of the subject, and tending to the destruction of the fundamental laws and liberties of this kingdom."

A high court of justice was then constituted for the trial of Charles, and the ordinance which contained the accusations, and some resolutions declaring that it was treason for the king to levy war against the parliament and kingdom, were sent to the upper house. Twelve peers only were assembled, but they rejected the ordinance without a division. In the mean time, the king laughed at the idea of a trial, and the Earl of Leicester, in his journal, describes his majesty at Windsor as merry as usual; it is even recorded, that so little did he anticipate the real result which followed, that after the commissioners were appointed, his majesty actually gave an order for the sowing of some Spanish melon seeds at Wimbledon. The Commons, seeing themselves abandoned by the Lords, turned the house into a grand committee, to take into consideration the nature and extent of their own powers. After much discussion, they came to the conclusion, that the people, under God, are the original of all just power; that the Commons House, being chosen by, and representing the people, have the supreme authority of the nation; also, "That whatsoever is enacted and declared law by the Commons of England assembled in parliament, hath the force of law, and all the people of this nation are concluded thereby, although the consent and concurrence of the king and House of Peers be not had thereunto."

It was on the 20th of January, 1649, that Charles, after having been brought from Windsor to St. James's Palace the night before, was conducted to Westminster Hall, there to undergo a judicial proceeding, such as was, up to that time, unprecedented in the history of the world. The number of the commissioners who were assembled on the occasion consisted of eighty out of the one hundred and fifty who had been appointed. Serjeant Bradshaw, described as an able and accomplished lawyer, acted as president, and on each side of him sat Lisle and Say, two members of the same profession. The royal prisoner was brought in a sedan chair, and placed before the bar on a velvet chair. He looked sternly about on the multitude present, and did nothing that indicated the slightest respect for the court; but his attention was soon fixed by the president, who rose, and in a solemn voice pronounced these words: "Charles Stuart, king of England: The Commons of England, being deeply sensible of the calamities that have been brought upon this nation, which are fixed upon you as the principal author of them, have resolved to make inquisition for blood; and, according to that debt and duty they owe to justice, to God, the kingdom, and themselves, they have resolved to bring you to trial and judgment, and for that purpose have constituted this high court of justice before which you are brought."

When the president concluded, the advocate for the Commonwealth, Mr. Cook, rose to state the case against the king; and when the latter saw what he was about to do, he stretched out a staff

which he held, and laying it on Mr. Cook's shoulder two or three times, desired him to "hold." But the president ordered the advocate to go on, and at his request the accusation was read. When the officer who read the charges came to pronounce "Charles Stuart to be a tyrant and traitor," the royal prisoner, who till then stood up frequently, and gazed on the guards and spectators with great sternness, began to laugh as he sat down.

When the proceedings on the part of the accusers were ended, the president called on "Charles Stuart" for what he had to say in his defence. His majesty replied, that he questioned their authority to try him, that he was their lawful king, having obtained his title as a trust committed to him by God, and by old and lawful descent. When the president told him that he was required to answer, in the name of the people of England, of whom he was elected king, Charles replied, that England was never an elective monarchy, but that it descended by hereditary right for nearly a thousand years; and as he persisted in this line of argument, the court thought it prudent to adjourn its proceedings. It was remarked as an ominous accident, that when the charge was reading against him, the head of his staff fell off; he looked at it in surprise, and seeing nobody about to take it up, he was under the necessity of stooping for it himself. Repeated adjournments took place afterwards, the king still obstinately questioning the authority of the tribunal, and desiring to be permitted to plead his own cause before the two houses of parliament. At last, the court gave peremptory instructions to the president to declare the final sena direction which was complied with in such a manner as to have a manifest effect in placing the guilt of the king in a clear light. The president, in his solemn address, informed Charles, that it was perfectly plain that he had acted on erroneous principles, and had even, by his own avowal, admitted that he considered himself in no manner subject to the law, and that, therefore, he held himself superior to it. But the contrary, he ought to have known, was the principle of the people of England, who always understood that the law was superior to the monarch, and that he was bound imperatively to rule in strict accordance with the law:

tence,

"I know very well' (observed the president) your pretence hath been that you have done so: but, Sir, the difference hath been, who shall be the expositors of this law: whether you and your party out of the courts of justice shall take upon them to expound law, or the courts of justice who are the expounders; nay, the sovereign and high court of justice, the parliament of England, that are not only the highest expounders, but the sole makers of the law. Sir, for you to set your single judgment, and those who adhere unto you, against the high court of justice, that is not law. As the law is your superior, so truly, Sir, there is something that is superior to the law, that is indeed the parent or authority of the law, and that is, the people of England. For as they are those that at the first did choose to themselves this form of government, even for justice' sake, that justice might be administered, that peace might be preserved; so, Sir, they gave the laws to their governors according to which they should govern;

and if these laws should have proved inconvenient, or prejudicial to the public, they had a power in them, and reserved to themselves to alter them as they shall see cause...... The end of having kings or any other form of government, is for the enjoyment of justice. Now, Sir, if so be that the king will go contrary to the end of his government, he must understand that he is but an officer in trust, and he ought to discharge that trust, and they are to take order for the animadversion and punishment of such an offending governor. This is not the law of yesterday, Sir, since the time of the division betwixt you and your people, but it is law of old. And we know very well the authorities that do tell us what the law was on that point upon the election of kings, upon the oath that they took unto their people. And if they did not observe it, there were those things called parliaments; the parliaments were they that were to adjudge (the very words of the authority) the plaints and wrongs done of the king and the queen, or their children; such wrongs especially when the people could have nowhere else any remedy. That hath been the people of England's case; they could not have their remedy anywhere but in parliament.

Sir, I speak these things the rather to you, because you were pleased to let fall the other day, that you thought you had as much law as most gentlemen in England. It is very well, Sir, and truly it is fit for the gentlemen of England to understand that law under which they must be governed. And then the Scripture says, "They that know their master's will and do it not.". What follows? The law is your master, and the acts of parliament." "— Vol. 11. pp. 590 – 592.

In this strain the president proceeded to show to the reluctant Charles, that he had completely realized the description given of his deeds by the charge, and that he must be truly accounted at once as a tyrant, who sought to establish an arbitrary government; a traitor who had broken the trust which was reposed in him by his superiors, the kingdom; and a murderer, because all the sanguinary murders, all the shocking outrages perpetrated in the late wars, must be traced to him alone.

"Sir,' said the president, in concluding his solemn address, 'you said to us the other day, you wished us to have God before our eyes: truly, Sir, I hope all of us have so; that God that we know is a king of kings and lord of lords; that God with whom there is no respect of persons; that God that is the avenger of innocent blood. We have that God before us that does bestow a curse upon them that withhold their hands from shedding of blood; which is in the case of guilty malefactors, and that do deserve death: that God we have before our eyes. And were it not that the consequence of our duty hath called us to this place and this employment, Sir, you should have had no appearance of a court here; but, Sir, we must prefer the discharge of our duty unto God and unto the kingdom before any other respect whatsoever; and although at this time many of us, if not all of us, are severely threatened by some of your party what they intend to do, we do here declare that we shall not decline or forbear the doing of our duty in the administration of justice even to you, according to the merit of your offence, although God should permit these men to effect all that bloody design in hand against us.'"

He concluded by urging the example of David's repentance on the king's imitation.

Here we close our eyes on the melancholy scene which followed,

and the details of which are so familiarly remembered by every reader of English history. Miss Aikin has shown throughout the deeply interesting narrative, a clear judgment, carefully directed by an impartiality which is strictly judicial. Nor are the literary merits which these volumes present, unworthy of the dignity and importance which are sustained uniformly throughout the style of Miss Aikin is beautifully simple, without the slightest deviation into carelessness or affectation; and possessing strength, grace, and freedom, it is modified with attention to the exigencies and proprieties of every varying occasion.

[From "The Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 23."]

[Many of our readers may perhaps wonder why we assign so many pages to the account of what will appear to them a farrago of absurd extravagances. But it must be recollected, that Goethe fills a wide space in the literature of our age, and that he himself appears to have thought the drama of Faust the greatest of his works; it having engaged his thoughts, as he tells us, during sixty years of his life. It is held in similar estimation by his admirers, though there has been a change of opinion respecting its character; for it was first regarded only as a sort of diabolical production of great power, and is now considered as the most philosophical and enigmatical of poems. The Conclusion, of which an account is here given, has been earnestly waited for, as about to afford aspirants a final initiation into the Greater Mysteries. EDD.]

ART. II. Goethe's nachgelassene Werke. (Goethe's Posthumous Works.) Bände I-V. 18mo. Stuttgart und Tubingen. 1833.

THE Volumes before us, five in number, constitute only what is termed the first delivery (Lieferung) of Goethe's Posthumous Works. They contain as mentioned in our last Number: 1. The Second Part, forming the continuation and completion, of Faust. 2. Gottfried von Berlichingen, never before printed, and Götz von Berlichingen, adapted to the stage. 3. A Journey in Switzerland in 1797, and a Journey on the Rhine and Main in 1814. 4. Miscellanies, hitherto unedited, upon Art. 5. Miscellanies relating to the Drama and German Literature. We propose to indicate the general character of each volume of the lot, but our principal attention will be directed to the first, which, though containing no less than 344 pages, is occupied exclusively with Faust.

So much has been said and written about this celebrated production of late, so many ingenious speculations have been set afloat with regard to its real meaning and tendency, that the English public, we are sure, will be glad to know something of the subsequent conduct and conclusion of the plot, though we are far from certain that any further disquisition on the philosophical object of the work will be tolerated. Nor is this our only reason for wishing to shun all disquisitions of the sort. It is, we know, a rather dan

gerous acknowledgment and may bring a storm of objurgation on our heads; but after giving our best consideration to the controversy and comparing the problem proposed at the outset of the poem with what must now be termed the solution of it, we cannot help suspecting that the author had no object at all, beyond the very ordinary one of wishing to possess a subject which should give full scope to his wondrous universality, and allow him to employ all the stores of fancy, feeling, observation, and reading, which a life of study might enable him to hive up; that, in short, as the author of Waverley confessed to be not unfrequently his case, Goethe began his story in a happy state of recklessness, and left the ending to take care of itself. This somewhat hazardous opinion will appear far less so after a fair examination of the plan; all, therefore, that we think it necessary to prefix by way of preamble to our analysis of this second and concluding part, is a slight recapitulation of the main incidents of the first; for unless these be fresh in the memory, the following analysis, as well as any critical remarks we may annex to it, will be understood with difficulty, if at all.

The first part of Faust then, be it remembered, now opens (for it did not originally *) with a Prologue in Heaven, in which a somewhat irreverent colloquy between Mephistopheles and the Lord is set forth. Amongst other topics this colloquy turns upon Faust, whom Mephistopheles obtains leave to tempt to destruction if he can; the futility of the enterprise being at the same time clearly intimated by words placed in a mouth which must be regarded as infallible:

"Enough," (says the Lord), "it is permitted thee. Divert this spirit from his original source, and bear him, if thou canst seize him, down on thy own path with thee. And stand abashed, when thou art compelled to own - a good man, in his dark perplexity, may still be conscious of the right way." "Well, well," (replies Mephistopheles,) "only it will not last long. I am not at all in pain for my wager. Should I succeed, excuse my triumphing with my whole soul. Dust shall he eat, and with a relish, like my cousin, the renowned snake."

The Lord reiterates his permission, Heaven closes, and the Archangels disperse, leaving Mephistopheles to compass the destruction of Faust as he best may. We are next introduced to the hero himself, who, after careering over the whole learning of the world, has just arrived at pretty nearly the same sagacious conclusion as Solomon:

"I communed with my own heart, saying, Lo I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem. Yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.

And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly.

* This circumstance must never be lost sight of in speculations as to the author's original object or plan. 3+

VOL. III. NO. I.