st die.

How little, up to the very last, did that unfortunate monarch know of
the terrible spirit of those enemies into whose hands he had fallen! He
saw himself necessary to the tranquillisation and stable government of a
nation still imbued with the love of monarchy, he therefore thought
himself and the monarchy were safe; he knew not that he was contending
with men who, when they rose to their high "heroic" mood, had a supreme
contempt for all considerations touching mere human polity,--the mere
peace and government of mankind. He trusted much to the sacredness of
royalty, the majesty of the purple, the divinity of a King; he was
delivered over to the power of enemies, whose glory it was to tread down
the glories of the world; who, so far from finding any sacredness in his
royalty, had classed him amongst all the wicked kings of the Old
Testament, sentenced to be exterminated with the idolatry they fostered,
and with whom the very audacity and fearful temerity of the deed, (if
this at all affected them,) would add only to its merit. Unfortunate
monarch! The tide of sympathy runs now against him, but we confess still
to retain our compassion for the fallen prince,--our compassion, very
little, it may be, of admiration. We see him contending against fearful
odds, keeping up a high and kingly spirit to the last. So far he braved
it nobly, and played a desperate game, if not wisely, yet with unshaken
nerves. His character, without a doubt, bears, as Lingard writes, "the
taint of duplicity." But it was a duplicity which, in his father's
court, would have been chuckled over as good practice of state-craft. We
are strangely fashioned--kings, and all of us--made up of fragments of
virtue, ill-assorted parcels of morality. Charles, when he had given his
parole of honour, would not escape from his imprisonment in the Isle of
Wight, though the means of escape were offered to him. But the wily and
diplomatic monarch thought he was entitling himself to the praise of all
men of spirit and intelligence, when, by fallacious promises and
protestations, he strove to play off one party of his enemies against
the other. He was practising, to the best of his ability, all the
traditionary maxims and manoeuvres of a subtle policy. Nor was it
ability that he wanted. On an Italian soil, these Italian arts might
have availed him. But what were the sleights and contrivances of a
traditionary state-craft against the rude storm of tumultuous pas