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transpiring elsewhere. An accident by which Cromwell was thrown from his seat, when driving a team of horses in Hyde Park, presented to him by the Duke of Oldenburg, while it endangered his life, also revealed the fact that he carried a loaded pistol on his person; a sufficiently significant fact, but not greatly to be wondered at in an old soldier, whose life had already been set as a mark to the assassin's dagger. Of very different import is another private incident thus touchingly alluded to by Carlyle: "What a glimpse into the interior domesticities of the Protector household have we in the following brief note! Amid the darkness and buzzard dimness, one light beam, clear, radiant, mournfully beautiful, like the gleam of a sudden star, disclosing for a moment many things to us. On Friday, Secretary Thurloe writes incidentally: 'My Lord Protector's mother, of ninety-four years old, died last night. A little before her death she gave my Lord her blessing in these words: The Lord cause His face to shine upon you, and comfort you in all your adversities; and enable you to do great things for the glory of your Most High God, and to be a relief unto His people. My dear son, I leave my heart with thee. A good night!'— and therewith sank into her long sleep. Even so. Words of ours are but idle. Thou brave one, mother of a hero, farewell!-Ninety-four years old: the royalties of Whitehall, says Ludlow very credibly, were of small moment to her at the sound of a musket she would often be afraid her son was shot; and could not be satisfied unless she saw him once a day at least. She, old, weak, wearied one, she cannot help him with his refractory Pedant parliaments, with his Anabaptist plotters, royalist assassins, and world-wide confusions; but she bids him, be strong, be comforted in God. And so good night! And in the still eternities and divine silences-Well, are they not divine? "*

* Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. ii. p. 309.