even after its workings were seen to be evil. She could most easily have been a free and a great nation, when in the transition state to which Cromwell brought her, had a second Cromwell been found to take the place of the first. Here Macauley thinks England made her great mistake,-" either Charles the First never should have been brought to the block, or Charles the Second never should have been brought to the throne." Had the great Hampden lived no man can say this consummation would not have been perfected,-it would most likely have been done.

To do it now would be to wipe out at one stroke the long line of Kings-bury the Peerage-rend Church and State from their harlot-embrace-fling the reins of government to the people, and bid them guide their own destinies, and relieve their own wants. This, King, Peerage, and Hierarchy will never willingly permit. To lay down their honors and ill-gotten wealth at the feet of the people, and be reduced to the painful necessity of acquiring them by industry and merit, is a task they cannot perform. Honors they must have, and opulence too, though millions perish as the price of obtaining them. Their rent-roll must be as great, though millions more fill the land with the cry

for bread. To sustain the splendors of royalty, aristocracy, and hierarchy, there must be a perpetual drain of wealth from the people, to flow round the throne and privileged classes. This flow of wealth does not pass through the natural chan

nels of trade. The people receive no equivalent for it. To go and take it from the poor man's pocket at the bayonet's point would be too bare-faced a robbery in the sight of the world. Hence inordinate taxation-tithes, church rates, corn-laws, excise and custom duties, &c. must be employed to legalize the robbery. The mass of the people behold this stream of gold incessantly flowing from them towards their idle and profligate oppressors, while there returns not even a scanty supply of bread. Such a sight naturally awakens the keenest inquiry, and as the injustice of it all, forces itself upon them, the strongest, stormiest passions of the human soul are aroused.

The English government is a solid one, but it must be infinitely more so to sustain itself amid such a wild waking up of men to their rights. There is a glory round her throne and her peerage, whose honors were laid in the days of Norman chivalry; but it must be brighter than it has ever yet been, to dazzle the eyes of wronged and starving men, for the first time open to the true and only means of redress. The Church, with its long train of mitred bishops, led on by Royalty itself, is an imposing spectacle, but it must invent some new majesty to awe a people that openly, boldly cry, "Give us more bread, and fewer priests!" The throne of England towers as majestic as ever, but fearful shadows are flitting over it, the visages of famine-struck, hate-filled men. The chariot with its blazing coronet, and lazy

lord within, rolls by as imposingly as ever; but there is an ominous sound in the streets which the rumbling of its wheels cannot utterly drown; it is the low, half-suppressed threat, YOUR TIME WILL COME! Her cathedrals and bench of bishops retain their ancient splendor, but there are eyes looking on them with other purpose than to admire or revere.

To the careless observer, England is as powerful and magnificent as ever; all things yet remain as they were. But there is an under-working power which gathers strength from the very obstacles that bar its progress. The tremendous power exerted to restrain it from bursting forth, cannot make it cease working. Instead of expending its fires in eruptions, it slowly eats away under ground, hollowing out the whole mountain on which the throne, the aristocracy, and the church rest. The greatest, keenest-sighted men of England know this, and they begin to study these new and alarming appearances, as philosophers study volcanoes, not to see what they shall do with the volcano, but what the volcano is going to do with them. And yet after all, we think England could make as great an exertion (in certain directions) now as ever. In a crisis which should call forth all her resources she would exhibit as much strength as she has ever done. A common danger would unite for a while all her jarring interests. No outward force, we imagine, can subdue her. Her provinces might be cut off

in a general war, but her throne she would hold against the world. Her danger lies where the exertion of physical force would only increase it. Not abroad, but at home, are the elements of trouble. Not hostile armies, but her own subjects have become her greatest dread. She has reached that crisis from which most governments date their decline-her foes have become they of her own household.

In many respects she resembles the Roman empire. Her own population being but a small proportion to the number of her subjects; like Rome her external growth has been more rapid than her internal; or rather, while she has been extending her dominion abroad, the elements of destruction have been gathering at home. Like Rome, too, her arms have become too long for her body. Even had not the Northern barbarians swarmed down on her, "like a giant drunk with wine," Rome soon would have reeled to her downfall. Nothing but a regeneration of the people could rescue her from the approaching ruin. But England is not threatened with this evil; her superstructure does not totter because it stands in the midst of a depraved people, but because it is based on millions of agitated human hearts. It vibrates not so much because it is drunk with sin, as because the bowed necks on which it has so long rested, begin to erect themselves. England's greatness is in the past, not in the future. She looks back with pride, forward with shuddering.

This truth was illustrated to me most forcibly as I passed from the crowded streets of London into the TOWER, that grand and gloomy treasure-house of England's feudal and military glory. It was founded by William the Conqueror as a fortress nearly eight centuries ago, and it speaks, to us of modern times, in the voice of the feudal age. As I entered its pondrous gates, crossed the ditch, and stood before the massive buildings, made gloomy by the terrible part they have played in the history of England, the past rose before me, crowded with its majestic figures. For awhile the misery of England was forgotten-London was to me as though it were not I stood in the shadow of past centuries. It is not my object to describe the Tower, but to listen for awhile to the language of this old home of the English monarchs. In one of the great chambers of the Tower,* (the Horse Armoury,) were arranged, in regular and chronological order, twenty-two equestrian figures, many of them the most celebrated kings of England, with their favorite lords; all of them with their horses, in the armour of the ages in which they lived, surrounded by the insignia of their rank, and the trophies of their conquests. In passing slowly along this royal rank, I saw first, the figure of Edward I. clad in armour he wore 600 years ago, with hauberk, and sleeves, and hood,

* The destruction of a large part of these valuable treasures of antiquity in this building by fire in 1841, was subsequent to the date of the visit here referred to.