scaffold, and will, doubtless, be reverently treasured in every Royalist household; not in the library, but in the oratory, beside the Bible and the Prayerbook, enkindling loyalty from a conviction into a passion, deepening it from a passion to a religion, while they compare the king's trial to that before: the unjust judge of old, his walk to the scaffold to that along the Dolorous Way, his sayings to those last words on which dying men and women have hung ever since.

Every one knows the heaviness with which even a day of festivity closes, when the event of the day is over. The weight with which that fatal day closed it is hard for any who did not feel it to imagine.

Scripture words repeated with ominous warning by ministers, Presbyterian and Episcopal, echoed like curses through countless hearts: "I gave them a king in my anger and took him away in my wrath." Who am I that I should lay hands on the Lord's anointed ?"

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Death gave to the king's memory an immaculateness very different from the technical, "the king can do no wrong of the ancient constitution."

And even with those whose resolution remained unwavering to the last, this was not the time for speech. The extremity of justice had been done, there was nothing more to be said. It would have been an ungenerous revenge far from the thoughts of such regicides as Colonel Hutchinson and General Cromwell to follow it with insulting words, and their own self-defence they were content to leave to

events. Mr. Milton's majestic Défences of the English People came later.

Ours was a silent fireside that winter night, as Roger, weary and numb, came at last to warm himself beside us.

As he entered, I was saying to my husband, "The terrible thing is, that he who lived trampling on the constitution and the rights of conscience, seems to have died a martyr to the constitution and conscience, doomed by a few desperate men."

"We must concern ourselves as little as possible, sister," Roger said very quietly, "with what seems." "I fear this day'will turn the tide against all for which you have fought throughout the war." "The tide will turn back," he said.

"But what if not in our time?" I said.

"Then in God's time, Olive," he said; "which is the best."

But he looked very worn and sad. I repented of having said these discouraging words, and weakly strove to undo them as he asked me to unlace the helmet which his benumbed hands could not unloose.

"I would rather a thousand times," I said, "have you with Colonel Hutchinson, and General Cromwell, and those who dared to do what they thought right in the face of the world, than with those who thought it right yet dared not do it. The nation will recognize their deliverer in General Cromwell yet."

"I do not know that, Olive," he said; "but it will be enough if General Cromwell delivers tha nation."

"At least the generations to come will do justice," I said.

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"It depends There is one

"I am not sure of that," he said. on who writes the history for them. Judgment Seat whose awards it is safe to set before us. Before that we have sought to stand. That sentence is irrevocably fixed. What it is we shall hear hereafter, when the voice of this generation and all the generations will move us no more than the murmur of a troubled sea a great way off, and far below."

Yet he could not touch the food we set before him; and as he sat gazing into the fire, I knew there was one adverse verdict which he knew too well, and which moved his heart all the more that it had not been able to move a hair's breadth his conscience or his purpose.

Many sorrows met in Roger's heart, I knew, that night; the pain of pity repressed driven back on the heart by a stern sense of justice; the pain of being misjudged by some whom we honour; the pain of the resignation of the tenderest love and hope; the pain of giving bitter pain to the heart dearest to him in the world. But one pain, perhaps the worst of all, he and men who, like Cromwell and Colonel Hutchinson, had carried out that day's doom fearlessly before the world because in unshaken conviction of its justice before God, were spared-the enervating anguish of perplexity and doubt. And this, perhaps, is the sorest pain of all

2*

LETTICE'S DIARY.

"The space between is the way thither,' Mr. Drayton said. It may be; it ought to be. But is it? That seems to me precisely the one terrible question which, when we can get cleared, all life becomes clear in the light of the answer, but which it is so exceedingly hard to have cleared.

"The days, as they pass, whether clothed in light and joy, as the old time at home was when I had a home, and a mother, and so many hopes-or in darkness that may be felt, as so many of these later days have been to me, are indeed surely leading us on to old age, to death, to the unseen world, and the judgment. But are they indeed leading us on to new youth, to changeless life, to heaven, and the King's 'Well done?'

"If I were as sure of the last as of the first, for me and mine, I think (at least there are moments when I think) I would scarcely care whether the days were dark or bright. For life is to be a warfare. All kinds of Christian people agree in that. And having learned what war means, I do not expect it to be easy or pleasant.

"But I am not sure. For myself or for any one.

"Roger thinks the execution of the king was a terrible duty. I think it was almost an inexpiable crime.

"Olive, I know, thinks I am breaking plighted faith, and betraying the most faithful affection in the world in parting from Roger. Mistress Dorothy thinks I am fulfilling a sacred duty, doing what was

meant when we were commanded to pluck out the right eye. As to the pain, I am sure she is right. If I could only be as sure as to the duty! For if it is right, it must be good, really, in the end for him as well as for me. How, I cannot imagine. For it seems bad as well as bitter for me. And Olive says it will be bad and embittering for him.

"Happy, happy people, who lived in the old days of dreams, and visions, and heavenly voices, saying, 'This is the way; walk in it;' when God's will became manifest in pillars of fire and cloud, in discriminating dews and fires of sacrifice, and such simple outward signs as poor perplexed hearts like mine can understand.

"Holy people say these days of ours are in advance of those, that the light has increased since then. I suppose it has, for holy people, who have grown up to it, and have eyes to see those inward leadings, and ears to hear those inward voices, which to me are so dim. But I feel as if I were still a child, and would fain have lived in that simple childhood of the world, when God spoke to men in plain ways as to children.

"Since I came here, I saw at the door of one of the churches a very awful piece of sculpture of the souls in purgatory, all aglow with the fires in which they were burning, stretching out piteous hands through iron bars for help and prayers from those still living on the earth.

"Mistress Dorothy was with me, and she clasped her hands over her eyes in horror, as she turned away.