disgraceful contradictions. His political
tergiversation was, to the very last degree, flagrant
and unblushing. Upon no palliative or
explanatory hypothesis that could possibly be
dreamed of, can his principles be reconciled, or
his actions harmonised. As a Parliamentary
representative he could so energetically
conduct the prosecution of Sir Francis Crawley,
one of the twelve judges who had declared
the legality of levying ship-money, that, of the
famous speech in which he advocated the
interests of the nation and the cause of the
legislature—an outburst of rhetorical logic and
eloquent vituperation, in the midst of which
he strikingly compares the beggary of the
realm for the mere purpose of supplying the
navy to the barbarity of seething a kid in its
mother's milk—there were sold in a single
day copies to the number of not less than
twenty thousand. Yet this enthusiastic and
impassioned conductor of Crawley's impeachment
could afterwards, with admirable consistency,
send a thousand broad pieces to
the king when Charles the First set
up the royal standard at Nottingham,
and could subsequently allow himself to be
so bewitched by his Majesty's kind reception
of him at Oxford after the battle of Edgehill,
that he is notoriously known to have engaged
a little later, in a treasonous conspiracy
against the Commonwealth. The particulars
of that futile plot—a plot so futile that Hume
speaks of it simply as a project, Lingard even
mentioning it as imaginary—are altogether
too familiar to the students of our national
history to be here recapitulated. Its
discovery, while it cost two of Waller's
accomplices their heads, cost the poet himself a
temporary incarceration, a fine of ten
thousand pounds, and eventually banishment.
Worse than all, it cost him his reputation.
During the period of his exile in France, an
event of interest befell the pardoned but
disgraced conspirator. There appeared at
London in sixteen hundred and forty-eight
the very first edition of his works ever
published: an enterprise originated by some
unknown lady who had written to him in his
foreign seclusion, requesting him to send her
all his various poems collected together in
manuscript. Could this nameless fair one by
any wild possibility have been Sacharissa?

Ultimately Waller was permitted to return
homeward, a blot on his escutcheon, and
considerably reduced in his circumstances.
It was then he took up his abode upon the
last remnant of his fortunes at Hallbarn, near
his mother's residence and his own former
estate at Beaconsfield. He subsequently
resumed his old position in the legislature,
continuing throughout another generation to be
the delight, and, in some sort also, the boast of
Parliament. His literary reputation was
securely established. It obtained—a marvel
in those days—a continental recognition among
his own immediate contemporaries. He
himself, it is true, by coolly writing in one of his
letters: "The old blind schoolmaster John
Milton hath published a tedious poem on
the fall of man," could perfectly justify, in
that one sentence, the accusation of envy
directed against him by Atterbury. But
Envy was not the Shadow of his own Merit.
He was on the contrary the very Schlemil
of popularity. Alexander Pope has taught
the merest tyro in verse to

"praise the easy vigour of a line
Where Denham's strength and Waller's sweetness join."

Mr. Addison has declared the perpetuity of
his renown as synonymous with the existence
of the language, when he has predicted,

"So long shall Waller's strains our passion move,
And Sacharissa's beauty kindle love."

On the twenty-first of October sixteen
hundred and eighty-seven, he peacefully
breathed his last at Beaconsfield.

ANGELA.

HER brow is set in mellow light,
Young Angela's! The happy mind
That dwells within is raying out
Its beauty; and as fruits behind
Her bower ripen, so her face
And form grow perfect to the mind.

Oh, ever so, through days and nights,
Be clear and smooth that rounding brow!
And ever, moulded from within,
Glow brightly pure and mild as now
The loveliness where soul is all
Upon the snowy-polish'd brow!

Her braidless hair swims down her neck,
Sweet Angela's! No tresses on
The richest tropic tree that drinks
The gold breath of the central sun,
Can vie with all that curled wave
That sways her bending neck upon.

Oh, soft and deep, on cheek and neck,
Fall ever so the peerless brown!
No rougher air than floats to-day
Disturb it as it clusters down;
Nor earth distain with sadder tint
The glossy crest of golden brown!

Her drooping eyes are full of dreams,
Rapt Angela's! The dewy eyes
Of those bright buds her hands are in,
Upon her lap, in all their dyes
Have not a match for their serene
And holy blue—my dreamer's eyes!

Oh, let them droop, and melt, and dream,
Blue eyes! And let her hands be hid
In blossoms! May no touch of pain
Bedim a marbled silky lid,
Nor stir with need to dry a tear,
A rosy palm in roses hid!

Her down-tipp'd lashes quiver oft,
Bright Angela's! and melts a smile
Around the temples, down the cheek
And chin, and bathes the lips awhile;
Till, past the gold drops in her ears,
The white neck steals the sliding smile.