Hampden; and Coke died before the contentions began; yet the jus tice of the cause prevailed! Their immediate successors in the conduct of affairs were Vane, St. John, and Cromwell. Of Vane, who has been misrepresented, and not well understood, Mr. Godwin speaks in the following terms:-"The man," he says, "principally confided in was Vane," and

"He indeed was the individual best qualified to succeed Hampden as a counsellor, in the arduous struggle in which the nation was at this time engaged. In subtlety of intellect and dexterity of negotiation he was inferior to none, and the known disinterestedness of his character, and his superiority to the vulgar temptations of gain, gave him the greatest authority. When he obtained under the new government the appointment of treasurer of the navy, he found that the fees of his office amounted to little less than thirty thousand pounds per annum ; but he liberally surrendered his patent, which he had for life from Charles the First, to the Parliament, stipulating only for a salary of two thousand pounds to the deputy who executed the ordinary routine of the business. He was no less superior to the allurements of ambition; and it may perhaps be ascribed to the entire absence of such views, that another person in the sequel, fitted better for the rude intercourse, and the sordid dispositions of the mass of mankind, got the start of him in the political race."

One of the persons next mentioned (Montrose) acquired a considerable share of reputation for his proceedings in the North. He was a shrewd, bloody, uncompromising soldier; a brave partisan; and for a time did Charles great service by his activity and successes in Scotland. As a patriot, as a generous victor, or as a man of principle, he has left himself without a character :

"The most considerable public characters at this time in Scotland were the Marquis of Hamilton, and the Earls of Argyle and Montrose. Hamilton was a professed courtier, and in peaceable times would have made a brilliant figure in the train of his sovereign. But he was subtle by nature, and timid in his disposition. He appears to have been infected with the spirit at that time prevalent in his country, and devoted in his heart to the presbyterian system: at the same time that he endeavoured to reconcile this predilection with a sincere attachment to the king. This gave to his conduct a fluctuating and enigmatical appearance; and, if his own countrymen understood him, the king at least was deceived. Argyle, on the other hand, was a man of fixed temper, and steady to his principles: the presbyterians relied on him, and placed their hopes to a great degree in his conduct and resolution. Montrose had commenced his course in the same career as Argyle; but he was of a turbulent temper and unbounded ambition. He saw that, in the party in which he had first engaged, he had no chance of outstripping his rival; and therefore, about two years before the period we are treating, made clandestine overtures to the court, which were accepted. His secret correspondences and intrigues were however detected; and, when Charles arrived in Scotland, he had already been thrown into prison by the prevailing party."

Of this celebrated personage, Cromwell, the "immortal rebel" as he has been called, we have this further account in connexion with Sir Thomas Fairfax.

"Fairfax was an admirable officer but it will be decided by all posterity, as it was decided by their contemporaries, that it was impossible to name a man in the island, of so consummate a military genius, so thoroughly qualified to conduct the war with a victorious event, as Cromwell. He was also,

Godwin's History of the Commonwealth.

675 whatever some historians have said on the subject, of scarcely less weight in the senate than in the field. Cromwell was besides an accomplished statesman. There was in this respect a striking contrast between him and Fairfax. Fairfax, richly endowed with those qualities which make a successful commander, was in council as innocent and unsuspecting as a child. He had great coolness of temper, an eye to take in the whole disposition of a field, and to remark all the advantages which its positions afforded, and a temper happily poised between the yielding and severe, so as to command the most ready obedience, and to preserve a perfect discipline. Fairfax was formed for the executive branch of the art military in the largest sense of that term. But in all that related to government and a state, he seemed intuitively to feel the desire to be guided. He was not acquainted with the innermost folds of the human character, and was therefore perpetually liable to the chance of being led and misled. He was guided by Cromwell; he was guided by his wife; and, if he had fallen into hands less qualified for the office, he would have been guided by them. But Cromwell saw into the hearts of men. He could adapt himself, in a degree at least exceeding every character of modern times, to the persons with whom he had dealings. He was most at home perhaps with the soldiers of his army he could pray with them; he could jest with them: in every thing by which the heart of a man could in a manner be drawn out of his bosom to devote itself to the service of another, he was a consummate master. It was not because he was susceptible only of the rugged and the coarse, that he was so eminently a favourite with the private soldier. He was the friend of the mercurial and light-hearted Henry Marten. He gained for a time the entire ascendency over the gentle, the courteous, the well-bred, and the manly earl of Manchester. He was the sworn brother of Sir Henry Vane. He deceived Fairfax ; he deceived Milton."

:

We conclude by recommending the following extract relative to Laud, to the attention of the reader :

"Laud certainly speaks of himself, and probably with much sincerity, as a good man and a martyr. Such he thought himself. He was a patron of the most minute and imposing formalities and processions: and we should show ourselves very slender observers of human nature, if we supposed that the most mortified and saintly character did not feel some flutterings and swellings of the heart, when he himself formed the central figure of such a scene. He was a man of narrow prejudices and great bigotry. He had certainly no sympathies for those, who for alleged offences against God or the king fell under his animadversion. The spectacle of his pulling off his cap in open court, and giving God thanks, when sentence was pronounced in the starchamber against Leighton, professor of moral philosophy in the university of Edinburgh, for a libel, that he should be publicly whipped, stand in the pillory, and there be branded, have his ears cut off, and his nose slit, and afterwards be imprisoned for life [Leighton was at this time between fifty and sixty years of age, and was father of the archbishop of that name], is an instructive example of what horrible perversity may be committed by one who holds himself to be a good man. Laud was now, as we have said, sunk into utter insignificance; but, in the period of his prosperity, he was a formidable instrument and adviser for a prince aspiring to be a tyrant."

FORGET ME NOT.

Addressed to a young Lady, who, on the Author handing her into a carriage, held out at the window a Nosegay which he had presented to her, in which Myosotis Scorpiodes, or Forget me Not, made a principal figure.

I CULL'D each floweret for my fair
The wild thyme and the heather bell,
And round them twined a tendril rare:-
She said the posy pleased her well.
But of the flowers that deck the field
Or grace the garden of the cot,
Though others richer perfumes yield,
The sweetest is "Forget me not."

We roam'd the mead, we climb'd the hill,
We rambled o'er the breckan brae
The trees that crown'd the mossy rill,
They screen'd us from the glare of day.
She said she loved the sylvan bower,

Was charm'd with every rural spot;

And, when arrived the parting hour,

Her last words were, "Forget me not."

H. P.

STANZAS.

Composed by the late ROBERT RAMSEY, in the year 1820, in the prospect of a visit to Italy.

YES, I will tread that hallow'd scene

Where Tiber winds through Latium's plains;
And mark the world's departed Queen
Enthroned amid her mouldering fanes.

Here many a column weed-o'ergrown,
And many a fountain's ceaseless noise,
And many a form of breathing stone,

And many a Muse with heavenly voice

And many a recollection grand,
And many a virtue's record sweet,

Invite the wise of every land,

Hither to turn their pilgrim feet.

Yes! there shall Memory cease to dwell
On vanish'd joy and Hope's decay,
Where all around the tale shall tell
Of might and glory pass'd away.

For who, howe'er oppress'd by fate,
Would mourn his individual doom,
While, midst the wreck of all that's great,
He gazes on a Nation's tomb.

INDEX

ΤΟ

THE SEVENTH VOLUME.

73

Commonwealth, Godwin's History of Fouque, La Motte, tale from, 235.