22nd of November lasted seventeen hours, a term much too long for many of the Court-party. Clarendon, forgetting that therein he praises the patience and constancy of his opponents, expressly says that they carried their motion by the hour of the night, which drove away more members than were necessary to form a majority against them.

The first session of this Long Parliament lasted nearly a full year, and then they adjourned only for a month and a few days: a short recess, but still “ a great refreshment to those who had sat so long, mornings and afternoons, with little or no intermission, and in that warm region where thunder and lightning were made."-Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars.-His Life written by himself.-Rushworth's Historical Collections.

During the civil war there were some very long debates in the House; but the longest of all the sittings was in 1648, after the triumph of the Parliament over Charles, and when the tragedy of that unhappy man's life was in its last act, and drawing near its final scene. The wellknown split in the party who had made the revolution had taken place, and the Presbyterians and the Independents stood in open opposition to one another. The Presbyterians, notwithstanding his notoriously bad faith, would still negociate with the King, and rely on a treaty; and to this end they succeeded by a majority of the House in sending commissioners to the Isle of Wight, where Charles was then kept prisoner. The Independents, on the other hand, insisted that the time for treating, and bandying useless scrolls of parchment, was past;

and that, instead of continuing to consider Charles Stuart as a sovereign prince, they ought to hold him as a traitor, and bring him to trial for his crimes. The Presbyterians were the stronger party in the House, but the Independents had the whole army with them; and Cromwell, who had signally defeated the Scottish forces that the Presbyterians had called to their aid, was now approaching London by forced marches.

The policy of the Independents in the House of Commons was therefore to gain time, and this they managed to do by their indefatigability in debate.

On the 1st of December 1648, the commissioners that had been despatched to the Isle of Wight, appeared in the House, and read their report, stating therein the several concessions Charles was disposed to make. Through the adroit manœuvres of the weaker party, this long document was read twice over. This occupied a good deal of time, and then the Independents got up a running debate on the mere wording of the report. About two o'clock in the afternoon, the House put the question, "Whether they should now debate the treaty, and whether his Majesty's answers and concessions, as reported to them, were satisfactory or unsatisfactory;" and after another long discussion, which still left the main business untouched, it was resolved in the negative, that they should not then discuss the question, but begin the debate thereon at nine o'clock the following morning. They voted that the City of London should forthwith pay £40,000 of arrears due to the army; and that a letter should be written to the general, ordering him on no account to march his troops nearer London; and then

the House adjourned at ten o'clock at night, having sat about thirteen hours.

On the 2nd of December, the debate commenced at nine, and was carried on with great heat far into the night, without coming to a division. The next day being Sunday, the House adjourned till the 4th. But the Independents had already well nigh carried their point, for, during the debate on Saturday, Fairfax had quietly marched into London with several regiments of horse and foot, which he quartered in Whitehall, St. James's, the Mews, York House, and in the suburbs of the City; and the King, having been removed from the Isle of Wight, where he was in the power of the Presbyterians, had been safely lodged in Hurst Castle, Hampshire, by the Independents, on the 1st of December; an important fact, which was not disclosed to the whole House until Monday the 4th.

On Monday the Commons met at their usual hour, and renewed their debate on the Isle of Wight treaty, the question being now complicated by the seizure of the King's person. The debate lasted all that day and night, and it was not until five o'clock on Tuesday morning that the House divided, and came to the decision, by a considerable Presbyterian majority, "That his Majesty's concessions to the propositions of the Parliament were sufficient grounds for settling the peace of the kingdom." -Rushworth, vol. viii.

On this occasion the House sate for twenty hours. Sir Harry Vane was one of the principal speakers against the treaty; and Hollis, and Onslow, and Fiennes, (who

had lately changed sides,) spoke long and ably in favour of it.

In what manner Cromwell and the army disposed of the Presbyterian majority, with all that followed, is well known to the readers of history.

XLVIII. THE DEATH OF CREDIT.

"Ar the south side of the higher court of mine inn, which is hard by the hall, (for there are two or three courts in that inne,) there is written this pretty French poesie: On ne loge céans à crédit: car il est mort, les mauvais payeurs l'ont tué.' The English is this: Here is no lodging upon credit; for credit is dead, ill payers have killed him."-Coryat's Crudities.

A common inscription in front of the Neapolitan wine and maccaroni houses is, "Domani si fa credenza, ma oggi no,”—or, "To-morrow we give credit, but not to-day."

XLIX. BOTANICAL SATIRE.

SOME of the systematic names of plants are very pretty little lampoons. Thus Sauvages having given the name Buffonia, in honour of Buffon, Linnæus added the epithet tenuifolia, which suits the slender leaves of the plant, and the slender pretensions of Buffon to the character of a botanist.

Another plant he named Browallia, after Browal, a scholar of his; and as Browal was of humble fortune, he called one of its species Browallia depressa; but

when Browal rose in the world, and forgot his old friends, Linnæus gave another species the name of Browallia elata.

Thus too, the Petiveria alliacea, while it commemorates the botanical zeal of Petiver, who, a century ago, was apothecary to the Charter-house, at the same time points out by its acridity the defect of his temper.

Sometimes again the name of the plant, though equally epigrammatic, is kinder than in the instances just mentioned. Thus Linnæus gave the name of Bauhinia to a plant which has its leaves in pairs, in honour of two brother-botanists, John and Gaspard Bauhins; and bestowed the name on Banisteria or a climbing-plant, in memory of M. Banister, who lost his life by falling from a rock while herborising.

In the name of Salix Babylonica, there is an elegant allusion to a well-known passage in the Psalms.

L. LATIN DISTICHS.

MANY old writers have passed their lives in making combinations of words, which did more honour to their patience than to their wit. The combinations were generally formed of Latin words, and put into a barbarous distich. One of these solemn and indefatigable triflers calculated that the following verses might be changed in their order, and recombined, in thirty-nine million nine hundred and sixteen thousand eight hundred different ways; and that to complete the writing out of this series of combinations would occupy a man ninety-one years