either side; and three huge mounds still attest the compliance of the clergyman with an order worthy of a Christian soldier. His Majesty, hearing of the "pious wish" of the Lord-General, issued his warrant to the Mayor of Newbury for the recovery of the wounded. Rival historians differ as to the number of the killed. But it seems certain that the loss of the Parliamentarians amounted to more than five hundred; and that on the King's part not fewer than a thousand were wounded and slain. Amongst them fell many distinguished loyalists above all, the young, the accomplished, the admirable Lord Falkland, he who, for talent and virtue, might be called the Hampden of his party, and who, like Hampden, left no equal behind.

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The night before the battle he had slept at the house of Mr. Head, whom my companion (a man of ancient family and high connections) was proud to claim among his ancestry; and tradition says, that being convinced that an engagement the next day was inevitable, and being strongly impressed with the presentiment that it would prove fatal to himself, he determined, in order to be fully prepared for the event, to receive the sacrament. Accordingly very early on the morning of the battle it was administered to him by the clergyman of Newbury, and Mr. Head and the whole family, by Lord Falkland's particular wish, were present. It is also related that his corpse, a few hours afterwards, was brought slung on a horse, and deposited in the Town Hall, from whence it was subsequently removed for interment.

Such strong impressions of coming death were not uncommon in that age to men of imaginative tempera

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ment. But it is not improbable that Lord Falkland, in that hour of danger, remembered a prediction which had come across him strangely not many years before, and which is thus related:

"Whilst he was with the King at Oxford, his Majesty went one day to see the Library, where he was shown, among other books, a Virgil,' nobly printed and exquisitely bound. The Lord Falkland, to divert the King, would have his Majesty make a trial of the Sortes Virgilianæ, an usual kind of divination in ages past, made by opening a Virgil.' The King, opening the book, the passage which happened to come up was that part of Dido's imprecation against Æneas, Æn. IV. 615, &c., which is thus translated by Dryden :

"Oppressed with numbers in the unequal field,

His men discouraged, and himself dispelled,
Let him for succour sue from place to place,

Torn from his subjects, and his son's embrace.'

"King Charles seeming concerned at this accident, the Lord Falkland, who observed it, would likewise try his own fortune in the same manner, hoping that he might fall upon some passage that could have no relation to his case, and thereby divert the King's thoughts from any impression the other might make upon him; but the place Lord Falkland stumbled upon was yet more suited to his destiny than the other had been to the King's, being the following expressions of Evander upon the untimely death of his son, Pallas, En. XI. 152:

"O Pallas! thou hast failed thy plighted word!
To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword,
I warned thee, but in vain; for well I knew

What perils youthful ardour would pursue;

That boiling blood would carry thee too far,
Young as thou wert in dangers, raw to war.
O curst essay of arms! disastrous doom!
Prelude of bloody fields and fights to come!'"

Charles was notoriously superstitious; and we may well imagine, that besides the grief of losing the noble adherent, whose very presence conferred honour and dignity on his cause, a strong personal feeling must have pressed upon him as he recollected the double prophecy, one half of which had been so fatally fulfilled.

I could not choose a better specimen of Clarendon, that great master of historical portrait-painting, than his character of Lord Falkland. The writer who so immortalises another, gains immortality himself:

"In this unhappy battle was slain the Lord Viscount Falkland, a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive simplicity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed civil war than that single loss is, it must be most infamous and accursed to all posterity.

"Before this parliament, his condition of life was so happy that it was hardily capable of improvement. Before he came to twenty years of age he was master of a noble fortune, which descended to him by the gift of a grandfather. His education for some years had been in Ireland, where his father was LordDeputy; so that when he returned into England, to the possession of his fortune, he was unentangled with any acquaintance or friends, which usually grow

up by the custom of conversation, and therefore was to make a pure election of his company, which he chose by other rules than were prescribed to the young nobility of that time. And it cannot be

denied, though he admitted some few to his friendship for the agreeableness of their manners and their undoubted affection to him, that his familiarity and friendship for the most part was with men of the most eminent and sublime parts, and of untouched reputation in point of integrity, and such men had a title to his bosom.

"He was a great cherisher of wit, and fancy, and good parts in any man; and if he found them clouded with poverty or want, a most liberal and bountiful patron towards them, even above his fortune; of which in those administrations he was such a dispenser as if he had been trusted with it to such uses; and if there had been the least of vice in his expense, he might have been thought too prodigal. He was constant and pertinacious in whatsoever he resolved to do, and not to be wearied by any pains that were necessary to that end; and therefore having once resolved not to see London, which he loved above all other places, till he had perfectly learned the Greek tongue, he went to his own house in the country, and pursued it with that indefatigable industry, that it will not be believed in how short a time he was master of it, and had accurately read all the Greek historians.

"In this time his house being within little more than ten miles of Oxford, he contracted familiarity and friendship with the most polite and accurate men of that University, who found such an immenseness

of wit, and such a solidity of judgment in him, so infinite a fancy, bound in by a most logical ratiocination, such a vast knowledge, that he was not ignorant in anything, yet such an excessive humility as if he had known nothing, that they frequently resided and dwelt with him, as in a college, situated in a purer air; so that his house was a University in a less volume, where they came not so much for repose as for study, and to examine and reform those grosser propositions, which laziness and consent made current in vulgar conversation.

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"He was superior to all those passions and affections which attend vulgar minds, and was guilty of no other ambition than of knowledge and to be reputed a lover of all good men; and that made him too much a contemner of those acts which must be indulged in the transactions of human affairs. In the last short parliament he was a burgess in the House of Commons * * * The great opinion he had of the uprightness and integrity of those persons who appeared most active, especially of Mr. Hampden, kept him longer from suspecting any design against the peace of the kingdom; and though he differed from them commonly in conclusions, he believed long their purposes were honest. When he grew better informed what was law, and discerned in them a desire to control that law by a vote of one or both Houses, no man more opposed their attempts, or gave the adverse party more trouble by reason and argumentation; insomuch as he was by degrees looked upon as an advocate for the Court; to which he contributed so little that he declined more addresses