ages which the king had corrected, with some embarrassment. Immediately the trumpets sounded, the standard was advanced, and the spectators threw up their hats, shouting, "God save the king!" The standard was a large blood-red ensign, or streamer, bearing the royal arms quartered, with a hand pointing to the crown, which stood above, and inscribed with the motto, "Give to Cæsar his due." Farther on, towards the point, were represented, at intervals, the rose, the fleur-de-lis, and the harp, each surmounted by the royal crown. A more stirring legend, than that cold appeal to justice might, perhaps, have been wisely chosen; yet its temperate demand was calculated to rouse in English bosoms a thought which the wild course of events had been sweeping towards oblivion viz. while all besides were clamouring for rights, real or feigned, had not the king his rights also; rights which never should have been regarded as hostile to those of the people?

Some delay now took place. It was with difficulty the standard could be fixed in its place, the ground being a solid rock, and no instrument to pierce it having been provided. Scarcely had this object. been accomplished, by means of digging into the firm stone with the daggers and halberd-points of the soldiers, when a fierce gust of wind, sweeping with a wild moan across the face of the hill, laid prostrate the emblem of sovereignty. Many persons regarded this accident as a presage of evil, and a general melancholy overspread the assembly. That day no further attempt was made. The louring sky of evening sym

pathised with the shadow that lay on men's spirits; and the standard was borne back into the castle, with the same state as had attended it to the field, but nearly in silence. Whispers, and words low and dubious, as of suppressed apprehension, passed from man to man; and if, now and then, some faint acclamations rose from the people, their effect was rather to startle than to animate. The next day, indeed, the ceremony was repeated, with less gloomy auspices; again, likewise, the day following; his majesty and his train presenting themselves each time, as at first. Within three or four days, however, the news arriving that the important town of Portsmouth had been surrendered to his enemies, that royal solemnity, by which the horrors of intestine strife were sanctified, and a charter given to impetuous passions and wasting calamity to riot through the land, became associated in the mind of Charles himself with a gloom neither visionary nor transient.

THE reader may adopt which side he please, in the much-contested and interminable question, so interesting to the fame of both the two great belligerent parties, "Who began the civil war?" But, one thing is beyond question, that the forces of the parliament were actually in the field earlier than those of Charles. At the time when the king set up his standard, he had with him scarcely troops sufficient to guard it, or to protect his own person; his slender stock of arms and ammunition was still lying at York; and the troops he had left before Coventry, neither in numbers, nor in any other respect, deserved the name of an army. It was, indeed, the common belief of his adversaries, both in and out of parliament, that he would be wholly without means to oppose their successful levies; and would consequently be obliged, after all, to submit to their terms without drawing the sword. In the majority of counties, they were able to prevent the commissioners of array from carrying the royal proclamation into effect; while, at the same time, their own levies proceeded without

interruption. Kent, Surrey, Sussex, and the southern counties in general, chose the popular side; the vigilance and activity of Cromwell, in Norfolk, Suffolk, Huntingdonshire, and Cambridgeshire, crushed, at a blow, the whole interest of the royal party in the east; Middlesex, including London, was entirely at their command. Such, indeed, was the eagerness of the capital to serve under Essex, that, immediately on the issuing of the commissions, four thousand citizens presented themselves in one day, at the Artillery Ground, for enlistment.

On both sides, the raising of troops was undertaken by the zealous friends of the cause, chiefly in their own neighbourhoods, where their interest was greatest. On both sides also, but not to an equal extent, the expense of the levies and equipments was defrayed by those individuals who raised the respective regiments, and by whom they were afterward, in most instances, commanded. The king, in effect, was wholly dependent on the wealthy royalists for the support of his troops; but the parliament, having the command of the national revenues, and beginning already to seize for the public service the property of delinquents, had, from the first, the means of proposing a regular scale of pay, extending from ten pounds per day for the lord-general, to eightpence per day for the privates in infantry regiments. Those noblemen and gentlemen were in general the most active in collecting troops, whose names acquired the chief celebrity during the earlier periods of the war. On the part of the parliament, Sir Thomas

Fairfax, in the north; Sir William Waller, at Exeter; the Earl of Bedford, in Bedfordshire; Lord Brooke, in Warwickshire; Lord Kimbolton and Cromwell, in Huntingdonshire and the adjoining counties; Sir Arthur Haslerigg, in Leicestershire; Lord Say and his sons, in Oxfordshire; Lord Wharton and Hampden, in Buckinghamshire; Hollis, Stapleton, and Skippon, in Middlesex, distinguished themselves by their exertions in this service. The recruits were placed at the disposal of the committee of safety, the parliamentary executive, and supplied the reinforcements for the army under Essex, mustering at Northampton.

England,― the loud beating of whose warlike pulse had, since the great dispute arose, wholly drowned the faint, decaying traditions of those miseries that attended her ancient domestic feuds, - had likewise happily forgotten military tactics, and their very nomenclature had become an unknown language. To drill their zealous recruits, withdrawn suddenly from the plough, the anvil, or the loom, the parliament employed officers who had served in the wars of Germany the fortifications and management of the artillery were chiefly confided to foreign soldiers of fortune, German or French. The proper equipment of the men was, for the same reason, a difficulty which it required time to surmount. The rude but picturesque matchlocks, or muskets, of the period, and, when these could not be had, pikes and poleaxes, supplied the arms of the infantry; the long heavy sword, the carbine and pistols, the back and breast plates, with the steel cap,