now plunged. He was dilatory in his movements, hesitating and undetermined in his plans, and seemed, as has been said, to avoid a victory full as much as a defeat. Hampden early saw these errors of the commanding general, and did whatever he could, consistent with the duty of military subordination, from which he never departed, to remedy and repair them. Wherever he held an independent command and had the opportunity of acting upon his own counsels, celerity, decision, never-ceasing activity, combined with the clearest judgment and the quickest intuition, marked his operations, and in almost every instance crowned them with brilliant success. This continued exhibition of rare military virtues and talents, contrasted with the faults and blunders of Essex, drew the eyes of the army, the Parliament and the nation more and more upon Hampden, as the destined leader under whom their banner was to be borne in triumph. He was, in many quarters, already impatiently designated for the supreme command, and the hopes and affections of all were centred in his person, when one of those mysterious providences, which so often disappoint the fondest calculations of man, closed his career. In an encounter with the troops of Prince Rupert, whom his gallantry and sleepless vigilance for the protection of the country engaged him in an attempt to check with an unequal force, till the army of Essex should come to his support, he received a wound which, a few days afterwards, terminated in his death.

Thus fell the great and virtuous champion of British freedom, in the fiftieth year of his age and just ten months after the rearing of the King's standard at

Nottingham-the signal of the bloody and unhappy civil war in which his country was involved. That country to which his whole life had been devoted was still uppermost in his thoughts and prayers, to the moment of his expiring struggle. "O Lord! save my bleeding country," was the last audible invocation addressed to Heaven by his parting breath.

The death of Hampden, we are told by Clarendon, brought as great a consternation to the popular party, as if their whole army had been cut off. And well

might it produce that effect, for no man now remained, who possessed that rare union of seemingly irreconcilable virtues, or who enjoyed that universal confidence in the integrity of his aims, which was necessary to conduct the contest in which they were engaged, to a safe and happy issue. His great rival and enemy, whom I have just quoted, with every disposition to malign his motives and principles of action is yet compelled to say, "his reputation of honesty was universal, and his affections seemed so publicly guided that no corrupt or private ends could bias them." But we are enabled to add even higher testimony-that of the pious, learned and eloquent Baxter, who also lived in these troubled times and was a profound observer of the conduct and character of those who were then actors upon the mighty scene of the public convulsions. That great Divine, such was the elevated and acknowledged purity of Hampden's character, confidently assigned him a place in the celestial society of his Saint's Rest. Speaking of him, he says, "Mr. John Hampden was one that friends and enemies acknowledged to be most eminent for prudence, piety

and peaceable counsels, having the most universal praise of any gentleman that I remember of that age." He adds, "I remember a moderate, prudent, aged gentleman, far from him but acquainted with him, whom I have heard saying that if he might choose what person he would then be in the world, he would be John Hampden."

A man endowed with so many and such lofty virtues and the object of universal confidence, if his life had been spared to guide the further progress of the great intestine conflict in which the nation was engaged, would have been the Washington of his country. In the presence of his sublime and heroic patriotism, the guilty ambition of Cromwell would have stood palsied and rebuked. Under the powerful ascendant of his high moral influence, the jarring and discordant factions which arose in the bosom of the popular party would have been harmonized and composed, and their divided energies been made to coalesce for the advancement of the one great and only cause of civil and religious freedom. Placed as he would have been at the head of the army, virtue like his never could have been tempted to turn against the liberty of his country the sword he had been entrusted with for its defence. His moderation and wisdom would have taught his countrymen the most difficult and the most important of all lessons for free states— to know when and where to pause, and to guard liberty from the danger of those excesses by which the best things may become the worst-a lesson, the ignorance or disregard of which cost England, after the death of Hampden, long added years of bloody civil

war, the iron rule of military ursurpation, and finally a vindictive and profligate Restoration which brought back, for a season, some of the worst abuses which had been condemned and discarded by the voice and the arm of the nation.

But the cause of virtuous liberty had now taken root in the hearts of the people, and it was never more to be eradicated, however overborne by adverse circumstances for a time. The noble struggles of Hampden and his illustrious associates had endeared it to the public affection and forever fixed its principles in the public mind.

In tracing the progress of this great contest, I have abstained from any special reference to the ecclesiastical controversies of the times. Hume and other writers of the same school have sedulously laboured to prove that these controversies formed the real ground of conflict in the struggle of contending parties, and that “the grievances which tended chiefly to inflame the Parliament and the nation were the surplice, the rails placed about the altar, the bows exacted on approaching it" and other ceremonies of religious worship.* I have thought there could be no better mode of refuting this narrow and prejudiced representation of a noble contest for the great fundamental principles of civil and religious freedom, than laying out of view for the moment these ecclesiastical disputes, to shew what ample cause was still left in the numerous and daring invasions of public liberty, for all the resistance that was offered by the patriots of that day to the encroachments of arbitrary power.

* History of England, chap. 54.

The persecuting and ambitious spirit of Bancroft, of Laud, and their instruments, furnished but too abundant cause to rouse a deep feeling of dissatisfaction in regard to the conduct of religious concerns in the kingdom. All who were thus aggrieved naturally rallied to the support of public liberty-the standard first raised in defence of the constitutional franchises of the people and the just privileges of Parliament, but which extended its protecting folds alike over the inalienable rights of person, property and conscience.

Such was the true character of the struggle for English liberty, of which Hampden became the master spirit, and which, while it remained under his guidance, stood without just reproach in the eyes of the world. Its principles are of all time, and applicable to every people, who cherish the cause of constitutional freedom. The liberty which Hampden and the great men who coöperated with him sought to establish for their country, was not a liberty unregulated by law and rioting in freedom from restraint. In the only reported speech of his now extant, made towards the close of his life and upon an occasion most deeply interesting to his character and feelings, he makes a scrupulous observance of "the ancient and fundamental laws of the land," the touchstone of civic duty and political trust. We have already seen, in a memorable occurrence of his life, what sacred reverence he professed for Magna Carta as the law of the land and the obligatory rule of his conduct.

No where in the records of eloquence or philosophy is to be found a nobler conception, more nobly expressed, of the majesty and transcendant functions of