particular storm. After its lull, brief as it was, Oliver Cromwell and John Hampden would have sailed, with a chosen band of Puritan friends, to Connecticut; but the doomed King forbade their departure! Well for us that it was so. Truly, enjoying as we were, that evening, the freedom of

*

free speaking, thinking our own thoughts, and uttering our own words, without dread of STAR-CHAMBER or GATE-HOUSE, we carried back these thoughts to things those grand old champions of our liberty wrought for

This building may be considered as the focus of Charles' despotism. From hence issued all the extortionate loans and levies which ended in the great civil war. So frightful in the end did it become, that its name infused terror, and to be "Star-chambered," was applied as a term indicative of tho severest and cruellest infliction of semi-legal tyranny. In this court were men summoned by extra-judicial right, fined mercilessly and extravagantly, branded as felons, their noses slit, and cars cut off, for acts and words less strong than many in use daily by the Press at the present time. The Star-chamber stood on the eastern side of New Palace Yard, and was originally a portion of the royal palace. It obtained the name of Camera Stellata, from the walls or ceiling having been ornamented with stars; but the building in use for the meetings of this court from the end of the reign of Elizabeth until its abolition in 1641, although probably built on the site of the elder chamber, was evidently of the Elizabethan era, as the letters E. R. and the date 1602 appeared over one of the doorways. It was pulled down in 1836, for the erection of the New Houses of Parliament. Our view exhibits the interior of the principal room, from a sketch made immediately previous to its demolition.

us. Why do we utter hard words against these iron men in ungarnished helmets? Staunch, stern, true, deep-hearted men,-enthusiasts, as all must be who work great changes,-men combating with themselves as well as with their foes; fighting with the arm of flesh; and yet at war with those passions which lead strong men captive,-heroes in a double sense-as against others and themselves!

How rapidly, with those old books as our guides, did we pass over an interval of some ten or eleven years, and then again find Hampden married to Letitia Vachel; but she could have had but little contentment with her great lord; his habits of life were changed; she never abode with him in the sweet bowers of the Chiltern Hills. He lived for the people's service, not his own pleasure; and during the time passed in London they resided (as we read) in 'lodgings near the house occupied by Pym in Gray's Inn Lane.'*

The night was passing, and we were anxious about our next day's pilgrimage; we looked out into the park, the moon was shining brightly upon the upland woods, and the monument at the termination of the avenue to Ashridge showed like a huge spectre on the brow of Moneybury hill. We felt it was time to restore to their shelves the venerable councillors who had revived our knowledge of the past: replacing a volume is like saying adieu to an old and dear friend; and there seemed an almost interminable number of last words to speak before we parted; in them all we saw, pitted against each other-the KING and HAMPDEN-the former preserving his natural dignity and courtliness of bearing; unsparing of his own toil and presence to work out purposes unworthy ;-the latter, having thrown away the scabbard when he drew the sword; chiefest among those who added to their rigid morals, a noble and simple vigour; having put

* When Mr. John Forster was writing the lives of some of those great lights, he sought in vain for vestiges of their dwellings. They were probably "garden houses" with a pleasant look-out towards the country. John Gerard dates the dedication to his Herbal, published in 1597,"from my house in Holborne, in the suburbs of London." Gray's Inn Lane was at that time one of the principal roads into London, and was connected by the old bridle-ways with the great north roads at Highgate. In such suburban districts the old aristocracy lived, and the Lord Gray of Wilton having a mansion here in the reign of Edward III., gave name to the Inn, which became celebrated as the residence of some of our greatest lawyers.

on, as Sidney says 'the athletic habit of liberty for the contest.' And yet, during the short remainder of his great days how bitterly was the Patriot' tried; domestic sorrows loosening the cords of life! The funeral plumes that waved over the coffins of his beloved daughter, Mrs. Knightly, and his eldest son, were stirred by the trumpet blast, the howls of ruined villages, and the still more agonising pangs of treachery—the treachery of relatives on whom he trusted! The motto in his banner

'Vestigia nulla retrorsum,'

marked well his public course, and marshalled him, at the head of his troop, clad in the ancestral colour of his house, the Lincoln green, to the various fields of Coventry, Southam, Worcester, Evesham, Edge Hill, Reading Chalgrove; one by one those old chronicles were replaced; yet still we lingered in memory over pages eloquent with facts.

It was impossible to dismiss them from thought without again and again thanking God for the many blessings we enjoy in our age and generationcontrasting England of the present with England of the past; without rejoicing that the best lessons we receive in all high, all true, and more especially, all womanly, virtues, issue from the Throne; knowing that no English woman of rank, elevated or humble, can have loftier aims or nobler ambitions, than to regulate a household, to bring up children, to study all domestic duties, in close imitation of Her, whose example is of far weightier force in her Kingdom than all the precepts of her servants in Divinity and Law. The times in which we live may abound in difficulties; 'the Arts of Peace' may have been cultivated to ruinous excess; we may have to guard against the enervating effects of luxury on the one hand, and the debasing inroads of poverty on the other; but we have liberty of conscience, no evil influences in high places, no civil war to ravage our lands and desolate our homes. Our task is but to preserve the freedom, purchased by the bold hearts, great heads, and iron arms of our forefathers -and to be grateful.

Early on the following morning we left the pretty village of Aldbury far behind, passed the town of Tring, and drove through those actual hamlets of old times, unchanged as their quaint names Aston-Clinton," and

*Much that is curious is connected with the names both of places and persons in many of

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"Weston-Turville," where the cottages are shaded by noble trees, or peep, like toy-houses, out of bouquets of monthly roses and holyoaks, and wildernesses of clematis. We strongly desired to spend an hour in the beautiful church of Kimble, which formerly belonged to the Hampdens; for those village churches are full of interest; brasses and time-worn tombs are to be met with in their sanctuaries; an old morion above a tattered flag, or some hallowed name stamping a blue slate with immortality; and Kimble tempted us, looking so full of conscious glory, upon its steep, above the treetops; but we had a long day's work before us at Great Hampden. We passed The Chequers,' in heroic self-denial-for the present; and while we admired the tinted woods and uprisings of the Chiltern Hills, we became grievously perplexed by the net-work of lanes and drives that, as we got deeper into the country, cross and recross, and seem to diverge everywhere, and in all directions; the crows evidently considering as indisputable their right to the shorn harvest fields. Our driver was in happy ignorance of Hampden, either the patriot or the house, yet affirmed it was somewhere hereabout; and but for a pretty cheerful girl, a miracle of intelligence, at a place we believe called 'Brockwell Farm,' we might have wandered vainly among the hills, and valleys, and paths, until the day was done. We had not heard that the fine red-brick Elizabethan house of the Hampdens had been stuccoed into whiteness, and we passed it without recognition; for the church, which we knew almost joined the dwelling, is concealed by trees. We drove on, however, to what an honest-looking smith, who wielded his iron as lightly as if it were a quarter-staff, told us was the 'Patriot's' village, and that the clerk of the church resided there. Hampden village consists of an irregular line of very primitive cottages, straggling along one side of a small common, from which their gardens have been taken, bit by bit; it is backed by rising and well-wooded ground. An old and ragged tree, nearly opposite the gate that separates the road from the common,

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our English counties, and striking peculiarities, indicative of remote antiquity, frequently arrest attention. While Cornwall tells of early British location, Kent speaks of Saxon rule in such names of persons as Fordred, which appears on the coinage of that people; or of places, as Offham (the house of Offa), Wodensborough (the hill of Oden), &c. The names above quoted are equally indicative of Norman rule, and the settlements awarded to the followers of William the Conqueror.

attracted our attention; and a peasant, whose appearance bespoke little of what we term 'comfort,' seemed much astonished at our visit to 'so poor a place.' He shook his head gravely, and told us- The people dead and

gone said that tree stood there in the "Patriot's" time, but the clerk of the church knew it all; he could tell all about the "Patriot," and everything: he would call him in a minute; when gentry did come to see so poor a place, they ought to know everything.' The clerk soon came-a tall thin man who stooped rather, and looked perhaps older than his years. His calm intelligent face lit up, when Hampden's name was mentioned and he knew the nature of our errand, Ay,' he said, 'that tree had heard the blast of Hampden's trumpet, sure enough!' No doubt it was there, under the woody brows of his own Chilterns, he first issued the command to gather the militia of his own country, which had, long before, caught the spirit of its great leader. We imagined the parishes and hundreds with their preachers at their heads, marshalling up a defile to the right, to meet him who had so bravely struggled for their liberty! Not only the tree,' resumed the worthy clerk, but the cottage in which I live, was standing then,' and he invited us to look at the beams, they were so thick.' When we entered, he pressed upon us pears and plums, the fruit of his garden; and