man bore the daily pain and lost the daily tooth; to King Philip's great astonishment, took him but, on the eighth, he paid the money. With under his protection, and informed King Philip the treasure raised in such ways, the King made that he found he could not give him leave to an expedition into Ireland, where some English invade England. The angry Philip resolved to nobles had revolted. It was one of the very few do it without his leave; but, he gained nothing places from which he did not run away; because and lost much; for, the English, commanded by no resistance was shown. He made another ex- the Earl of Salisbury, went over, in five hundred pedition into Wales—whence he did run away in ships, to the French coast, before the French the end: but not before he had got from the fleet had sailed away from it, and utterly defeated Welsh people, as hostages, twenty-seven young the whole. men of the best families; every one of whom he caused to be slain in the following year.

To Interdict and Excommunication, the Pope now added his last sentence-Deposition. He proclaimed John no longer King, absolved all his subjects from their allegiance, and sent Stephen Langton and others to the King of France to tell him that, if he would invade England, he should be forgiven all his sins-at least, should be forgiven them by the Pope, if that would do.

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The Pope then took off his three sentences, one after another, and empowered Stephen Langton publicly to receive King John into the favor of the church again, and to ask him to dinner. The King, who hated Langton with all his might and main-and with reason too, for he was a great and a good man, with whom such a King could have no sympathy-pretended to cry and to be very grateful. There was a little difficulty about settling how much the King should pay, as a recompense to the clergy for the losses he had caused them; but, the end of it was, that the superior clergy got a good deal, and the inferior clergy got little or nothing-which has also happened since King John's time, I believe.

When all these matters were arranged, the King in his triumph became more fierce, and false, and insolent to all around him than he had ever been. An alliance of sovereigns against King Philip, gave him an opportunity of landing an army in France; with which he even took a town! But, on the French King's gaining a great victory, he ran away, of course, and made a truce for five years.

As there was nothing that King Philip desired more than to invade England, he collected a great army at Rouen, and a fleet of seventeen hundred ships to bring them over. But the English people, however bitterly they hated the King, were not a people to suffer invasion quietly.They flocked to Dover, where the English standard was, in such great numbers to enroll themselves as defenders of their native land, that there were not provisions for them, and the King could only select and retain sixty thousand. But, at this crisis, the Pope, who had his own reasons for objecting to either King John or King Philip being too powerful, interfered. He intrusted a legate, whose name was Pandolf, with the easy And now the time approached when he was to task of frightening King John. He sent him to be still further humbled, and made to feel, if he the English camp, from France, to terrify him could feel any thing, what a wretched creature with exaggerations of King Philip's power, and he was. Of all men in the world, Stephen Langhis own weakness in the discontent of the En-ton seemed raised up by Heaven to oppose and glish barons and people. Pandolf discharged his subdue him. When he ruthlessly burnt and decommission so well, that King John, in a wretch-stroyed the property of his own subjects, because ed panic, consented to acknowledge Stepher. Langton; to resign his kingdom "to God, Saint Peter, and Saint Paul"-which meant the Pope; and to hold it, ever afterward, by the Pope's leave, on payment of an annual sum of money. To this shameful contract he publicly bound himself in the church of the Knights Templars at Dover where he laid at the legate's feet a part of the tribute, which the legate haughtily trampled upon. But they do say, that this was merely a genteel flourish, and that he was afterward seen to pick it up and pocket it.

their lords, the Barons, would not serve him abroad, Stephen Langton fearlessly reproved and threatened him. When he swore to restore the laws of King Edward, or the laws of King Henry the First, Stephen Langton knew his falsehood, and pursued him through all his evasions. When the Barons met at the abbey of Saint Edmund'sBury, to consider their wrongs and the King's oppressions, Stephen Langton roused them by his fervid words to demand a solemn charter of rights and liberties from their perjured master, and to swear, one by one, on the high altar, that There was an unfortunate prophet, of the name they would have it, or would wage war against of Peter, who had greatly increased King John's him to the death. When the King hid himself errors by predicting that he would be unknight- in London from the Barons, and was at last ed (which the King supposed to signify that he obliged to receive them, they told him roundly would die) before the Feast of Ascension should they would not believe him unless Stephen be past. That was the day after this humilia- Langton became a surety that he would keep tion. When the next morning came, and the his word. When he took the Cross, to invest King, who had been trembling all night, found himself with some interest, and belong to somehimself alive and safe, he ordered the prophet-thing that was received with favor, Stephen and his son too-to be dragged through the streets at the tails of horses, and then hanged, for having frightened him.

Langton was still immovable. When he appealed to the Pope, and the Pope wrote to Stephen Langton in behalf of his new favorite As King John had now submitted, the Pope, Stephen Langton was deaf, even to the Pope

himself, and saw before him nothing but the welfare of England and the crimes of the English King.

At Easter time, the Barons assembled at Stamford in Lincolnshire, in proud array, and, marching near to Oxford where the King was, delivered into the hands of Stephen Langton and two others, a list of grievances. "And these," they said, "he must redress, or we will do it for ourselves?" When Stephen Langton told the King as much, and read the list to him, he went half mad with rage. But that did him no more good than his afterward trying to pacify the Barons with lies. They called themselves and their followers, "The army of God and the Holy Church." Marching through the country, with the people thronging to them every where (except at Northampton, where they failed in an attack upon the castle), they at last triumphantly set up their banner in London itself, whither the whole land, tired of the tyrant, seemed to flock to join them. Seven knights alone, of all the knights in England, remained with the King; who, reduced to this strait, at last sent the Earl of Pembroke to the Barons to say that he approved of every thing, and would meet them to sign their charter when they would. "Then," said the Barons, "let the day be the 15th of June, and the place, Runny-Mead."

parted from the splendid assembly. When he got home to Windsor Castle, he was quite a madman in his helpless fury. And he broke the charter immediately afterward.

He sent abroad for foreign soldiers, and sent to the Pope for help, and plotted to take London by surprise, while the Barons should be holding a great tournament at Stamford, which they had agreed to hold there as a celebration of the charter. The Barons, however, found him out and put it off. Then, when the Barons desired to see him and tax him with his treachery, he made numbers of appointments with them, and kept none, and shifted from place to place, and was constantly sneaking and skulking about. At last he appeared at Dover, to join his foreign soldiers of whom numbers came into his pay; and with them he besieged and took Rochester Castle, which was occupied by knights and soldiers of the Barons. He would have hanged them every one; but the leader of the foreign soldiers, fearful of what the English people might afterward do to him, interfered to save the knights; therefore the King was fain to satisfy his vengeance with the death of all the common men. Then he sent the Earl of Salisbury, with one portion of his ar to ravage the eastern part of his own dominions, while he carried fire and slaughter into the northern part; torturing, plundering, On Monday, the fifteenth of June, one thou-killing, and inflicting every possible cruelty upon sand two hundred and fourteen, the King came the people; and, every morning, setting a worthy from Windsor Castle, and the Barons came from example to his men by setting fire, with his own the town of Staines, and they met on Runny-monster-hands, to the house where he had slept Mead, which is still a pleasant meadow by the Thames, where rushes grow in the clear waters of the winding river, and its banks are green with grass and trees. On the side of the Barons, came the General of their army, ROBERT FITZWALTER, and a great concourse of the nobility of England. With the King, came, in all, some four-and-twenty persons of any note, most of whom despised him and were merely his advisers in form. On that great day, and in that great company, the King signed MAGNA CHARTA-the great charter of England-by which he pledged himself to maintain the church in its rights; to relieve the Barons of oppressive obligations as vassals of the Crown-of which the Barons, in their turn, pledged themselves to relieve their vassals, the people; to respect the liberties of London and all other cities and boroughs; to protect foreign merchants who came to England; to imprison no man without a fair trial; and to sell, delay, or deny justice to none. As the Barons knew his falsehood well, they further required, as their securities, that he should send out of his kingdom all his foreign troops; that for two months they should hold possession of the city of London, and Stephen Langton of the Tower; and that five-and-twenty of their body, chosen by themselves, should be a lawful committee to watch the keeping of the charter, and to make war upon him if he broke it.

All this he was obliged to yield. He signed the charter with a smile, and, if he could have looked agreeable, would have done so, as he de

the last night. Nor was this all; for the Pope, coming to the aid of his precious friend, laid the kingdom under an Interdict again, because the people took part with the Barons. It did not much matter, for the people, had grown so used to it now, that they had begun to think about it. It occurred to them-perhaps to Stephen Langton too-that they could keep their churches open, and ring their bells, without the Pope's permission as well as with it. So they tried the experiment-and found that it succeeded perfectly.

It being now impossible to bear the country, as a wilderness of cruelty, or longer to hold any terms with such a foresworn outlaw of a king, the Barons sent to Louis, son of the French monarch, to offer him the English crown. Caring as little for the Pope's excommunication of him if he accepted the offer, as it is possible his father may have cared for the Pope's forgiveness of his sins, he landed at Sandwich (King John immediately running away from Dover, where he happened to be) and went on to London The Scottish King, with whom many of the Northern English Lords had taken refuge; numbers of the foreign soldiers, numbers of the Barons, and numbers of the people, went over to him every day-King John, the while, continually running away in all directions. The carcer of Louis was checked, however, by the suspicions of the Barons, founded on the dying declaration of a French Lord, that when the kingdom was conquered he was sworn tɔ banish them as trai

tors, and to give their estates to some of his own | ned in the previous course of their innocent and Nobles. Rather than suffer this, some of the segregated existence. Indeed, there is some Barons hesitated; others even went over to King cause for that alarm, seeing that not long since John. in a journal professing to be critical, this My Novel; or, Varieties in English Life, was misnamed and insulted as "a Continuation of The Caxtons," with which biographical work it has no more to do (save in the aforesaid introductions to previous Books in the present diversified and compendious narrative) than I with Hecuba, or Hecuba with me. Reserving the doubt herein suggested for maturer deliberation, I proceed with my new Initial Chapter. And I shall stint the matter therein contained to a brief comment upon PUBLIC LIFE.

It seemed to be the turning point of King John's fortunes, for, in his savage and murderous course, he had now taken some towns and met with some successes. But, happily for England and humanity, his death was near. Crossing a dangerous quicksand, called the Wash, not very far from Wisbeach, the tide came up and nearly drowned his army. He and his soldiers escaped; but, looking back from the shore when he was safe, he saw the roaring water sweep down in a torrent, overturn the wagons, horses, and men that carried his treasure, and engulf them in a raging whirlpool from which nothing could be delivered.

Were you ever in public life, my dear reader? I don't mean, by that question, to ask whether you were ever Lord-Chancellor, Prime-Minister, Cursing, and swearing, and gnawing his fin- Leader of the Opposition, or even a member of gers, he went on to Swinestead Abbey, where the House of Commons. An author hopes to the monks set before him quantities of pears, and find readers far beyond that very egregious but peaches, and new cider-some say poison too, very limited segment of the Great Circle. Were but there is very little reason to suppose so-of you ever a busy man in your vestry, active in a which he ate and drank in an immoderate and municipal corporation, one of a committee for beastly way. All night he lay ill of a burning furthering the interests of an enlightened candifever, and haunted with horrible fears. Next date for your native burgh, town, or shire?—in day, they put him in a horse-litter, and carried him to Sleaford Castle, where he passed another forts as men in order to share the public troubles a word, did you ever resign your private com night of pain and horror. Next day, they carried of mankind? If ever you have so far departed him, with greater difficulty than on the day be- from the Lucretian philosophy, just look back— fore, to the castle of Newark-upon-Trent; and was it life at all that you lived?—were you an inthere, on the eighteenth of October, in the forty-dividual distinct existence-a passenger in the ninth year of his age, and the seventeenth of his rile reign, was an end of this miserable brute. MY NOVEL; OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.*

Book IX.-INITIAL CHAPTER.

NOW that I am fairly in the heart of my story,

railway?- -or were you merely an indistinct portion of that common flame which heated the boiler and generated the steam that set off the monster train?-very hot, very active, very useful, no doubt; but all your identity fused in flame,

and all your forces vanishing in gas.

And you think the people in the railway carriages care for you?-do you think that the gentleman in the worsted wrapper is saying to his neighbor with the striped rug on his comfort

these preliminary chapters must shrink into comparatively small dimensions, and not encroach upon the space required by the various personages whose acquaintance I have picked ap here and there, and who are now all crowd-able knees, "How grateful we ought to be for ing upon me like poor relations to whom one has unadvisedly given a general invitation, and who descend upon one simultaneously about Christmas time. Where they are to be stowed, and what is to become of them all, Heaven knows; in the mean while, the reader will have already observed that the Caxton family themselves are turned out of their own rooms, sent a-packing, in order to make way for the new

comers.

that fiery particle which is crackling and hissing under the boiler! It helps us on a fraction of an inch from Vauxhall to Putney ?" Not a bit of it. Ten to one but he is saying—“Not sixteen miles an hour! What the deuce is the matter with the stoker ?"

Look at our friend Audley Egerton. You have just had a glimpse of the real being that struggles under the huge copper; you have heard the hollow sound of the rich man's coffers under the tap of Baron Levy's friendly knuckle

warning sound to the scientific ear of Dr. F―. And away once more vanishes the separate existence, lost again in the flame that heats the boiler, and the smoke that curls into air from the grimy furnace.

And now that I refer to that respected family, I shall take occasion (dropping all metaphor) to-heard the strong man's heart give out its dull intimate a doubt, whether, should these papers be collected and republished, I shall not wholly recast the Initial Chapters in which the Caxtons have beer permitted to re-appear. They assure me, themselves, that they feel a bashful apprehension lest they may be accused of having thrust irrelevant noses into affairs which by no means belong to them-an impertinence which, being a peculiarly shy race, they have carefully shunContinued from the January Number.

Look to it, O Public Man, whoever thou art, and whatsoever thy degree-see if thou canst not compound matters, so as to keep a little nook apart for thy private life; that is, for thyself! Let the great Popkins Question not absorb wholly

the individual soul of thee, as Smith or Johnson. | ever, as with his usual sagacity he came to reDon't so entirely consume thyself under that in-flect upon the alarming intelligence conveyed to satiable boiler, that when thy poor little monad him by Randal, viz., that the Count sought his rushes out from the sooty furnace, and arrives daughter's hand, he divined that there was some at the stars, thou mayest find no vocation for strong personal interest under such ambition; thee there, and feel as if thou hadst nothing to and what could be that interest save the proba do amidst the still splendors of the Infinite. I bility of Riccabocca's ultimate admission to the don't deny to thee the uses of "Public Life;" I Imperial grace, and the Count's desire to assure grant that it is much to have helped to carry himself of the heritage to an estate that he might that great Popkins Question; but Private Life, be permitted to retain no more? Riccabocca my friend, is the life of thy private soul; and was not indeed aware of the condition (not acthere may be matters concerned with that which, cording to usual customs in Austria) on which on consideration, thou mayest allow, can not be the Count held the forfeited domains. He knew wholly mixed up with the great Popkins Ques- not that they had been granted merely on pleas tion-and were not finally settled when thou ure; but he was too well aware of Peschiera's didst exclaim-"I have not lived in vain—the nature to suppose that he would woo a bride Popkins Question is carried at last!" O im- without a dower, or be moved by remorse in any mortal soul, for one quarter of an hour per diem overture of reconciliation. He felt assured, too -de-Popkinize thine immortality! -and this increased all his fears-that Peschiera would never venture to seek an interview himself; all the Count's designs on Violante would be dark, secret, and clandestine. He was perplexed and tormented by the doubt, whether or not to express openly to Violante his appre

CHAPTER II.

Ir had not been without much persuasion on the part of Jackeymo, that Riccabocca had consented to settle himself in the house which Randal had recommended to him. Not that the ex-hensions of the nature of the danger to be appre ile conceived any suspicion of the young man beyond that which he might have shared with Jackeymo, viz., that Randal's interest in the father was increased by a very natural and excusable admiration of the daughter. But the Italian had the pride common to misfortune-he | did not like to be indebted to others, and he shrank from the pity of those to whom it was known that he had held a higher station in his own land. These scruples gave way to the strength of his affection for his daughter and his dread of his foe. Good men, however able and brave, who have suffered from the wicked, are apt to form exaggerated notions of the power that has prevailed against them. Jackeymo had conceived a superstitious terror of Peschiera, and Riccabocca, though by no means addicted to superstition, still had a certain creep of the flesh whenever he thought of his foe.

But Riccabocca-than whom no man was more physically brave, and no man, in some respects, more morally timid—feared the Count less as a foe than as a gallant. He remembered his kins- | man's surpassing beauty-the power he had obtained over women. He knew him versed in every art that corrupts, and void of all the conscience that deters. And Riccabocca had unhappily nursed himself into so poor an estimate of the female character, that even the pure and lofty nature of Violante did not seem to him a sufficient safeguard against the craft and determination of a practiced and remorseless intriguer. But of all the precautions he could take, none appeared more likely to conduce to safety, than his establishing a friendly communication with one who professed to be able to get at all the Count's plans and movements, and who could apprise Riccabocca at once should his retreat be discovered. "Forewarned is forearmed," said he to himself, in one of the proverbs common to all nations. How

hended. He had told her vaguely that it was for her sake that he desired secrecy and concealment. But that might mean any thing; what danger to himself would not menace her? Yet to say more was so contrary to a man of his Italian notions and Machiavellian maxims! Ta say to a young girl, "There is a man come over to England on purpose to woo and win you. For Heaven's sake take care of him; he is diabolically handsome; he never fails where he sets his heart,"-" Cospetto !" cried the doctor, aloud, as these admonitions shaped themselves to speech in the camera-obscura of his brain; "such a warning would have undone a Cornelia while she was yet an innocent spinster." No, he resolved to say nothing to Violante of the Count's intention, only to keep guard, and make himself and Jackeymo all eyes and all ears.

The house Randal had selected pleased Riccabocca at first glance. It stood alone, upon a little eminence; its upper windows commanded the high road. It had been a school, and was surrounded by high walls, which contained a garden and lawn sufficiently large for exercise. The garden doors were thick, fortified by strong bolts, and had a little wicket lattice, shut and opened at pleasure, from which Jackeymo could inspect all visitors before he permitted them to enter.

An old female servant from the neighborhood was cautiously hired; Riccabocca renounced his Italian name, and abjured his origin. He spoke English sufficiently well to think he could pass as an Englishman. He called himself Mr. Richmouth (a liberal translation of Riccabocca). He bought a blunderbuss, two pair of pistols, and a huge house-dog. Thus provided for, ho allowed Jackeymo to write a line to Randal and communicate his arrival.

Randal lost no time in calling. With his usual