what power was to rule in his place? Half, at least, of the nation looked on his death as a murder-but there was to be no mourning; the rest, as the terrible but victorious close of a terrible conflict-but there was to be no triumph.

No funeral pomp was to darken the streets that day, as for a king slain. No triumphal procession was to make them festive, as for an enemy vanquished. It was to be a day without mark or sign; and yet since England was first one nation surely such a day had never dawned on her. "The first day of freedom, by God's blessing restored," said the Commonwealth coins; the first day of England's widowhood, said the Royalists, widowed and orphaned at one blow.

Yet there was no disorder, no interruption of employment. The sounds of day began to awake in the busy city, the cries of countrymen bringing their vegetables from the fields, the ringing of the hammer on a forge near our house, the calls of the bargemen and boatmen locked in by the ice; and then, as the day went on, all distinction of sound lost in the general hum, like the sound of many waters, which marks that a great city is awake and at work.

Looking westward, I could see the gardener sweeping the snow from the walks in the gardens behind Whitehall, as if no terrible black scaffold had that day to be taken down in front.

Yet, I suppose, in well-nigh every heart, man or woman's, in London that morning, the first conscious thought was, "the king is dead;" all the more because

there were few lips that would have uttered the

words.

"What are we to do to-day, Leonard?" I said, when we had breakfasted.

"Do! dear heart," quoth he; "it is not thy wont to need thy day's tasks set thee by any."

"Nay; but to-day seems like a work-day without work, and a Sabbath without services," I said.

"There will be a service," he replied. "The great Dr. Owen is to preach before the Parliament in St. Margaret's Church."

"The Parliament!" I said; thinking pitifully of the fifty members who still bore the name.

"You scarcely recognize the Rump as the Parliament," he said, answering my tone rather than my words.

"I scarce know what to recognize or reverence,” I said. "I was wont in the old days at Netherby to think I had politics of my own, and would have belonged to the country-party by free choice, if all around me had deserted it. But since our own people have split and divided into so many sections, I begin to fear, after all, it was nought but a young maid's conceit in me to think I had any convictions of my own. Aunt Dorothy and the Presbyterians think the killing of the king a great crime; my father and the old Parliamentarians think the forcible purging of the Parliament a manifest tyranny; Roger and the army think these things but the necessary violence to introduce the new reign of justice and freedom. But I know not what to believe, or whom to fol

low. What is to come next? Who are to rule us? We must have some to honour and obey; if not the king, and if not the Parliament, then whom?"

"Sweet heart," said he, " if the government of the three kingdoms has been resting on thy shoulders, no wonder thou art cast down and weary. But thou and I are among the multitude who are to be governed, not among the few who govern. Let us be thankful, as good Mr. Baxter saith, for any government which suffers people to be as good as they are willing to be. And let us be willing to be as good as we can. That will give us enough to do."

"But," I said, "all these years we have been learning that the Country is as a great mother who demands fidelity from her most insignificant child; that Liberty is no mere empty name for schoolboys to make orations about, and Law no mere confused heap of technicalities for lawyers to disentangle, but that all these are simple sacred realities mothers are to teach their children to reverence; that the glory and safety of a nation depends on their political rights being sacred household words. We have been taught to look to Jewish and Roman matrons as our examples. Are we to unlearn all this now, and go back to the old saws we have been taught to think selfish and base; that politics are to be left to rulers, and laws to lawyers, and our liberties and rights to whoever will defend or trample on them?"

"Not go back, I think," he said gently, looking a little surprised at my vehemence; "only go deeper. Some precious rights, I believe, have been won. Let us use

them. That is the best way to secure them.

We are

free to do what good we can, to unloose what burdens, and to hear and speak what good words we will. Let us use our freedom. No one can say how long it may last. This morning I must go to visit Newgate, and other gaols, in which there has been much sickness. For although the prisons are no longer filled by the Star Chamber, or the High Commission, they are unhappily still kept too well supplied by a tyrant more ancient and more universal than these. Moreover, Olive," he added, "there is still one sect not tolerated. The number of the imprisoned Quakers is increasing; and in Newgate there is one poor Quaker maiden whom I think thou mightest A few days since thou wert desiring a maiden to wait on the babe. This Quaker maiden is a composed and gentle creature, and with kind treatment, such as she would have from thee, might, I think, be led into ways which seem to us more sober and rational."

succour.

My husband's words opened a prospect of abundant work before me. Already we had four washing-women of four different unpopular religious persuasions. And I would have preferred choosing a nurse for the babe, on account of her qualities as a serving-wench, rather than as a Confessor. Moreover, what he intended to be re-assuring in his description, alarmed me rather the more. For of all fanatics, I have found gentle fanatics the most incorrigible; and of all wilful persons, those who never "discompose" themselves, or put themselves wrong by losing their tempers, are certainly the most immovable. However, I repressed such selfish fears as quite unworthy of

Leonard Antony's wife. And, accordingly, when he returned from the gaol, I was quite prepared to welcome the Quaker. And so I told him as we joined the sober throng who were going to hear Dr. Owen preach at Margaret's" before the Parliament.

A scanty Parliament indeed! No Lords, and about fifty Commons; and among them scarce one of those whose words and deeds had made its early years so strong and glorious.

Hampden lay among his forefathers in the church of Great Hampden; Pym among the kings in Westminster Abbey. Denzil Hollis and Haselrigge had been expelled from it; old Mr. Prynne, who had been liberated by its first act, had vehemently denounced its last; even the young Sir Harry Vane had for the time deserted its austere counsels.

Nevertheless the congregation was great and grave. And when Dr. Owen spoke, he led our thoughts at once to spheres compared with whose sublime chronology the length of the longest Parliament is indeed but as a moment. He came of an ancient Welsh ancestry; his bearing had a courtly grace; his tall and stately figure had the ease and vigour of one used to manly exercises; his voice was well tuned, as the tones of one who loved music as he did should be; his eyes were dark and keen.

To the death of the king on that dreadful yesterday he barely alluded. There was neither regret nor triumph in his discourse. His exhortations were addressed not to the vanquished, but to the victorious party. If he alluded