tions. Alarmed more than he chose to express at the responsibility his family had incurred in harbouring Forester, and not choosing to place himself in the power of such a faithless adventurer as Seagrave, his knowledge of James's character suggested to him that he would have a much better chance of safety and pardon by frankly confessing what he had done, and throwing himself on the royal clemency, than by trusting either to the probabilities of concealment, or the sordid promises of the Major. Prompt to execute what he had once conceived, and equally anxious to afford Walter a chance of escape, and to secure his own family from danger, he took charge of the petition, set off instantly upon his journey, and relaxed not in his speed until he had reached the metropolis.

CHAPTER III.

There's no retiring now; we are broke in
The deed past hope of pardon. If we prosper
"Twill be styled lawful, and we shall give laws
To those that now command us. Stop not at
Or loyalty, or duty :-bold ambition

To dare, and power to do, gave the first difference
Between the king and subject.

The False One.

IMITATING the example set by Stanley Forester in his letter to Agatha, we shall avoid all mention of the perils and adventures that attended his escape from Hales Court. His latter life had afforded such a succession of similar enterprises that to himself they appeared scarcely worthy of record; and we know not how to account for his passing scathless through such repeated ordeals, unless by offering him

as a singular illustration of the old adage, that fortune favours the bold. Achievements that to others would have seemed impossible, he had happily accomplished by simply daring to attempt them, and it must be recollected that the ample funds placed at his disposal, combined with the disturbed and disaffected state of the country, offered peculiar facilities to a man who was not less dexterous than dauntless, and who possessed, moreover, in the graces of his person, and the winning enthusiasm of his eloquence, an almost irresistible power of persuasion. Although he had dispatched his impassioned letter immediately upon his arrival at Helvoetsluys, truth compels us to admit, even at the risk of lowering him in the estimation of those who imagine that a lover's heart, like the Polar needle, should invariably point one way, that the thoughts of his absent mistress did not by any means form the exclusive occupation of his mind. He loved his Country at large better than any individual that it contained; patriotism was the ruling passion to which every other was subservient,

and even if all impediments had been suddenly removed, and he could have married Agatha amid approving friends, and under every favourable auspice, he would not, to secure his own happiness, have withdrawn himself even for a single day from the prosecution of that great and urgent cause which had for its object the welfare and the liberties of a whole nation. Nor were his generous views for the extension of freedom limited to his own country.

"It is the object of the French Monarch," he once exclaimed to a friend, 66 to establish arbitrary power throughout Europe upon the basis of Popery, in which nefarious project our own besotted ruler is eager to second him. For this royal treason, King James must and shall be deposed; there is no alternative, no compromise with a man who has broken his faith with God by changing his religion, and with his people by invading the Constitution. But shall I be satisfied when England has thrown off her chains, when she has become the seat of civil and religious liberty? As soon shall the handful of turf in his cage make

compensation to the lark for the loss of the wide and verdant earth over which he loved to range, as the freedom of our own little Island satisfy a heart like mine that yearns to expatiate over a whole emancipated world. No-England shall only take the lead, as she ought to do; she shall be the bulwark and vanguard of Liberty, whence the Manichæan war of the good against the evil principle shall be carried on until in the fulness of time, unless my sanguine hopes deceive me, she shall finally establish either by her influence or her example, the universal triumph of free and liberal institutions over slavery and superstition."

Animated by this generous but perhaps visionary enthusiasm, he had no sooner forwarded his letter to Agatha, than he betook himself to those grave and important duties to which all the energies of his life were dedicated. At Bruges, to which place he immediately proceeded, he was so fortunate as to rejoin Henry Sidney and Admiral Herbert, the two friends who had shared his late perilous expedition to England, and who, under assumed