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 danger† with the security of his lowborn associates!

* 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.

† Cromwell had this feeling. I can say in the presence 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 ' 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.

VOL. II.

G

'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.'

83

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 of which children are

* 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 half-penny 'a look.'-Letters, vol. i. p. 151.

6

REVOLUTIONARY PRINCIPLES.

85

taught to offer up their daily prayers, but for which the institutions of society seem little calculated to prepare the way. Half a century ago, the British constitution was an object of admiration, or of envy, to other nations, wherever its true character was understood, or its effects perceived. Then also it was the pride, the boast, the peculiar and proper glory of the British people, that they lived under such a constitution, ..that they were blessed, above all nations, with a form of government in which political freedom and legitimate authority were united, . . that they were born to an inheritance of civil and religious liberty. Is it at this time held in such estimation, either by foreigners, or among yourselves?

MONTESINOS.

With the wise and the thoughtful it is not less valued, either abroad or at home, than it has been at any time since, under the especial blessing of Providence, it settled, after so many struggles, and such imminent danger, into its existing

state.

SIR THOMAS MORE.

The wise and the thoughtful!.. what proportion, think you, do these bear to the multitude? Or in what age or country is it that they have ever acted upon their own generation, otherwise than