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Lord Russell asked for a pen, ink, and paper, in order to take notes of the proceedings. These were given to him; and he said: "Can I have some person who can write, to assist my memory?" "Yes, my lord, one of your servants." "My wife is here, ready to do it," he replied. "If her ladyship will take the trouble, she can do so," said the judge; and the thronging spectators could not refrain from expressions of sympathy and admiration, when the noble woman, calm, selfpossessed, and majestic, seated herself by the side of the man she loved so tenderly and well, and whom she was soon to see no more in this changeful, weary world. During the long and tedious trial, ever ready with wise suggestions, Lady Russell was at once her husband's secretary and counsellor; but, neither able self-defence, nor the more powerful eloquence of her tears prevailed with a corrupt judge and a hireling jury. Convicted and condemned, he was warned to prepare for speedy death. In vain, at his wife's earnest entreaties, noblemen implored the Duke of York to intercede with his brother for the life of the condemned prisoner. That cruel, stubborn bigot silently refused. Nothing so completely represents to posterity the cold, merciless nature of Charles II.-for the true profligate is ever without heart-as the replies made by him to the persons who besought the royal clemency on behalf of Lord Russell. To his own son, Monmouth, the king said: "I should like to pardon him, but I can not do so with out involving myself with my brother. Don't let us talk of it any more." The answer he gave to Lord Dartmouth, however, evinces the real reason of his refusal "All that you allege is true; but it is also true that, if I do not take his life, he will soon have mine." Lady Russell thought that, if her uncle, the Marquis de Ruvigny, came to London with the permission of Louis XIV., her husband might perhaps be pardoned. Charles, hearing of it, said to the French ambassador: "I don't wish to prevent M. de Ruvigny from coming here; but my Lord Russell will have his head cut off before he can arrive." In their horror of republican institutions, under which their piety and competency had been so severely tested, the Anglican clergy had preached the insane doctrine of non-resistance to the crown, however tyrannous the

monarch might be. The clergy of that day, abject and servile, happily possessed but little power, or the English nation had been entirely lost. Even Sherlock stooped so low as to write, that it is "unlawful under any pretence to wage war, even defensive, against the king, that the supreme power is in him; for he who is unaccountable and irresistible is supreme." What was to be expected from such ready servants of a detestable despotism, but that they should strengthen their bloody master's hands? Burnet and Tillotson tormented the condemned lord in his prison, by vexatious questionings as to his belief in this atrocious doctrine of the unlawfulness of resistance to royal authority, however insane or cruel the ruler might be. Lord Russell was too wise and too honorable a man to obtain even life by assenting to such a proposition.

For my part," he said, "I have always thought that a free nation, such as this, was right in defending its religion and its liberties, when any one threatened to snatch them away. If I have sinned in this, I hope that God will not regard it as a crime in me, for it is only a sin of ignorance." When Burnet pressed him again with the same question, he cut the matter short by saying: "I can not lie; I shall lie, if I proceed further."

Although annoyed and distressed by the persistence of Tillotson in pressing this question, Lord Russell, in such brief time as remained, prepared to enter on that world where every doubt is removed, every sorrow forgotten, and where, too, upon the tranquil soul is shed the light of perpetual day-truth without eclipse. The years passed with his noble wife had not been spent in vain. From her he had learned how good and great is the strength of virtue, how soothing and fortifying is true religion in the darkest hour of human endurance and sorrow. The nearer the fatal day approached, the more he wished to be alone with her, that he might learn from her piety and courage how a good man should encounter death. On July 19th, he was informed officially that no respite would be granted, and that in two days he must die. He had learned that it was in vain to trust in princes, and that the heart of a Stuart could neither pity nor spare. The king, who basely neglected his scarred and impoverished friends, was but little inclined to pardon his enemies; and in the breast of some heredi

tary monarchs the quality of mercy is rare, unless by its exercise reputation can be acquired or power increased. Republican governments have sometimes been cruel to traitors and captives; but long lines of kings with irresponsible authority are painfully remembered by posterity as, oftentimes, the murderers of men whose only crime was the endeavor to be free; and of these none are more conspicuous than that hated family whom William of Orange banished for ever from the English throne.

"I have done with time; eternity is at hand."

That short summer-night of tears seems like the last hours of some grand martyr in the early time of Christianity, who preferred death to a recreant and dishonored life, and who sought, in "the bosom of his Father and his God," for that freedom and peace which the world could not give. Such a hero-martyr was Lord Russell, worthy to be lastingly remembered and revered, as one of those whose sacrifice was necessary for the future well-being of mankind; for by his blood were moistened the roots of that freedom under whose shade the English people live. His memory will render tyranny for ever impossible in England. A new era began when this patriot died. The execution took place on July 21, 1683, and from that day Lady Russell lived to mourn her irreparable loss. Her life was prolonged to a great age. At Southampton House, on September 29, 1723, the illustrious mourner expired in the arms of one of her children, honored and beloved by all men, not only for her great historic name, which had long been the watchword of the free, but for her gentleness of soul, her sublime devotion to her murdered husband's memory, and her religion pure and undefiled. Faithfully she had obeyed his last behest-she had lived for their children alone. Laboring for their highest benefit, and patiently waiting until she should join her beloved one in the home of all the good, she was permitted to see her poste

On the evening before his execution, Lady Russell, with anguished heart, brought to him their children, that he might take a long farewell of these beloved ones; and after conversing with them for some time, of their education and their future, he gave them his parting blessing. When they had been removed, Lord Russell said to his wife: "Remain to supper with me, and let us take our last earthly repast together." During supper, he spoke of the many illustrious men who had met death without fear-the nobility of the ancient glory; and at ten o'clock, after embracing many times, in trembling silence, their "woe too deep for tears," they parted in this world for ever. Turning to Burnet, he said: "The bitterness of death is past ;" adding, at intervals in his grief: "What a blessing she has been to me! God has shown me remarkable mercy in giving me such a wife birth, fortune, great intellect, great piety, great love for me; it has been all that! And, above all, her conduct in this extrem-rity ity! It is a great consolation to me to leave my children in the hands of such a mother; she has promised me to take care of herself on their account, and she will do it." Burnet then spoke to him of his approaching end; and as his thoughts. We must leave M. Guizot to narrate reverted to his own state, Lord Russell for our readers the widowed life of Lady said to the sorrowing clergyman: "What Russell, and that admirable philosophical an immense change death must make in historian has delineated her portraiture us! what new and marvellous scenes must with a master hand. His retirement from open before our soul! I have heard it public life has enabled him to contribute said of men who were born blind, that from his profound historical knowledge to they were stricken with stupor when, after the literature of Europe, and, among other the cataract had fallen from their eyes, works, to produce this exquisite sketch of they were able to see; how great would the life of an illustrious woman, whose this have been, if the first object they had true religion, as M. Guizot gracefully and looked upon had been the rising sun!" prominently states, surrounds her characThen, giving his watch to Burnet, he said:ter with lasting dignity and beauty.

VOL. XXXVII.—NO. I.

honored, virtuous, and esteemed by the entire English nation, who, enjoying that liberty to obtain which Lord Russell died, forgot not, in their regard for his children, the thanks which were due to their immortal father.

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From Bentley's Miscellany.

ARTHUR HELP S.

BACON's words make an apt motto for | ford Graduate," never without such deep "Friends in Council," the spirit of them love of God, of truth, and of humanity, being notably embodied in the form of as shall make even its lightest words revthat charming book. "It is good, in Dis- erent, its idlest fancies profitable, and its course, and Speech of Conversation," saith keenest satire indulgent: a playfulness, of the philosopher, "to vary and intermingle which Wordsworth and Plato are proSpeech of the present Occasion with Ar- posed as the finest and highest examples guments; Tales with Reasons; Asking-in the one case, unmixed with satire, of Questions with Telling of Opinions; the perfectly simple effusion of that spirit and Jest with Earnest: For it is a dull Thing to Tire, and as we say now, to Jade, anything too far." Milverton's essays are never allowed to tire, or jade, anything too far: at the first possibility of quid nimis, his two friends in council haste in to the rescue, and change the monologue into a mixed mode of cheery converse like those other friends in council, one of whom tells us how, on summer days in the woods,

-they glanced from theme to theme, Discussed the books to love or hate, Or touched the changes of the state, Or threaded some Socratic dream.

For we can fancy a real likeness to exist between the colloquies on paper of these Worth Ashton worthies, and those of actual vivâ voce fact, so tenderly recorded in our laureate's verse; between the matter and manner peculiar to the collegians' conferences, and that characteristic of our fictitious "Friends in Council," who, in effect, seem to us now to

-talk as once they talked

Of men and minds, the dust of change, The days that grow to something strange, In walking as of old they walked,

beside the river's wooded reach, or elsewhere. This composite order in the structure of his later works, gives them a marked superiority, cæteris paribus, in point of interest and popular effect, over the earlier "Essays written in Intervals of Business."

Mr. Helps is one of those writers whose frequent playfulness is, to quote the "Ox

Which gives to all the self-same bent,
Whose life is wise and innocent;

in Plato, and, adds Mr. Ruskin, “in a very wise book of our own times, not unworthy of being named in such companionship, Friends in Council,' mingled with an exquisitely tender and loving satire."* You can see how satirical the essayist might be, in many an instance where he allows himself only to be gently ironical. There is often a strong dash of the Thackeray essence in his reflections on man and manners-as where the essayist, contrasting life as it is in novels, with life as it is out of them, says that in the latall in odds and ends, and that no third ter, real life, nothing is tied up neatly, but volume turns up to make things straight Belinda, and, instead of being happy ever -many an Augustus marrying many a afterwards, finding in each successive period of their existence its own new growth of trials and troubles. Or where Milverton mentions his meeting at a country inn with a book of prize-fighters' memoirs, and describes them as sad chronicles, told with much earnestness: how Jim This was stout-hearted and skilful too, but thought he could do more than he could -and Tom That could have done anything but that he was fond of something else and Sam the Other who could beat all the world, had somebody at home whom he was more afraid of than all the world: the book being dismissed with the remark, that it was very like reading o.

* "Stones of Venice," vol. iii.

great conquerors and mighty kings, only | expressibly dear to him; when he awoke that the names were shorter. The quality morning after morning to struggle with a of the author's satire is seen and felt in grief which seemed as new, as appalling, such remarks as that on the exact propor- and as large as on the first day; which, tion of a man's ignorance of a subject, to indeed, being part of himself, and thus the noise he makes about it at a public partaking of his renovated powers, rose meeting; or the sententious counsel to equipped with what rest, or alacrity, sleep prefer tallow-boiling as a profession to had given him; and sank, unconquered, literature "it is better to provide the only when he was too wearied in body fuel for the lamp than those productions and mind to attend to it, or to anything." which are said to smell most of it ;" or To every such passage we may justly aphis fling at those coarse, complacent peo-ply a distinguished critic's note of admiple of the world who " pronounce not ration: "Il n'y a pas une affectation, pas only upon the influx and efflux of tea, un effort: ce sont des circonstances toutes coffee, sugar, and gold (in which, by the simples, senties par une âme vive; et rien way, their dicta are generally wrong)," n'est plus éloquent." but also on the ebb and flow of the passions or the affections-and who, seven hundred years ago, after the first crusade, would have pronounced with a wave of the hand after dinner, that there never could be such another adventure again, as the first had by no means been found to pay ;-or, once more, the expression of his quiet disdain for the wordy revolutionists of 1848, and their issuing edicts upon the settlement of all human affairs, public and private, with a rapidity and want of thought which, he says, would be shameful if applied to the regulations of a kennel of hounds-men (he calls them) "of glittering words, false axioms, inappropriate antitheses, and general inflation of mind." His turn for humor is of a genuine English sort. It is his own observation, that nothing corrects theories better than that sense of humor in which Englishmen excel: "an Englishman sees easily the absurdity which lurks in any extreme proposition ;" and the essayist's own writings exemplify the assertion. In pathos, again he repeatedly, though most unobtrusively, shows himself an approved good master. Witness the little episode relating to Ellesmere's dead-and-gone nephew, and that of his German protégée, or the reverie picturing forth a descendant's life-history, or the sick-bed scene where a fallen woman lies, steeped in misery and degradation, but thinking of her mother's gentle assiduities in some of the ailments of her childhood, or the allusion to one of those vast bereavements which seem a tearing away of part of a man's very soul: "when he thought each noise in the house, hearing noises that he never heard before, must be something they were doing in the room-the room-where lay all that was mortal of some one in

Of the three "Friends" who walk and talk and take sweet "Council" together, Ellesmere is the man of most individuality. He is a rough, slovenly-dressed, outspoken George Warrington sort of man, cynical of speech and kind of heart, impatient of shams, and no way regardful of appearances. When he goes out to dinner, his reflection is, "What a sacrifice of good things, and of the patience and comfort of human beings, a cumbrous modern dinner is;" and his inevitable longing on such occasions is, to get up and walk about. His friends wonder what he would have done, with that satirical turn of his, in old persecuting times-what escape his sarcasm would have found for itself: some orthodox way, one of them suggests, who questions Ellesmere's inclination for martyrdom: to which Ellesmere replies, that certainly he has no taste for making torches for truth, or being one-preferring humane darkness to such illumination; but that, at the same time, as he for himself well and truly says, "one cannot tell lies; and if one had been questioned about the incomprehensibilities which men in former days were so fierce upon, one must have shown that one disagreed with all parties." His intimates accuse him of coldness of nature; he never dilates much upon anything that interests him, though a pet subject at which he has been working for months,-nor is he fond of listening to the never-ending talk of others about their hobbies, but, even with Dunsford and Milverton, votes for much continuity of silence when the Friends in Council have had "floods of discussion," and declares his preference of Rollo's companionship (good dog Rollo!) to theirs, unless such silence be accorded. Ellesmere's regard for Rollo, and in fact for all dumb crea

tures, is a characteristic not to be slurred | tured of man: when she knows him bet

ter, she will find the rugged cynic has a heart tender as her own; for he is like what one of our queerest and best of essayists has been called, a Diogenes with the heart of a Saint John.

If Ellesmere's character is traced in bold sharp strokes, that of Dunsford is happily shaded with delicate nuances and quiet tints, very effective in their way. He likes to listen rather than to talk; and by his own account, when anything apposite does occur to him, it is generally the day after the conversation takes place. But we feel his presence "in Council" throughout; and when he does speak, it is with a benignant sagacity, a mellow good sense, and often a lambent irony, that add materially to the interest of the debate. On a hot day, when the Friends are all of them lying about in easy attitudes on the grass, Dunsford with his gaiters forms a prominent as well as a most

over. "Come, let us go and see the pigs," he exclaims, at the close of one congress "I hear them grunting over their dinner in the farm-yard. I like to see creatures who can be happy without a theory." Like some other great lawyers of past and present days-Erskine, Brougham, and Wilde, for instances he is very fond, Milverton tells him, "of live creatures of all kinds—men, women, and children excepted"-and is ever making purchases at Hungerford-market in his walks home from Westminster to his chambers; now a Newfoundland puppy of remarkable sagacity, which forthwith gets the upper hand of Rollo; now a peacock of imperial presence and entire self-complacency; pigeons, guinea-pigs, curious fowls of various kinds, a jackdaw of mark and likelihood, and a hedgehog which he calls "his learned friend," but which his associates call Snoozelem. His maxim is, Love me, not only love my dog, but my pig, my guinea-picturesque figure. He sometimes puts a pig, that is to say, my pigeons, and my hedgehog. And when Milverton, in one of the colloquies, expresses his wish to see an opportunity of self-development extend to animals, Ellesmere says: "Mine does not 'extend' to animals: it begins there, I don't know whether it goes on. Benevolence, you know, is not my forte." Benevolence is his forte though, and beneficence too. As for his faithful Rollo, it is fine to observe the entente cordiale between them-to overhear the master's half asides, muttered in piquant ridicule of something in the essay or the debate, and supposed to be meant for the favorite's rough and ready ear-and to see that favorite come bounding to him, nearly upsetting him thereby, in the intent of coming to shake hands, as the way of dogs is, with his mouth.

Ellesmere, then, is "not a bad fellow," says Milverton, "at least not so bad as he seems"- a remark properly enough resented by Ellesmere, who vows it is very spiteful to represent him as having less spite than was supposed, "wearing me about you like a tame serpent with the poison taken out of him." Whether working a problem in boyhood, or cogitating a quæstio vexata in manhood, "I very seldom," says Ellesmere, "come to the same results as anybody else." So sarcastic is he, that the gentle Lucy wonders when anything in nature will give occasion to Mr. Ellesmere to say anything good-na

question that requires a stout quarto volume with notes to answer. In matters of controversy, he seldom wants more than a slight pretext for going over to the charitable side of things. His sister manages his Worth Ashton home for him, and does not leave him much to do as regards the management of himself; but he is tolerant of petticoat government, and checks the first risings of discontent with the memento, "But I must not complain, as it is a great thing to be loved and cared for by anybody." He is no white-livered milk-sop, though. He is prompt to glow with enthusiasm at a generous thought or deed, and to boil with indignation at a base or cruel one. When one of Milverton's essays refers to Slavery as "the enduring perplexity of the wisest men," the good, mild pastor interposes a protest: "Strike out that word enduring,' Milverton; endure it cannot, endure it shall not"-to be hailed by Milverton with a delighted "Well done, my dear Dunsford! I have seen for some time that you have been at boiling point, quite ready to go out in a boat by yourself and attack a slaver (some one did the other day); or to set up an academy for Negro boys in a slave state, perhaps the more dangerous thing of the two." And if Dunsford now and then says something that, by its simplicity and confiding innocence, elicits from Ellesmere the exclamation: "My dear Dunsford, what a invaluable creature

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