THE WEAVER'S FLOWERS.

ROBERT BUCHANAN (b. 1841).

Blessings on the flowers!

They were his children! father never loved
His little darlings more, or for their sakes
Fretted so dumbly! Father never bent
More tenderly above his little ones,

In the still watches of the night, when sleep
Breathes balm upon their eyelids! Night and day
Poor Hugh was careful for the gentle things
Whose presence brought a sunshine to the place
Where sickness dwelt: this one was weak and small,
And needed watching like a sickly child;

This one so beauteous that it shamed its mates,
And made him angry with its beauteousness.
"I cannot rest!" cried Hughie with a smile;

I scarcely snatch a moment to myself,

They plague me so!" Part fun, part earnest this:
He loved the pansies better than he knew.
E'en in the shadow of his weaving-room
They haunted him, and brightened on his soul:
Daily, while busy working at the loom,
The humming, humming seemed a melody
To which the pansies sweetly grew and grew,-
A leaf unrolling soft to every note,

A change of colors with a change of sound;
And walking to the door to rest himself,
Still with the humming, humming in his ears,
He saw the flowers and heard a melody
They made in growing.

Hugh Sutherland's Pansies.

THE ENGLISH NATION.

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674).

Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing [moulting] her mighty youth and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means, and in their endless gabble would prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.

Areopagitica: A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing (1644).

LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

T. P. TASWELL-LANGMEAD.

[Mr. Taswell-Langmead is one of the latest writers on the constitutional aspect of English history. The chief value of his work resides in its wide research, which has embraced a close study of the Rolls of Parliament, the Mediæval Chroniclers, and other original authorities.]

Under James I. and Charles I. political and religious discussion was repressed by the Star Chamber with the greatest severity. By an ordinance of the Star Chamber, issued in July

1637, the number of master printers was limited to twenty, who were to give sureties for good behavior, and were to have not more than two presses and two apprentices each (unless they were present or past masters of the Stationers' Company, when they were allowed three presses and three apprentices); and the number of letter-founders was limited to four. The penalty for practising the arts of printing, book-binding, letterfounding, or making any part of a press, or other printing materials, by persons disqualified or not apprenticed thereto, was whipping, the pillory, and imprisonment. Even books which had been once examined and allowed were not to be reprinted without a fresh license; and books brought from

abroad were to be landed in London only, and carefully examined by licensers appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, who were empowered to seize and destroy all such as were seditious, schismatical, or offensive.' Periodical searches both of booksellers' shops and private houses were also enjoined and authorized. Yet it was during this inauspicious period that the first newspaper, the Weekly News, made its appearance, late in the reign of James I.; and after the abolition of the Star Chamber (February 1640-1) tracts and newspapers issued forth in shoals during the contest between the Crown and the Parliament. The Long Parliament, however, while abolishing the Star Chamber, continued the censorship of the press; and endeavored to silence all royalist and prelatical writers by most tyrannical ordinances "to repress disorders in printing," by which the messengers of the Government were empowered to break open doors and locks, by day or by night, in order to discover unlicensed printing-presses, and to apprehend authors, printers, and others. These proceedings called forth the "Areopagītica" of Milton, in which he branded the suppression of Truth by the licenser as the slaying of "an immortality rather than a life,” maintained that "she needs no policies, no stratagems, no licensings to make her victorious," and nobly, but ineffectually, pleaded for "the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely, according to conscience, above all [other] liberties."

After the Restoration the entire control of printing was placed in the hands of the Government by the Licensing Act of 1662, which, though originally passed only for three years, was continued by subsequent renewals until 1679. Printing was strictly confined to London, York, and the two universities; the number of master printers was limited, as in the ordinances of the Star Chamber in 1637, to twenty; and no private person was to publish any book or pamphlet unless it were first licensed -law books by the Lord Chancellor or one of the chiefs of the Common Law Courts, historical or political books by a Secretary of State, books of heraldry by the Earl Marshal, and all other books by the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Bishop of London, or by the chancellor or vice-chancellor of one of the universities. Authors and printers of obnoxious works were hung, quartered, mutilated, exposed in the pillory, flogged, or simply fined and imprisoned, according to the temper of the judges; and the works themselves were burned by the common

hangman. After the Licensing Act had been temporarily suffered to expire in 1679, the twelve judges with Chief Justice Scroggs at their head declared it to be criminal at common law to publish anything concerning the Government, whether true or false, of praise or censure, without the royal license. All newspapers were in consequence stopped; and the people were reduced for political intelligence and instruction to two Government publications, the official London Gazette, which furnished a scanty supply of news without comment, and the Observator, which consisted of comment without news. In the absence of newspapers, the coffee-houses became the chief organs through which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself, while the inhabitants of provincial towns and the great body of the gentry and country clergy depended almost exclusively on Newsletters from London for their knowledge of political events.

At the accession of James II. in 1685 the Licensing Act was revived for seven years, and was thus in force at the Revolution. It was once more renewed in 1692 for one year and until the end of the following session of Parliament; but a further attempt to renew it in 1695 was negatived by the Commons, and henceforth the censorship of the press has ceased to form part of the law of England.

English Constitutional History (2nd ed., 1880), chap. xvii.

MISUSE OF PARLIAMENTARY PRIVILEGE.

SPENCER WALPOLE.

(Author of "The History of England from 1815.")

Privilege has passed through many phases. Claimed originally by the Commons to help them in their contest with the Crown, it was subsequently used by them in their contest with the people; it fell into comparative disuse when the cause of the nation became the cause of the House of Commons. In the present time no British sovereign would force himself into the legislature and demand the arrest of members obnoxious to himself; but no House of Commons would go out of its way to declare an article in the Times a seditious libel or venture to reprimand the printer of a newspaper who published its debates. Modern sovereigns have had the good sense to refrain from the

conduct which cost Charles I. throne and life; and recent Parliaments have had the wisdom to abstain from imitating the examples of the legislatures in the early years of the reign of George III. The supremacy for which the King was contending in the early years of the seventeenth century, and which the House of Commons temporarily obtained in the concluding years of the eighteenth century, has virtually passed to the people, and both the Crown and the aristocracy have practically recognized the facts which it is no longer possible for them to ignore. It would, perhaps, be well for them, even now, occasionally to reflect on the consequences of the contrary policy which their ancestors pursued. The cause of freedom is the holiest which history commemorates; and the persons who have struck a blow in freedom's cause are the favorite heroes of the historian. In ancient Athens, Hipparchus used his power to cultivate wisdom and virtue; Harmŏd'ius gave his days to degrading vices; yet the Athenians forgave the one because he slew the other. The private life of George III. was excellent, like that of Hipparchus; the private life of Wilkes was only less degraded than that of Harmodius; yet Wilkes lives in history as freedom's champion-the Government of George III. is condemned as unconstitutional. Callis'tratus composed his sole surviving lyric in Harmodius' honor; and Byron described in one of his most pungent stanzas the memorable conduct of Wilkes. May future generations take warning from such examples. That policy must at least be unfortunate which holds up rulers such as George III. and Hipparchus to reproach, and which turns characters such as Harmodius and Wilkes into heroes. The Electorate and the Legislature (1881).

MACAULAY: ESSAYIST, ORATOR, POET, HISTORIAN. REV. WILLIAM MORLEY PUNSHON, D.D. (1824-1881).

[The eloquent lecture from which the following passages are selected was first delivered early in 1860.]

1. Essays.

To

The world is now familiar with that series of inimitable Essays, which were poured out in rapid and apparently inexhaustible succession, for the space of twenty years. criticise them, either in mass or in detail, is no part of the lecturer's province; and even to enumerate them would entail a pilgrimage to many and distant shrines. As we surrender