friendship was ratified, which, beginning at

never wilfully given her mother a moment's uneasiness, and who knew how miserable she would be until she saw her again, insisted on going, notwithstanding all that could be urged by the waterman or Mr. Marvell, who earnestly intreated her to return to his house, and to wait for better weather.

Mr. Marvell, finding her resolutely bent to venture her life, rather than run the risque of disobliging a fond parent, thought himself obliged, in honour and conscience, to share the danger with her; and, accordingly, having persuaded some watermen to attempt the passage, they both got into the boat. Just as they put off, Mr. Marvell threw his gold headed cane on shore to some friends who attended at the water-side, telling them, that as he could not suffer the young lady to go alone, and, as he apprehended the consequence might be fatal, if he perished he desired them to give that cane to his son, and bid him remember his father. Thus, he armed with innocence, and his fair charge, with filial duty and affection, set forward to meet their inevitable fate: the boat was overset, and they were lost.

"The lady, whose excessive fondness had plunged her daughter and friend into this terrible condition, went the same afternoon into her garden, and seated herself in an arbour, from whence she could view the water; and while with no small anxiety she beheld the tempestuous state it was in, she saw (or rather thought she saw) a most lovely boy with flaxen hair come into the garden; who, making up directly to her, said, "Madam, your daughter is safe now." The Lady, greatly surprized, said, "My pretty dear, how didst thou know any thing of my daughter?"-Then bidding him stay, she arose, and went into the house for a pretty piece of new money to reward him for his care: but returning into the garden, the child was gone, and no tiding of him could be heard. This gave her some suspicion of her misfortune, which was soon after confirmed, with the additional aggravation that her friend was involved in the same mischief, and of course his family great sufferers; she having lost her pleasure, they their support: and thinking herself bound by every tie, to make all the reparation in her power, she sent for the son of her late friend, the cele,

a somewhat earlier period, was terminated only with their lives.

In the september of the following year, the Protector finished, amid the wretchedness of apprehension and remorse, his splendid but criminal career; supplying one awful and monitory example more to the many which had already been exhibited to the world, (if human passion could be brought to attend to the lesson of example) of the impotence of ambition with her richest rewards to compensate the forfeiture of integrity. The confusions, which ensued upon his death, induced the people to regret the loss, even, of an usurper, whose vigorous authority had suspended those dissensions of which they were now the prey, and had controlled the licentiousness of the army by whose caprices they were now insulted and oppressed. After a reign of less than nine months, Richard Cromwell descended, in the conscious security of innocence, and with a magnanimity which

brated Andrew Marvell, charged herself with the expence of his future education, and at her death left him her fortune."

Richard Cromwel! might have supported himself on his Protectoral throne if he would have consented to the assassination of Desborough and Fleetwood; or would have accepted in time the military assistance offered to him by his brother Henry, the amiable and popular governor of Ireland. The letters of Henry Cromwell, on this occasion, discover a clear head and an excellent heart.

could disdain greatness when associated with guilt, from his high and giddy eminence to the safe level of a private station; and the council of officers, headed by Desborough and Fleetwood, who had immediately contributed to Richard's abdication, summoned the relics of the Long Parliament to reassume the guidance of the Commonwealth. A part of this renowned assembly, which still legally existed, convened on this invitation; and, soon displaying its accustomed energy and talent, became, in a short time, the object of just alarm to its military tyrants, and again suffered a forcible interruption of its sittings. On this last excess of the army, under the influence of men, destitute alike of ability and of public feeling, and equally incapable of providing for their own interests or for those of the community, the nation experienced a species of anarchy, and fell into the extreme of degradation under a military despotism. The Presbyterians, discontented since the triumph of the Independents, but crushed beneath the weighty sceptre of Oliver and acquiescing in the succession of his son, now openly avowed their disaffection to the rul ing powers and united themselves heartily with the Royalists.

This extraordinary confusion and conflict

of parties opened a field to Monk, who had
been placed by Cromwell at the head of the
forces in Scotland and was now the gover-
nor of that kingdom, for the display of his
inconstancy, his cunning, and his perfidy.
Peculiarly favoured by his situation, and so-
licited by the Presbyterians, the People, and
the Parliament for aid against an insolent
soldiery, who, like the blind giant of classical
fable, possessed brutal power without the
vision requisite to divert it from self-destroy- -
ing exertion, this wavering and narrow-
minded man, with mean talents but with
deep dissimulation, was enabled to betray
all who confided in him, to abandon his old
associates to the butchery of legal vengeance,
and, with a fearful accumulation of perjury
on his head, to surrender the nation, without
a single stipulation in its favour, to the do-
minion of a master in whom voluptuousness
and cruelty were confounded in a disgusting
embrace. By every intelligent and reflecting
man the restoration of the monarchy of Eng-
land must be hailed as a most auspicious event:
but it may be questioned, whether the uncon-
ditional restoration of it, and this alone was
properly the act of Monk, can be regarded as
a benefit either to the prince, or to the peo-
ple;- to the former, whom it allured to those

excesses which induced the final expulsion of his family from the throne; to the lat ter, whom it immediately. exposed to the evils of an injurious reign, and eventually subjected to the necessity of asserting, with the blood of two domestic wars, their right to civil and religious liberty.

While these strange transactions were passing in the space between the Protector's death and the return of Charles, the mind of Milton must necessarily have been agitated with very severe inquietudes. Under the usurpation of Cromwell, he had seen the structure of liberty, which his ardent imagination had erected, dissolve like a vision into air, and leave not a vestige to intimate the place where the fanciful edifice had stood. In this bad case, however, there were circumstances to appease and console him. At home, religious liberty had been admitted in its most ample expansion; and, with the name of a commonwealth, many of the privileges of free men had been respected and permitted to remain. The personal character of the usurper had, also, in some measure, covered the deformity of the usurpation. Magnificent in public, as the representative of a great nation, in private he was simple and plain. Impatient of those questions