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from every pore and vein, his broad breast panting and heaving with emotion, and his entire aspect displaying the most ungovernable and tremendous passions.

"You are no parliament I say," he shouted at the pitch of his stentorian voice, “you are no parliament! Ho! bring them in !-without there! Bring them in !"

There was a sudden pause-a moment of unutterable terror!-for such was the expression painted upon the faces of the grave members of the long parliament. When, years before, a king had dared to violate in a far less degree the privileges of that high assemblage, their own undaunted valour, fired by a sense of right—a proud uncompromising feeling of their own inborn worth had wellnigh armed those patriots to battle with such weapons as chance afforded them against the licensed cut-throats of the Sovereign. But as the door flew open, and Colonel Worseley entered with a guard of twenty musketeers, blank and base apprehensions sat on the pallid brows

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of three-fourths of those present; nor did one man, of the whole number, offer to make the least resistance, to draw a sword, to raise a hand, or even to exchange a look with the strange person, who from so lately being their servant, or at least their equal, had then by one bold effort rendered himself their master-their unquestioned, undisputed master!

"This is not honest!" cried Sir Harry Vane, at length, when he had rallied from the first surprise; "it is against morality, and common honesty!"

Words cannot picture, language of man cannot describe, the change that flashed across the speaking lineaments of Oliver. An instant-a short instant only, ere Vane addressed him, all had been virulent and active fury, lashed as it were by its own goadings into a state purely animal and uncontrollable. Now the fierce glare of anger instantly subsided; leaving the face for the moment passionless and vacant as an infant's; but ere there was time-not for words, but for

thought-the deepest sneer of scorn, of loathing and unutterable undisguised contempt succeeded.

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"Sir Harry Vane !" he replied in a low stern whisper, which drove the blood curdling through his veins. "O Sir Harry Vane! The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane! Honesty and Sir Harry Vane! Morality and Harry Vane!—who if he so had pleased, might have prevented this! who is a juggler—a mere hypocrite-and hath not common honesty himself! A parliament! I do profess, I do profess, a precious parliament!--of drunkards!—knaves!—extortioners -adulterers !-Lo! there," he added, pointing to Challoner,-"there sits a noted wine-bibbera very glutton and a drunkard! There!" casting his eyes towards Henry Marten and Sir Peter Wentworth, "there two most foul adulterers!"

Then turning on his heel, as if he had already said enough, he waved his hand toward

the soldiers, and in a voice as quiet and unruffled as if he had not been in any wise excited, commanded them to clear the house!

“I," exclaimed Lenthall boldly, for seeing that no violence was offered he had recovered his scared spirits, "I am the Speaker of this House, lawfully by its members chosen, and save by vote of those same members, or by actual force, I never quit its precincts, while in life!"

Then Harrison stepped slowly up the body of the long hall to the chair, attended by two musketeers; he laid his hand on Lenthall's shoulder, and prayed him to descend, and without further words, he came down from his seat, and putting on his hat, departed from the house all crest-fallen and astounded.

Algernon Sydney followed him at once, though with a statelier mien and bolder bearing, eighty more of the members moving with him towards the door.

While there had seemed to be the slightest

chance of any opposition to his will, Cromwell had stood in silence, with his arms folded on his breast, facing the speaker's chair with a dark scowl upon his brow and his lips rigidly compressed; but now, when he perceived that all, without more words, were skulking away from the house, he once again addressed them. "It is you," he exclaimed," it is you, who have thrust this on me. Night and day have I prayed the Lord that he would slay me, rather than put me on the doing of this work."

"Then wherefore do it," asked Allen bluntly, ere he left the house, "if that be so grievous to you? There is yet time enough to undo that which is already done—and, as your conscience tells you, ill-done, my Lord Cromwell!"

"Conscience! Ha! Conscience! Alderman," retorted Oliver," and what did thine tell thee, when thou, as treasurer of the army, didst embezzle much more than one hundred thousand pounds to thine own uses? What sayest thou to that

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