The last night came. It was the 2nd of September,, the eve of his day of victory, the day of his "crowning mercy," a Thanksgiving Day in England since the battle of Worcester. The voice was low now, and the words not always to be understood.

"Surely God is good. He is-He will not-"

And often again and again, "with cheerfulness and fervour in the midst of his pains,"

"God is good."

This was the key-note to which "all along" he kept recurring,—

"Truly God is good; indeed He is."

"I could be willing to live to be further serviceable to God and His people. But my work is done. Yet God will be with His people."

Through the night much restlessness, yet much inward rest. Broken words of holy consolation and peace, "self-annihilating" words, words of kingly care for England, and God's cause there; these among the very last.

Some drink being offered to him, with an entreaty to try to sleep, he answered,—

"It is not my design to drink or sleep; but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone."

And on the morrow he had fallen asleep, and was gone.

Amongst us who were left behind, the Thanksgiving Day was turned into weeping. But his long day of thanksgiving had begun. The long night of his faithful watching of the wars and storms for England was over;

the clear eye, the steady hand, were gone from the helm. The day of victory, and rest, and coronation, had dawned for him at last.

For, as his chaplain Mr. John Howe said: "The greatest enemy we have in the world cannot do us the despite to keep us from dying."

XVIII.

Notes by Magdalene Antony.

HE first public event of which I have any recol

lection, or rather the first time I can clearly

recollect having a glimpse beyond our own little world in London and Netherby, was one warm evening in August 1658.

My mother was coming home with me and Dolly from the house of Mr. John Milton in Bird-Cage Walk, past Whitehall, when we noticed many people clustering like bees around the doors of the palace; and I remember my mother lifting up her finger, and saying to Dolly and me, who were discussing some of our small affairs eagerly,— "Hush, children; the Protector is there, in sore sickness."

And then I remember noticing that the groups of people through which we were passing were all speaking low and walking softly, as people do in sick-chambers, and every now and then looking up anxiously to the palace-windows.

I recollect a hush and awe creeping over me, and a guilty feeling, as if Dolly and I had been chidden for talking in church.

And all spoke in murmurs, and no one said anything I could hear distinctly, until, as we were leaving the space in front of the palace, from the last point at which we could see the windows, my mother turned back to look. It happened that at that moment two men were standing close to us, and one pointed to the palace, and said: "It was there! the murderers set up the black scaffold there, just under those windows. I see it now; and so, I trow, does the murderer on his sick-bed inside. And so will more than one when the black pall comes out at those doors. The day of vengeance always comes at last."

The words went through me like a shudder. They were spoken in a deep hissing whisper, more like the gnashing of teeth than speaking.

I did not venture to tell my mother of them. I did not know if she had heard them. I never told any one of them. They lay seething and working in my brain, as so many perplexities do in children's minds-half-shaped, half-shapeless, altogether voiceless, like ghosts waiting to be born-and tormented me greatly.

For in a few days the terrible black train did leave those palace-doors. My mother took us to see it. And my mother wept, and Aunt Gretel, which was not so wonderful, because Aunt Gretel would weep as easily at anything that moved her as we, children. But my father wept, and even Uncle Roger; and Annis, the nurse, was stiller than ever. And there was great silence and quiet weeping among the people as the black train passed from the Palace to the Abbey. It was a great day of mourning; and my father told us we must never forget it. For

all the people of England that day had lost their best friend. But all the time I could not get it out of my head that somebody had called him a murderer, and had called this day of mourning a day of vengeance.

It puzzled me exceedingly, more especially as Dr. Rich, the learned clergyman who lived in the little house at the end of our garden, and Austin his son, our playfellow, would not, I knew, have anything to do with the procession; and, indeed, would never call the Protector anything but Mr. Cromwell. And Annis, our nurse, never called him anything but Oliver Cromwell (although in her that was not remarkable, since she called even our father and mother Leonard and Olive); and I had heard her say often, no man was to be called a "Protector" who let hundreds of poor Friends languish in prison. Also Aunt Dorothy, I knew, would not come to stay with us on account of something that had to do with the Protector. All which things made a great tumult and chaos in my brain.

But I must confess that the result was, that we grew up with a great tenderness for the Royalist side.

There was little in the shows and titles of the Commonwealth to enkindle the imaginations of children.

In all the fairy tales and romaunts and poems we knew, there was no such prosaical title as Lord Protector. Indeed, we agreed that the Bible history itself became much more interesting after the judges were changed into kings, however wrong it might have been of the Jews to wish for the change. We felt that the threat of his taking our sons" to be his horsemen and