Eliot only was detained. After the conclusion of the treatise that had so long served to keep up his interest and attention, he appears to have sunk rapidly. Almost worne out by his illness, his friends at last prevailed upon him to petition the king. The account of his "manner of proceeding" is affecting to the last degree. I give it in the words of a letter from Pory to sir Thomas Puckering. "Hee first presented a petition to his majesty, by the hand of the lieutenant his keeper, to this effect: - 'Sir, your judges have committed mee to prison here in your Tower of London, where, by reason of the quality of the ayer, I am fallen into a dangerous disease. I humbly beseech your majesty you will command your judges to sett mee at liberty, that for recovery of my health I may take some fresh ayer,' &c. Whereunto his majestie's answere was, it was not humble enough.' Then sir John sent another petition by his own sonne to the effect following: - 'Sir, I am hartily sory I have displeased your majesty, and, having so said, doe humbly beseech you once againe to comand your judges to sett me at liberty, that when I have recovered my health, I may returne back to my prison, there to undergoe suche punishment as God hath allotted unto mee,' &c. Upon this the lieutenant came and expostulated with him, saying, it was proper to him, and common to none else, to doe that office of delivering petitions for his prisoners. And if sir John, in a third petition, would humble himselfe to his majesty in acknowledging his fault and craving pardon, he would willingly deliver it, and made no doubt but hee should obtaine his liberty. Unto this sir John's answer was

'I thank you, sir, for your friendly advise, but my spirits are growen feeble and faint, which when it shall please God to restore unto their former vigour, I will take it farther into my consideration.' " 1

That this is a perfectly correct account, cannot be doubted. Pory collected the particulars after the death of Eliot, and gives us his authority. "A gentleman," he

says,

"not unknown to sir Thomas Lucy, told me from lord Cottington's mouth, that sir John Eliot's late manner of proceeding was this." Moreover, in one of lord Cottington's own despatches to Wentworth, the savage satisfaction with which the court had received, and with which they knew lord Wentworth would also receive, the assurance of the approaching death of the formidable Eliot, is permitted to betray. itself. "Your old dear friend sir John Eliot," observes the chancellor of the exchequer to the lord deputy of Ireland, winding up a series of important advices with this, the most important of all, "IS VERY LIKE TO DIE." 1

Within two months from that date lord Cottington's prediction was accomplished. Eliot, however, had yet a duty of life left, which he performed with characteristic purpose. He sent for a painter to the Tower, and had his portrait painted, exactly as he then appeared, worn out by disease, and with a face of ghastly paleness. This portrait he gave to his son, that it might hang on the walls of Port Eliot near a painting which represented him in vigorous manhood, - a constant and vivid evidence of the sufferings he had unshrinkingly borne, "a perpetual memorial of his hatred of tyranny." These pictures are at Port Eliot still. I have been favoured with a loan of the earlier portrait, by the courtesy of lord St. Germains. It represents a face of perfect health, and keenly intellectual proportions. In this respect, in its wedge-like shape, in the infinite majesty of the upper region, and the sudden narrowness of the lower, it calls to mind at once the face of sir Walter Raleigh. Action speaks out from the quick keen eye, and meditation from the calm breadth of the brow. In the disposition of the hair and the peaked beard, it appears, to a casual glance, not unlike Vandyke's Charles. The later portrait is a profoundly melancholy contrast. It is wretchedly painted, but it expresses the reality of death-like life. It presents Eliot in a very elegant morning dress, apparently of lace, and bears the inscription of having been "painted a few days before his death in the Tower."

In the last moments of his life, Eliot presented the perfect pattern of a Christian philosopher. I quote the last of his letters to Hampden.- "Besides the acknowledgment of your favour that have so much compassion on your frend, I have little to return you from him that has nothing worthy of your acceptance, but the contestation that I have between an ill bodie and the aer, that quarrell, and are friends, as the summer winds affect them. I have these three daies been abroad, and as often brought in new impressions of the colds, yet, body and strength and appetite, I finde myself bettered by the motion. Cold at first was the occasion of my sickness, heat and tenderness by close keepinge in my chamber has since increast my weakness. Air and exercise are thought most proper to repaire it, which are the prescription of my doctors, though noe physick. I thank God other medicines I now take not, but those catholicons, and doe hope I shall not need them. As children learn to go, I shall get acquainted with the aer, practice and use will compasse it, and now and then a fall is an instruction for the future. These varieties He does trie us with, that will have us perfect at all parts, and as he gives the trial he likewise gives the ability that shall be necessary for the worke. He has the Philistine at the disposition of his will, and those that trust him, under his protection and defence. O! infinite mercy of our master, deare friend, how it abounds to us, that are unworthy of his service! How broken! how imperfect! how perverse and crooked are our waies in obedience to him! how exactly straight is the line of his providence to us! drawn out through all occurrents and particulars to the whole length and measure of our time! how perfect is his hand that has given his sonne unto us, and through him has promised likewise to give us all things - relieving our wants, sanctifying our necessities, preventing our dangers, freeing us from all extremities, and dying himself for us! What can we render? what retribution can we make worthy soe great a majestie? worthy such love and favour? We have nothing but ourselves who are unworthy above all, and yett that, as all other things, is his. For us to offer up that, is but to give him of his owne, and that in far worse condition than we at first received it, which yet (for infinite is his goodnesse for the merits of his sonne) he is contented to accept. This, dear frend, must be the comfort of his children; this is the physic we must use in all our sicknesse and extremities; this is the strengthening of the weake, the nuriching of the poore, the libertie of the captive, the health of the diseased, the life of those that die, the death of the wretched life of sin! And this happiness have his saints. The contemplation of this happiness has led me almost beyond the compass of a letter; but the haste I use unto my frends, and the affection that does move it, will I hope excuse me. Frends should communicate

their joyes: this as the greatest, therefore, I could not but impart unto my frend, being therein moved by the present expectation of your letters, which always have the grace of much intelligence, and are happiness to him that is trulie your's."

I add to this an extract from one of Pory's letters, dated November 15. 1632. "The same night, Monday, having met with sir John Eliot's attorney in St. Paul's Churchyard, he told me he had been that morning with sir John in the Tower, and found him so far spent with his consumption as not like to live a week longer." 1

He survived twelve days. On the 27th of November, 1632, sir John Eliot died. Immediately after the event, his son (Richard, as I presume, since he did not go abroad as he purposed) "petitioned his majesty once more, hee would bee pleased to permitt his body to be carried into Cornwall, there to be buried. Whereto was answered at the foot of the petition, 'Lett sir John Eliot's body be buried in the church of that parishe where he dyed." 1 This attempt to wreak an indignity on the remains of Eliot was perfectly in accordance with Charles's system. A paltry piece of heartless spite on the lifeless body of a man, appropriately closes a series of unavailing attempts to reduce his living soul. What remained of the great statesman was thrust into some obscure corner of the Tower church, and the court rejoiced that its great enemy was gone.

Faithful and brave hearts were left to remember this, and the sufferings of Eliot were not undergone in vain. They bore their part in the heat and burthen of the after struggle. His name was one of its watchwords, and it had none more glorious. His sufferings, then, have been redeemed. The manner of his death was no more than the completion of the purposes of his life. Those purposes, and the actions which illustrated and sustained them, I have described in these pages, for the first time, with fidelity and minuteness. In doing this, I have also endeavoured to exhibit his personal and intellectual qualities so fully, that any reiteration of them here might be tedious, and is certainly unnecessary. In estimating his character as a statesman, our view is limited by the nature of the political struggle in which he acted. We have sufficient evidence, however, to advance, from that, into a greater and more independent field of achievement and design. His genius would assuredly have proved itself as equal to the perfect government of a state, as it showed itself supreme in the purpose of rescuing a state from misgovernment. As a leader of opposition, he has had no superior in history, probably no equal. His power of resource in cases of emergency was brilliant to the last degree, and his eloquence was of the highest order.

The