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mark it as sublime. We then saw her attend her husband in prison, upon a charge of high treason, and divide her day between the soothing attention which his situation excited, and the active enquiries which his defence required. We found her, where a nobleman's wife might not, perhaps, be expected,-acting as his secretary in a court of justice, and writing, with her own hand, the notes from which he was to plead in a cause where his life was at stake. After his condemnation, we followed her in the anxious and unceasing solicitations which she made, on every side, to obtain his pardon; and, amidst her restless endeavours to save his life, we still had to admire a heart, which could lead her to abstain from even hinting to the patriot she was about to see perish on the scaffold, that his existence might be prolonged by means degrading to his spirit, or inconsistent with his honour.

The life of Lady Russell, after the death of her lord, was occupied and embittered by that grief, of which she has left in her letters so af fecting a memorial. Yet we are not to suppose that sorrow for her departed husband made her incapable of the duties which remained to her to perform. We find her, on the occasion of the marriage of her daughter, expressing her resolve not to bend her child's inclinations to her own judgment. There remains a letter to

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Mrs. Howland, whose daughter was to marry her son, afterwards Duke of Bedford, giving very sensible advice upon the manner in which the child, then eight years old, ought to be educated. And it is worthy of remark, that so serious a person as Lady Russell does not omit to mention dancing as one of the things which her future daughter-in-law ought to learn: for, "though I confess," she says, "fashion and those other accomplishments are, perhaps, over-rated by the world, and I esteem them but as dross and as a shadow, in comparison of religion and virtue, yet the perfections of nature are orna ments to the body, as grace is to the mind." It appears, by another letter, that she gave a large sum from her own fortune, to pay the debts which her son had contracted by gambling; and, to conclude these quotations, there is another, in which she exhorts him, by every argument she can imagine, to seek for support in religion, which had been her own guide and consolation. The peculiarity which is most striking in Lady Russell is, that she was esteemed and consulted by her cotemporaries, and has been admired and revered by posterity, without posterity, without any ambitious effort of her own. She neither sought to shine in the world by the extent of her capacity, nor to display, by affected retirement, the elevation of her soul; and when circumstances obliged

her to come forward on the stage of history, she showed herself in the appropriate character of a wife and a mother. Hence we may believe, that the unobtrusive modesty of private life contains many a female capable of giving the same example to her sex, and to mankind. But the hour of danger is past: the liberties for which Lord Russell sacrificed his life are established; and it is to be hoped that no English widow may, in future, have to mourn a husband, unjustly condemned, and tyrannically executed.

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THE REALITY OF THE RYE-HOUSE PLOT.

BEFORE Concluding this work, it will be proper to give some account of those who were involved with Lord Russell in the accusation of conspiring against the King, and to offer some observations on the reality of the Rye-House plot.

In November, Algernon Sydney was brought to trial. He was much more hardly used than Lord Russell had been; and the trial exhibits a strange and unnatural contrast between the violence, the injustice, and the brutality of the judge; and the calmness, the pointed reasoning, and the heroic fortitude of the prisoner. He was tried by a jury, many of whom were not freeholders. Jeffries, then Chief Justice, said the point had been decided on Lord Russell's trial, although, in that case, the trial had been in the city of London, and this was at the King's Bench. Rumsey and West were the first witnesses against him; and they swore that they knew nothing of the prisoner since the

conspiracy began. They had heard that he was one of the council of six; and, what is most curious, West had heard this from Rumsey, and Rumsey had heard it from West. Lord Howard followed, adding many particulars to his former tale; but as he was the only direct witness, the evidence required by law was filled up with a manuscript-book, in Sydney's hand-writing, written some years before. Quotations, proving that he approved of the conspiracies against Nero, and against Caligula, were read as proofs of his having compassed the King's death. The Lord Chief Justice, in summing up the evidence, laid it down as law, that if one witness deposed that a man had said he would kill the King with a knife, and another witness deposed that he had bought a knife, these two would form the two witnesses required by law. It is needless to enter farther into this well-known case; but I cannot help expressing my own sentiment, that there is no murder which history has recorded of Cæsar Borgia, which exceeds in violence, or in fraud, that by which Charles took away the life of the gallant and patriotic Sydney.

The Duke of Monmouth was persuaded, by Lord Halifax, to make his confession. He did this in a letter, in very general terms; but being told that he might hurt Mr. Hampden, and

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