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the certainty of destroying the Church of England. On the one side, by refusing, he seemed to disown his duties as the father of his people. On the other side, by yielding, he seemed to forget his coronation oath, and the ultimate interests of his people; to merge the future and the reversionary in the present and the fugitive. It was not within the possibilities that he could so act as not to offend one-half of the nation. His dire calamity it was, that he must be hated, act how he would, and must be condemned by posterity. Did his enemies allow for the misery of this internal conflict? Milton, who never appears to more disadvantage than when he comes forward against his sovereign, is indignant that Charles should have a conscience, or plead a conscience, in a public matter. Henderson, the celebrated Scotch theologian, came post from Edinburgh to London (whence he went to Newcastle), expressly to combat the king's scruples. And he also (in his private letters) seems equally enraged as Milton, that Charles should pretend to any private conscience in a state question.

Now let us ask, what was it that originally drove Charles to books of casuistry? It was the deep shock which he received, both in his affections and his conscience, from the death of Lord Strafford. Everybody had then told him, even those who felt how much the law must be outraged to obtain a conviction of Lord Strafford, how many principles of justice must be shaken, and how sadly the royal word must suffer in its sanctity-yet all had told him that it was expedient to sacrifice that nobleman.

One man ought not to stand between the king and his alienated people. It was good for the common welfare that Lord Strafford should die. Charles was unconvinced. He was sure of the injustice, and perhaps he doubted even of the

expedience. But his very virtues were armed against his peace. In all parts of his life self-distrust and diffidence had marked his character. What was he, a single person, to resist so many wise counsellors, and in a representative sense to resist the nation ranged on the other side? He yielded, and it is not too much to say that he never had a happy day afterwards. The stirring period of his life succeeded the period of war, camps, treaties. Much time was not allowed him for meditation. But there is abundant proof that such time as he had always pointed his thoughts backwards to the afflicting case of Lord Strafford. This he often spoke of as the great blot-the ineffaceable transgression of his life. For this he mourned in penitential words yet on record. calamity of his latter life.

To this he traced back the
Lord Strafford's memorable

Lord Strafford's blood

words, "Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of princes," rang for ever in his ear. lay like a curse upon his throne.

Now, by what a pointed answer, drawn from this one case, might Charles have replied to the enemies I have noticed to those, like so many historians since his day, who taxed him with studying casuistry for the purposes of intrigue to those, like Milton and Henderson, who taxed him with exercising his private conscience on public questions.

"I had studied no books of casuistry," he might have replied," when I made my capital blunder in a case of conscience.

"I did not insist on my private conscience; wo is me that I did not: I yielded to what was called the public conscience, in that one case which has proved the affliction of my life, and which, perhaps, it was that wrecked the national peace

A more plenary answer there cannot be to those who suppose that casuistry is evaded by evading books of casuistry. That dread forum of conscience will for ever exist as a tribunal of doubt and difficulty. The discussion must proceed on some principle or other, good or bad; and the only way for obtaining light is by clearing up the grounds of action, and applying the principles of moral judgment to such facts or circumstances as most frequently arise to perplex the understanding, or the affections, or the conscience.

Hist.

§ Greece. (B.6.146- A.B. 717.)

GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS.

WITH A

REFERENCE TO MR GEORGE FINLAY'S WORK UPON THAT SUBJECT.

WHAT is called Philosophical History I believe to be yet in its infancy. It is the profound remark of Mr Finlayprofound as I myself understand it—i. e., in relation to this philosophical treatment, "That history will ever remain inexhaustible." How inexhaustible? Are the facts of history inexhaustible? In regard to the ancient division of history with which he is there dealing, this would be in no sense true; and in any case it would be a lifeless truth. So entirely have the mere facts of Pagan history been disinterred, ransacked, sifted, that except by means of some chance medal that may be unearthed in the illiterate East (as of late towards Bokhara), or by means of some mysterious inscription, such as those which still mock the learned traveller in Persia, northwards near Hamadan (Ecbatana), and southwards at Persepolis, or those which distract him amongst the shadowy ruins of Yucatan (Uxmal, suppose, and Palenque)—once for all, barring these pure godsends, it is hardly "in the dice" that any downright novelty of fact should remain in reversion for this nineteenth century. The merest possibility exists, that in Armenia, or

in a Græco-Russian monastery on Mount Athos, or in Pompeii, &c., some authors hitherto avezdoro may yet be concealed; and by a channel in that degree improbable, it is possible that certain new facts of history may still reach us. But else, and failing these cryptical or subterraneous currents of communication, for us the record is closed. History in that sense has come to an end, and is sealed up as by the angel in the Apocalypse. What then? The facts so understood are but the dry bones of the mighty past. And the question arises here also, not less than in that sublimest of prophetic visions, "Can these dry bones. live?" Not only can they live, but by an infinite variety of life. The same historic facts, viewed in different lights, or brought into connection with other facts, according to endless diversities of permutation and combination, furnish grounds for such eternal successions of new speculations as make the facts themselves virtually new, and virtually endless. The same Hebrew words are read by different sets of vowel points, and the same hieroglyphics are deciphered by keys everlastingly varied.

To me, I repeat that oftentimes it seems as though the science of history were yet scarcely founded. There will be such a science, if at present there is not; and in one feature of its capacities it will resemble chemistry. What is so familiar to the perceptions of man as the common chemical agents of water, air, and the soil on which we tread? Yet each one of these elements is a mystery to this day; handled, used, tried, searched experimentally, combined in ten thousand ways-it is still unknown; fathomed by recent science down to a certain depth, it is still probably by its destiny unfathomable. Even to the end of days, it is pretty certain that the minutest particle of earth-that a dew-drop scarcely distinguishable as a separate object-

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