noble prisoner came from the Tower, accompanied by the lieutenant and one hundred soldiers, armed with partizans, in six barges, rowed by fifty pair of oars. On landing at Westminster, he was received by double the number of the trained bands; those citizensoldiers, whose subsequent familiarity with the view of great men in adversity had now its beginning, in the instance of one who in bearing it nobly has not been excelled. Disease and care-not age-had begun to impress on Strafford the appearance of bodily decay; but his countenance was marked with intellectual vigour, and bore the impress of authority. Awed, in spite of hate, by the actual presence of the individual whose name had often stirred them with terror, the crowd falls back; even the rudest vail their bonnets a token of respect which the earl courteously acknowledges.

The entrance by which Strafford was brought into the hall was on one side, at the lower end. He is preceded by Maxwell; advancing to whom, an officer inquires whether the axe is to be borne before the prisoner: "The king," replies Maxwell, "has expressly forbidden it!" Balfour, the lieutenant, now conducts the accused to the bar, where a space, furnished with seats and a bench, is enclosed for him, for his gaoler, his counsel, and secretaries. "After obeisances given," he kneels; and, rising, looks calmly round upon a scene of imposing grandeur.

In the centre of that proud historic chamber sit Strafford's judges, the Lords of England. They are covered, and all wear the habits of temporal peers;

for the prelates have been persuaded to take no part in the judgment. With them, in scarlet robes, appear the lord-keeper and his brethren of the legal bench ; and, at their head, fronting his compeers, sits the Earl of Arundel, for this occasion lord high-steward of England. At the upper end of the hall, under a canopy of state above the peers, are placed two raised seats, designed for the king and the Prince of Wales, but unoccupied. On either side the canopy of state runs a small gallery, closed with trellis-work; one of these contains the king and queen, the prince, and their attendants; the other accommodates such foreigners of distinction as have been attracted by this high solemnity. Scaffolds, rising stage above stage, on each side of the hall, are filled, respectively, by the great accusing parties; the Commons of England, uncovered, on the lower benches; in those above, their assessors, the Lords of Ireland and the Commissioners of Scotland: with whom are mingled many spectators, mostly persons of quality. The peeresses and other ladies present occupy a gallery at the foot of the throne. Adjoining the place assigned to the accused, a similar space encloses the managers of the impeachment; a band of the ablest lawyers and most eloquent statesmen of that great age of English intellect.

The lord-steward rises, and commands the trial to proceed.

The treason charged against the prisoner, it was contended by his accusers, was either particular, consisting in individual acts of a treasonable nature; or

cumulative, the aggregate result of many acts tending to a treasonable design. The articles of impeachment were distributed over his whole official life, as president of the North; in his government of Ireland; as chief minister, since his return, of England. In proportion, however, as it became clear that the evidence could not sustain this accumulated charge, the Commons altered their accusation to "an attempt to subvert the fundamental laws of the country, and to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government." But, as no such offence is specified in the statute, or recognised by the common law, they demanded that he should be tried, not merely by the rules of the courts, but by certain maxims said to be inherent in what we now call the constitution.

To Pym, chiefly-if not to him alone-belonged the credit of that philosophic tact, or that vindictive boldness, by which it was resolved to carry out the substantial allegation, beyond the reach of law, into the awful, but dangerous and indefinite, regions of Eternal Right. Into that abyss, whither an arbitrary power in a state may, at any time, on the falsest pretences, thrust to their destruction the doomed victims of its will, Strafford, remembering he stood before the legal tribunal of his peers, deemed it needless to look: with the question as one of law, it was not hard for such a mind to deal.

For fifteen days, he, with manifest success, directed his defence to this point. Though suffering grievously from disease, and surrounded with embarrassing difficulties, some, and the worst of them, thrown in his

way by his accusers, once only in all that time did he permit himself to be led by his natural heat of temper to make a recriminatory observation. He asserted, indeed, on all occasions, his right; when that was allowed, modestly thanked his judges; complained not when it was refused; and, in reference to an angry and insulting remark by one of the managers, on his insisting upon a point of order, which he regarded as of vital importance to his defence, merely observed, that he thought he had as good a right to defend his life, as any person had to endeavour to take it away. His eloquence, acknowledged by his accusers to have been "full of weight and reason," was regulated by manly temper, combined with the finest flow of diction and the most finished grace of delivery; while his countenance, exhibiting a severe loftiness, natural to the man, with conscious intellectual power, shaded by suffering and a just sensibility to his condition, harmonised well both with his past greatness and his present misfortunes. The effect is described as strikingly favourable. The clergy, the courtiers, above all, the ladies in that illustrious auditory, are loud in admiration. The general sentiment penetrates to the judicial benches; and the Commons perceive, with undissembled vexation, that the peers are recovering the courage to be just. Vehement cries of "Withdraw! withdraw!" resounding from their galleries, startle the court. The members retire within their own walls, and there, amid tumultuous confusion, debate the question, "What is next to be done?"

CHAPTER III.

STRAFFORD'S FAREWELL.

THE genius of Pym had long since anticipated the reply. Should so pernicious a foe to liberty be allowed to escape for want of a specific statute, or known law, capable of reaching his great crimes? It was not to be thought of! To the remedy for their difficulties he had pointed, when he argued for the existence of a treason against the principle of justice, as well as treason in violation of the law; for a treason against the people, no less than against the sovereign. The remedy was a bill of attainder the ready instrument of tyranny, and tacitly acknowledged such by these statesmen themselves, when they inserted in it the much-lauded proviso (what action may not win praise from partisans?) that this attainder should not be acted upon by the judges as a precedent in determining the crime of treason. To give the necessary support to his plan, Pym, resorting once more to the solemnity of closed doors, announced a discovery involving important supplemental evidence of Strafford's guilt. It consisted in a minute of the privy council on Scotch affairs, in May, purporting to contain words spoken by