Of all the evils which infest human society, and only too certainly prove the moral maladies in which they originate, war perhaps is one of the greatest: and of all kinds of war, those which exist among the members of the same community-civil wars-are the most painful and melancholy. Our Lord's language, describing the contentions of which his own religion of peace and good-will would be, through the malignity of human nature, the occasion, may be strictly applied to these; and brief as is the sentence, to the reflecting mind it suggests whole volumes of distressing circumstances:— "A man's foes shall be those of his own household." Not only near neighbours, and dear friends, take different sides, but are often found opposed to each other in the battle-field; and hands which had been clasped together in amity, become the instruments of depriving of life objects once wellbeloved. The great English dramatist, in describing the wars of the "Roses," between "Yorkists" and "Lancastrians," has not failed to introduce this heart-rending aspect of the vast and multifarious calamity. A son says,—

"Who's this?

Ah me! It is my father's face,
Whom in this fight I unawares have kill'd.

O heavy times begetting such events!
From London by the King was I press'd forth;
My father, being the Earl of Warwick's man,
Came on the part of York, press'd by his master;
And I, who at his hands received my life,

Have by my hands of life bereaved him."

And a father thus deplores a similar event,—

"Is this our foeman's face?

Ah! no, no, no, it is mine only son!
Ah! boy, if any life be left in thee,

Throw up thine eye; see, see, what showers arise,

Blown with the windy tempest of my heart,

Upon thy wounds, that kill mine eye and heart.

Pity, O God, this miserable age!

What dire events, how fell, how butcherly,
Erroneous, mutinous, and unnatural,

This deadly quarrel daily doth beget!

*

These arms of mine shall be thy winding-sheet,
My heart, sweet boy, shall be thy sepulchre,-
For from my heart thine image ne'er shall go,—
My sighing breast shall be thy funeral bell."

And not only do such deplorable occurrences take place, leaving wounds that can never be healed; not only are angry passions excited, which scarcely ever are assuaged, and enmities occasioned which are seldom fully reconciled; but all the activity pauses which conduces to natural prosperity, commerce languishes, agriculture is suspended, and all energy is absorbed in strife. So great are these evils, that the only safe and prudent, as well as righteous, general rule, is that which the Scriptures lay down, of obedience, "not for wrath, but for conscience' sake." The emergency which peremptorily requires the contrary, and renders resistance a duty, must be investigated and decided by its own evidences.

Happy has it been for England that through so many generations no such distressing emergency has arisen, but that internal peace has uninterruptedly reigned. It has not always been so. Before the accession of the Tudors, disputes

concerning the accession to the throne occasioned long and desolating contests. Perhaps the sternest, however, was the one which was caused by the determination of Charles I. to perfect the plans which some of his predecessors had formed, and to fix, in perpetual maturity, constitutional despotism in place of the limited monarchy which, with whatever variations in practice, had in principle always existed before. The determination to resist became stronger and stronger, and, ultimately, both parties appealed to the sword. At first, the opponents of the unhappy Monarch carried with them the general feeling of the nation, in the resolution to defend their ancient laws and liberties as their inalienable birthright; but among the public leaders of the resistance, with the increase of power, came either a change of purpose, or, as was probably the case with many, a further development of principles which hitherto had been concealed. And then commenced, with the more thoughtful of the public men of the day, the difficulties of their position. Opposed to the plans of Charles, while they viewed him as the assailant of the true principles of the constitution, they saw no less reason to oppose the men who now avowed their wish for organic changes in it, by the establishment of a republic. On both sides were noble spirits, neither fully approving those with whom they acted, nor yet opposing in everything those whom they felt it to be their duty to oppose on the whole. They chose their side with difficulty. They supported it with reluctance. They appeared as much to dread victory as to strive against defeat. They apprehended peril to the constitution from each.

Among these was Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, eldest son of Henry Cary, who possessed the same title, one of the greatest and best men of the age. He was born in 1610. From 1622 to 1629 his father was Lord Deputy of Ireland, and during this period he was educated at Trinity College, Dublin; though, on returning to England, he went to St. John's College, Cambridge. A diligent student, he became an accomplished scholar. Influenced by a deep sense of religion, he grew up to be a gentleman of chivalrous honour, at once steadily loyal, and warmly patriotic. As his peerage was Scotch, he was chosen, in 1640, as the representative in