My Philip, my lov'd Stanhope-is it THOU ?-
Then let me die.

The tawdry theatrical artifices which had secured his popularity in the pulpit clung to him still. He has a pain in his side, and when asked what it is, replies: "Lethalis arundo."

In the preface to his "Prison Thoughts" he writes: "They are imperfect, but the language of the heart; and, had I time and inclination, might be improved. But——” Accepting Johnson's dictum, that a man's mind is wonderfully concentrated when he knows that he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it is difficult to believe on the evidence of the "Prison Thoughts," that Dodd supposed he would be executed. They are on a level with the lines to Dr. Squire; loose, hasty, and utterly unreal. We quote a few lines describing the scene in which Dodd was soon to appear as chief actor :

Crowd then along with yonder revel-rout
To EXEMPLARY punishment! and mark
The language of the multitude, obscene,
Wild, blasphemous, and cruel! tent their looks
Of madding, drunken, thoughtless, ruthless gaze,
Or giddy curiosity and vain!

Their deeds, still more emphatic, note; and see
By the sad spectacle unimpress'd, they dare
Even in the eye of Death, what to their doom
Brought their expiring Fellows!

This, too, is curious; a prophecy which some of us may live to see fulfilled :

-yes, the day

I joy in the idea-will arrive
When Britons philanthropic shall reject
The cruel custom, to the sufferer cruel,
Useless and baneful to the gaping crowd!

On the 6th of June, Dodd delivered to his fellow-prisoners an address, which had been written for him by Dr. Johnson.

The petitions for Dodd's life failing, other attempts to save him were made. "He (Johnson) told us," says Boswell, "that Dodd's city friends stood by him so, that a thousand pounds were ready to be given to the gaoler if he would let him escape. He added, that he knew a friend of Dodd's, who walked about Newgate for some time on the evening before the day of his execution, with 500l. in his pocket, ready to be paid to any of the turnkeys who could get him out; but it was too late, for he was watched with much circumspection. He said, Dodd's friends had an image of him made of wax, which was to have been left in his place, and he believed it was carried into the prison."

On the fatal morning, Dodd appeared composed; the cart set out for Tyburn amid constant showers, and Dodd appeared greatly affected as he approached his former house.

"He was a considerable time in praying, which some people standing about seemed rather tired with; they rather wished for some more interesting part of the tragedy. The wind, which was high, blew off his hat, which rather embarrassed him, and discovered to us his countenance, which we could scarcely see before. His hat, however, was soon restored to him, and he went on with his prayers. There were two clergymen attending him, one of whom seemed very much affected; the other, I suppose, was the ordinary of Newgate, as he was perfectly unfeeling in everything that he said and did.

"The executioner took both the hat and wig off at the same time. Why he put on his wig again I do not know, but he did, and the doctor took off the wig a second time, and then tied on a nightcap which did not fit him; but whether he stretched that, or took another, I could not perceive. He then put on his nightcap himself, and upon his taking it, he certainly had a smile on his countenance; very soon after wards there was an end of all his hopes and fears on this side the grave. He never moved from the place he took in the cart; seemed absorbed in despair, and utterly dejected, without any other signs of animation but in praying."

According to a very general belief, the efforts of the doctor's frends did not cease with the execution. It is said that the knot of the rope was placed in a particular manner under his ear, and that the hangman, who had been gained over by Dodd's friends, whispered, as the cart drew off, "You must not move an inch!" When cut down, the body was conveyed to a house in Goodge Street, where, under the direction of Pott, the celebrated surgeon, every attempt was made to restore animation. But the crowd had been enormous, and the delay in the transport of the body had been too great; nevertheless there were not wanting people who believed that Dodd had been resuscitated and carried abroad.

His wife, who seems to have borne him a sincere and lasting affection, died some years afterwards in indigence. ALFRED MARKS.

*A. M. Storer to G. Selwyn. quoted by Jesse in "George Selwyn and his Cotemporaries."

A plash in the water-a cry of a bird
Frighten'd off from her nest-is all that is heard,
A few rings on the lake, a few ripples on shore,
And the scene is as calm, and as bright as before.

THE THIRTIETH OF JANUARY. GIOVANNI LORENZO BERNINI-most florid and meretricious of sculptors, who seemed to be able to mould his marble as though it were of a material as plastic as putty, to twist and curve it in the air, and leave it fluttering there

as though it were so much gauze-had been commissioned to execute a bust of King Charles the First. Bernini's fame was European. He was one of the most successful and best-paid artists of his day. The well known portrait by Vandyck, representing on one canvas the full front, three-quarter, and profile views of the king, was sent to the sculptor at Rome to enable him to complete the bust. For his work he received a thousand Roman crowns, and the king ordered a companion bust of Queen Henrietta. The civil wars, however, interfered, and prevented the completion of this commission.

There must have been something ominous about Charles's look. Bernini said, as he contemplated the Vandyck portrait, that he "had never seen any face which showed so much greatness, and withal such marks of sadness and misfortune." Years before, Ben Jonson, in his masque of the "" Gypsies Metamorphosed," had made one of the gypsies say of Prince Charles :

--

How right he doth confess him in his face,

His brow, his eye, and every mark of state; As if he were the issue of each grace,

And bore about him both his fame and fate. The words have a prophetic ring about them. Doubtless Charles's regular features, grave expression, and noble but melancholy air, impressed while they attracted the men about him. Indeed, Macaulay has attributed to the king's "Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard," joined to consideration for his many domestic virtues, the sympathy and loyalty with which so many generations have regarded his memory.

Bernini's bust arriving in this country seems to have brought with it a prognostic of evil. The story is to be found both in "Sir Richard Bulstrode's Memoirs," and in "Aubrey's Miscellanies." The bust had been conveyed up the Thames in an open boat, to be landed at Greenwich. In the carriage of it, the face being upwards, "a strange bird, the like whereof the bargemen had never seen," (Sir

Richard is content to describe it as "a swallow, or some other bird,") "dropped a drop of blood, or blood-like, upon the statue." And although this was immediately wiped off by the bargemen, still, notwithstanding all endeavours, the blood-stain "could never be gotten off."

The ultimate fate of the bust seems to be a matter of some mystery. A notion prevailed that it had been destroyed in the burning of Whitehall in 1697. It seems curious, however, that such a work should have survived the iconoclastic days of the Commonwealth. The Lord Protector was not likely to be very

careful about preserving the bust of his predecessor as an ornament of the palace. All Charles's art-treasures had been mercilessly brought to the hammer. The pictures, jewels, plate, and furniture of nineteen palaces were hurriedly sold by auction, and produced only 118,000l. Le Sueur's equestrian statue of the king (set up at Charing Cross in 1678), was sold by the Parliament to John Rivet, "a brazier living at the dial, near Holburn conduit," with strict orders to break it in pieces. The man, however, produced some fragments of old metal, and buried the statue underground until the Restoration made it safe to dig it up again.

Vertue, whose anecdotes of painting Horace Walpole "digested and published," was of opinion that Bernini's bust certainly survived the Commonwealth, and probably also the fire. One Norrice, frame-maker to the court, who saved several pictures, had been heard to aver that at the time of the fire he was in the room where the bust used to stand over a corner chimney, and that it was removed before that chamber was destroyed. Nearly the whole of the palace, with the exception of the Banqueting House, which still remains, fell a prey to the flames. Besides the royal apartments, 150 houses, inhabited for the most part by officers of the court, were totally burnt, while some twenty more buildings were blown up with gunpowder, to arrest the progress of the fire. Lord Cutts was in command of the troops, and was impatient to commence the blasting operations; yet, after he had ordered the drums to beat, half an hour elapsed before the explosion took place; time enough to save the bust if it was not-as Sir John Stanley, the deputy chamberlain, believed-already stolen. Sir John was dining in Craig Court when the fire began, at three o'clock in the afternoon. He ran to the palace, and perceived only at that time an inconsiderable smoke in a garret not in the principal building. He found Sir Christopher Wren and his workmen there, and the gates all shut. Pointing to the bust, he begged Sir Christopher to take care of that, and the statues. He replied, "Take care of what you are concerned in, and leave the rest to me." Sir John declared that it was not until more than five hours afterwards that the fire reached that part of the building. Norrice dug in the ruins, but could not discover the least fragment of marble. A figure of a crouching Venus, in the same chamber, was known to have been stolen, and was reclaimed by the Crown after being concealed for four years. But of Bernini's bust no tidings were ever heard. Dr. Edward Brown, in his "Travels," described a white marble

bust of King Charles in the Imperial Library at Vienna. But this could not have been Bernini's, presuming it to have been in Whitehall at the time of the fire. For Brown wrote in 1673, and the fire was not until 1697.

Besides the blood-stain on Bernini's bust, other omens of Charles's doom were not wanting. "Colonel Sharington Talbot was at Nottingham," writes Aubrey, "when King Charles did set up his standard upon the top of the tower there. He told me that the first night the wind blew it so that it hung down almost horizontal, which some did take to be an ill-omen." Presently, the same authority relates:"The day that the Long Parliament began, 1641, the sceptre fell out of the figure of King Charles, in wood, in Sir Thomas Trenchard's Hall at Wullich, in Dorset, as they were at dinner in the parlour."

There had been a proposition that the king should be executed in his robes, and afterwards "that a stake should be driven through his head and body, to stand as a monument upon his grave." But this brutal suggestion was negatived. The king spent the last three days of his life in St. James's Palace, and was brought thence to Whitehall very early on the fatal morning of the 30th January, 1649. Of his demeanour on the scaffold let Andrew Marvell speak :

While round the armëd bands
Did clap their bloody hands,
He nothing common did or mean,
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try;

Nor call'd the gods with vulgar spight
To vindicate his helpless right!
But bow'd his comely head
Down as upon a bɛd.

Clarendon's description is as follows:-"The king asked the executioner if his hair was well. After which, putting off his cloak, doublet, and his George, he gave the latter to Bishop (Juxon), saying, 'Remember.' After this he put on his cloak again over his waistcoat, inquiring of the executioner if the block was fast, who answered, it was. He then said "I wish it might have been a little higher.' But it was answered him it could not be otherwise now. The king said, 'When I put out my hands this way, then-' He prayed a few words standing, with his hands and eyes lift up towards heaven, and then, stooping down, laid his neck on the block. Soon after which the executioner putting some of his hair under his cap, the king thought he had been going to strike, bade him stay for the sign. After a little time the king stretched forth his hand, and the executioner took off his head at one stroke. When his head was held up, and the people at a

distance knew the fatal stroke was over, there was nothing to be heard but shrieks, and groans, and sobs, the unmerciful soldiers beating down poor people for this little tender of their affection to their prince. Thus died the worthiest gentleman, the best master, the best friend, the best husband, the best father, and the best Christian that the age in which he lived produced."

The scaffold was erected on the west front of the Banqueting Hall. Opposite, on the site of the Admiralty, stood Peterborough House, from the roof of which Archbishop Usher attempted to witness the execution. We read in Parr's life of Usher: "At the time of his Majesty's murther, the Lady Peterborough's house (where my lord then lived) being just over against Charing Cross, divers of the countess's gentlemen and servants got upon the leads of the house, from whence they could see plainly what was acting before Whitehall. The primate, who could not stand the sight, fainted, was taken down and put on his bed."

Philip Henry, who also witnessed the execution, related that at the instant when the blow was given, there was "such a dismal universal groan among the thousands of people that were within sight of it (as it were, with one consent), as he never heard before, and desired he might never hear the like again, nor see such a cause for it."

There is doubtless an inclination on the part of the royalist historians to exaggerate the sorrow and rage of the nation in regard to the putting to death of the king. Hume would have us believe that "women cast forth the untimely fruit of their womb when they learned it; and others fell into convulsions, or sank into such a melancholy as attended them to their graves; and that some, unmindful of themselves, as though they could not or would not survive their beloved prince, suddenly fell down dead." There is high colouring about this: yet, undoubtedly, among a large section of the people a profound grief prevailed. There is even a story of a learned Fellow of All Souls who died of the shock given him by the king's execution. Numbers of the clergy and gentry,-Philip Henry, Usher, and Evelyn, among them,always kept the anniversary of the day as a strict fast, and this custom was observed during many years. The first Lord Holland used to relate that, during the lifetime of his father, Sir Stephen Fox, upon the return of every 30th of January, the wainscot of the house used to be hung with black, and no meal of any sort permitted until after midnight.

now

The loyalty of Westminster School was proved beyond question at this time. "We really were King's Scholars, as well as called so," says South, proudly. "Nay, upon that very day, that black and eternally infamous day of the king's murder, I myself heard, and am a witness that the king was publicly prayed for in this school but an hour or two at most before his sacred head was struck off." At such a time, any expression of attachment to the king, or sympathy with his fate, had its dangers. We read that immediately after the decapitation, Hewson (originally a cobbler, afterwards a member of Cromwell's Parliament, and a colonel in the army) went with a party of horse from Charing Cross to the Royal Exchange, proclaiming, as he went, "that whosoever should say that Charles Stuart died wrongfully should suffer present death."

After the execution the king's body was embalmed and removed to Windsor for interment. The Parliament sanctioned the expenditure of not more than five hundred pounds

"I

upon the funeral. No religious ceremony took place; the burial service being at that time prohibited. No tablet or inscription marked the last resting-place of royalty. cannot," says Bishop Kennet, "but commend the piety of those gentlemen employed to inter the body of King Charles I., who, taking a view of St. George's chapel in Windsor to find the most fit and honourable place of burial, declined at first the tomb-house built by Cardinal Wolsey, as supposing King Henry VIII. was buried there, in regard his majesty would upon occasional discourse express some dislike of king Henry's proceedings in misemploying those vast revenues the suppressed abbeys, monasteries, and other religious houses were endowed with." Charles was said in his lifetime to have registered a vow, that if it pleased Heaven to restore him to his "kingly rights," and re-establish him upon the throne, he would give back to the Church all the impropriations then held by the Crown; and whatsoever lands had been taken from any episcopal see, or any cathedral or collegiate church, from any abbey or other religious house, he promised thereafter to hold from the Church under such reasonable fines and rents as should be determined by some conscientious persons, whom he proposed "to choose with all uprightness of heart, to direct him in that particular." The scruples of the king's friends seem to have been removed however. The coffin was deposited in a vault in the centre of the choir containing two coffins-believed to be those of King Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour.