were made; and was, indeed, much more relied on by that party, than the general himself. In the first entrance into the troubles, he undertook the command of a regiment of foot, and performed the duty of a colonel, upon all occasions, most punc, tually. He was very temperate in diet, and a supreme governor over all his passions and affections, and had thereby a great power over other men's. He was of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out, or wearied by the most laborious; and of parts not to be imposed upon by the subtle or sharp; and of a personal courage equal to his best parts: so that he was an enemy not to be wished, wherever he might have been made a friend; and as much to be apprehended where he was so, as any man could deserve to be. And therefore his death was no less pleasing to the one party, than it was condoled in the other. In a word, what was said of Cinna, might well be applied to him: "He had a head to contrive, and a tongue to persuade, and a hand to execute any mischief;" [or as the historian says elsewhere,]" any good."

It must be remembered, that this character of our heroic and venerated champion of free

dom, was given by one, whom difference of party rendered an enemy to him. Yet even here his unrivalled superiority is unquestioned. A doubt is only cast upon the purity of his motives; though it is at the same time admitted, that no selfish ends could be discerned. On any supposition, he must unquestionably have been one of the most extraordinary men that ever lived. It will be recollected, that he was mortally wounded in a skirmish with prince Rupert, at Chalgrovefield in Oxfordshire. He was shot in the shoulder with two musket-balls, on the 18th of June 1643, and died on the 24th in great agony and as Clarendon says, to as great a consternation of all his party, as if their whole army had been defeated,

Character of Lord Falkland, who was slain in the battle of Newbury, between the parliament forces under the earl of Essex, and the royalists commanded by prince Rupert.

In this unhappy battle was slain the lord viscount Falkland; a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and

obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war, than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity.

Turpe mori, post te, solo non posse dolore.

Before this parliament, his condition of life was so happy, that it was hardly capable of improvement. Before he came to be twenty years of age, he was master of a noble fortune, which descended to him by the gift of a grand-father, without passing through his father or mother, who were then both alive, and not well enough contented to find themselves passed by in the descent. His education for some years had been in Ireland, where his father was lord deputy; so that, when he returned into England to the possession of his fortune, he was unentangled with any acquaintance or friends, which usually grow up by the custom of conversation; and therefore was to make a pure election of his company; which he chose by other rules than were prescribed to the young nobility of that time. And it cannot be denied, though he admitted some few to his friendship for the agreeableness of their natures, and their undoubted affection to him, that his familiarity and friendship for the most part was

with men of the most eminent and sublime parts, and of untouched reputation in point of integrity; and such men had a title to his bosom.

He was a great cherisher of wit, and fancy, and good parts, in any man; and if he found them clouded with poverty or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which, in those administrations, he was such a dispenser, as, if he had been trusted with it to such uses, and if there had been the least of vice in his expence, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied by any pains that were necessary to that end. And therefore, having once resolved not to see London, which he loved above all places, till he had perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went to his own house in the country, and pursued it with that indefatigable industry, that it will not be believed in how short a time he was master of it, and accurately read all the Greek historians.

In this time, his house being within little more than ten miles of Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite and accurate men of that university; who found such an immenseness of wit, and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he

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was not ignorant in any thing, yet such an excessive humility, as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resorted and dwelt with him, as in a college situated in a purer air; so that his house was a university in a less volume, whither they came not so much for repose as study; and to examine and refine those grosser propositions, which laziness and consent made current in vulgar conversation.

Many attempts were made upon him by the instigation of his mother, (who was a lady of another persuasion in religion, and of a most masculine understanding, alloyed with the passion and infirmities of her own sex) to pervert him in his piety to the church of England, and to reconcile him to that of Rome; which they prosecuted with the more confidence, because he declined no opportunity or occasion of conference with those of that religion, whether priests or laics; having diligently studied the controversies, and exactly read all, or the choicest of the Greek and Latin fathers, and having a memory so stupendous, that he remembered on all occasions, whatsoever he read. And he was so great an enemy to that passion and uncharitableness, which he saw produced by difference of opinion in matters of religion, that in all those disputations with priests, and others of the Roman church, he affected to manifest all possible civility to their persons, and estimation of their parts; which made them retain still