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itself in the person of his own king, by bringing him to a public | whom he could relieve himself of the great burden of public and trial and a public execution; the man who had overcome all private care which came upon him daily in the singularly exceprivals, punished all rebels against his own authority, and seated tional position in which he found himself placed. himself firmly on the throne of kings (having been originally but increased he suffered more and more from the chilling wind of a country gentleman), though he had refused, and refused reso- isolation, and seemed to yearn after that rest which the weary lately, the name and emblems of royalty. love. Yet the spirit of duty within him, the duty which he believed he was called to discharge in England, strove to prevent his wish to depart; he saw his work all unfinished, and he knew that he had no fit successor; he believed-some say affected to believe-that his work was God's work, and he wished to do it to the utmost of his power. For duty's sake and religion's, and because it was "God's high gift," he guarded his life "from scathe and wrong," and his hold on life was not a little strengthened by the natural dread a man has of loosening it through sudden violence and deadly malice. Such a dread had Cromwell for a companion, in addition to his load of carking cares and weighty troubles. Plots to assassinate him were continually being made, and were only baffled by the most watchful energy and the most exemplary punishments. The knowledge of their existence, and the consciousness that at any moment he might fall a victim, contributed to make a man whose mind was already overladen, a man who had a religious or superstitious dread of being sent to his account suddenly, "disappointed, unaneled," without any reckoning made, excitable and nervous to an almost unbearable degree.

It was the 3rd of September, the day Cromwell was wont to call his fortunate day. On a 3rd of September he overcame the Scots' army at Dunbar, when, looking at the position of his army in a military point of view, he was committed to certain destruction at their hands; on a 3rd of September he had fought the battle of Worcester, "the Lord's crowning mercy to him," as he called it, when the royalist cause was lost in England, so long as Cromwell could move a regiment or man a ship. His wife and his friends hoped much from this circumstance, that the worst of the fever seemed to come upon him on this his fortunate day. Fortunate indeed if he could realise in his own case the assertion of the wise king, that the day of one's death is better than the day of his birth; fortunate too, still, if he could feel that death was but the entrance into life, the outlet from a world of which, and of the people and things in which, he was heartily tired and weary; the means by which, and by which only, he could enter into rest.

In this last sense surely the 3rd of September was still Cromwell's fortunate day, for if ever a man was weary of life and anxious to be quit of the cares of it, Cromwell must have been that man.

Whether he was to be blamed or not for the part he had taken in the recent troubles-whether he was the murderer of the king, or whether in putting him to death he had done but a solemn act of justice-the result to him was the same: the weight of the government pressed heavily upon his shoulders, and he found at the end of ten years that all he had for the labour which he had taken under the sun was vanity and vexation of spirit. Fatigue of body and mind, continuous and severe, occasioned by causes acting from without, were supplemented latterly by a spring of bitterness welling up within, sapping the strong man's energy, gnawing away at the very vitals of his strength, overwhelming him with a dreadful sense of responsibility and fear lest he had striven in vain and in the wrong direction. Once he had felt no hesitation about what he should do, and believed that his decision was an inspiration direct from the Spirit of the Almighty; now he doubted whether all things were lawful or expedient unto him. Once he had felt no difficulty in telling his troopers, by way of assurance against their fears as to the propriety of offering personal violence to the king, "If I should meet the king in battle, I would shoot the king;" now he was uneasy in his mind when even his favourite daughter, Mrs. Claypole, suggested to him doubts as to the integrity of his conduct in the sight of God. Even his old friends, the men who had stood by him through good report and evil until his genius eclipsed them and turned them into rivals and opponents, these too had forsaken him, and left him alone in the state like a lodge in a garden of cucumbers. Then he found how, without being bitter, a man's household may be among his foes. His mother, a homely woman, quite incapable of realising the magnitude and the difficulties of her son's position, disquieted him in return for his filial devotion to her with the expression of her convictions that they and the like of them had no business in the royal palaces. His children were incapable, excepting perhaps Henry, of appreciating his statesmanship and his motives, and were therefore divided from him by a great gulf of want of sympathy; while some of them, if the accounts of those times are to be trusted, actually reproached him for what he had done for the country. On one side, a numerous and implacable enemy, burning with desire to revenge the unpardonable death of "the royal martyr," and the losses they had incurred in his behalf-on another side, a formidable array of enemies who had once been friends and associates; the hatred of foreign nations, only kept from finding expression by the fear inspired by his sword; chronic rebellion at home; within the camp lukewarm allies, ready to fall away like water as soon as they should "perceive the least rub in his fortunes;" his own kith and kin not with him, and uneasy in his own mind about grace and acceptance; doubtful, too, as has been said, whether or not he had striven in vain for the ultimate good of his country-what comfort could he have in living? He was alone, and he felt it keenly; the still strong man felt the need of some sympathy, some divider of cares with

In August, 1658, he was at Hampton Court Palace, watching the sure progress of disease in the body of his best beloved child, Elizabeth Claypole. He was, and had been for some time, far from well, but the absorbing attractions of his daughter's state made him oblivious or indifferent to his own ills. On the 6th of August the strongest link of affection that bound him to the world was snapped; Elizabeth Claypole died, and then the Protector found out, what other men had known long since, that he was very ill. For a time he distracted himself by the sad cares of the last offices for his daughter, whom he caused to be buried with imperial pomp among kings and queens in Westminster Abbey; but this done he had leisure to find out that he was mortal. At the moment of his daughter's death he was confined to his bed with gout, and upon that fever supervened. His pulse became intermittent, but his physicians did not seem to be anxious, and he, on his wife expressing her fears as to the issue of his illness, bade her be sure he should not die, since he knew he should not "from better authority than any which you can have from Galen or Hippocrates. It is the answer of God himself to our prayers; not to mine alone, but to those of others who have a more intimate interest in him than I have."

For sake of the change he had moved from Hampton Court to Whitehall, where he took to his bed, and within a month of his daughter's decease he had followed her to her long home. Thurloe, his faithful secretary and most devoted friend, announced the event to the Deputy of Ireland in a letter wherein he said of Cromwell, "He is gone to heaven, embalmed with the tears of his people, and upon the wings of the prayers of the saints."

With a magnificent ceremonial, copied from that which was used at the funeral of the Spanish King Philip II., in 1598, the Republican Government laid the body of Oliver Cromwell in Westminster Abbey, where it remained with those of princes and senators till the restoration of the monarchy, when the spirit of revenge wreaked itself on the corpse of the spoiler of kings by causing it to be exposed on the gallows at Tyburn, and then buried in a hole like the carcase of a dog. To Cromwell himself it could scarcely have mattered much where they laid his body or what they did with it after he had done with it; the splendid funeral at St. Peter's was as little in accordance with his habits and ways as the ignominious barbarity at Tyburn. He was beyond the reach of honour and dishonour, insensible to flattery as to blame; but to those who remained these two ceremonials sig. nified something. What had Cromwell done that gave significance to them?

In order to answer this question it is necessary to take a survey of the life of the man, as the history of it is presented to us in the records of his time, and by the light of dispassionate, truth-seeking inquiry instituted since then.

Oliver Cromwell was born on April 25, 1599, at Huntingdon, and was the son of a country gentleman of moderate estate, who was of the same family as that Thomas Cromwell,

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Cartina. Wcisey's favourite secretary, who was made Earl of Esser by Henry VIIL, and was afterwards beheaded by him. Oliner was sent to the University, where he made but small proficiency in his studies, and fell, it is said, into some wild Reforming his mode of life, however, on a sudden but ancere conviction that it was a wrong one, Cromwell married, and at the same time warmly embraced the puritanical faith, wich was then beginning to acquire great influence throughout the country. For reasons of economy he gave up housekeeping as a country gentleman, and farmed some land which he took near St. Ives; but his operations in this direction were not ncess-ful, the duties of the farmer being probably neglected for those of the religious politician. In conjunction with his kin man, John Hampden, he formed a project of emigrating to America, believing that there alone he could live in the enjoyment of that freedom of conscience and of political action which was denied to him and his brethren here. How that project was frustrated by royal order, on the very eve of completion, has been already shown at length in No. VII. of the present series of Historic Sketches (page 222).

Soon after the veto was put on his emigration, Cromwell was sent to Parliament as member for the town of Cambridge, and though he seldom spoke, and when he did, not in a way to cap. tivate or lead the house, his vote was invariably to be found in the lists of those who had maintained the popular right against the kingly power. He did not take a prominent part in the political and domestic matters which brought about the rupture between the King and the Parliament, but he made good use of his time, and of his great powers of observation and reflection, to make up his mind thoroughly both as to the righteousness of the common cause, and as to the integrity and capacity of the men engaged on both sides of it. Having formed very strong opinions upon the most important questions of the day, he cleaved to them as a strongly persuaded man does with uncompromising intensity; and the shape of the quarrel in the state, and the peculiar habit of his mind, caused him to see plainly a great gulf fixed between what he believed to be on one side the cause of God himself, and on the other the cause of God's enemies.

In all important points before the breaking out of civil war we find him voting on the popular side, lending whatever weight his influence had to the cause of liberty; and when by the flight of the king from London, and by the rearing of the royal standard at Nottingham, August 25, 1642, war became inevitable, Cromwell, then in his forty-third year, was among the first to offer his sword to the Parliament, and he was forthwith commissioned to raise a troop of horsemen to serve in the Parliamentary army. This troop, which he soon increased to a regiment, he raised from among the yeomen and well-to-do farmers in Cambridgeshire and the neighbouring counties, ensuring thereby a certain amount of education among his men, and a large admixture of that free spirit which cannot grow but in an independent atmosphere. He severely disciplined his recruits till they became the famous "Ironsides," dreadful in battle; he prayed with them, preached to them, fought with them, and by cool courage and fervent zeal succeeded in inspiring them with a belief that a prophet had risen up among them.

First at Gainsborough, and then at Horncastle, in Yorkshire, Cromwell displayed his military ability as a general, by defeating with severe loss some divisions of the Royalist army under the Marquis of Newcastle; and soon afterwards, in 1644, he was appointed second in command of the Parliamentary army operating in the Eastern counties under the Earl of Manchester. In conjunction with Fairfax and Lambert, the Earl of Manchester, having been victorious in the east, marched to York and besieged it, the issue being the battle of Marston Moor, where the cavalry and infantry under the command of Oliver Cromwell broke the serried ranks of Prince Rupert, and carried the day "for God and the Houses."

At Dennington Castle, near Newbury, where King Charles had left his baggage and artillery after the rout of his army at the latter place, a difference arose between Cromwell and the Earl of Manchester which first showed the firmness and dominancy of the spirit which actuated the future Protector. Cromwell was for taking the castle and the guns, the earl was for hing elsewhere, and upon this question the two men split, thereafter taking his own independent line across the ountry of politics which was before him. It matters

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not now to follow him through all his military achievements prior to the death of the king: suffice it to say that he was incessantly employed, retaining by stratagem his seat as a member of Parliament the while, and that he figured in all the great battles of the war, including Naseby, June 14, 1645, and always was attended by success.

Thoroughly persuaded of the dishonesty of the king; convinced that, unless he were completely overthrown, the last state of England would be worse than the first; persuaded also that there was not any man, or any set of men on the Parliamentary side, who could prevent this except himself, he determined, about the time King Charles was given up by the Scots, with whom he had taken refuge, to gather up the reins into his own hands, and to drive the chariot of the state along the only road which in his opinion was a safe one. Firmly, harshly, perseveringly, prayerfully, he addressed himself to his task, which was to overthrow the power-namely, the Parliament— which had overthrown the king, to subject the king utterly, even by death if need be, and to bring under obedience those rival chiefs and commanders, who, he foresaw, would never tolerate quietly the assumption of power by one whom they looked on as their equal or inferior.

It was by Cromwell's orders, or at least with his concurrence, that Cornet Joyce, with a strong party of cavalry, made a sort of raid on the captive king's guard at Holdenby, in Yorkshire, where he was on his way to be given up to the Parliament, and snatching the king from the hands of the Scots' and Parliamen tary commissioners, brought him to the head-quarters of the army. The army at that time was in open quarrel with the Parliament on the subject of the limitations which that body had thought fit to place upon the authority and influence of the military. The Parliament itself was divided into many factions, all pulling a different way, none of them seeking the general good, but only the advancement of their own petty interests. Cromwell, whose influence with the army was at this time paramount, resolved to crush the rival but divided power, and knowing the immense importance of the possession of the king's person, gladly acquiesced in, if he did not order, the violent taking of Charles from the custody of the Parliamentary commissioners.

Immediately he heard of the king's re-arrest he left London, hastened to the army, and putting himself at its head, marched to St. Albans, where he opened negotiations with the Parliament in London. The nation looked on approvingly, being disgusted with the way in which the Houses had used their power, with the taxes they levied, the harsh laws they enacted, and the tyrannical manner in which the executive was carried on; and though London held out in favour of the Parliament, the army marched up and demanded admittance, which was conceded to them without show of resistance. This was in June, 1647. On November 11, in the same year, King Charles, who was a sort of prisoner at large at Hampton Court Palace, fled to the Isle of Wight, where he was detained at Carisbrook Castle by the governor, Colonel Hammond. Meantime the army, represented by Cromwell, had completely overawed the Parliament, which was allowed, however, still to exist till the dictator had used them for his purposes. The negotiations between it and the king having proved futile, Cromwell summoned a council of the principal officers of the army to devise some means of settling the nation. At this council it was resolved, after much prayer and much deliberation, to bring the king to trial for having com. mitted treason against the people by levying war upon them.

Plots and counterplots now took place, some having in view the overthrow of the officers, some of the Parliament, some the restoration of the king, the result being that a second civil war broke out, aided by the Scots, and England was ablaze again from end to end. Promptly, skilfully, successfully, Cromwell and his friends crushed the rebellion and the invasion; and that being done, they resolved to bring the king to punishment for the part he had had in them. The Parliament resisting, the army came to London; and the Houses having still declared their willingness to treat with the king, and their entire disapproval of the course taken by the army, Cromwell resolved to coerce them still more, and on the 6th of December, 1648, "purged" the House by seizing some two hundred of the members inimical to his interests, and allowing no more than some sixty of the most partisan-like to remain. It was by a High Court of Justice appointed by this "Rump" Parliament that King Charles was

brought to trial in Westminster Hall, and by a sentence of that court, signed, amongst others, by Oliver Cromwell, he was publicly executed "in the open space before Whitehall," on the 30th of January, 1648-9. There was no other way in the state to which things had come; it was war to the knife, and so wide had become the difference in political and religious feeling between the opposed parties, that the intolerant absolutism of one of them was inevitable.

For four years after this event the government of England was nominally republican, and really a sort of parliamentary executive under the control of the army. The prime mover, though he kept himself in the background, was Oliver Cromwell, whose will made itself law, and whose policy guided the state. Ireland, the state of which was more wretched and deplorable, perhaps, than at any other time in her history, was to be "tranquillised," and Cromwell marched through it in inexorable fashion, putting whole garrisons to the sword, burning, killing, and destroying, in pursuance of what his stern, strong nature conceived to be the only efficacious way of dealing with her. Ireland was tranquil in the sleep of death, and never again was able to trouble the sister island with her aspirations after life. It was an awful opiate the Puritan leader gave her, and deadly and bitter was the hatred with which she woke from the effects of it. With no worse malediction can an Irishman curse to-day than with "the curse of Crom'ell."

The Dutch were punished for the aid they gave to the king's cause by a naval war, which was singularly brilliant, and in which the names of De Ruyter, De Witt, Van Tromp, Blake, Ayscue, Venables, and Monk, shine out in bold relief. Scotland, which had espoused the cause of Charles II., and had proclaimed him king, was overrun by the same irresistible man who had crushed the opponents of the Commonwealth and Puritanism in Ireland. At Dunbar, at Stirling, and then at Worcester, whither the Scots' army had penetrated in order to be overthrown, the strong hand and wise head of Oliver Cromwell prevailed, and the royal cause was irretrievably lost.

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in the race, with admiration by those who loved their country more than themselves, and prized the objects for which England had struggled and fought; loved by very few, unhappy in himself, Cromwell sank to rest; and enough has been said here to make it intelligible why to many of his countrymen a funeral and a tomb less than the most splendid seemed all unworthy of him, and also why, when Charles II. was restored to his father's throne, there were found men to suggest and approve the senseless barbarity which led to the exposure of his dead body on Tyburn gallows. Perhaps even these men, after "the merry monarch" had reigned a few years, might have looked back and said-when they saw the Dutch in the Medway, the French allpowerful through money, the Spaniards insulting the English flag in all places in the world, and the revenues of the kingdom squandered on mistresses and frivolity, while the servants of the state died of hunger-that sombre, harsh, ungenial as Cromwell might have been, he never allowed an Englishman to have cause to blush for his nationality, never made the state interests subservient to his own, never gave the people such provocation as did the restored line of princes, that in less than thirty years after the day of their unfortunate restoration they hurled them off the throne, and forbade firmly and for ever their re-accession to it.

SYNOPSIS OF EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF OLIVER CROMWELL, LORD PROTECTOR OF THE ENGLISH COMMONWEALTH. Oliver Cromwell, who virtually held supreme sway over England from the surrender of Charles I. by the Scotch in 1647, was the son of a gentleman of Huntingdonshire, and grandson of Sir Henry Cromwell, of Hinchinbrook. By his wife, Elizabeth Bourchier, daughter of Sir John Bourchier, he had two sons and six daughters.

1599"Long Parliament" ended

Born at Huntingdon April 25,
Elected Member of Parlia
ment for Huntingdon .. 1628
Prevented from emigrating to

1640

New England by Charles I. 1637
Elected Member of Parlia-
ment for Cambridge
Civil War between the King
Parliament began
August 25, 1642

and

[For Events and Battles in

Civil War, see page 122.]
Members expelled from the

House of Commons by
"Pride's Purge". Dec. 6, 1648
"Rump" or Barebones' Par-

liament

.

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1648 Charles I. executed. Jan. 30, 1649 Temporary abolition of House

In 1653 it became obvious to the army, or to the man who commanded it, that parliamentary government must cease in form as well as in reality. The exceptional state of England rendered it impossible to have a divided government, and in divisions and petty squabbles the Parliament, mutilated as it was, was only strong. Every day the civil and the military powers were coming into collision. In the face of smouldering war at home, avowed hostility abroad, and the still unsettled state of the realm, this sort of thing would not do. Cromwell resolved to take the helm himself, and alone to steer the ship of the state. On the 20th of April, 1653, he dismissed the sham Parliament, over which Praise God Barebones presided, and was forthwith made Protector of the Commonwealth of England. From that moment England rose to be a first-rate power in Europe. The Dutch were ruinously beaten in a two days' naval battle, in which Van Tromp, their great admiral, was killed. Spain, the greatest power in Europe, was victoriously withstood, and lost, among other possessions, the island of Jamaica; France, under Cardinal Mazarin, was glad to be well with the Republic of England; and Portugal received condign punishment for some assistance she gave to the exiled king. At home a firm and disinterested rule served to heal many of the wounds from which poor England bled; and with a commerce protected afloat, and industry encouraged on shore, the English Dutch Admiral Van Tromp people grew prosperous, wealthy, and in some sort contented. Now and again the royalists, and those enemies of theirs who were enemies of the Commonwealth also, gave the government trouble; and it was seriously proposed, in order to put an end to their hopes, that Cromwell should make himself king, and found a new dynasty. In 1657 the crown was actually offered to him, but he firmly refused it, and accepted instead "the humble petition and advice," wherein were laid down rules for his guidance in the government, and in which his authority was defined.

For twelve months he continued to carry on his work, hoping against hope that it might be an abiding one; welding the disintegrated masses of English society into a strong, united community; striving to do justice to all, though many would not suffer him; making the country he had been called upon to govern prosperous at home and respected abroad. Space fails to tell of all he did, or to seek out a knowledge of the intentions he was not allowed to fulfil. Regarded with respectful hatred by the royalists, with envy by those whom he had outstripped

1649

of Lords
1649
Cromwell goes to Ireland 1649
Proclamation of Charles II.
by the Scots
Execution of Montrose, May 21 1650
Battle of Dunbar . Sept. 3, 1650
Charles II. crowned at Scone

.

January 1, 1651
Battle of Worcester, Sept. 3, 1651
Navigation Laws enacted,
October, 1651

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defeats the English Fleet in the Channel Nov. 29, 1652 Richard Cromwell dies Blake defeats the Dutch Fleet at Hursley,

Hampshire,
July 17, 1712

off Portsmouth, Feb. 18-20, 1653
SOVEREIGNS CONTEMPORARY WITH OLIVER AND RICHARD

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LESSONS IN BOTANY.-XII.

THE reader will now begin to understand the general principles on which a natural classification of vegetables is effected. In the first place, we divide them into cryptogamic and phænogamous; then we divide the latter into endogenous and exogenous. Next we proceed to establish orders, from a consideration of such characteristics as the position of stamens, nature of fruit, character of seed; and, as we have already seen, we usually give to each order a name derived from some leading genus or sub-division. Thus our principal genus in the Ranunculus order is the Ranunculus or Crowfoot; hence the generic name Ranunculaceae is given; and we subdivide this genus into species by the addition of terms which consideration will render obvious. For example, there is one species of Ranunculus which is more frightfully poisonous than the rest; botanists, therefore apply to this species the appellation of wicked, or sceleratus; hence, when the expression Ranunculus Sceleratus is met with, the reader is made acquainted with the following facts in the following order :-The plant is a flowering plant, is an exogenous plant, belongs to the order of Ranunculaceæ, to the genus Ranunculus, and is a member of the species designated sceleratus.

parietal, sometimes prolonged into vertical plates, at other times filiform; fruit, capsular; seed, dicotyledonous and albuminous. Such are the botanical characteristics of this natural order succinctly expressed. Some of the terms employed the reader will understand; but those which have not come under his notice before, we will explain before we proceed.

The first new word that requires explanation is caducus, used to describe the peculiarity of the sepals. These the reader will remember are the component parts of the calyx, and compose the green envelope of the poppy-bud which bursts asunder when the flower is ready to open. Soon after the flower has opened the sepals fall off, and for this reason they are called caducous, from the Latin caducous, which is derived from cado, to fall. Estivation is the manner in which the sepals are fitted together before the flower expands, from the Latin æstiva, summer quarters. They overlap each other, as one tile laps over another on the roof of a house. The Latin for a gutter-tile or roof-tile is imbrex, so all that is meant by the term imbricated in æstivation is, that before the flower expands the sepals that enclose it overlap each other at the edges. The ovary or seed-vessel is termed unilocular because it is "one-celled," or has only one cell, from the Latin unus, one, and loculus, a cell, the diminutive of locus, a place. In this cell, however, there are parts to which the seeds are attached, which are called placentas. These placentas are flattened, and derive their name from the Greek λa, genitive λaкоs (plax, plak'-os), a term applied to anything flat, such as a plate or flat cake. They grow out or project from the inside of the ovary, or as it were from the wall of the ovary, therefore they are are called parietal, from the Latin paries, a wall.

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126. CAPSULE OF THE POPPY.

More than one poisonous principle abounds in the Ranunculaceæ, but of these the alkali, termed by chemists aconitum, is the most violent. It is a white substance, something like flour to look at, and so frightfully poisonous that the twentieth part of a grain, or even less, is a fatal dose. Of all the various species of aconitum, that termed Aconitum Ferox is the most dangerous. This plant grows in the Himalaya Mountains, and was on one occasion used by the Nepaulese as a means of riding themselves of us, their invaders. A few leaves of this Aconitum Ferox being thrown into the well, poisoned all the water to such an extent that men or beasts drinking of it were almost infallibly killed.

Many of the most beautiful and striking flowers in our gardens belong to the order of Ranunculacea. In our last lesson we mentioned some of these-the Hepaticas; the Larkspurs, short and tall; and the Delphiniums of all shades and tints of blue, from the brilliant azure of the Delphinium Carulescens to the dark indigo tint of the Delphinium Grandiflorum.

Anemones, those pretty flowers with their variously-coloured petals and drooping flowers,-these, too, belong to the order of Ranunculaceæ, as also do the large showy peonies and the Monk's Hoods or Aconites, flowers which have also the characteristics of the Ranunculacea, as the student who examines them will not fail to ecognise.

Our space does not admit of more being said concerning the order Ranunculaceæ. We must conclude, therefore, by stating that their frait, and all fruit similar to it, is denominated by botanists achenium, a term which has been explained in a former lesson.

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The reader may provide himself with a red corn-poppy as a specimen of the flower, and a white poppy-capsule, procurable at the druggist's, as a sample of the fruit. Like buttercups,

races, or Poppy Tribe, bearing some affinity to the order Ranunculacea, but differing from it by certain characteristic signs, which are described in botanical phraseology as follows:Characters: Sepals two, three, caducons; petals, hypogynous; their number double or quadruple that of the sepals; imbricated ation; stamens numerous; ovary unilocular, placenta

poppies will be seen on examination to have a great number of stamens; these stamens, moreover, are below the carpels, or are hypogynous. Thus far, the resemblance of the Poppy tribe to the Ranunculus tribe is complete. But when we come to examine the fruit, what a difference is there! In the Ranunculaceae the carpels remain distinct, and the fruit is, owing to that circumstance, denominated apocarpous; in the Papaveracea the carpels unite together and constitute one capsule, the poppy-head of the shops. This, then, is the grand broad distinction between the two natural orders. The carpels have all grown into one common ovary, but what has become of the stigma or upper expan sion of the styles? These may be seen at the extremity of the poppy capsule, as represented in the accompanying diagram (Fig. 126), where they may be observed forming a sort of crown. If the capsule be now opened it will be found to consist of one cell, into which various little flattened plates project; the latter are termed placentas or placenta, s term of which a full explanation has already been given above; they are the parts in a vegetable which give attachment to the seeds.

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by making cuts on the ripe capsules, and causing the juice to exude. After exposure for a while to the sun, the juice, at first milky, soon thickens into a dark waxy-looking mass. This is opium, the active principles of which are numerous, but that termed morphia is the chief.

Just as the characteristics of the Ranunculus tribe become veiled in the larkspur, anemone, clematis, and peony, so are the Poppy characteristics obscured in certain plants belonging to this natural order. For example, on some parts of the sea-coast there grows a plant termed the "horned poppy," on account of the peculiar appearance of its fruit, which, instead of being round like the fruit of a common red or white poppy, is shaped something like a horn. This appearance is at once explained by the botanist. In the fruit of the ordinary poppy numerous carpels are united together, and thus a globular body results, just as the orange presents a globular aspect on account of the assemblage of so many easily divisible sections; but supposing many of these sections removed, then the orange would no longer be globular, but elongated. It is thus

with the horned poppy. Its fruit, like the ordinary poppy, is syncarpous; that is to say, compounded of carpels united together; but their number being fewer-only two-the resulting fruit is necessarily more elongated.

The Celandine (Chelidonium Majus) is another plant of the Poppy tribe, in which the fruits are elongated, and for a similar reason. All these species of Papaveraces are characterised by having a milky juice, by the presence of which, taken in connection with hypogynous stamens and syncarpous fruits, the various members of this tribe may always be discriminated. The milky juice of the celandine will remove the excrescences called warts. SECT. XXIII. ROSACEA, OR THE ROSE TRIBE.

This is a very extensive natural order of plants, comprehending not only the roses proper, but almonds, strawberries, apples, pears, and some others.

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rose or a strawberry flower in this manner, we shall soon find it impossible to remove the sepals of which the calyx is composed without at the same time removing all the stamens. This distinctive characteristic was known to Linnæus, and embodied by him in the distinction between his Icosandria and Polyandria, as the reader will observe if he turns to page 305.

This peculiarity in the insertion of stamens in flowers of the Rose tribe is shortly indicated in botanical language by the term perigynous. We have already seen that the term hypogynous means below the carpel; therefore the reader will now be prepared to understand that perigynous means around the carpel;

and this is expressive of the mode of growth of stamens in the Rose tribe. Had we not previously explained the nature of the strawberry itself, that point would have to be explained now; but the reader is already aware that the real botanical fruits of the strawberry are those little seed-like things scattered over the surface of the part we eat.

Very nearly allied to the strawberry in their botanical aspect are the Cinquefoil or Potentilla plants. Their flowers are almost exactly like those of the strawberry,

but strawberries, nevertheless, do not result. The torus, which becomes juicy and delicious in the strawberry, remains hard in the potentilla.

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Raspberries and brambles are also members of the Rose tribe, with which they agree in the easily-recognised essential characteristic of perigynous stamens. There is a sort of general resemblance, too, between the fruits of the raspberry, blackberry, and the edible portion of the strawberry; yet the botanical distinction between raspberries and blackberries on the one hand, and strawberries on the other, is amazingly great. The very part we eat in the strawberry is the portion we throw away in the raspberry and blackberry. The fleshy and delicious torus or receptacle of the strawberry becomes in the latter a white, insipid, spindleshaped core, whilst the edible part is a real fruit, or rather an assemblage of real fruits, matured ovaries. How are we to know this? the learner will ask. Simply thus:-Did he never observe that each of these little berry-like elevations is surmounted or terminated by a sort of hair? Now these hairs are nothing more than the styles of carpels, the lower portions or ovaries of which have expanded in order to become fruit.

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128. THE WILD ROSE, OR DOG-ROSE. (1.) THE FLOWER-BUDS AND LEAVES. (2.) (3.) CARPEL. (4.) FRUIT. (5.) SEED.

VERTICAL SECTION OF FLOWER.

Characteristics: Calyx, monopetalous, tubular; sometimes free, sometimes adherent to the ovary; four or five lobed, imbricated in æstivation; petals equal in number to the sepals, alternate with them, free, inserted on the calyx, imbricated in æstivation, sometimes absent; stamens almost always indefinite, inserted like the petals; pistil, various; ovule, reflected; seeds, dicotyledonous; flowers, ordinarily complex; inflorescence, varied. All these botanical terms have already been explained. Perhaps the best specimen for affording the general characteristics of the Rose tribe is a strawberry flower. Supposing the reader to have provided himself with one of these, he will at first be struck with a general resemblance to a buttercup flower. In both the carpels and the stamens are numerous, but the following leading distinction between them may at once be seen. In the buttercup the stamens do not grow from the calyx, so that the latter may be altogether removed without in any respect disturbing the former. If. however, we attempt to dissect a

In the illustration on this page the reader will find a good representation of the wild rose or dog-rose, the Rosa Canina of Linnæus, which is to be found in almost every hedge-row in the country, and which furnishes excellent stocks on which to engraft the different varieties of garden roses by budding. The smaller cuts, immediately below the engraving of the rose itself, with its flower-buds and glossy dark-green leaves, will help him in distinguishing the component parts of the flower when dissecting it, as No. 2 exhibits an accurate sketch of a vertical section of the flower, and Nos. 3, 5, and 4, the carpel, the seed within the carpel, and the outer envelope in which the carpels are contained.

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