Flunky Ferrie think of these things?-for there are many of his kidney who 'd like to be enlightened.

But, oh Grandmother! perhaps the worst is to come. The Church is really now in danger! I've not had a fare up LudgateHill lately, but I've no doubt St. Paul's is cracked from top to bottom. Would you believe it? David Salomons, the late Sheriff (who was sweetly cheated out of his gown as Alderman, the said gown being now on the shoulders of Church-and-State Moon, Esq.);-David Salomons, a Jew, has given 16667. 13s. 4d. to buy a scholarship of 50l. a year for the city of London, and the City -Gog and Magog quivered as with the ague-has been mean enough to take it. Oh, for the good old times, when they used to spit upon Jews in the Exchange! and now we take their money from 'em! I know you'll think it a blow at the Church. scholarship is said to be "open to members of every religious persuasion;" this is a flam-a blind. The gift is a sly attack on the Established Church. It's the evident intention of the Minories to turn us all into Jews. Never has there been such a blow struck at the vested interests of Smithfield pig-market. Sir Robert Inglis-whom I took up at Exeter Hall a night or two ago -says, in two years there'll be a grand Rabbi in Lambeth Palace. Your affectionate Grandson,

The

JUNIPER HEDGEHOG.

LOOK FORWARD.

ONE year the nearer, wife,
Are we to death:

Time, love, that meeteth life,

Garners our breath.

Let not thy dear face own
Looks of distress:

If days of love are gone,
Sorrows are less.

Look forward cheerily,—

Hope to the last!

Would'st thou live wearily,

Cling to the past.

M. L.

A HISTORY FOR YOUNG ENGLAND.*

What a pitie is it to see a proper gentleman to have such a crick in his neck that he cannot look backward. Yet no better is he who cannot see behind him the actions which long since were performed. History maketh a young man to be old, without either wrinkles or grey hairs; privileging him with the experience of age, without either the infirmities or inconveniences thereof. Yea, it not onely maketh things past, present; but inableth one to make a rationall conjecture of things to come. For this world affordeth no new accidents, but in the same sense wherein we call it a new moon; which is the old one in another shape, and yet no other than what had been formerly. Old actions return again, furbished over with some new and different circumstances.-Fuller.

CHAPTER THE NINTH.

HENRY THE SECOND AND HIS SONS.

1170-1189. It was a day of evil omen for the great English king, when the swords of Fitzurse, Brito, and Hugh of Horsea, struck down Thomas à Becket at the high altar of Canterbury church. Wholly without warrant are the partizan statements which would still associate Henry with that dreadful crime, an most melancholy blunder. At the very hour when the murderers held parley before the deed with their high-spirited victim, three barons, royal messengers, were on their way, with proper legal authority, and on a ground for which no good man will now condemn the king, to arrest the archbishop. His first act on his return to England after his six years' exile, had been in gross violation of the compromise he had, at the least colourably, sanctioned but a few brief months before.

In truth the contest, as I have said, was virtually decided for the king, when these ruffian swords again depressed the scale against him. Even in the French Court, where political had far outweighed religious considerations in the determined support of Becket, there was but one feeling of hearty sympathy with Henry, when, in language often afterwards referred to, he would have brought the quarrel to a simple test. Whatever displeases that

*Continued from page 469.

'man, is taken by him to be contrary to God's honour. By these 'two words would he take from me all my rights. But I will make 'him one concession. Certes there have been kings in England 'before me, less powerful than I am; and possibly there have been in the See of Canterbury, archbishops more holy than he is. 'What the greatest and holiest of his predecessors did for the least of mine, let him do for me, and I shall be satisfied.' The virtuous and independent bishop of Lisieux had not scrupled after this to convey to Becket, that even churchmen began to attribute the continued desperation of his struggle to pride rather than to virtue; and that they saw in him still the Chancellor in spirit, resolved to have no superior, and determined to assert a power above government with which government could not consist. Finally, when Henry procured the secret apostolical letter which authorised his son's coronation by whatsoever prelate he might choose to select, even the Pope had virtually deserted the archbishop's cause.

6

On this question of the consecration of Henry's eldest son, the last dispute turned almost wholly. The coronation of young Henry was an ill-advised step, but, supposing it would settle the succession past dispute, the king had set his heart upon it; and when Becket, still suspended from his see, learnt that what he held to be the inalienable right of consecration belonging to it, had been deputed to another, his rage did not spare even St. Peter's representative. He accused the Roman court of betraying the cause of God, of saving Barabbas, and of crueifying Christ again. It is my firm purpose,' he added, never more to importune the pontifical court. Let those repair thither 'who seek profit from their iniquities, and return thence glorious for having oppressed the righteous cause and made innocence captive.' Alarmed at this abuse, the Pontiff, with a double treachery to which it is strange to find the high though mistaken spirit of Becket a consenting accomplice, secretly supplied means of suspension and excommunication against the very prelates whom his own act had authorized to supersede the alleged functions of the primacy. With these powers, unknown to the king, who would not else have reinstated him, Becket returned to England.

He returned, not to complete the compromise-an essential condition of which was acquiescence and silence in regard to the pastbut to renew the contest. The common people crowded to welcome him at his landing (knowing nothing of the matter in dispute,

but that, against the doubtful tenure of the barons, they preferred to hold and serve under the Church); and, unattended by a single man of rank or station, but accompanied by excited masses of the peasantry, serfs and tributaries of the towns and fields, he again proclaimed defiance to the king. He refused to do homage for his barony; he resisted the king's officers and laws at every step; and he celebrated the Christmas festival with thunders of excommunication. On the day set specially apart for gentlest and most. sacred rejoicing, he appeared in his Cathedral with a budget of curses. Men whose only crime was to have obeyed their king, he cursed in soul and body; in all their limbs and joints and members; at home and abroad; in their goings out and their comings in; in towns and in castles, in fields and in meadows, in streets and in public ways, by land and by water; sleeping and waking, standing and sitting and lying, eating and drinking, speaking or holding their peace; by day and by night, and every hour, in all places, and at all times, everywhere and always.

The battle-axe of Brito or Fitzurse was not a weapon that could be wielded with such terrible potency as this! It is to say so much even for them-rude friends and officers of royalty to record that the last public act of the man they murdered was to invoke God to afflict the king's friends and officers with hunger and thirst, with poverty and want, with cold and with fever, with scabs and ulcers and itch, and with blindness and madness; to eject them from their homes and consume their substance; to make their wives widows and their children orphans and beggars; to curse all things belonging to them, even to the dog which guarded them and' the cock which wakened them. Why by God's eyes!' Henry swore, when the three bishops on whom these denunciations had fallen, crossed the sea to entreat his protection, he will next excommunicate me.'

The main defect of Henry's character was the sudden violence of his temper. His passion quickly passed away, but while it lasted was ungovernable. Even his friendly chroniclers admit this; saying that his round soft eyes, so dovelike and simple in hours of quiet, in his anger flashed dreadful fire, and, as it were, lightened. To which it is added by witnesses less friendly, that in such paroxysms those eyes were spotted with blood, his countenance seemed of flame, his tongue poured a torrent of abuse and imprecations, and his very hands inflicted vengeance. He would throw down his cap; ungird his sword; tear off his

clothes; pull the silk coverlet from his couch; unable to do more mischief, would sit down and gnaw the straw and rushes on the floor; and then, with the better impulse of that really noble though ill-regulated nature, would undergo a passion of selfreproach and penitence. Through these trials he passed on hearing of the primate's fresh defiance. He raved of his government outraged, and his England trampled under feet, by a friend who had betrayed him; by a wretch who had eaten his bread; by a beggar who had come to his court on a limping packhorse, carrying all his baggage at his back. And of all the dastardly 'knights I maintain at my cost, and feed at my table,' he shouted forth, there is not one that will deliver me from this turbulent ' priest !' Silently, when the frantic words were said, four barons of the chamber withdrew. Their absence was not at first observed, nor, when observed, was its cause suspected. Recovering calmness, Henry addressed himself to council; and while Brito, de Morville, de Tracy, and Fitzurse, were in full gallop for the coast, the three commissioners for arrest of Becket were formally appointed. The more fell arrest in progress was yet undreamt of. It is the curse of kings, says the great poet, to have even their humours taken for a warrant to break into the bloody house of life.' When the intelligence was conveyed to Henry, he was celebrating the festival of Christmas with unusual pomp, at Bure, in Normandy. He stayed the festivities, and shut himself up in his chamber. For three days none had access to him. He refused food; he would not receive the offices of his attendants; his disordered steps were heard in the room unceasingly. His horror of the deed there is no reason to doubt; but on his clear intellect there had also flashed the sense of what he had lost by it ;—that much of his labour of the last seven years, one foul rash instant had destroyed; and that the last moment of Becket's life was the first of real advantage to his cause. But on the fourth day he reappeared in his council-chamber; commissioned five envoys to lay his case before the pontiff; took resolute means to disavow the deed throughout the other courts of Europe; and, as though to find relief from thoughts which still threatened his quiet, embarked with passionate energy in an old weighty project of conquest and adventure.

·

Fourteen years before, he had discussed with Becket the means of adding Ireland to his dominions. It was a design he never ceased to entertain; but his wars for Anjou, his contests with the