indicate something which it was prudent to conceal. Walker appears to suppose that the work belonged entirely to his friend; but if we adopt the narrative of Mrs. Gauden, it is evident that Walker was not cognisant of the whole matter, for he expressly states that Gauden never knew certainly whether the king had seen his manuscript, which is a direct contradiction to Mrs. Gauden's statement with reference to the answer brought by the Marquis of Hertford. Lastly, Sir Philip Warwick and several others have recognised in the Eikon Basilikè things which they had heard from the king's own lips: the identity of doctrine among different members of the same party might serve to explain these apparent similarities; but they contribute to sustain a supposition natural in itself, and which-if the controversy had an interest for us now, such as it possessed in England forty years after the events had happened-might receive, by a minute discussion of facts, a sufficient degree of probability.

But our curiosity is neither so patient nor so insatiable; and out of the numerous dissertations that have been written for or against the authenticity of the Eikon Basilikè, the two principal considerations which remain for us are the political importance and the literary merits of the work. This merit has been so generally acknowledged that, of all the arguments employed by the partisans of the Stuarts to disavow the cooperation of Dr. Gauden, this is the one to which least has been said in reply. No one of those who have maintained most pertinaciously that the Bishop of Exeter was the author of the Eikon Basilikè has thought of denying the distance that exists between the doctor's acknowledged works and this which they thus attribute to him. "This is certain," says Burnet, "that Gauden never writ anything with that force, his other writings being such, that no man, from a likeness of style, would think him capable of writing so extraordinary a book as that is." ."* If, in fact, Gauden deserved the reproach cast upon him by his contemporaries of diffuseness, bombast, and affectation, such faults must have been carried to an extraordinary degree in order to make themselves remarked at a time when they were generally characteristic of the style of the period, and especially of theological writings; and we must confess that the Eikon Basilikè is in this respect distinguished by a perspicuity and wisdom of

* Burnet's History of his own Times, p. 51, fol. ed.

which few illustrations are to be found in the writings of the Presbyterian school. Nevertheless, the wisdom of this book is sometimes disfigured by a hunting after metaphors, and a too constant use of antithesis; its perspicuity is more than once obscured by cumbrous and lengthy sentences, by the extent and frequency of parentheses; the learned unwieldiness of the Presbyterian style is sometimes perceptible, and, if we may judge by comparison, the specimen which Charles I. has left us, in his controversy with Dr. Henderson, of his mode of treating theological questions, would do little to establish his claims to the composition of the Eikôn Basilikè, which has still less the appearance of being written by a king, although the Bishop of Exeter says of the former that it does not belong to the royal author. Charles's style, as it appears in his controversy with Dr. Henderson, is simple and devoid of ornaments; the sentences are short and clear, such as generally belonged at that time to the style of the Cavaliers, who, for the most part, made little pretension to theological science.

The composition of the Eikon Basilikè would also be a strong presumption against the authenticity of the work, at least in the state and form in which it is given to us. We may discover in it a species of artifice but little in harmony with the real nature of the impressions of which it pretends to offer the unvarnished representation. Several chapters, said to be written on the suggestion of the moment, are evidently inapplicable to the position which they are intended to illustrate. Thus, two chapters are devoted to the fatal resolution which Charles took in April, 1646, of proceeding to the Scottish camp. The first, which is supposed to be written at the time of the king's departure from Oxford, expresses the hopes of the unfortunate prince with reference to the last asylum which remained to him; in the second is painted his calm and resigned indignation against the men who had betrayed his confidence. It is highly improbable that, on the eve of such a step, any one would think it necessary to commit to writing, for his own private perusal, an account of the motives which led to it; and we can hardly imagine that the captive monarch, after the event, would occupy his leisure in giving expression to his feelings in a manner most suited to dramatic effect.

As to the character of its ideas, the Eikon Basilikè, to use

the language of a writer of our own time, "contained nothing beyond the familiar meditations and the limited observations of a court divine."* Gauden, who was early thrown into the ranks of the opposition, was not a court theologian; but we have seen that he planned his work with the aid of the Bishop of Salisbury, and it was doubtless owing to the assistance, perhaps also to some original pieces put into his hands, that the doctor's work acquired that colouring of royalty which, in some respects, we cannot refuse to recognise in it. The divine right of kings, which is assumed in the Eikon Basilikè as an incontrovertible dogma, presents itself moreover under the form of interior and individual feeling, expressed with that mixture of dignity and personal prejudice which such an opinion would necessarily produce in the mind of a sovereign strongly attached, as Charles was, to moral ideas, and accustomed to regard his own person as the first object of his attention. Nevertheless, this disguise is not always so perfectly preserved but that the religious personality will sometimes show itself instead of the royal, and lead the theologian to refer to spiritual interests what the the king would probably have referred to the interests of his crown. For instance, the egotism of repentance, if I may be allowed the expression, which is observable in the chapter on the death of the Earl of Strafford, shows clearly the habits of thought belonging to a theologian who often sees in crime nothing but expiation, nothing but the personal interests of the sinner, and in whose eyes all traces of evil are effaced when the offender can believe himself ransomed from punishment.

It is in some prayers, veritably composed by Charles himself, that we must seek for the mode of sorrowful expression which his penitence would lead him to adopt with reference to this criminal weakness. If he places in the same rank the self-reproach which he felt for having consented to the abolition of episcopacy in Scotland, we must recollect that it was in defence of that institution in England that the unhappy prince, up to the last moment, sacrificed the hope of approaching peace, and certainly the hope of liberty. "Was it through ignorance," says he, in one of his prayers, entitled "A Prayer and Confession in and for the Times of Affliction;" "was it through ignorance that I suffered innocent blood * Malcolm Laing's History of Scotland, vol. iii., p. 407.

to be shed, by a false pretended way of justice, or that I permitted a wrong way of thy worship to be set up in Scotland, and injured the bishops in England? O no! but with shame and grief I confess that I therein followed the persuasions of worldly wisdom, forsaking the dictates of a right informed conscience. Wherefore, O Lord! I have no excuse to make, no hope left, but in the multitude of thy mercies."** If we compare these prayers with those which conclude the chapters of the Eikon Basilikè, we shall be struck with the difference between them. In the former we find the natural utterance of a soul trembling under an oppressive sense of its own weakness, in the presence of its Creator; the others seem to have been composed in the presence of the public. Without insisting on the continual abuse of antithesis, we recognise without difficulty the desire to obtain honour and favour in the eyes of men by a mention of Divine mercy, rather than any effort to obtain that mercy. It is not thus that a man prays for himself; and it is evident that the mind of the author, having no concern with heaven, did not think it necessary to raise its thoughts from earth..

We are unable to say whether it was from any regard to the public, or only to his own private opinions, that Gauden sacrificed those of the king with respect to episcopacy: in the prayer, unquestionably attributable to the king, which I have just quoted, the aversion of Charles I. to all measures contrary to episcopacy, is far more strongly marked than it is in the Eikon Basilikè. But it is in the royal controversy with Mr. Henderson that we shall find the king's principal argument in favour of the episcopal hierarchy. "No one thing," says Charles, "made me more reverence the Reformation of my mother, the Church of England, than that it was done according to the Apostle's defence (Acts xxiv. 18), neither with multitude nor with tumult, but legally and orderly, and by those whom I conceive to have the reforming power." This is, undoubtedly, such a motive as should actuate a king; and in omitting to avail himself of it, and thus giving to his book a far greater appearance of truthfulness, the author of the Eikon Basilikè must have been influenced by very urgent reasons.

* Works of Charles I., vol. i., p. 196, folio. London, 1662.

† Charles's first letter to Henderson. Dated from Newcastle, May 29, 1646. Works of Charles I., vol. i., p. 156.

It is not for us now to judge accurately as to the causes of th immense sensation which this work produced at the time of its publication. Undeceived as to its origin, far removed in time from the events which gave it birth, we can no longer appreciate those vivid emotions which would be produced in the hearts of loyal English subjects, in the midst of their sufferings, by the least trace of a prince to whom the public grief was unwilling to attribute anything but virtue. It is needful to pass through and mingle in such an epoch in order to share this feeling in all its intensity. When engaged in these scenes, the excited spirit becomes susceptible to impressions which cannot preserve themselves through any succeeding ages. By the wise arrangements of Providence it has been ordained that the sufferings of humanity should not form a depth of woe destined to increase from generation to generation. But the astonishing reputation of the Eikôn Basilikè-the part which Charles I. himself probably took in it-the knowledge, at any rate, which he had of it before its publication, which is equivalent to an assent to it,—all these things make this work one of the most important monuments of that period, and certainly one in which the feelings and the ideas, the state of mind and heart, of the Royalist and Anglican party, are the most faithfully expressed.

ON THE MEMOIRS OF JAMES II.

KING JAMES II. was born with that activity of mind which is often found united with mediocrity of talent, and which, according to circumstances, renders mediocrity honourable or dangerous. It displayed itself alternately in good and disastrous effects; it was useful to him when an exile, and it deprived him of his throne; it led him to devote to honourable employment in France, under Turenne, those years of youth and adversity which his brother wasted in the dissipations of a court; it urged him on afterwards in England to precipitate that fatal catastrophe of the fortunes of the Stuarts which the indolence of Charles II. would have postponed. Always serious and careful of himself, even in the midst of those disorders which preceded and accompanied his devoted