ious to the Christian dispensation, which prescribes submissive
patience under injuries, and overcoming evil with good. Those deeds were
performed under a Divine impetus, and though, by their performance, the
will of God was fulfilled, it is not clear that the perpetrators were
justified in His sight, any more than was Hazael, when (as had been
divinely predicted) he acted as the chastiser of offending Israel.

Neville then took up the argument. He retorted on Whitlock the
expressions used by St. John to procure the condemnation of Lord
Strafford, and asked how they had the effrontery to object to that rule
when employed against themselves. "You have cut off our nobles, our
prelates, and our King," said he, "by that formal and public
assassination, an illegal trial; but we alike abjure your principles and
practice. If I hunt a usurper and tyrant to death, it shall be by
honourable means. If his character deserves no respect, I know what is
due to my own. I hold no tenets in common with regicides. Man cannot
commit a crime that can so far deface the image of his Maker impressed
upon him as to reduce him to the level of a beast of prey. Would that
this unnerved arm had strength, and that this sinking frame were again
erect with youthful vigour, then, if the awakened feelings of the nation
allowed me opportunity to meet, in the field of battle, the brave,
great, wicked man you serve, I would single him out from every opponent;
but were he unarmed, and in my power, I would give him a sword before I
assailed him."

Whitlock walked to the table; but it was evident that he received,
rather than gave, directions. The soul-searching eye of Cromwell peered
through his visor, and turned alternately on Neville and Beaumont.
Though a stranger to the feelings of magnanimity, he honoured its
expressions. He walked towards the captives, removed the shade from his
sickly, care-worn features, and asked how he could make them his
friends.

Neville shrunk aghast, petrified at the aspect of his Sovereign's
murderer. The feelings of a father repressed his maledictions, while he
gazed on him with stern silence as he would on a portentous meteor. Dr.
Beaumont sooner recollected himself. Bowing to Cromwell as to one of
those powers that are ordained by God, he answered that forgiveness and
obedience were duties; but that the feelings of friendship were a
voluntary engagement, and arose from very different motives.

"Your frankness," replied