the Neapolitans had good reason to mourn the loss of their liberator. In passionate frenzy they had slain him-forgetful of the work he had accomplished, and of the work which still remained to be done, in a few acts of sharp and mistaken tyranny. Was he dead? This question was often repeated. Was he not immortal? There were some who argued that no enemy's sword, no foeman's bullet could have killed him, but that it was different when his friends and comrades were against him. Others said he had been carried to heaven to plead the cause of his oppressed countrymen, and when they told their beads they added a new saint to their calendar. By others it was avowed that he had risen from the dead. The death and resurrection of Masaniello became the confirmed faith of Naples. He would yet appear for the relief of the country-he would again cast down these tyrants from their seat; he would re-establish popular independence. But in a quiet grave, near his home at Amalfi, the hero of the Neapolitan revolution slept his last sleep. The schemes of France were defeated. Châtillon and Guise were overmatched. Guiseppe, the rat catcher, saw the triumph of the Spaniards, and Don John took vengeance on the rebellious herd-and still Masaniello slept. Near Amalfi there is a kind of rude pyramid still shown, and the peasantry have given it the name of the tomb of the Fisherman King. HE union of England with Scotland in 1603, by the accession of James First and Sixth, was conducive to no good feeling between the nations. The Scottish lairds who followed the king over the border were ill-received by the English nobility; and the people made rough songs about them, of which one sample may suffice: "Thy blue bonnet, when thou came hither, But now a long rapier hangs by his side, And huffingly doth the bonnie Scot ride." Several fatal duels were fought in the streets between the Scotch and English, and not all that James could do could lessen the ill-feeling which subsisted. Besides, the very conduct of the monarch himself, in attempting to reduce the institutions of Scotland to a state of uniformity with those of England, only seemed to exasperate his old subjects." When the Scottish king ascended the throne of England, great things were expected of him. He was identified with the Presbyterians, and, consequently, in a manner with the Puritan cause; but James changed his opinions. He began to believe in bishops, and exhibited no desire to favour a religion which, doing away with bishops, might ultimately do away with kings. "No bishop, no king," was his favourite saying, and in conformity with this idea, instead of continuing a Presbyterian, as he had ever professed to be, he became a Churchman when he came to England, and was lauded by the prelates as a man who spoke by the inspiration of God. There were at that time three parties, who called themselves Christians, and who were struggling on a theological arena. There were the Romanists with the Pope for head and governor-the Churchmen with the king as supreme ruler-and the Puritans, who denied the right of the state to interfere with the church at all. Of all causes of quarrel under the sun none have done so much evil as those of religion. In the name of Christ the cruellest outrages have been committed, and the bitterest wrongs done. The attempts of James to interfere with the Scottish church, to rule where he had no right to rule, was a gross piece of injustice. King or no king he ought to have been sensible of the rights of others—he ought never to have forgotten that he was but a man, and that his meanest subjects were men as well as he. But James forgot all this, and when he determined to remodel the church, he supposed that everybody would submit to him without opposition. He claimed the exclusive right to convoke the General Assembly. This right the Scottish clergy disputed, and penalties were introduced by the king to compel them to submit. Two of their most popular ministers were tried for treason, and condemned to perpetual exile. Others were shut up in the Tower of London, and the gloomy cloud of persecution settled over Scotland. Scottish pulpits rang with invectives against the king. He in opposition to the earnest desire of the nation, sent bishops to rule the church. He had prepared the way for this by appointing superintendents, and one of the ministers, seeing clearly into the scheme, had denounced the innovation, saying, "Dress him as bonnily as ye can, bring him in as fairly as ye will, we see the horns of his mitre weel enough;" and now the mitred prelates really came, disposed to roughly handle those who opposed them. James then gave instructions that the communion should be received kneeling. That baptism and the Lord's Supper might be administered in private. That all persons should be confirmed according to the rites of the Church of England, before they were admitted to communion. That Good Friday, Christmas Day, Easter Day, and Whit Sunday should be observed as holy; but that after divine service on Sundays, the people should indulge in public sports and pastimes. The Presbyterians were greatly shocked at these proceedings, for though they had never read in the Book of God about the celebration of Christmas Day and Whit Sunday, they had read that it was right to remember the Sabbath Day and keep it holy, and they entertained the notion-right or wrongthat dancing round a maypole, and riding on a hobby-horse, were scarcely consistent with Sabbath sanctity. When James died of a bilious fever, and was succeeded by his son Charles-more dignified, more chivalric than his father, but not a whit less obstinate the Presbyterians and the Puritans found that affairs had altered but little for the better. With the Earl of Strafford for his guide in civil affairs, and Archbishop Laud for his spiritual father, it was scarcely possible for a man to help being a tyrant. The monarch and the monarch's advisers had a short and easy way with every opponent-they fined them, or shut them up in gaol, or put them in the pillory and cut their ears off, and sent them to the whipping post or the gibbet as the case might be, or the digestion of the judges. Now it is a hard thing to scourge a nation into quietness-lopping off ears does not cement society, prisons and gallows will not make people loyal; these things have been tried again and again and have failed in every instance. With the Scotch especially, Charles was particularly severe, and these Scots were not men to be trifled with. They had lifted their swords against a crowned head more than once. James the First had been murdered in his bedchamber; James the Second had found the nation arrayed against him; they had slain James the Third on the battle-field; they had broken the heart of James the Fifth; Mary they had imprisoned and deposed,-what they had done before they could do again. Events had rendered them desperate. But Charles, blind to his own interest, deaf to the voice of warning, pursued a line of conduct which was at once highly distasteful and cruelly unjust. Not content with the innovations made by his father on the forms of Scottish worship, he determined to force upon the Scots the English liturgy, or rather a liturgy which, wherever it differed from that of England, differed in the judgment of all rigid protestants for the worse. It was planted in the mere wantonness of tyranny, but it bore deadly fruit. A large congregation had assembled in the High Church of St. Giles, Edinburgh. Grey-haired men were there, their lips tremulous with emotion, as they listened to the first performance of the liturgy-for they heard in it something more than prayer and praise, it was the voice of the tyrant speaking through the priest. Old and young were there, alike The beginning of the Riot in the High Church, Edinburgh. intent-wondering and doubting-the gay, the grave, the rude, the learned, some for pleasure, some for curiosity, some from habit; but not a word of opposition was offered as the service proceeded. But the silence was ominous; it was the calm which precedes a storm. There was an old woman there-a pious God-fearing woman by her neighbours' account |