and when the answer, with the expected upon London and again after the capture surrender of the militia, came not, he was declared a prisoner.

of Bristol, he was lagging and dilatory; when defeat was sure to be fatal, as at A touching phase of the casuistical Naseby, he was precipitate. Experience reasoning wherewith Charles sheltered could not teach him. When one instruhis conscience is revealed in his self- ment was broken he took up another, communings on the death of Strafford, without any stringency of requirement as poured into the ear of his wife. It that the second should be better than the was his fixed idea that God was angry first. The English cavaliers are beaten ; with him for sacrificing the earl, and perhaps the Irish Papists will pull us that, if he sinned again in the matter of through that hope vanishes; but the the Church, there could be no pardon for English Presbyterians are rising in our him. "I must confess," he writes, behalf: they are put down, but here "that heretofore I have for public respects come Hamilton and his Scots, and all (yet I believe if thy personal safety had may still be well. Sanguine yet not sure, not been at stake I might have hazarded ever learning but never coming to the the rest) yielded unto those things that knowledge either of the truth of facts or were no less against my conscience than the principles of action, Charles was this, for which I have been so deservedly made for failure. His patient perseverpunished, that a relapse now would be ance in blundering, his perpetual activity insufferable, and I am most confident without progress, were deeper signs of that God has so favoured my hearty practical incapacity, and infinitely more (though weak) repentance, that He will productive of calamity to himself and be glorified either by relieving me out of others, than mere indolence or impathese distresses (which I may humbly hope tience would have been. for, though not presume upon), or in my gallant sufferings for so good a cause, which to eschew by any mean submission cannot but draw God's further justice upon me, both in this and the next world." These may be the words of a weak and a superstitious, but they are those of a sincerely religious man. Charles's casuistical ingenuity might have reconciled him to large concessions of a nature unfavourable to the Church; but death was easier for him than its unreserved abandonment. And let it be deliberately said, that the mere fact of its being a necessity of life for Charles to preserve the citadel of his soul inviolate, reveals a moral quality which places him in a different class from certain historical personages who, in intellectual strength, were immeasurably his superiors. He never, like Napoleon the First, in his period of spiritual decadence, or like Frederick of Prussia all through, took evil into his service, and resolved to succeed at whatever moral cost. Charles died clinging to the hem of Christ's garment, and this separates him spiritually by the deepest of all chasms from the men whose god is success.

There is immense beneficence in a clear, bold word, yea or nay. Could Charles have done as Count Chambord did last year - said, once for all, that he would reign as a divinely appointed autocrat or not at all-he would have saved himself years of misery and his country rivers of blood. But never in his life was he anything except by halves, and to no party did he ever give complete satisfaction. He could neither serve God nor fee the devil; and all men were disappointed in him. Lilly, who was familiar with the gossip of both camps, says that even the Cavaliers only half trusted him, and did not dare to realize the thought of his being completely victorious. Again and again he had excellent cards in hand, but he never could make up his mind to play them rationally. It was a sound scheme "to work the Scots to his design " in 1646; but in order to do so, it was necessary to agree with the Scots, and Charles could not persuade himself to that. When the Scots marched out of England, having found it impossible to take him with them as a friend, and not choosing to take him as a prisoner, he still had good Casuistry can do much, but it can cards if he would have adopted the tone neither fight battles nor beguile nations of the Independents, avowed himself the out of the fruits of victory. Charles was champion of toleration, and made terms a bad soldier. There was, in fact, no with the army. But Cromwell and Ireton limit to his practical incapacity. He found that he was trifling with them. missed the mark at every critical junc- Charles had been bred in an element of ture. When decision and promptitude intrigue, and was an intriguer all his life ; were required, as in his early advance yet he could no more keep a secret than VOL. VIII. 400

LIVING AGE.

It is important to discern the exact

a net can hold water. It looks like in- | friends were with him; and Cromwell, sanity to have put into black and white who, with his Ironsides, had been shatand committed to a messenger a state- tering every force that looked him in the ment that he intended to hang Cromwell face, came fiercely demanding surrender. and Ireton at a convenient season; but Cromwell had not a breaching-gun, not it was scarcely more foolhardy in Charles even foot-soldiers, only a "few dragoons," to speak of Cromwell and Ireton as he is and as he was a cavalry officer, besiegsaid to have spoken in the letter inter- ing was, he said, "not his business," but cepted in the Holborn Tavera, than it the name of him already (April, 1645) was to speak of Argyle and the other made both the ears of every one of the Scotch leaders as it is absolutely certain king's people hearing it to tingle. Agohe spoke of them in letters despatched nized by the thought of what might overby him from the Scotch camp. Charles take his bride and the other ladies in the never perceived that, if he was to have event of a storm, Windebank lost his the services of any party, he must adopt, head and took down the royal standard. honestly or dishonestly, that party's side. The court-martial was bound to condemn No man but he could have imagined that him to die; but the circumstances were it was possible to bring the Scots under inexpressibly touching, and were not Lesley and the Parliament to mutual ex- likely to recur; Charles might surely termination, or again, the Parliamentary have granted himself the luxury of remitPresbyterians and the Independents to ting the sentence. He made no sign, and mutual extermination, by shilly-shallying the poor young colonel had to bid his between the two, his own conscience wife adieu and take the death-shot to his being kept quiet, and both parties being breast. "Never was so cold a heart!" hoodwinked, by preternatural subtlety The words are spoken of Charles by Mr. in the art of diplomatic evasion. Even Browning's Strafford; and well spoken. Clarendon found that Charles was with him only by halves, and emits a lament-reason why Charles died, as there has able wail on the king's plots within plots. It has often been pleaded in favour of Charles that he tried hard to make terms for his friends; but the grievous fact is that he displayed little depth of feeling on behalf of the brave and devoted men who lost life or fortune for his sake. "He was seldom," says Lilly, "in the times of war, seen to be sorrowful for the slaughter of his people or soldiers, or indeed anything else." A chill-blooded man, of low though tough vitality and lethargic feelings, he was capable of much languid wretchedness but not of acute suffering, The state of his body after death showed that the organs had not been wasted or worn; it was physically probable that he would have lived long; and it is doubtful whether the loss of a friend or even of a battle ever cost him a night's sleep. Though he was a bad disciplinarian, and the riot in his camp and the rapine of his soldiers did him infinite harm, he could not do a daringly generous thing to the most willing of friends. Might he not, for example, have spared the life of poor young Colonel Windebank, even although a court-martial had consigned him to death? Colonel Windebank held Bletchington House for the king. The place was strong and well-manned; but the colonel had lately been married, and his young wife and a bevy of her lady

been much mistaken writing upon the subject. Hallam and Macaulay argue that neither by national nor by municipal law could he be put to death; but neither Hallam nor Macaulay precisely considers for what or by whom he was slain. It was not the Long Parliament that brought him to trial. The Commons of England were faithful to their professions of holding the king incapable of wrong. The Parliamentary majority was cut down by military force into a minority, for the express purpose of making it a possible instrument to take the king's life. In the second place, it is to be recollected, in justice to those who did bring Charles to the block, that he was not even made the subject of judicial accusation for his share in the first war. At Hampton Court, many months after his last fortress had been surrendered, he was treated with lenity and consideration. It was because he plotted war within the walls of gentle and honourable imprisonment, because he called an invading army into England, that he was adjudged to die. The men who tried him tore the figment of his personal irresponsibility to shreds.

The king can do no wrong! This man, king or no king, was conquered in battle. In the dark, in easy confinement, he felt for a dagger, and came behind England and did his best to stab her to the heart.

For this he deserves to die; and if Parliament cannot say so, we can and do." Such was their plea.

Charles possessed some talents. He had a true taste in art. His gallery of pictures was rich in the productions of Titian, Tintoret, Giorgione, and Velasquez. Every one who engaged with him in discussion was struck with his power of following the clue through labyrinthine mazes of argument. His most remarkable faculty, however, was that of detecting, by some curious instinctive sympathy, the kind of men whom he could make his own-men of splendid parts, but with a certain moral Haw or sickliness in them. This last was the nidus, as the naturalists say, which prepared them for Charles's fascination; and once he had exercised it upon them, he bound them to him, by indissoluble ties. It would have been a priceless talent if he could have stood by the men he got and had known how to use them; but he did not.

ness." His Majesty could not see it; now, as always, he missed the mark.

Whatever his failings or his faults, he had not “sinned against light;" at lowest he had not taken darkness for light, and said to evil, "Be thou my good." Therefore it was with placid dignity that he laid his head on the block.

From The Cornhill Magazine.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD.
CHAPTER XLVIII.

DOUBTS ARISE: DOUBTS VANISH.

BATHSHEBA underwent the enlargement of her husband's absence from hours to days with a slight feeling of surprise, and a slight feeling of relief; yet neither sensation rose at any time far above the level commonly designated as indifference. She belonged to him: the certainties of that position were so well defined, and the reasonable probabilities of its issue so bounded, that she could not speculate on contingencies. Taking no further interest in herself as a splendid woman, she acquired the indifferent feelings of an outsider in contemplating her probable fate as an interest

It is interesting to observe how, to the last, he continued plotting and blundering. He was conducted, in the close of 1648, by Colonel Harrison, from Hurst Castle, opposite the Isle of Wight, to London. The route lay by Bagshot, where he formerly had a little park," and where now lived Lord and Lady New-ing wretch; for Bathsheba drew herself burgh, vehement Royalists. His lordship and her future in colours that no reality possessed the fleetest horse in England, could exceed for darkness. Her original and it was arranged that Charles, as he vigorous pride of youth had sickened, rode through the glades of the forest, and with it had declined all her anxieties should complain of his horse and should about coming years, since anxiety recog be remounted on Lord Newburgh's. The nizes a better and a worse alternative, king was then to give his escort the slip, and Bathsheba had made up her mind and availing himself of his perfect knowl- that alternatives on any noteworthy scale edge of the wood, to make his way to an had ceased for her. Soon, or later appointed rendezvous, where other swift and that not very late her husband horses were to be in attendance. The would be home again. And then the scheme, as Charles was concerned in it, days of their tenancy of the Upper Farm got wind, and at the critical moment, would be numbered. There had origiwhen he had been long grumbling about nally been shown by the agent to the esthe discomfort of his seat and was urgent tate some distrust of Bathsheba's tenure for a new mount, the fleetest horse in as James Everdene's successor, on the England was found to be lame in stall. score of her sex, and her youth, and her He thought it useless to try another, as beauty; but the peculiar nature of her he rode in the midst of a hundred picked uncle's will, his own frequent testimony men, well horsed, every man, soldier and before his death to her cleverness in officer, "having a pistol ready spanned such a pursuit, and her vigorous marin one hand." He was quite in the dark shalling of the numerous flocks and herds as to the true state of affairs. He feared which came suddenly into her hands beassassination, and lectured Harrison upon fore negotiations were concluded, had the odiousness of the crime. Harrison won confidence in her powers, and no told him he might keep his mind easy on further objections had been raised. She that point; what was in store for him, had latterly been in great doubt as to would be very public and in a way of what the legal effects of her marriage justice to which the world should be wit-I would be upon her position; but no no

tice had been taken as yet of her change of name, and only one point was clear, that in the event of her own or of her husband's inability to meet the agent at the forthcoming January rent-day very little consideration would be shown, and, for that matter, very little would be deserved. Once out of the farm, the approach of poverty would be sure.

Hence Bathsheba lived in a perception that her purposes were broken off. She was not a woman who could hope on without good materials for the process, differing thus from the less far-sighted and energetic, though more petted ones of the sex, with whom hope goes on as a sort of clock-work which the merest food and shelter are sufficient to wind up; and perceiving clearly that her mistake had been a fatal one, she accepted her position, and waited coldly for the end.

up at the bringer of the big news as he supported her.

"Her husband was drowned this week while bathing in Carrow Cove. A coastguardsman found his clothes and brought them into Budmouth yesterday."

Thereupon a strange fire lighted up Boldwood's eye, and his face flushed with the suppressed excitement of an unutterable thought. Everybody's glance was now centred upon him and the unconscious Bathsheba. He lifted her bodily off the ground, and smoothed down the folds of her dress as a child might have taken a storm-beaten bird and arranged its ruffled plumes, and bore her along the pavement to the Three Choughs Inn. Here he passed with her under the archway into a private room, and by the time he had deposited so lothly the precious burden upon a sofa, Bathsheba had opened her eyes, and remembering all that had occurred, murmured, "I want to go home!"

The first Saturday after Troy's departure she went to Casterbridge alone, a journey she had not before taken since her marriage. On this Saturday Bath- Boldwood left the room. He stood for sheba was passing slowly on foot through a moment in the passage to recover his the crowd of rural business men gathered senses. The experience had been too as usual in front of the market-house, much for his consciousness to keep up and as usual gazed upon by the burghers with feelings that those healthy lives were dearly paid for by the lack of possible aldermanship, when a man, who had apparently been following her, said some words to another on her left hand. Batesheba's ears were keen as those of any wild animal, and she distinctly heard what the speaker said, though her back was towards him.

"I am looking for Mrs. Troy. Is that she there?"

"Yes; that's the young lady, I believe," said the person addressed.

"I have some awkward news to break to her. Her husband is drowned."

As if endowed with the spirit of prophecy, Bathsheba gasped out, "Oh, it is not true; it cannot be true!" Then she said and heard no more. The ice of self-command which had latterly gathered over her was broken, and the currents burst forth again, and overwhelmed her. A darkness came into her eyes, and she fell.

But not to the ground. A gloomy man, who had been observing her from under the portico of the old corn-exchange when she passed through the group without, stepped quickly to her side at the moment of her exclamation, and caught her in his arms as she sank down.

"What is it?" said Boldwood, looking

with, and now that he had grasped it it had gone again. For those few heavenly golden moments she had been in his arms. What did it matter about her not knowing it? She had been close to his breast; he had been close to hers.

He started onward again, and sending a woman to her, went out to ascertain all the facts of the case. These appeared to be limited to what he had already heard. He then ordered her horse to be put into the gig, and when all was ready returned to inform her. He found that though still pale and unwell, she had in the meantime sent for the Budmouth man who brought the tidings, and learnt from him all there was to know.

Being hardly in a condition to drive home as she had driven to town, Boldwood, with every delicacy of manner and feeling, offered to get her a driver, or to give her a seat in his phaeton, which was more comfortable than her own conveyance. These proposals Bathsheba gently declined, and the farmer at once departed. About half an hour later she invigorated herself by an effort, and took her seat and the reins as usual in external appearance much as if nothing had happened. She went out of the town by a tortuous back street, and drove slowly along, unconscious of the road and the scene. The first shades of evening were showing themselves when Bathsheba reached

"No, no, no," said Bathsheba, hur- this intentionally, yet contrived to make riedly.

his death appear like an accident? Oddsome-ly enough, this thought of how the apparent might differ from the real made

"Not at present, I think. It is not vivid by her bygone jealousy of Fanny, necessary."