month of January, "that the King seems to be as merry as usual, and saith that he fears none; he makes the business talked on for questioning him, a jest; and he saith that he hath yet three games to play, the least of which gives him hope of regaining all." And the Earl of Leicester, (our authority) goes on to say that his Majesty "gave order, very lately, for saving the seed of some Spanish Melons which he would have set at Wimbledon." Poor King! ere they can fructify thou wilt be food for worms!

In less than three weeks Charles is brought to the bar-but here let Carlyle speak for himself, relative to the King and his judges.

6

"He refuses to plead, comports himself with royal dignity, with royal haughtiness, strong in his divine right; smiles' contemptuously, 'looks with an austere countenance ;'-does not seem, till the very last, to have fairly believed that they would dare to sentence him. But they were men sufficiently provided with daring; men, we are bound to see, who sat there as in the Presence of the Maker of all men, as executing the judgments of Heaven above, and had not the fear of any man or thing on the Earth below. Bradshaw said to the King, Sir, you are not permitted to issue out in these discoursings. This Court is satisfied of its authority. No Court will bear to hear its authority questioned in that manner.'-'Clerk, read the Sentence!'"

Here follows the Death Warrant, upon which Carlyle, in his own strange way, makes the following comments. Speaking of Bradshaw, Thomas Grey, Oliver Cromwell, and the fifty-six others who signed the Warrant, he says:

66

Ipsis molossis ferociores, More savage than their own mastiffs!" shrieks Saumaise; shrieks all the world in unmelodious soul-confusing diapason of distraction,-happily at length grown very faint in our day. The truth is, no modern reader can conceive the then atrocity, ferocity, unspeakability of this fact. First, after long reading in the old dead pamphlets does one see the magnitude of it. To be equalled, nay, to be preferred think some, in point of horror, to the Crucifixion of Christ.' Alas, in these irreverent times of ours, if all the Kings of Europe were to be cut in pieces at one swoop, and flung in heaps in St. Margaret's Churchyard on the same day, the emotion would, in strict arithmetical truth, be small in comparison! We know it not, this atrocity of the English Regicides ; shall never know it. I reckon it perhaps the most daring action any body of men to be met with in history ever, with clear consciousness, deliberately set themselves to do. Dread phantoms, glaring supernal on you,—when once they are quelled and their light snuffed out, none knows the terror of the phantom! The phantom is a poor paper-lantern with a candle-end in it, which any whipster dare now beard.

"This action of the English Regicides did in effect strike a damp like death through the heart of Flunkeyism universally in this world.

* Salmasii Clamor Regii Sanguinis.

Whereof Flunkeyism, Cant, Cloth-worship, or whatever ugly name it have, has gone about incurably sick ever since; and is now at length, in these generations, very rapidly dying. The like of which action will not be needed for a thousand years again. Needed, alas, -not till a new genuine Hero-worship has arisen, has perfected itself; and had time to degenerate into a Flunkeyism and Cloth-worship again! Which I take to be a very long date indeed."

In the year 1649, Cromwell was under the necessity of proceeding to Ireland. He is now Lord-Lieutenant of that unhappy country. Hear what the newspapers of the period say of him.

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'Tuesday, 10th July. This evening about five of the clock, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland began his journey; by the way of Windsor, and so to Bristol. He went forth in that state red equipage as the like hath hardly been seen; himself in a coach with six gallant Flanders mares, whitish grey; divers coaches accompanying him; and very many great Officers of the Army; his Lifeguard consisting of eighty gallant men, the meanest whereof a Commander or Esquire, in stately habit;—with trumpets sounding, almost to the shaking of Charing Cross, had it been now standing. Of his Lifeguard many are Colonels; and believe me, it's such a guard as is hardly to be paralleled in the world. And now have at you my Lord of Ormond! You will have men of gallantry to encounter; whom to overcome will be honor sufficient, and to be beaten by them will be no great blemish to your reputation. If you say, Cæsar or Nothing; they say a Republic or Nothing. The Lord Lieutenant's colours are white.""

For about nine months he was in the "Green Isle," fighting with extraordinary success. His dispatches from Ireland are most singular documents, and merit careful perusal, and deep reflection. A great lesson is to be learned from them and much light is shed upon the true state of affairs. They are the most valuable records that we have as yet come to. But we must refer the Historical student and moral philosopher to the book itself, to verify our assertion. On the 31st May, 1650, Cromwell again arrives in London, "where all the world is out to welcome him." "Fairfax and chief Officers, and members of Parliament with solemn salutation on Hounslow Heath: from Hounslow Heath to Hyde Park, where are Train Bands and Lord Mayors, to Whitehall and the Cockpit, where are better than these, it is one wide tumult of salutation, congratulation, artilleryvolleying, human shouting; Hero worship after a sort, not the best sort.

Thus we have afforded thee reader, a faint glimmering notion of the first five hundred pages of our singular author's production. In our next we will follow the fortunes of the wonderful Oliver, and endeavor to give thee a better understanding of the Man and his Biographer.

POEMS:-BY THOMAS HOOD.

Edward Moxon, Dover Street.

THOMAS HOOD while living, was courted and admired as a brilliant wit and incomparable punster; posterity will know and do him reverence as an exquisite Poet. A short time before his death, as he felt his tide of life fast ebbing to the ocean of eternity, he earnestly requested those near and dear to him to collect and publish, as soon after his departure as possible, all his serious To this death-bed desire we poems. are indebted for the valuable volumes before us. The great charm of Hood's

writings consists in their touching delicacy and extreme tenderness. The gifted being who has so recently left the shores of Time, possessed a combination of intellect and heart, rarely to be found in a literary character. He was a gentle, sympathetic creature, who, though he wrote for his daily bread,' performed his task of teacher with singleness of heart, and acted as a recreator with a high moral purpose. His beautiful poems entitled, the "Bridge of Sighs," the " Lady's Dream," the "Workhouse Clock," and the most characteristic lyric of our age, "The Song of a Shirt," will support our assertion. In the precious bequest beside us, we find the gems here named, with many others whose value is already widely known. There is, however, one not so famous, which from its singular beauty, pathos, and power, is worthy of special extract and comment; we allude to "Miss. Kilmansegg and her precious leg." It is a first-rate specimen of the poet's strangely blended sympathies with the serious and ludicrous, and his mastery of humorous and pathetical expression. Thomas the Rhymer commences with the birth of a young lady, of whom he says, "She was one of those who by Fortune's boon Are born, as they say, with a silver spoon

In her mouth, not a wooden ladle:
To speak according to poet's wont,
Plutus as sponsor stood at her font,
And Midas rocked the cradle."

This was the fortunate Miss Kilmansegg, "a fifty thousand pounder." In course of time, the christening took place, and the poet historian declares,

"It would fill a Court Gazette to name
What East and West End people came
To the rite of Christianity :

The lofty Lord, and the titled dame,

All di'monds, plumes, and urbanity:

His Lordship the May'r with his golden chain,
And two Gold Sticks, and the Sheriffs twain,
Nine foreign Counts and other great men
With their orders and stars, to help M or N
To renounce all pomp and vanity.

"To paint the maternal Kilmansegg
The pen of an Eastern Poet would beg,
And need an elaborate sonnet;

How she sparkled with gems whenever she stirr'd
And her head niddle-noddled at every word,
And seem'd so happy, a Paradise Bird

Had nidificated upon it.

"Sir Jacob the Father strutted and bow'd,
And smiled to himself, and laugh'd aloud,
To think of his heiress and daughter-
And then in his pockets he made a grope,
And then, in the fulness of joy and hope,
Seem'd washing his hands with invisible soap,
In imperceptible water.

As she grew in years her education was proceeded with,

but

"Instead of stores from Edgeworth's page,
The true golden lore for our golden age,
Or lessons from Barbauld and Trimmer,
Teaching the worth of Virtue and Health,
All that she knew was the Virtue of Wealth,
Provided by vulgar nursery stealth

With a Book of Leaf Gold for a Primer.

"The very metal of merit they told,
And praised her for being as "good as gold!"
Till she grew as a peacock haughty;
Of money they talk'd the whole day round,
And weigh'd desert like grapes by the pound,
Till she had an idea from the very sound
That people with nought were naughty.

And so she approached womanhood; empty headed and hollow hearted. But an accident occurred, that checked for a time the hateful pride that swayed her soul. Her horse ran away with her, and fractured her leg to such a frightful extent that she was compelled to have it amputated. A cork leg was then made, but she positively refused to wear it.

"She could'nt-she should'nt-she would'nt have wood!

Nor a leg of cork, if she never stood,

And she swore an oath or something as good,

*

The proxy limb should be golden!"

*

*

*

"Wood indeed, in forest or park,

*

With its sylvan honours and feudal bark,
Is an aristocratical article:

But split and sawn, and hack'd about town,
Serving all needs of pauper or clown,
Trod on! stagger'd on! Wood cut down
Is vulgar-fibre and particle!

"And Cork!-when the noble cork tree shades
A lovely group of Castilian maids,

"Tis a thing for a song or sonnet !-
But cork, as it stops the bottle of gin,
Or bungs the beer-the small beer—in,
It pierced her heart like a corking-pin,
To think of standing upon it!

And she at last had her whim gratified. After her convalescence she took every opportunity of displaying the limb, and it soon became the "theme of all conversation." She gives a fancy ball, and actually dances there with the glittering leg, to the envy of some and the wonder of all beholders. Admirers soon gather round her, but the favored one is a foreign count, a fortune-hunting rascal. After the usual preliminaries, her marriage with this bad specimen of humanity is consummated. Ere the honeymoon is over, however, she has good reason to believe there is something wrong in her husband's notions of morality.

"He drank-the reverse of sparely,

And he used strange curses that made her fret,
And when he played with herself at piquet,
She found to her cost

For she always lost,

That the Count did not count quite fairly.

And then came dark mistrust and doubt,
Gathered by worming his secrets out,
And slips in his conversations-

Fears, which all her peace destroyed,

That his title was null-his coffers were void-
And his French chateau was in Spain, or enjoyed

The most airy of situations.

At last, the wicked Count who is "breaking her heart by constant aches," urges her to melt her golden leg to supply him with means to carry on his revels. This is too much to bear; she would rather lose her life than her leg, and alas! she does lose it. But how, let our poet tell. High words have passed