scratched off the following impromptu-it was thought wonderful then :

'You tax your powder, and you tax our tea

We'll soon have no beaux left-not ev'n bo-hea !'"

"The wit," said I, " is certainly not of the most elevated order; and thereupon the Devil and I fell into a long dispute about the nature of wit, in which, selon la regle, nothing was omitted-but wit itself.

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"What is this?" said I, some little while afterwards, as we were looking over the newspapers at the Athenæum-" A Public Dinner,' to celebrate the memory of Burns and the arrival of the Ettrick Shepherd!-let us go." The Devil sneered, and we went.

Oh! what a failure! Dinner presumptive at six o'clock, and apparent at a quarter past seven! Then the literary gentlemen present! -the flower of England-warmed from ill-humour to noise; and the row became stunning. It was evidently a Tory trap-none of the Liberals advertised as stewards, Campbell, &c. were present-doubtless they heard the meeting was to be political, and discreetly kept away. Such is the mania of Politics, that even the peaceful ground of Literature is not to be left unpolluted!-the high name of Burns, the noblest of Scotland's reformers, is to be prostituted to the purposes of Anti-reform!-and Hogg (whose bold and native genius required more generous treatment) is to be considered, not as the Poet of " Kilmene," but the incarnation of Blackwood's Magazine. These devices of party despair make a freeman sick-they make a Tory traveller exceedingly drunk-verbum sat! Great Burns! brave and unhappy spirit! couldst thou have looked down and beheld thy haughty name bowed to such purposes?—Out on it!

The Devil saw me in a passion-" Come home," said he, "for tomorrow night I have better sport in store for you. Talking of Burns, puts me in mind of Witches and Tam O'Shanter. I know some most agreeable Witches-to-morrow night is a gala-I will introduce you to them."

"Are you in earnest?—are Witches still extant?" "In plenty."

"Give me your hand. O Diamond of Devils, you restore me to life!-is it possible that at this day I still have one novelty left me, and that of the feminine sex! Oh! Asmodeus, an amour with a Witch will be heaven itself!"

"Are not ordinary women possessed of sufficient witchcraft?" said the Devil.

I was about to reply, when suddenly

(To be continued.)

JOHN HAMPDEN.*

Ir was a noble saying of Machiavel, that it is hopeless to attempt to reduce to slavery a nation imbued with the spirit of freedom, Never, in any age or time, did that spirit arise, without the power, and the knowledge of power, to carry forward its great dictates. It must always be seconded and followed out by the active and energetic love of humanity, to which it owes its birth, and which is a better security against tyranny or oppression than any which human wisdom has devised. Nothing can repress the general WILL in a nation to be free, it can perish by nothing, save its own hand.

Hence arose the new power which was developed in this nation during the early part of the seventeenth century, and against which the kingly, and aristocratic power, dashed themselves to pieces. It was this that knit the nation together in that day by a common bond of interest and sympathy, which carried the hearts of men along with the honourable struggles they were obliged to sustain, and converted them into an ennobling enjoyment. Out of this issued forth those Great Men who cast off the trammels of old opinion, and proclaimed the rights of human intelligence against stationary and particular interests. And never sprang there up so formidable an association in behalf of the doctrines of civil liberty, with so many lasting claims to the gratitude of freemen now. For to what did their exertions tend? To the correction of abuses; to the adaptation of the Government to the progress and wants of the age; to the establishment of an independent party in the House of Commons to obey the wishes, and guard the interests, of the people. Thus alone could the peaceful developement of the new power abroad throughout the nation be peacefully provided for, and to these great ends they devoted their wonderful faculties. They proposed changes in political government with caution, and in a humane and conscientious temper. They were met by the mockery of all public right, by the breach of common good faith, and by the outrage of all the principles that hold men together in subordination to a government. They strived in vain to fight the battle out on the floor of the House of Commons: they were driven from that constitutional arena by a monstrous deed of perfidy and violence, -and not till then did they betake themselves to a field of more agitating and dreadful warfare. They must have felt secure of the issue of the conflict, and they preferred it, attended as it might be with danger and death to themselves, to a victory gained over constitutional principle, and the great rights before which individual interests sink into nothing.

And, now that two hundred years have elapsed since their immortal exertions, do not they stand proudly vindicated to us, their posterity, in their claims to practical wisdom and disinterested patriotism? We are engaged (it is useless to deny it) in a struggle which concerns the same principle for the defence of which they lived and died. Reflection and experience, it is true, have established with us wider maxims of political wisdom, but the people have also increased in consequence and political importance. It has become necessary that we

Some Memorials of John Hampden, his Party, and his Times. By Lord Nugent. Feb.-VOL. XXXIV. NO. CXXXIV

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should provide for the timely and peaceful operation of a great power newly arisen to feel its strength among us. Our task is the same as theirs, though our position is altered. Still we also are to contend against overgrown power, and the battle must be fought out on the same great principle. Thanks to them, for that they have placed us on the vantage-ground of historical example, and handed down to us the moral of the great drama of which they were the actors. Nothing that opens out to us the consideration of its tempestuous scenes can be without advantage now, and we gladly welcome the appearance of a book on the times of one of its greatest conductors, written by a man in whose habits of thought we have as much faith as in his love of justice. In the character and actions of Hampden, detailed by a friend of freedom, we may see much that will administer to our own interests, and the objects of our present concern. Nor to others ought the book to be without its use, if it induces them to look at history for a while in the spirit recommended by Raleigh, that they "may gather a policy no less wise than eternal, by the comparison of other men's fore-passed miseries with their own like errors and ill deservings."

Lord Nugent has called his book "Some Memorials of John Hampden, his Party, and his Times." This title, however, does not convey, we think, the true character of the work, which partakes more of the nature of general history, than of private or particular details. And in this we were disappointed. It may be true, that of Hampden himself less of correspondence and private conversation has been preserved than of any other so remarkable person living in times so near our own but why, when some of his correspondence, and that, too, of the most delightful character, has come down to us, should Lord Nugent think it necessary to apologise for its introduction, and speak of it as "having nothing of historical importance to recommend it?" And why has he not given us some private memorials of Hampden's party? Sufficient exist to have afforded a very lively conception of their individual character and demeanour, and they would not have been without their use even in illustrating the habitudes and distinguishing particulars of the character of Hampden. As to the "having nothing of historical importance to recommend" them, we believe, on the contrary, that such details, delightful as they always must be, carry light and life into history itself; and for ourselves, we are almost inclined to go the length of the writer, who tells us he was grateful for being told that Milton wore shoe-buckles. In these respects the book before us is certainly scanty and unsatisfactory, though nothing can be better in its general spirit, or in the judgment and care with which its details have been digested. Perhaps we have reason to quarrel with Lord Nugent for his reluctance to enter into large speculations, or to trust himself to the guidance of principles more binding than the letter of any positive statute can ever be. Hence his anxiety to rescue Hampden from certain imputations of having exceeded the precise letter of precedent, scrupling not to separate him, for a time, from the great men with whom it was his pride to labour, and whose actions need no justification with those who know the true bearings of the struggle in which they had engaged— of the characters with whom they had to deal-of the rash and violent

experiments on the nature and power of government they had bound themselves to overthrow-and of the original rights of man, which they had sworn to maintain.

We are the more sorry for this, because Lord Nugent is a right and manly thinker, and ought not to have been afraid of great questions, like that of Strafford's attainder. Setting these aside, he has done ample justice to the acts and motives of Hampden and his Party, and has borne ample testimony to the truth and sincerity of their objects. He seems to have come to his task under the sense of a high responsibility, and has examined questions with considerable diligence and care. We are glad, therefore, to avail ourselves of his assistance, with that of the original records, and of those older authors who illustrate best the sentiments of their own age, and are, perhaps, the most imbued with its real spirit and feeling, in giving a brief, but we trust faithful, account of Hampden's great character and immortal exertions.

John Hampden, descended from an "ancient and genteel family," was born in London in 1594. Clarendon tells us that he had a "fair fortune," to which, it seems, he succeeded in his infancy. At the age of fifteen he entered Magdalen College, Oxford, as a commoner, and though he left it without a degree, his attainments there seem to have gained him some repute, as we learn from Lord Nugent that he was chosen, with a few others, to write the Oxford gratulations on the marriage of the Elector Palatine with the Princess Elizabeth. Strange to connect this slight circumstance with the events of his after-life, and to learn that, from this marriage,—which he was called on to celebrate, and the issue from which he spoke of, in his school-boy ode, as

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proles

Cui nulla terra, nulla
Gens sit parem datura,"

-should spring Prince Rupert, who led the King's troops in the fatal field of Chalgrove !

After the custom of the time, which pointed out a knowledge of the common law as an essential of good education, and necessary to one who aspired to the duties of a Member of the House of Commons, Hampden entered his name on the books of the Inner Temple. Whether, at this youthful period, he had been induced, from his cheerful habits and fascinating manners, to enter into the dissipations of the age, and had begun the life of "great pleasure and licence," which Clarendon, not, as it seems, unjustly, has charged upon his earlier years, we have no means of knowing; but it is certain that he never at any period of his life abandoned intellectual exertion, or neglected the literary labours to which his taste always inclined him. Accordingly, at the Inner Temple he did not fail to make considerable progress in his new study; and we find the courtier Sir Philip Warwick bearing testimony to his "great knowledge, both of scholarship and law." Nor does the next circumstance of his life to which our attention is directed, indicate any taste on his part for "licence” of the more abandoned sort. He married, in 1619, a lady to whom, we are told, he was throughout life tenderly attached. Here we could wish

that Lord Nugent had favoured us with those "several parts of his correspondence" in which, it seems, he pays tribute to her talents, virtues, and affection. We could have spared some of the more stately passages of the book in return for them.

From his retreat in his native county, Hampden was soon called on to bear his part in public affairs. A year after his marriage he took his seat for the borough of Grampound, in that celebrated Parliament of 1620, which struck the first heavy blow against corruption, by furthering independent representation. The venerable Coke, Pym, Selden, Phillips, and St. John, had met the solemn and precise claims of the pedantic James with flat contradiction and denial, and the great fight for Parliamentary privilege and extended representation was already begun, to the amazement of all the continental nations. Hampden chose his part at once, and took his seat beside them. In vain had his mother, fondly desiring (what she imagined to be) dignity for her son, entreated him to seek a Peerage. On the high ground of public principle he saw a nobler dignity, and resolvedly refused to stir from it. We owe this fact to the researches of Lord Nugent, and are grateful for its discovery, because it throws a steady light on his early character, and is a comfort and guide to our understanding in looking to his after-exertions. Here was no personal vanity, or private interest, or boundless ambition, no restless or unsatisfied desires.

In considering the character of Hampden, it will not appear strange that for many years he made no considerable figure in Parliament. In disposition he was unobtrusive; of "rare temper and modesty," to use the words of Clarendon; whilst his wonderful energy of mind was under exact discipline. He saw that the leading members of the Opposition were as yet sufficient to their task, and he cared not to thrust himself unnecessarily forward. Recording his votes for freedom always, he waited a fitting opportunity for more personal exertion. But as he was resolved wisely not to anticipate the call of the occasion, so he prepared himself not to disobey it. In the retirement of his yet private life, he earnestly investigated the great political questions of the time; and a manuscript volume of his notes attests the anxious assiduity with which he pored over the doctrines and precedents of parliamentary privilege. We may imagine the effect produced on his mind by such studies; nor do we wonder to hear from Clarendon, that at this period "he retired to a more reserved and melancholy society;" whilst we feel to love him the more for it, when the historian adds, that "he yet preserved his own natural cheerfulness and vivacity, and, above all, a flowing courtesy to all men."

The country was now under the sway of Charles the First, and that misguided prince had realized the most melancholy forebodings. In the painful and humiliating denial of all public right and public law, which the young King and his pampered Minister had openly proclaimed, how grateful a thing it is to contemplate the patriotism and gallant resistance it immediately provoked! Hampden was not wanting when a personal sacrifice was required. The "loan" was demanded from him; he saw the consequences of compliance, and that it must endanger the general right. From that moment his constitutional diffidence vanished;-and he stood forward, for the first time, pro