DEATH OF THE LITTLE CAPTIVE KING.

We have been telling no imaginary tale. The sufferings of Louis XVII. in his foul prison require no picturesque embellishment. Yet the mind of the compassionate reader may well be excused for doubting the truthfulness of these melancholy details, and will naturally inquire if no effort was made to rescue the unfortunate prisoner from his oppressors--if no humane hand interfered to point out his condition to the people. Nothing of this kind appears to have been done. A nation assuming itself to be the greatest, the most civilised, and the most polite, quailed under the despotism of a set of wretches elevated to a power which they disgraced. As M. Thiers forcibly observes: 'People dared no longer express any opinion. A hundred thousand arrests and some hundreds of condemnations rendered imprisonment and the scaffold ever present to the minds of twenty-five millions of French.' And thus the fate of poor Louis-Charles, if it did not escape notice, at least encountered

no censure.

The visit of the physician, to which we have alluded, took place only after the Reign of Terror had subsided, and the nation had resumed something like its senses. But this resumption of order came too late to save the little captive king. The physician, on seeing his deplorable condition, had him instantly removed into an apartment, the windows of which opened on the garden; and observing that the free current of air seemed to revive him for the moment, he said in a cheerful tone: 'You will soon be able to walk and play about the garden.'

'I' said the prince, raising his head a little; 'I shall never go anywhere but to my mother, and she is not on earth.'

You must hope the best, sir,' said the physician soothingly. The child's only answer was a smile; but what a tale of withered hopes, of buried joys, of protracted suffering, was in that smile!

On the 8th of June 1795, about two o'clock, he made signs to those about him to open the window. They obeyed, and with a last effort he raised his eyes to heaven, as if seeking some one there, softly whispered, 'Mother!' and died.

Thus expired Louis XVII. at the early age of ten years and two months. He was buried in a grave so obscure that it has never been identified. This and other circumstances, strangely enough, led various impudent individuals, in after years, to pretend that the little prince did not die in prison, but survived in their own persons. These impostors met with no respect from any but the most credulous, and they have ceased to be thought of. Any one desirous to get full particulars of the captivity and death of the unfortunate Louis XVII., may consult the carefully written work of M. A. Beauchyne (Paris, 1852).

T could hardly have been expected that the more eager and enthusiastic partisans and admirers of the great religious movement in the sixteenth century, would remain content with such changes in ecclesiastical doctrine and government as satisfied the views and wishes of the royal and hierarchical personages who in this country helped on the triumph of the Reformation. True, the change which bound the nation to the pontificate of Rome was snapped asunder, and some of the dogmas to which they were chiefly opposed had been denounced and discarded; but more, much more, in their opinion, remained to be accomplished, before there could be any well-grounded hope of the establishment of pure scriptural rule in England. It was not, they would fain believe, merely to set up the spiritual supremacy of the crown that that of the pope had been abrogated; and certainly, as regarded themselves, they, the Puritans, as many began to call them, were not one whit more disposed to submit to the yoke of Canterbury for having cast off that of Rome. Austere, impracticable fanatics, persons of less fervid zeal, less deeply rooted convictions, or more comprehensive charity, no doubt deemed them to be; but none could deny that they were, as a body, thoroughly sincere, and terribly in earnest; men who held the pleasures of life and worldly advantages as nought-personal liberty, life itself, at a pin's fee-if by their sacrifice the cause which they believed to be of God might be thereby advanced. And it was quite in vain that our reforming monarchs, Henry, Edward, Elizabeth, No. 131,

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James, who, one after another, traced with their sceptres the exact line upon the sand beyond which the rushing and tumultuous tide should not be permitted to flow, had recourse to the discredited weapons of a defeated intolerance in vindication of their own infallibility. Imprisonment, torture, death, failed to subdue, or sensibly check, the stubborn nonconformist spirit which animated the majority of the middle classes both in England and Scotland; and Elizabeth's reign had not closed, when it was clearly apparent that the fulminations of Lambeth were as impotent to rebuke or control effectually the progress of religious 'opinion,' as had been the thunders of the Vatican. No doubt, during the earlier portions of the great queen's reign, when the independence of the realm was menaced by the haughty and powerful Spaniard, devotion to her majesty, whose throne seemed to be the only barrier against the reimposition of papal rule, absorbed or dominated all other and comparatively minor considerations. One, for instance, of the most forward and stubborn of the Puritans, condemned by Elizabeth's iniquitous Court of High Commission to lose his right hand, the instant it was struck off waved his hat in the air with the other, and shouted: 'God save the queen!' But after the magnificent Armada had been destroyed, and the Low Countries had finally triumphed in their long and terrific struggle with Spain; when Scotland especially, for centuries the unyielding, and, from her position and the character of her population, one of the most dangerous enemies of England, was about, by the accession of James to the English throne, to be united with her ancient antagonist, and all reasonable fear of successful invasion had consequently vanished, the fierce and prolonged struggle in behalf of mental freedom, liberty, sanctity of conscience, commenced in real earnest. Yes, mental freedom, liberty and sanctity of conscience, albeit these principles were not inscribed upon the banners of the earlier Puritans, who were, nevertheless, unwittingly it may be, their first and only indomitable champions. They began by wrangling against formularies in worship-the Book of Common Prayer, the use of the ring in marriage, the cross in baptism, the Aaronitic vestments of the priesthood; and if the ablest, most clear-sighted amongst them had been asked what essentially they were contending for, the answer, if an unreserved and candid one, would doubtless have been, as the after-acts of their zealous leaders but too fully proved, that they were bent upon establishing and enforcing the practice, or at least the profession, of pure spiritual religion, as interpreted by Calvin and themselves from the Bible, and rooting out all other forms and modes of Christianity-a despotism as gross and detestable as any other that in any age has afflicted mankind. But the arguments they used, the principles they appealed to, especially that main pillar of their strength, the indefeasible right of private judgment in matters spiritual, could not, experience taught them, be long dwarfed and

restricted to such narrow issues as they would have imposed. Two main irreconcilable principles, in fact, and they only, were in presence of each other-authority and conscience. There was no middle course permanently possible. Either the stubborn nonconformist must again bow his neck to authority, or, however reluctantly, concede to others that which it was his aim to secure at any cost or hazard for himself-inviolability and supremacy of conscience in things spiritual. This vital principle it is-lying at the very root of Puritan dissent, but not, unhappily, for many years embodied in its practice that has breathed enduring life and vigour into the dry bones of a sour, dogmatic theology; this, the sacred flame, the beacon-light, which, borne half-unconsciously, if you will, across the Atlantic to the shelter, and for the guidance of a new world by the Pilgrim Fathers, still hallows their footsteps, and sheds a glory over their history which conceals beneath its veil of light the faults, errors, crimes-for that is the true word-which blot and darken the else bright, heroic record. As humble but faithful expositors of truth, it will be our duty to draw aside that veil, certainly with no irreverent hand, but the less unwillingly that we believe a higher moral, a greater, or, at all events, a more needed lesson, is to be derived from those stained and sorrowful leaves, than from the lustrous pages with which they so deplorably contrast; although these, we at the same time entirely agree, will be pondered over with enthusiasm and delight, as long as lofty enterprise, unswerving resolution, and unquailing self-sacrifice, have power to arouse the sympathies and command the admiration of mankind.

Next to the House of Commons, in which the Puritans had, in the latter days of Elizabeth's reign, a powerful and growing party, they looked with hope, almost with confidence, to the accession of James for relief from the vexations and persecutions to which they were exposed. They were miserably disappointed. A conference was held at Hampton Court, before the king, between the Puritan leaders and their dignified opponents, at which his majesty, after giving unusual vent to the loquacious egotism it was his delight to indulge in, plainly declared, that if nonconformists of all patterns and degrees did not submit to what he, in the plenitude of royal wisdom, deemed to be true and orthodox, it should be worse for them. I will make them conform,' were his words to Dr Reynolds, 'or harry them out of this land, or worse.' His acts redeemed his threats; and as he was enabled for some years to rule without a parliament, the only potent and ever-hated foe of absolutism, the burning, hanging, torturing of unhappy dissidents from the Establishment, soon became as common as during the reign of the imperious Elizabeth. Many bowed their heads in affected submission, till the violence of the storm should have passed away; others, of sterner purpose and hardier mould, disdained to temporise, preferring rather to seek in foreign lands the peace and safety refused

to them at home. A large number had emigrated, some years previously, to Holland, Switzerland, and parts of Northern Germany; and amongst others who followed their example were a numerous body of reputed ‘Brownists,' from the neighbourhood of Boston, in Lincolnshire. They were called Brownists for no other reason than that, like the Rev. Mr Brown, a beneficed and eccentric clergyman of the Establishment, they asserted the right of free churches, and refused submission to Episcopacy and state rule. Their first restingplace (1606) was Amsterdam; but a schism having broken out between two of their pastors or elders, who mutually excommunicated each other, a large portion of them removed to Leyden, under the clerical guidance of the Rev. John Robinson, a Norfolk divine, and an amiable, just man. They now assumed the more appropriate designation of Independents, and for about twelve years dwelt and worshipped in peace-in peace, that is to say, inasmuch as they were not molested from without; but their hearts yearned for the accustomed haunts, the old customs, manners, the familiar accents of their native land. The people about them were civil and helpful enough, but strange-strange as the tongue they spoke. This homesickness grew upon them; and whilst anxiously pondering how to deal with it-for there was yet no safety in England, except on condition of 'conformity'-Mr Robinson bethought him of the vast new western continent, where reputedly fertile solitudes appeared to offer so inviting a refuge to fugitives from the oppressions of the Old World. The Spaniard, the Frenchman, the Hollander, were, he knew, already busy there, and the plantation of Virginia had been partially commenced in Elizabeth's time; why might they not, then, hope to found another England in the American wilderness? -a New England, to which they would bear the language, the manners, the traditions, the self-reliant spirit, the passionate attachment to representative institutions, the indomitable hatred of despotism, the Magna Charta, the jury-trial of OLD England-reproduce, in fact, in the regions of the setting sun, the England from which they were self-exiled for conscience' sake, in all but its persecution of the people of God! The reverend gentleman lost no time in imparting the idea, which had so forcibly struck him, to his congregation, by whom it was received with enthusiasm. It was, they said, a message from God himself, commanding them to go forth and plant His church in the wilderness; and no dread of suffering, peril, death itself, should deter them from obeying the divine injunction. These were the first PILGRIM FATHERS-the forlorn-hope of the great Puritan emigration which, commencing in 1620, and mainly concluded by the meeting of the Long Parliament, not only founded and settled the New England states of America, but has, in a wonderful degree, impressed its own political and religious policy and character, in their essential attributes, upon the institutions, ideas, tendencies, of the entire republic, one-third of