strife, and the hard and painful moral necessity which impelled others to take their side—the mean, low, selfish, or fanatical motives which influenced some, and the high, pure, and patriotic principles which moved the breasts of others—the godless zeal of multitudes, and the firm faith and wrestling prayer that sustained not a few. These varied elements, grouped and arranged by the imagination upon the background of the scenery of old London, in the first half of the seventeenth century, form a picture of deep and solemn interest.

After the battle of Edgehill, in October, Charles marched towards London, anxious to possess himself of that citadel of the empire. So near did the royal army come, that many of the citizens were scared by the sound of Prince Rupert's cannon. The horrors of a siege or invasion of a city, penned in by lines of threatening troops, expected every hour to burst the gates or scale the walls—the spectacle of soldiers scouring the streets, slaying the peaceful citizen, pillaging his property, and burning his dwelling—such were the anticipations that presented themselves before the eyes of the Londoners in that memorable October, creating an excitement in all ranks, which the leaders of the popular cause sought to turn to practical account.

Eight speeches spoken in Guildhall on Thursday night, October 27th, 1642, have come down to us; and as we look on the old reports, which have rescued these utterances from the oblivion into which the earnest talking of many busy tongues at that time has fallen, we seem to stand within the walls of that civic gathering-place, amidst the dense mass of excited citizens assembled at eventide, their faces gleaming through the darkness, with the reflected light of torches and lamps, and to hear such sentences as the following from the lips of Lord Saye and Sele, whose words were applauded by the multitude, till the building rings again with the echo: "This is now not a time for men to think with themselves, that they will be in their shops and get a little money. In common dangers let every one take his weapons in his hand; let every man, therefore, shut up his shop, let him take his musket, offer himself readily and willingly. Let him not think with himself, Who shall pay me? but rather think this, I will come forth to save the kingdom, to serve my God, to maintain his true religion, to save the parliament, to save this noble city." The speaker knew what kind of men he was appealing to; that their feelings were already enlisted in the cause; that they had already given proofs of earnest resolution to support it, and of a liberal and self-denying spirit. While his majesty had been getting himself "an army by commission of array, by subscription of loyal plate, pawning of crown jewels, and the like—London citizens had subscribed horses and plate, every kind of plate, down to women's thimbles, to an unheard-of amount; and when it came to actual enlisting, London enlisted four thousand in one day." As might have been expected, therefore, the audience responded to Lord Saye and Sele, and prepared themselves to obey the summons of their leaders; so that a few days afterwards, on hearing that Prince Rupert with his army had come to Brentford, and on finding that the roar of his cannon had reached as far as the suburbs, the train bands, with amazing expedition, assembled under Major-General Skippon, and forthwith marched off to Turnham Green. Besides enlistment of apprentices and others, and contributions of all kinds for raising parliament armies, measures were adopted for the permanent defence of London. The city walls were repaired and mounted with artillery; the sheds and buildings which had clustered about the outside of the city boundaries in time of peace were swept away. All avenues, except five, were shut up, and these were guarded with military works the most approved. The first entrance, near the windmill, Whitechapel-road, was protected by a hornwork; two redoubts with four flanks were raised beside the second entrance, at Shoreditch; a battery and breastwork were placed at the third entrance, in St. John's street; a two-flanked redoubt and a small fort stood by the fourth entrance, at the end of Tyburn, St. Giles's Fields; and a large fort with bulwarks overlooked the fifth entrance, at Hyde Park Corner. Other fortifications were situated here and there by the walls, so as to fit the city to stand a long siege. A deep enthusiasm moved at least a considerable party in the performance of these works. They were not left to engineers or artillerymen and the paid artificers, who in ordinary times raise bastions and the like. "The example of gentlemen of the best quality," says May, "knights and ladies going out with drums beating, and spades and mattocks in their hands, to assist in the work, put life into the drooping people." While warlike harangues, enlistments, contributions, and the building of fortifications, were going on, and the bustle and music of military marches were heard in the street, while the walls and gates bristled with cannons and soldiery, there were those within that war-girdled city who sympathized indeed in the popular cause, but who were far differently employed in its defence and promotion.

There was at this time residing in London one

"Whose soul was like a star, and dwelt apart;
Who had a voice whose sound was like the sea."

His place of abode was in Aldersgate-street, in an humble house, with a small garden—"the muses' bower," as he called it; and there his marvelous mind was searching out the foundations of laws and governments, breathing after liberty, civil and religious, and picturing an ideal commonwealth of justice, order, truth, purity, and love, which he longed and hoped to see reduced to a reality in his own native land; he was preparing, also, for some high work, which should be "of power to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of public virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set the affections in right tune—a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapors of wine, nor to be obtained by the invocation of dame Memory and her syren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases."

John Milton, who thus describes his employment in grand and sonorous English, such as he alone could write, was by birth a Londoner, having first opened his eyes in one of the houses of old Bread-street, and received the elements of his vast and varied learning at St. Paul's School. Antiquarian research has traced him through successive residences in St. Bride's Churchyard, Aldersgate-street, Barbican, Holborn, Petty France, Bartholomew-close, Jewin-street, Bunhill-fields, to his last resting-place in the upper end of the chancel of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. (Knight's London, vol. ii, p. 97.) In youth he had pursued his studies in his native city, after his removal from Cambridge,

"I, well content, where Thames with refluent tide
My native city laves, meantime reside,
Nor zeal, nor duty, now my steps impel
To reedy Cam, and my forbidden cell.
If peaceful days in lettered leisure spent
Beneath my father's roof be banishment,
Then call me banished: I will ne'er refuse
A name expressive of the lot I choose;
For here I woo the muse, with no control;
For here my books, my life, absorb me whole."

In the maturity of his manhood, at the outbreak of the civil war, Milton was pursuing his favorite studies at his house in Aldersgate-street, combining with his literary researches and sublime poetic flights, deep theological inquiries and lofty political speculations. At a time when the rumors of invasion were afloat, and the inroads of an incensed enemy expected, he appealed to the chivalrous cavalier in his own classic style:—

"Lift not thy spear against the muse's bower.
The great Emathian conqueror bid spare
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower
Went to the ground; and the repeated air
Of sad Elecha's poet had the power
To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare."

Relieved from the fears of invasion, he continued to occupy his pen in the production of those wonderful prose works, which, scarcely less than his poetry, are monuments of his enduring fame. Probably it was in his house in Barbican—the queer old barbican of that day, with a portion of the Barbican, or tower, still standing, and picturesquely gabled and carved dwellings crowded close against it—that Milton, musing on his native city, wrote some of his most stirring political tracts. He was the representative of a large class of London citizens, who, without taking up arms on either side, earnestly entered into the great struggle, and thought and talked, and worked and wrote, as men agitated and in travail for the restoration and welfare of their distracted and bleeding country.

It is interesting, in connection with this illustrious man, to notice one of his London contemporaries, also distinguished in English literature, but in another way, presenting an opposite character, and the type of a different class. While Milton was exercising his lofty intellect and plying his mighty pen on divinity and politics, Isaac Walton, so well known as the author of the Complete Angler, and the lives of Dr. Donne and others, was, besides pursuing his occupation as a Hamburgh merchant, busily amusing himself with his favorite sport, and preparing materials for his celebrated work, (which was published in 1653,) as well as writing two of his lives, that of Donne and Wotton, which appeared in 1640 and 1651. When London was moved from one end to the other by storms of political excitement, Walton, undisturbed by the commotion in public affairs, quietly sought enjoyment on the banks of the Thames with his rod and line, below London Bridge, where he tells us "there were the largest and fattest roach in the nation;" or, taking a longer excursion, rambled by the Lea side, or went down as far as Windsor and Henley. It is certainly (whatever opinion we may form of the pursuits which engrossed so large a portion of Walton's time) a relief, amidst scenes of strife, to catch a view of little corners in English society, which seem to have been sheltered from the sweeping tempest. Curious it is also to observe how little some men are affected by the great changes witnessed in their country. Moderation is frequently, however, nearly allied to selfishness, and Walton apparently belonged to a class of individuals, from whom society may in vain look for any improvements which involve the sacrifice of personal ease or comfort. He could, to use the language of Dr. Arnold, "enjoy his angling undisturbed, in spite of Star Chamber, ship-money, High Commission Court, or popish ceremonies; what was the sacrifice to him of letting the public grievances take their own way, and enjoying the freshness of a May morning in the meadows on the banks of the Lea?"

However the great conflict might be regarded or forgotten, it waxed hotter every day, and London became increasingly involved in the strife. For a while the parliament and the army were united in their efforts against the king, and the city of London continued to lend them efficient aid. But at length disagreements arose between the legislative and military powers, the former being in the main composed of Presbyterians, while the latter were strongly leavened by the Independents. The rent became worse as time rolled on, till these two religious parties, diverging in different directions, tore the commonwealth asunder, and from having been allies became decided antagonists.

The Presbyterians were strong in London; Presbyterians occupied the city pulpits—Presbyterians ruled in the corporation. The Westminster Assembly, which began to sit in 1642, and continued their sessions through a period of six years, numbered a large majority of that denomination, and in the measures for the establishment of their own views of religion throughout the country, met with the sympathy and encouragement of a considerable portion of London citizens. In the church of St. Margaret's, Westminster, under the shadow of the venerable abbey, the members of this assembly, with the Scots' commissioners, and representatives from both houses of parliament, met on the 25th of September, 1643, to take the Solemn League and Covenant, the chosen symbol and standard of the Presbyterian party. It was certainly one of the most remarkable scenes in the ecclesiastical history of our country; and whatever opinion may be formed of the ecclesiastical principles which moved that memorable convocation, no person of unprejudiced mind can fail to admire the piety, the earnestness, zeal, and courage, which many of them evinced in the performance of their task. Solemn prayers were offered, addresses were delivered in justification of the step they were taking, and then, as the articles of the Covenant were read out from the pulpit, distinctly one by one, each person standing uncovered, with his hand lifted bare to heaven, swore to maintain them. On the Lord's-day following, the Covenant was tendered to all persons within the bills of mortality of the city of London, and was welcomed by a number of ministers and a great multitude of people. Of the excitement which prevailed, some idea may be gathered from the narrative of a royalist historian. We are informed by Clarendon, that the church of St. Antony, in Size-lane, Watling-street, being in the neighborhood of the residence of the Scotch commissioners, was appropriated to their use during their stay, and that Alexander Henderson, a celebrated preacher, and one of their chaplains, was accustomed to conduct service there. "To hear these sermons," he says, "there was so great a conflux and resort by the citizens out of humor and faction, by others of all qualities out of curiosity, by some that they might the better justify the contempt they had of them, that from the first appearance of day in the morning of every Sunday to the shutting in of the light the church was never empty; they, especially the women, who had the happiness to get into the church in the morning, (those who could not hang upon or about the windows without, to be auditors or spectators,) keeping the places till the afternoon exercises were finished."

As discussions arose between the parliament and the Presbyterians on the one side, and the army and Independents on the other, the city of London showed unequivocally its attachment to the former. In addition to difficulties arising from an embargo laid by the king on the coal trade between Newcastle and London, difficulties met by parliamentary orders for supplying fuel in the shape of turf or peat out of commons and waste grounds, and also out of royal demesnes and bishops' lands; in addition to other difficulties, commercial, municipal, and social, springing from the disjointed state of public affairs—the Londoners were plunged into new difficulties, ecclesiastical and political, by an important step which they conceived it their duty to take. The Presbyterian ministers of London, upheld by their flocks, were zealous for the full and unrestricted establishment of their own scheme of discipline through the length and breadth of the city. In June, 1646, the ministers met at Zion College, contending for the Divine right of their form of government, and maintaining that the civil magistrate had no right to intermeddle with the censures of the Church. The lord mayor and common council joined them in a petition to the parliament to that effect; but the political powers would not allow them that uncontrolled and supreme ecclesiastical constitution which they craved. However, they were authorized to carry out their Church polity according to the law enacted for the whole kingdom, and to have presbyteries in every parish, which parochial bodies should be represented in a higher assembly called the classes, the