This year, 1846, the annual holiday kept by the House of Commons, in memory of the martyrdom of Charles the First, was not asked for as usual in Parliament; and the 30th of January was suffered to pass over without a sign or a sigh to mark that cruel butchery, which for just two hundred years has added a martyr to the calendar. Assuredly this is a huge slice out of the crust which hedges in "the divinity of kings." Well may old thrones totter, and ancient sceptres every day look more "shaky," if such neglect as this is to be tolerated; yet it has been done, and "though an evil sign No owl shrieked, No night-crow cried, aboding luckless time; Dogs howled not; no hideous tempest shook down trees; No chattering pies in dismal discord sung." SHAKSPERE. This is a great and silent stride towards somethinga tacit admission, that kings are but mortal, and, like many other mortals, who have nothing mighty to mark their memories, may be, without much harm, unworshipped and forgotten. No marvel if old customs fall to the ground, whilst such an example is set by an English legislature-one headed, too, by the last survivors of a stubborn, hard, Tory race. That dukes and rulers, who were in former days the makers and hurlers down of monarchs, should at last become the butt at which Wit empties his quiver, showing no more regard for a coronet than he would for a cabbage, are signs of awful times, neighbour-awful times! What would become of this country were the foolish part of its nobility to emigrate? Alas! alas! it would be left to a government of mind, an aristocracy of uncurried intellect only! And we, who have worn oak-leaves in our hats, and - dragged home huge, heavy branches to commemorate the Restoration of Charles the Second-who have aided and abetted in the burning of many a "Guy," and the decapitation of many a stuffed "Pope," we have lived to see men bold enough to propose the erection of a statue of Cromwell in the new House of Parliament. To this have we come at last. After robbing woods in the night to show our loyalty, blowing till we were black in the face, shouting, and huzzaing, and throwing up our hats, to the great damagement of their crowns-after believing for years, without even a shadow of a doubt, that every castle we saw in ruins, and every church which stood unroofed, unhabitable, and drearisome, were all the handiwork of that arch traitor, Oliver Cromwell, after all, it has come to this at last, the memory of Charles the Martyr is "burked" by the very House of Commons who are about to erect a statue to the man who was chiefly instrumental in his being beheaded. Oh, Memory! 'tis of but little use thou and I journeying back to these green, dreamy, secluded haunts; the light of truth, reflected from the pages of history, falls upon these dear old customs, and, in spite of all our love for them, shows that they are truly ridiculous! Sorry are we, grave old oaks! that ever we rent a leafy honour from your aged heads to commemorate so silly a ceremony! Ancient home of the grim old Druids! we were innocent invaders of your sanctity,—we knew not what we did! What, then, were we guilty of? Let us look back through this night of years. Alas! the image of the Merry Monarch overshadows it not: traitors that we are! his memory is not even there. We but went out to do "observance to May;" to bring her home "with much green" and a sound of merriment: it was, after all, to the month of flowers we paid homage. The representative of majesty we did not kneel down and worship, even when he sat enthroned in the royal oak; for it had been the custom of our forefathers" to pelt and hoot him;" unmannerly dogs that they were, they valued not his royalty a rush. And yet there is a poetry about his perils, a something to linger and sigh over, even in the cold, uncharitable pages of history; and while we censure the man, we seem to have a I wish to love him. Poor historians should we make after all; our love of leaning towards human frailty would often cause us to show justice a cold shoulder. What a doing and undoing does this short sketch present! Ten years ago it would have been a picture overhung with green and garlands, teeming with flowers and steeped in sunshine. Poetry without reflection, sentiment without thought, life such as we see on a stage, where the actors move, and cross, and smile, and bow to each other, but have no other share in the stirring events of the drama; they come and go, and so end a pretty scene. Neither Charles nor Cromwell would have appeared in our part had we written it then. Whence comes this change? Is the day at hand when the name of the Royal Martyr will be blotted out of our Litany, and that, too, by the consent of good and pious men? When Cromwell, instead of being considered a kingly scourge, will be hailed as the great benefactor of his country, and looked upon as one of the mightiest minds that ruled the age in which he lived? That day we believe is not far off, neither is that change very remote. The light which two centuries have clouded is about to break forth, and reveal all the progressions and improvements which science has made during this long night of silent labour; and the old mind, which during this long period has seemed to sleep, is up and looking out upon the new field which time has prepared for action. The fossil bones of freedom have become hard as iron during their long slumber, and now clothed with a new body and a new life, they bid defiance to the old battering rams of bigotry, become stronger through the very blows which are rained down upon them, and shrink not, as of yore, at the touch of ancient superstition. What England has been we know; what it will be "hath not yet entered into the heart of man to conceive." And at the foot of those very hills, more than two hundred years ago, the first bold blow was struck, which proclaimed that those who struggled for liberty were no respecters of persons. Those ancient woods had reverberated to the sound of Cromwell's musketry, and the thunder of a thousand hoofs had shaken their summits, as he drove before him the cavalry of the routed Royalists. The ringing of pistol-shots and the clanging of sabres had, two centuries ago, startled the echoes of those solitudes; and where the unwooded, bald brow of those ancient hills spread, there lay the traces of many a goodly ruin, old and almost forgotten, when the quietude was disturbed by Cromwell's cavalry,— for the devastating hand of Henry the Eighth had been there in advance of him, and the long grey grass had even then overgrown the crumbling foundations of the monastery. Cromwell had by this time obtained the rank of colonel; and it was here, where we dragged down our green offerings to celebrate May, that he met in arms General Cavendish, son of the haughty Earl of Devonshire, when, to quote from Cromwell's own unadorned description of the battle, we came up horse to horse, where we disputed it with ourswords and pistols a pretty time, all keeping close order, so that one could not break the other; at last they a little shrinking, our men perceived it, pressed in upon them, and immediately routed this whole body, some flying on one side and others on the other, of the enemy's reserve, and our men pursuing them" 66 Cromwell did not join in this victorious pursuit, but hung back with three troops of horse of his own regiment, ready to attack the reserve, which was still unbroken, and headed by General Cavendish. Four troops of the Lincolners which had also kept aloof from the chase, were now drawn up in the front of the General's regiment; these Cavendish attacked and dispersed. He had no sooner done so, than Cromwell, whose three troops of horse were stationed deeper among the hills, charged the Royalists in the rear, which, says Cromwell, " did so astonish him, that he did give over the chase, and would fain have delivered himself from me, but I, pressing on, forced them down the hill, having good execution of them, and below the hill drove the General, with some of his soldiers, into a quagmire, where my captain-lieutenant slew him with a thrust under his short ribs. The rest of the body was wholly routed, not one man staying upon the place." Here, then, fell one of England's old aristocracy; though not by Cromwell's own hand, yet under his very eye and by his own command. "If I met the king in battle," said Cromwell, "I would fire my pistol at him as at another." Proof here that he had lost all respect for the already doomed Charles, and with it the "divinity that hedges in kings" was scattered to the wind. The magic circle was overleaped. He had gained the mysterious centre of that halo, looked around, and instead of the blinding light which had so long been fabled to strike the beholder dead, he saw but the common haze of an old mortality. He had seen his lieutenant drive into a bog and thrust under his short rib the son of the Earl of Devonshire, and felt no more remorse than if he had been the son of a cheesemonger. That spot where Cavendish's cavalry foundered, and |