never pretended to be either Puritan or Roundhead. With his Irish Brigade he fought on the side of Charles I., and after being taken prisoner at Nantwich, and long confinement in the Tower, he accepted a commission under the Parliament, on condition of being employed solely against the Irish rebels. It was only when the Stuart cause seemed hopelessly lost, and both crown and mitre had been kicked into the kennel, that Monk became the general servant of the Commonwealth. His conduct however, on the Restoration, admits only of this palliative, that it was consistent with his past life, and known predilections in favour of the exiled family. These had not escaped the penetration of Oliver Cromwell. In a postcript to a letter addressed to Monk a little before his death, the Protector jocosely alludes to the surmises abroad, respecting his lieutenant :-There be that tell me, that there be a certain cunning fellow in Scotland called George Monk, who is said to be in wait there to introduce Charles Stuart; I pray you use your diligence to catch the rogue and send him to me. So the event proved, there was a 'cunning fellow' there, waiting to 'introduce Charles Stuart;' but after Cromwell's death, nobody appeared qualified to succeed him, and the re-establishment of the monarchy seemed to afford the easiest solution to existing perplexities. Ireton, the protector's son-in-law, was dead; he was a stanch republican, and able man, and might have been competent to fill the vacant place. Of Cromwell's own children, Henry was a man of capacity and good dispositions, but 'like poor Richard' deficient in ambition and enterprise. Of the generals none evinced the ability, nor indeed much inclination to seize the prize. Fleetwood (who had also married a daughter of Cromwell), was restrained by his commonwealth principles. Fairfax was a brave and honest man, and good soldier, but half a royalist; Lambert had energy, but was deficient in all the other requisites of the crisis. In respect of generals, England was in the same position as France before Napoleon returned from Egypt. France had many able and valiant captains, but only one of the number qualified to rescue her from impending dangers. Massena, Jourdan, Kellerman, and other leaders, were soldiers only, without civil qualifications. Moreau was an able tactician, and seemed, spurred on by an ambitious, restless wife, to have an inkling for the foremost place Bonaparte seized; but too indolent, undecided or timid to make the attempt. Experience has shown that Bernadotte possessed administrative abilities; but it may be doubted whether his capabilities would have been varied and energetic enough to confront the emergency. He would not have-inspired confidence; France would not have

Italy and the Pyramids.

rallied round and submitted to him as she did to the hero of He would have won battles, and made a judicious and formidable resistance; but he would in the end have succumbed, made peace with the allied powers, and restored the Bourbons as Monk did the Stuarts.

Bonaparte was just the person to avert this issue. Upon him all eyes were fixed; he had the renown which infused hope and trust; the transcendent abilities he had displayed in war and in peace were precisely those the occasion demanded, to overturn domestic factions, and repel foreign aggressors. But England had no Napoleon to step forth in the somewhat parallel juncture, though there was a clear aspiring for one, and which might have averted by a second military usurpation the period of national opprobium that intervened between the Restoration and the Orange revolution.

General Monk possessed shrewdness, and some capacity, but his chief gifts were subtlety, disimulation, and dogged perseverance. He was incapable of profound, enlarged, rapid and energetic views. Had any master spirit sprung up either in the family of the protector, the army, or the parliament, he would, rather than run risks, have yielded to him, and troubled himself no further about the profligate outcasts at Breda. No doubt he might have seized the helm himself, but for that he had neither the ambition nor hardihood, and it suited better his little mind to play the smaller and safer game of setting up the Stuarts. Thus the country was left to its fate; the famous Long Parliament was powerless, it having forfeited character and public confidence by its hypocrisy, inconsistency and spoliation; nobody of commanding genius emerged from the military or civil ranks adequate to its rescue; and the wily, dirty knave of the North, of whom Cromwell had taken such exact measure, was allowed to promenade triumphantly with some 8 or 10,000 men from the Tweed to the Thames, and allocate the destiny of England!

Monk managed the transaction as might be expected from his name and character. After playing off various feints and devices, he and his confederate chapman Sir John Greenvile, actually sold the nation to the Stuarts for a price; just, as in the days of Roman degeneracy, the rampant soildery used to sell the imperial purple to the highest bidder. They entered into no stipulation for the people or their liberties. They even went so far in their exclusive selfishness as to stifle the attempts of Sir Matthew Hale, Prynne, and others, to enforce constitutional checks on the royal authority, lest it should impair the means at the king's disposal to redeem his pecuniary engage

ments to themselves. All these two state-brokers cared about, was the sum to be paid them by Charles in grants, pensions, and titles. At length the terms were settled. According to this bargain, Monk was to be created Duke of Albemarle, and receive an estate of inheritance of £9,000 per annum.* The various places and emoluments placed at his disposal, enabled him within eight years after the restoration, to amass the large sum of £400,000. His family, though ancient, had fallen into poverty and obscurity. By the return of the Stuarts it became the most powerful in the kingdom. But this forced vegetation did not thrive,-did not take root, and the race became extinct in an only son whom he left a minor.

Monk's memory is blotted by other infamies, beside his huxtering transfer of the national rights and weal. But we can only enumerate them. They were, first, his occasioning the death of the Duke of Argyle by betraying private correspondence, and then (oh! cumulative Diabolism, of which none but a Monk could be guilty) seeking to be a concealed spectator of the execution of his victim! Secondly, he was so regardless of the public interest, as to propose the king's marriage with Catherine of Portugal; and thirdly, he not only consented to, but advised the unprincipled sale of Dunkirk to the French.

We shall not, we repeat, dwell on these. It certainly does exhibit odd perversity in a writer selecting such a subject for emblazonry. In the way of historical white-washing it is as hardy an effort as that of Mr. Sharon Turner to purify the reputation of that saintly character Richard III. However, one good has resulted from Mr. Lloyd's handling, he has given us rather a good description of the effects of the silent and solitary system of imprisonment. To expect that men should be best fitted for life by being excluded from it; that they should be trained for its uses by being denied the practice of them; that they should be enabled to resist its seductions by never being exposed to them, seems as rational in aim as an attempt to rear choice vegetables under a closed vessel, carefully excluding the light, heat, moisture, and other elements essential to their growth, structure, and maturity. All men of practical sense and knowledge of human nature at once repudiate such a mistaken scheme of criminal reformation. Mr. Lloyd is no exception to the number, and from his active experience as a magistrate, and diversified minglings with the world, is well qualified to sit on the jury. His description is not so terrific as that by Dickens, but it appears to us a more just and natural portraiture of the paralysing

Biographia Britannica, iv. 2333; art., Greenvile, which contains full particulars of this memorable bargain.

effects of hopeless solitude. We have already mentioned Monk's dismal imprisonment in the Tower of three or four years continuance. Those who have been shut up from the sight, sympathies and collisions of existence can alone know the dread blank that follows; how the heart is saddened, the intellect enfeebled, and the physical powers enervated: in a word, how all the springs of life are drained off drop by drop from day to day, and the poor prisoner already fancies himself in his grave, and the worms crawling over him. It was in this state of living death that occurred almost the only droll incident in Monk's biography. The world without was in commotion, and instinct with stirring events, and he, a gallant soldier, was buried and forgotten in the dormitories of the Tower. Without object or occupation he became hypochondriac, and the chief relief of his megrims was the conversation of the laundress of the prison. Although no metaphysician, Mrs. Clarges had penetration enough to discern the nature of Monk's complaint and its cure; that he was a man of worth who required only to be rightly placed to become useful. With this impression she formed a plan for his expansion, and the revivification of his latent energies; that was, with her own little savings and those of her father, to buy him out of durance by paying his debts and gaol fees, clothing him in uniform, with cap, sword and feather the price; of his renovation and freedom being that he should marry a disguised lady. Monk was in too prostrate a condition to say no to any proposal; any change promised to be an amendment, and he consented to espouse the veiled bride, whom it is needless to say, was the sagacious washerwoman herself.

The state of abandonment, stolidity, despair, and impotence to which the unhappy General had been reduced are thus set forth

Monk had scarcely awakened from an unrefreshing sleep, when these rude preliminaries of his nuptial treaty were opened. He had lately sought prolonged slumber as his refuge from hypochondriac or oppressive feelings, and his indulgence in this unwholesome resource of the listless weighed down his brain, and gave to his senses a cast of carelessness and indifference consonant with dull daily routine. His mental energies, then repressed, were with difficulty summoned to comprehend anything on the instant; but this stupor was a relief, and somnolency became soothing and too consistent with the monotony of his life to be discouraged. He cherised hebetude as a refuge from harassing reflections, and was of late seldom roused from increasing mental prostration, unless by urgent wants. He began to credit Stowe's account of William Foxley sleeping in the Tower for fourteen days in Henry VIII.'s time. His morning dreams had been dispiriting, and he awoke by the summons of old Clarges, in that state of inconceivable wretchedness which the habitually melancholy and physically hypochondriac only know.

'Don't ye know ye are to be spliced this morning, Sir? ye keep the young woman a-waiting.'

Eh! eh!' yawned the dozing General, turning on his poor couch, more intent on wooing slumber than a bride.

'Come, sir, I mean to take the stuff back again, if ye won't rise. Perhaps, Sir, when bums come for the bed and table, Sir, you may wake?'

The sluggard grunted, but unclosed not his eyes, always postponing a view of the dirty bare walls to the last moment.

Show him these, and tell him the lieutenant has sent for the money,' whispered the lady.

Won't marry, Sir? bills must be paid,-won't wait;' and he shook the slumbering prisoner roughly by the shoulder.

Monk was recalled to sensibility by the words bills' must pay,' their harassing associations, at least, could not be laid dormant. He gazed at his bride, and her black-muzzled guardians, then at the money-bag, and lastly round the cell, then with a glimmering remembrance of some proffered means of rescue from the lieutenant's officer, he groaned, 'Who will marry a wretch like me?"

'I will,' said Anne, eager to end the business, seeing that every minute's delay was dangerous and in a tone that nearly betrayed her.

Let me see that angel, that more than angel,' said he, putting up his hand to lift the veil.

Fair play, Sir! You've promised to marry the lady, and there's her fortune, and more a top of it when the ring's on. Come, Sir, up and don your togs. Shall I send for a justice ?' growled the father.

A gentleman always keeps his promise, and you said you'd make an honest woman of that young cretur.'

The lady is more merciful than your insinuations merit,' said Monk, throwing off the bedclothes.

·

Lady, Sir!' said the father, looking shocked; when you are fit to see her, we'll come in again.' Anne modestly withdrew.

Justice! Good heavens! cannot the lieutenant wait for his money? I have not a groat; but who are you? How came you in the room?" he asked rather angrily then in a gentle compassionate tone, Some poor captive like myself, who will be walked out to Tower-hill for a happy deliverance! I would rise Sir.'

'You'll be married Sir this morning,' said Clarges, 'the lady waits without' here's her dowry, 'twill pay all your debts.'

'Will it then I'll be married as soon as you like--ay, to the devil's daughter' said he, and he shook himself into his clothes.

Under the Commonwealth justices were empowered to solemnize marriages; but in this juncture the services of Dr. Wren, Bishop of Salisbury, a fellow prisoner in the Tower were procured.

When Dr. Wren was informed that he was to get up and solemnize the marriage of an anxious couple he could hardly credit the news, so little was the intervention of the clergy required in such partnerships at that day. The good bishop was pleased at the change of men's manners, and cheerfully rose to array himself in full canonicals, hailing it as a harbinger to his own release, and restoration to good order in Church and State; the reverend prelate being quite uninformed of the devastation of which England was at that time the scene. Meanwhile Monk had risen to dress himself, indifferent as to whether he was about to be married or hung. Marriage to a veiled lady is like a leap in the dark, but men become husbands in this way in Persia, and they have like feelings; then for a moment came the recollection of Lady Miranda the first flame of the General;) but all her brightness seemed lost in a thick mist; a wall had been built around him, and morti