remembrance of the insults she sustained during the reigns of the first
most amiable, yet most weak--of the second most admired, yet most
contemptible--of these legal kings. What must she think of the treatment
of the elector palatine, though he was son-in-law to king James? And let
her ask herself how the Duke of Rohan was assisted in the Protestant war
at Rochelle, notwithstanding the solemn engagement of king Charles under
his own hand! But we are treading too fearlessly upon ground on which,
in our humble capacity, we have scarcely the right to enter. Alas! alas!
the page of history is but a sad one; and the Stuarts and the Cromwells,
the roundheads and the cavaliers, the pennons and the drums, are but
part and parcel of the same dust--the dust we, who are made of dust
animated for a time by a living spirit, now tread upon! Their words,
that wrestled with the winds and mounted on the air, have left no trace
along that air whereon they sported:--the clouds in all their beauty cap
our isle with their magnificence, as in those by-gone days; the rivers
are as blue, the seas as salt; the flowers, those sweet things! remain
fresh within our fields, as when God called them into existence in
Paradise, and are bright as ever. But the change is over us, as it has
been over them: we, too, are passing. O England! what should this teach?
Even three things--wisdom, justice, and mercy. Wisdom to watch
ourselves, and then our rulers, so that we neither do nor suffer wrong;
justice to the memory of the mighty dead, whether born to thrones or
footstools; mercy, inasmuch as we shall deeply need it from our
successors.

* * * * *


THE "WHY AND BECAUSE" OF CHRISTMAS.