s enthusiasm was
kindled. The work was issued with all the circumstance of a State
paper, and it came upon foreign courts like a declaration of policy,
the resolve at length to enforce the time-honoured and indefeasible
rights of England. Copies were with due ceremony deposited in the
Exchequer and at the Admiralty. A fleet was equipped, and as an
atonement for the wrongs done to the elder Northumberland, the King
gave the command to his son, whose portrait as Admiral forms one of the
noblest of Vandyck's canvases. But Northumberland, though brave to a
fault, was no seaman, and the whole enterprise threatened to end in
ridicule. Stung to the quick, Charles again turned to the nation. But
in the nine intervening years since 1628 the nation's heart had left
him. To his demand for supplies to strengthen the fleet came Hampden's
refusal. The trial was the prelude to the Grand Remonstrance, to
Naseby, and to Whitehall, where, as if swept thither by the crowded
events of some fantastic dream, he awoke from his visions of England's
greatness and the empire of the seas, alone on a scaffold, surrounded
by a ring of English eyes, looking hate, sullen indifference, or cold
resolution.

Leave him still loftier than the world suspects,
Living or dying.

After all he was a king, and in his veins the blood of Mary Stuart
still beat. An English version of Selden's treatise appeared in the
time of Cromwell. The translator was Marchamont Nedham. The
dedication to the Supreme Authority of the Nation, the Parliament of
the Commonwealth of England, is dated November 19th, 1652.

[11] The preliminaries to the Peace of Amiens were signed on October
1st, 1801. Parliament opened on October 29th, and after the King's
speech, Windham compared his position amid the general rejoicings of
the House at the prospect of an end to the war, to Hamlet's at the
wedding-feast of Claudius. In the debate of November 3rd, Pitt
declared himself resigned to the loss of the Cape by the retention of
Ceylon, while the opinion of Fox was, that by this surrender we should
have the benefit of the colony without its expenses. Nelson, with the
glory of his victory at Copenhagen just six months old, maintained that
in the days when Indiamen were heavy ships the Cape had its uses, but
now that they were coppered, and sailed well, the Cape was a mere
tavern that served to delay the voyage. The opening of Windham's
speech on the 4th, "We are a conqu