Cit.

We need not put new matter to his charge:

What you have seen him do, and heard him speak,
Beating your officers, cursing yourselves,

Opposing laws with strokes, and here defying

Those whose great power must try him; even THIS,
So criminal, and in such CAPITAL kind,

Deserves the extremest death.

For that he has,

As much as in him lies, from time to time,
Envied against the people; seeking means
To pluck away their power: as now, at last,
Given hostile strokes, and that, not in the presence
Of dreaded justice, but on the ministers
That do distribute it; in the name o' the people,

And in the power of us, the tribunes, we,

Even from this instant, banish him our city,

In peril of precipitation

From off the rock Tarpeian, never more

To enter our Rome's gates. I' THE PEOPLE'S NAME

I say it shall be so.

It shall be so, it shall be so

let him away,

He's banish'd, and it shall be so.

Com. Hear me, MY MASTERS, and my COMMON FRIENDS.

HE'S SENTENCED: no more hearing.

Sic.

Bru.

THERE'S NO MORE TO BE SAID, BUT HE IS BANISHED,
As ENEMY to the PEOPLE, AND HIS COUNTRY:

IT SHALL BE SO, IT SHALL BE SO.

Cit.

IT SHALL BE SO.

And this is the story that was set before a king! One, too, who was just then bestirring himself to get the life of 'that last king of England who was his ancestor' brought out; a king who was taking so much pains to get his triple wreath of conquest brightened up, and all the lines in it laid out and distinguished-one who was taking so much pains to get the fresh red of that last 'conqueror,' who also 'came in by battle,' cleared up in his coat of arms, in case his double line of white and red from the old Norman should not prove sufficient sufficient to convince the English nation of his divine right, and that of his heirs for ever, to dispose of it and its weal at his and their pleasure, with or without laws, as they should see fit. A

pretty scene this to amuse a king with, whose ancestor, the one from whom he directly claimed, had so lately seated himself and his line by battle-by battle with the English people on those very questions; who had beaten them in' in their mutinies with his single sword, and taken all from them'; who had planted his chair of state on their suppressed liberties, and 'the charters that they bore in the body of the weal'that chair which was even then beginning to rock a little while there was that in the mien and bearing of the royal occupant and his heir which might have looked to the prescient mind, if things went on as they were going then, not unlike to break some one's neck.

'Bid them home,'

says the Tribune, after the military hero is driven out by the uprisen people, with shouting, from the city gates for ever; charged never more to enter them, on peril of precipitation from the Tarpeian Rock.

'Bid them home:

Say, their great enemy is gone, and THEY
STAND in their ancient strength.'

But it is in the conquered nation that this scene of the deposing of the military power is completed. Of course one could not tell beforehand what effect that cautious, but on the whole luminous, exhibition of the recent conquest of the English PEOPLE, prepared at the suggestion and under the immediate criticism of royalty, might have with the profoundly loyal English people themselves, in the way of 'striking an awe into them,' and removing any lurking opposition they might have to the exercise of an arbitrary authority in government; but with people of the old Volscian pluck, according to this Poet's account of the matter, an allusion to a similar success on the part of the Conqueror at a critical moment, and when his special qualifications for government happened to be passing under review, was not attended with those happy results which appear to have been expected in the other instance.

'If you have writ your annals true, 't is there,

That like an EAGLE in a dove-cote, I

Flutter'd your Volsces in Corioli:
Alone, I did it,'

[The answer is, in this case,]

• Why——

' Why, noble lords,

Will you be put in mind of his blind fortune,

Which was your shame, by this unholy braggart,

'Fore your own eyes and ears?

Cons. Let him die for 't. [Several speak at once.]

Citizens [Speaking promiscuously]. Tear him to pieces; do it presently. He killed my son-my daughter;- he killed my cousin Marcus; he killed my father..

[. . . . Honest, my lord? Ay, honest.']
Cons. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him.'

'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius ?
Against him FIRST.'

Surely, if that 'Heir apparent' to whom the History of HENRY THE SEVENTH was dedicated by the author, with an urgent recommendation of the 'rare accidents' in that reign to the royal notice and consideration; if that prince had but chanced in some thoroughly thoughtful mood to light upon this yet more 'ancient piece,' he might have found here, also, some things worthy of his notice. It cannot be denied, that the poet's mode of handling the same historical question is much more bold and clear than that of the professed philosopher. But probably this Prince was not aware that his father entertained at Whitehall then, not a literary Historian, merely a Book-maker, able to compose narratives of the past in an orderly chronological prosaic manner, according to the received method - but a Show-man, also, an Historical

Show-man, with such new gifts and arts; a true Magician, who had in his closet a mirror which possessed the property of revealing, not the past nor the present only, but the future, 'with a near aim,' an aim so near that it might well seem 'magical'; and that a cloud was flaming in it, even then, 'which drizzled blood upon the Capitol.' This Prince of Wales did not know, any more than his father did, that they had in their court then an historical scholar, with such an indomitable passion for the stage, with such a decided turn for actingone who felt himself divinely prompted to a part in that theatre which is the Globe-one who had laid out all for his share in that. They did not either of them know, fortunately for us, that they had in their royal train such an Historic Sport-Manager, such a Prospero for Masques; that there was a true' Phil-harmonus' there, with so clear an inspiration of scientific statesmanship. They did not know that they had in that servant of the crown, so supple, so patient-patient as the midnight sleep,' patient' as the ostler that for the poorest piece will bear the knave by the volume' - such a born aspirant for rule; one who had always his eye on the throne, one who had always in mind their usurpation of it. They did not know that they had a Hamlet in their court, who never lost sight of his purpose, or faltered in his execution of it; who had found a scientific ground for his actions, an end for his ends; who only affected incoherence; and that it was he who was intriguing to such purpose with the PLAYERS.

The Elizabethan revolutionist was suppressed: then 'Fame, who is the posthumous sister of rebellion, sprang up.'

'O like a book of sports thou 'lt read me o'er,
But there's more in me than thou 'lt understand.'

'Henceforth guard thee well,

For I'll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there;
But by the forge that stithied Mars his helm,
I'll kill thee everywhere, yea o'er and o'er.'

CHAPTER XIII.

CONCLUSION.

'How I have thought of this, and of these times,
I shall recount hereafter,

and find a time

Both meet to hear and answer such high things.
Till then, my noble friend, chew upon this;
Brutus had rather be a villager,

Than to repute himself a son of Rome,
Under these hard conditions as this time
Is like to lay upon us.

INASMUCH

NASMUCH as the demonstration contained in this volume has laboured throughout under this disadvantage, that however welcome that new view of the character and aims of the great English philosopher, which is involved in it, as welcome it must be to all true lovers of learning, it presents itself to the mind of the reader as a view directly opposed, not merely to what may possibly be his own erroneous preconceptions of the case; but to facts which are among the most. notable in the history of this country; and not only to facts sustained by unquestionable cotemporary authority, and attested by public documents,-- facts which history has graven with her pen of iron in the rock for ever, but with other exhibitions. of this man's character, not less, but more painful, for which he is himself singly responsible; - not the forced exhibition of a confession wrung from him by authority, not the craven self-blasting defamation of a glorious name that was not his to blast, that was the property of men of learning in all coming ages, precious and venerable in their eyes for ever, at the bidding of power, not that only, but the voluntary exhibition of those qualities with which he stands charged, which he has gone out of his way to leave to us, - memorials