daring and heroic importunity. Upon the earth, and above it, proofs of the wisdom and power of Omnipotent God have long been accumulating upon us with a force and swiftness that might well challenge the respect of the sceptic, and put to shame the audacious folly of the atheist. It has been left for our own time to deliver up from the very bowels of the earth evidence equally overwhelming and conclusive of the value and truth of those writings in which the doings of God's chosen people from the earliest times find their only record. It is difficult to speak or to write without emotion of the significant and extraordinary discoveries that have been made upon the site of ancient Nineveh. We have read as children of the devastating wars of Sennacherib, and been subjected to the awe arising from the perusal of events occurring at a period of time which it fatigued even the imagination to reach. We have listened, as children still, to the prophetic denunciations of Ezekiel, and trembled as we reflected upon the dismal fate of the gorgeous city he had doomed-once a city, a