At last, when hope deferred was waning and almost dying out, except in Mary's faithful breast, a letter was brought from Bristol, as we now spell it, by the hand of one of the old float or barge owners of the Severn, who traded with Gloucester and Worcester, having a connection at Shrewsbury on the Quay, just where it stands at the present day. The letter, however, was sad as sad might be, though full of the tenderest affection. It told, in the simplest language of Christian thankfulness, that, comparatively, he had not been ill-treated, but had fallen into rather hard hands. At the same time he could give no hope of returning; to which it was added that from hardships undergone before he sailed and greater hardships on the passage out, his life was burning dim; but that he was happy in his steadfast hope in Christ his Saviour, whose Name he strove to make known on the estate where he resided.

Contained in this letter was one for the old home in Shrewsbury, and an entire resignation of the business into the hands of Alfred Muckleston, in whom he placed the most unreserved confidence. He was to make arrangements with his family in Worcester, and to do all that he could for Mary Buckingham. 'And,' said my Talking Friend, 'he did his duty faithfully, and deserved all the trust that had been placed in him; and if Mary ever could have given her affections to another it would have been to Alfred Muckleston, who clung to her as one dearer than a brother, trying to supply the place of her lost Edward.'

About a year after the last communication Mary received through a friendly planter the sad tidings of his death; but they were brightened by the planter's saying that he had brought life to him and to his household; and that she should hear of him whenever he had an opportunity. He added, also, that within a time she would receive a large trunk, containing such things as were thought worth remitting. All came within the year; and year after year there came to the old warehouse on Mardol Quay, at Shrewsbury-directed to Mary Buckingham, Hanwood, Salop-a huge parcel containing all the good things of the plantation which the gratitude of a Barbados planter and his wife could think of. I wish I

could have recorded his name, but my Talking Friend never heard it. He only said 'that his heart must have been HEART OF OAK, and as for his memory, it was as sweet as those lengths of sugar-cane which Mary used to distribute amongst the children.'

In the last letter he wrote to Mary Buckingham he applied to himself those words of the Prophet Jeremiah, adding, however, that he looked upward for the better land:He shall not return thither any more. But he shall die in the place whither they have led him captive, and shall see this land no more. This was the passage he wished her to turn to in the little Bibles so often mentioned, and to let the children read it, whilst she impressed on them the wickedness of Shallum, the son of Josiah. Besides these, there were often words of affection added also, as the rector of Hanwood reported it. After his signature there were the last words of Edward, feebly traced, but all in large capitals :—

FOR TO ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST, AND TO DIE IS GAIN.

Constant remittances had been sent to him, but there was the Oliver and Barebones ill-omened cross against his name ; and he was never allowed to return. He seems to have died about two years before the return of Charles II.; and many inquiries were instituted about him by Richard Ottley of Pitchford, who went to salute the king, with such thorough joy of heart, on his arrival at Dover.

Little remains to be added about Mary Buckingham. Deep as was her sorrow, she bore it like a Christian woman, still teaching the children at Hanwood and beloved by all, especially by the rector of Hanwood, and by the inhabitants of the old homestead at Meole; but specially by the children of Alfred Mucklestone, who, with his wife, was her constant friend. Nor did she leave the home of the Berringtons at Môt-Hall till the elders of the family passed away. When her mistress died, to whom she had been as a daughter, she then retired, with the blessings of the family on her head, to her father's cottage, so often mentioned; where, my Talking Friend said, she lived quite till the days of William and Mary, and might have seen those old pictures of them still

remaining at Meole. Long after her death her name remained as a household word amongst the people of Hanwood; and pleasing it is to remember that when riches, and power, and worldly honour, and pride of place, and pomp, and pageantry, with nodding plumes and horses, pass off this human stage as a dream when one awaketh, RIGHTEOUSNESS IS IMMORTAL.

I had nearly omitted to add-and a grave omission it would have been-that in the last package Mary received from the worthy old planter in the West Indies, there was a curious piece of workmanship, wrought by the Carib women with fishbones as white as ivory, and inlaid with grass as fine as the gossamer. It was a representation of Edward Spurstow's tomb.

The palms he loved, so slow of growth, were rising by it, and the fireflies he loved like the palms were fitfully playing round them, his favourite light. Hard by them was a little rill of water, taught to run there, and called by the negro women THE REA WATER, the name of the dear old brook at Hanwood. Nothing, since her irremediable loss, ever gave Mary Buckingham so much pleasure.

251

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE MERRY MONARCH.

Coepisti melius quam desinis. Ultima primis
Cedunt: dissimiles hic vir et ille puer.'

OVID, Heroid. Epist. ix. 23.

Hyde answered, that he thought the king had so true a judgment, and so much good nature, that when the age of pleasure should be over, and the idleness of his exile, which made him seek new diversions for want of other employment, was turned to an obligation to mind affairs, then he would have shaken off the entanglements.-Bishop Burnet's Summary, Book I. p. iii. ed. 8vo, 1815.

Here lies our sovereign lord the king,

Whose word no man relies on ;

Who never said a foolish thing,

And never did a wise one.1

COURT EPIGRAM.

THE letter of Charles I. to his son, when in the hands of his enemies, is one not readily forgotten by any reader of these times; and Southey, with his ripe wisdom and penetration, commences his eighteenth chapter of the Book of the Church' with it: that Book which, beyond any other, is still the Book which should command the attention of all real Churchmen. Not impossibly-for what has been will be again -times in some way not dissimilar, may be cropping forth, and unless the wisdom of experience is to be thrown to the winds, the wisdom of history is not to be disregarded. Had Charles II. not fallen, as he did, into the slough of indolence, and consequent dissoluteness, he might have profited well by what his father wrote, and the nation at large would have been saved from many troubles. But trouble and exile had not wrought upon the second Charles as it ought to have done, and hence the sad results-hinc illæ lacryma! Nothing

can be more sad than to read the melancholy accounts in Evelyn and Burnet; Pepys even could not but be dismayed at what he saw and heard.

Who comes-with rapture greeted, and caress'd

With frantic love—his kingdom to regain.
Him Virtue's Nurse, Adversity, in vain
Received, and fostered in her iron breast;
For all she taught of hardiest and of best,
Or would have taught, by discipline of pain
And long privation, now dissolves amain
Or is remembered only to give zest

To wantonness.

But I must now pass on to something concerning the Old Oak's locality.

It was reported at once in the valley of the Rea that on the Restoration the aldermen in the Old Town took their old places once more. On this occasion, as is usual in Shropshire, there were feast and festival, or, as the people spoke, 'great doings,' and many from Pontesbury, Meole, and Hanwood, went to the gala sight.

About this time the Old Oak told how that wild preacher Vavasor Powel passed by on his way to preach in North Wales,' against all magistracy and ministry,' and very few of that cast and sort of people ever made a greater commotion than he did from Montgomery to Salop. The Welshmen, in their blue thick coats, and with their little ponies, and panniers full of mussels, which they then hawked about as they did when I was a boy, were loud in his praise. Taffy, indeed, has been at all times easily influenced by mob oratory, hedge-preaching, and ranting.

As the Old Oak said so much of him he must be mentioned here.

It appears that he was thrown into prison in Shrewsbury before he was committed to the Fleet, which was subsequent to August 1660. As he used to say, not without boasting, that he was once a member of Jesus College, Oxford, Antony à Wood gives, in many ways, an interesting account of him in the Athenæ Oxonienses.' Many people, said my Talking Friend, called him the Apostle of the Cymry, and there can be no doubt that, however wild and fanatical, he was