infamy, a baptism into the communion of corruption. As he was the
earliest of the hateful list, so was he also by far the greatest;
eloquent, sagacious, adventurous, intrepid, ready of invention,
immutable of purpose, in every talent which exalts or destroys
nations pre-eminent, the lost Archangel, the Satan of the
apostasy. The title for which, at the time of his desertion, he
exchanged a name honourably distinguished in the cause of the
people, reminds us of the appellation which, from the moment of
the first treason, fixed itself on the fallen Son of the Morning,

"Satan;--so call him now--His former name
Is heard no more in heaven."

The defection of Strafford from the popular party contributed
mainly to draw on him the hatred of his contemporaries. It has
since made him an object of peculiar interest to those whose
lives have been spent, like his, in proving that there is no
malice like the malice of a renegade; Nothing can be more natural
or becoming than that one turncoat should eulogize another.

Many enemies of public liberty have been distinguished by their
private virtues. But Strafford was the same throughout. As was
the statesman, such was the kinsman and such the lover. His
conduct towards Lord Mountmorris is recorded by Clarendon. For a
word which can scarcely be called rash, which could not have been
made the subject of an ordinary civil action, the Lord Lieutenant
dragged a man of high rank, married to a relative of that saint
about whom he whimpered to the peers, before a tribunal of
slaves. Sentence of death was passed. Everything but death was
inflicted. Yet the treatment which Lord Ely experienced was still