confront the perils of the hour. His haughty spirit spurned the idea of submitting to the terms, dictated by men whom he regarded as successful rebels. "Let the King" said he to Laud, "but speak the word, and I will make the Scots go hence faster than they came, I would answer for it on my life; but the instructions must come from another than from me." The imperious tone in which he addressed the soldiers, irritated them to such a degree as to incense them more against their own leaders than the enemy they were enlisted to oppose. Lord Wharton and another peer having ventured to present a petition to the King, requesting him to conclude a peace with the Scots, Strafford summoned them before a court-martial, and demanded that they should be shot at the head of the army, as abettors and encouragers of revolt. Before the court rose, Hamilton asked Strafford "if he were sure of the army," a home question to which the latter could make no reply. Even while the treaty was pending at Ripon, Strafford ordered a skirmish to be made against the Scots, and gained a slight advantage-a circumstance which rather prejudiced than proved of service to the King's affairs. Thus, desperate in the dire extremity to which his fortunes were reduced, he stood eager to rush headlong on the foe, fully conscious that for him nothing now remained but the chance of victory or the certainty of death.

On the 3rd of November, 1640, a day conspicuous even in the annals of the world, that illustrious assembly, known in history as the Long Parliament, commenced its memorable career. The Commons, irritated by the

wrongs they had suffered, and indignant at the neglect with which they had been treated, assumed a stern and determined attitude. They laid the axe to the very roots of regal absolutism. They took the whole power of the government into their own hands. They subjected the executive to the control and supervision of Parliament. They placed restraints upon the prerogatives of royalty. They vindicated and re-established the privileges of the people. They curbed the ambitious pretensions of the church. They eradicated corruption and abuse from the courts of law. They purified the administration of justice. They liberated the victims of arbitrary power, and struck off the fetters of servitude from the oppressed. Finally, they brought to the bar of trial those guilty agents of despotism, who for eleven years had laboured to abrogate the Constitution by establishing a tyranny as revolting as it was unnatural.

To the merits of those inflexible patriots who formed the leaders of this Assembly, posterity has at length done tardy justice; errors they committed-excesses they sanctioned-authority they abused, yet when all the faults of their chequered conduct shall be closely scanned, when all the evil deeds of their administration shall be harshly written down against them, when the worst construction shall have been put upon their actions and intentions, a sufficient measure of virtue will still be left to place them high upon the list of English statesmen, conspicuous amidst the ranks of freemen, and pre-eminent even among the noblest, the wisest, and the greatest benefactors of the human race.

EDMUND WALLER.

THE English poets of the sixteenth century, though characterised by an exuberant richness of imagination, and great strength of thought, are, generally speaking, with the exception of Spenser, remarkably deficient in graceful construction and harmonious versification. The language had not then been sufficiently purified and chastened to admit of elegant composition, but proved so harsh and unpliable, even in the hands of the greatest masters of the divine art, that however much we may admire the vigour and originality of their ideas, the verse which expressed them sounds rough and unpleasing to the ear. In the present day scarcely any work of these writers can be perfectly comprehended as to the exact meaning of many passages, without a glossary being constantly at hand, as well as the aid of some laborious and patient commentator to explain the text. It was not that these writers were wanting in genius or taste, but that the barbarisms of the age in which they lived formed insurmountable obstacles in preventing them from attaining a pure and correct style. The seventeenth century accomplished a perceptible improvement in the language, as regards chasteness and refinement of expression, so that before the Augustan age of English literature had closed, both verse and prose were written in a style so elegant and graceful, that the works then

produced have rarely in subsequent times been rivalled or surpassed. We know of no compositions in recent annals, which excel the L'Allegro and Penseroso of Milton, the Essays of Temple and Addison, the Fables of Dryden, and the Epistles of Pope, in reference to correctness of diction, variety of modulation, and perfection of harmony. As a conspicuous labourer among those who contributed to effect this reformation in the English language, the subject of the following memoir deserves honourable mention.

Edmund Waller was born at Coleshill in Hertfordshire, on the 3rd of May, 1605, his father occupying the position of a country gentleman, and possessing large estates in Buckinghamshire, as well as the enjoyment of a considerable fortune. The mother of the poet being a sister of the celebrated Hampden, this circumstance shaped in some degree the political conduct of her son, amidst the disastrous troubles which ensued.

Waller having had the misfortune while an infant to lose his father by a sudden illness, the patrimonial estate passed into his hands at a very early age; and as this inheritance produced an income of nearly four thousand pounds a year, his position naturally proved favourable and commanding for his entrance into public life. After receiving a rudimentary education at Eton, he was removed to King's College, Cambridge, and from thence, at the age of seventeen, he passed directly into the House of Commons as the member for Amersham, in Bucks, a borough adjoining his landed property, and probably in some degree

under the family influence as well. He represented this town in the third and fourth Parliaments of James the First, and it is recorded that soon after his admission to the House, he spoke upon several occasions with considerable fluency and vigour. One of his biographers, in mentioning the circumstance of Waller's appearance at the court of this monarch, has reported a remarkable conversation that occurred when the poet was present. Andrews, Bishop of Winchester, and Neale, Bishop of Durham, standing behind the King's chair, his majesty thus addressed them: " "My Lords, cannot I take my subject's money when I want it, without all this formality of Parliament?" The Bishop of Durham answered, "God forbid but that you should, you are the breath of our nostrils." Whereupon the king turned round, and said to the Bishop of Winchester, "What say you."-"Sir,” replied the Bishop, "I have no skill to judge of Parliamentary cases."-The King answered, "No put offs, my Lord, answer me presently."-"Then, Sir," said he, "I think it is lawful for you to take my brother Neale's money, since he offers it."

No sooner had Waller taken his seat in Parliament, than he aspired to attract the observation of the court, by the publication of a poem, upon the escape of Prince Charles, at St. Andero; and so favourably were the verses received, that after this successful debut every one appears to have regarded him as entitled to assume the laurels of Parnassus, by an indisputable right. The versification of this fragment is exceedingly correct, and proves that the writer had