A portion
of it, which has since been cleaned and dried, is of a beautiful
dark-brown color. That of the beard was a reddish-brown. On the back
part of the head it was not more than an inch in length, and had
probably been cut so short for the convenience of the executioner,
or perhaps by the piety of friends after death in order to furnish
memorials of the unhappy king. On holding up the head to determine
the place of separation from the body, the muscles of the neck had
evidently contracted themselves considerably, and the fourth cervical
vertebra was found to be cut through its substance transversely,
leaving the face of the divided portions perfectly smooth and even--an
appearance which could have been produced only by a heavy blow
inflicted with a very sharp instrument, and which furnished the last
proof wanting to identify Charles I."

[Illustration: HERNE'S OAK.]

A highly-edifying spectacle this must have been to the prince regent
and his brother Cumberland. The certainties of the past and the
possibilities of the future were calculated to be highly suggestive.
A French sovereign had but a few years before shared the fate of
Charles, and a cloud of other kings were drifting about Europe with
no very flattering prospect of coming soon to anchor. Napoleon was
showing his banded foes a good double front in Germany and Spain.
His dethronement and the restoration of the Bourbons were not as yet
contemplated. The Spanish succession was whittled down to a girl--that
is, by Salic law, to nothing at all. The Hanoverian was in a similar
condition, or worse, none of the old sons of the crazy old king
having any legitimate children. The prince regent himself was highly
unpopular with the mass of his people; and the classes that formed
his principal support were more so, by reason of the arrogance and
exactions of the landed interest, the high price of grain and
other heavy financial burdens consequent on the war, the arbitrary
prosecutions and imprisonment of leaders of the people, and the
irregularities of his private life.

But these sinister omens proved illusory. Leigh Hunt, Wraxall and the
rest made but ineffectual martyrs; the Bourbons straggled back into
France and Spain, with such results as we see; George IV. weathered,
by no merit of his own, a fresh series of storms at home; the clouds
that lowered upon his house were made glorious summer by the advent of
a fat little lady in 1819--the fat old lady of 1875; a