England will have peace and rest beneath the shelter of those republican institutions, which her patriots, in the days of the Commonwealth, toiled, and suffered, and bled to secure to her.

While the sincere and faithful friends of liberty were thus employed in the deliberations of Parliament, a very different train of affairs was in progress throughout the nation. The army,

was

By

which from the beginning seemed to have been destined to blast the efforts of patriotism, and destroy the hopes of the country, was becoming the prey of the most profligate factions, poisoned with the jealousies, and agitated by the mad ambition, of its rival chieftains. The various religious sects, contending with their usual bitterness and blindness, for the power to persecute and oppress each other, were filling the country with dissensions and animosities. such causes the moral and political health and strength of the nation were gradually undermined. The adherents of the royal interest eagerly availed themselves of these circumstances to increase their own influence, encourage their friends, and rally their numbers, until, at last, by the base and infamous treachery of one of the military leaders, the cause of liberty in England was sacrificed and lost. General George Monk was the instrument of its ruin. He sold his army, and with it the welfare of his country, and his own fame; and

the price at which he sold them was the title of His Grace, the Duke of Albemarle, and the perpetual execration of mankind. The monarchy was restored. Charles the Second was crowned, and England was given over to the scourge of an unbridled tyranny. A flood of licentiousness poured through the land, extinguishing every spark of manly virtue, and bearing before it, not only the principles, but even the very forms and outward professions of honor, virtue, and religion. By this disastrous turn of affairs the progress of humanity was checked and turned back for more than a century.

Sir Henry Vane was, of course, one of the first to fall a victim to the treachery of the army and Parliament. He was placed in confinement, in one of his own houses, at Belleau in Lincolnshire, and subsequently at Raby Castle. On the restoration of the King, he was committed to the Tower, and was afterwards removed from prison to prison, until at length he was immured in a castle on one of the Isles of Scilly. In the mean time his fate was hanging in suspense. His name, however, had been excepted from the act of pardon and oblivion; and it was but too evident, that it was resolved that his blood should be shed to atone for the efforts of his life in favor of republican principles, and that the government waited only that their power might be sufficiently

confirmed, and the spirit of the people broken down, to render it safe to attempt the life of one whose influence they so much dreaded.

His imprisonment in Scilly continued about two years. While waiting the slow approach of a monarch's vengeance, in the solitary and dismal recesses of the desolate castle in which he was immured, his noble spirit was neither subdued nor depressed. Although separated from his family and friends, and severed, as it were, from the earth itself, shut out from the light of heaven and the intercourse of man, hearing no sound but the dashing of the ocean's waves against the foundation-stones, and the howling of its storms among the turrets of his feudal prison, his soul was serene and unruffled, the abode of peace and light. Religion and Philosophy, to whose service he had devoted his great faculties and pure affections, in the days of his ardent youth and glorious manhood, when power and prosperity were his lot, and the world was bright before him, now came to solace, and cheer, and bless him, in the reverse of his earthly fortunes, and when the dark clouds were gathering around the close of his career. Although to human eye all his efforts had failed, and the cause of liberty was utterly lost and undone, when even hope itself had fled from every other breast, he did not despond. Not a shadow of doubt passed over his spirit.

His confidence was founded upon a rock, and his faith in the promises of God disclosed to his clear and heaven-illumined vision the sure prospect of the happy period, when there would be no more tyranny or oppression on the earth. He felt that the hour of his final trial was rapidly approaching; and, although there was a constitutional delicacy and tenderness in his nature, which had even made him so sensitive to physical suffering, as to lead his enemies to charge him with a want of personal courage, he contemplated death with a singular calmness and complacency of spirit. And well he might; for, when he looked back over his life, his mind rested with a just satisfaction upon the faithful and constant devotion of his talents to the cause of God and his people; and, when he turned towards the future, he contemplated, with a glorious hope and blessed assurance, the rewards in reserve for sincerity, benevolence, and piety in that world, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.

CHAPTER XV.

His Occupation while a Prisoner." An Epistle General, &c."-" The Face of the Times." "Meditations on Death." "Letter to his

Wife." - Vane removed to the Tower.

DURING his imprisonment on the rocks of Scilly, he solaced and dignified his solitude, and occupied the weary and slow-pacing hours, by composing several elaborate works in his favorite branches of theology. One of them was entitled "An Epistle General to the mystical Body of Christ on Earth, the Church universal in Babylon, who are Pilgrims and Strangers on the Earth, desiring and seeking after the Heavenly Country." This work was addressed "to the scattered seed and sheep of Christ in all nations, the true Israel by faith, unknown for the most part to themselves, but more to the world and worldly Christian; yet, in this their unknown or dispersed estate, owned of the Lord, as the church that are in God the Father, truly pure, catholic, and Christian, of which Jesus Christ is the alone and immediate head." It commences in the following

manner.