attained a height that would have swept
him away from his station, had not the assassin's
knife wickedly anticipated the righteous judgment
of the nation. As this session was closing,
the death of his wife— a mother never willingly
absent from her children— called Eliot away to
Cornwall. He placed some of the young motherless
children with Mr. Gedie, their grandfather.
On the twenty-third of August, sixteen 'twenty-
eight, the Duke of Buckingham was stabbed
to the heart at Portsmouth, by the zealot Felton,
who was stirred to the crime by the common
sense of the favourite's baneful influence over the
state. It is certain that a wide sense of relief
followed its commission.

Upon the reassembling of the House, much
time was given to discussion of religious
grievances, and the claim of the people to be
taxed by their representatives alone. And it
was in this session, on the morning of the
second of March, sixteen 'twenty- nine, that
Eliot entered the House of Commons for the
last time. Upon Eliot's rising to speak, the
Speaker, who was of the court party, stood up
in his chair, and said he had the king's
command for adjournment. Eliot persisted, the
cry became general that he should proceed, and
that it was not the Speaker's office to deliver
such command, or the king's to direct their
adjournment. Eliot rose again, and the Speaker
stated that he had the king's command to quit
the House after delivering his message: on
which, at the impulse of the moment, members
sitting near him seized him, one by each arm,
and held him in his chair. At the same time
Eliot began to speak, the whole house turned to
listen, and the spell of his eloquence secured
him hearing to the end.

"None," he said, in the course of that speech,
"none have gone about to break parliaments,
but in the end parliaments have broken them."
He ended by producing the declaration drawn
up by the Committee of Trade. The Speaker
and the clerk, both servile to the court, refused:
the one to receive, the other to read it. A
scene of violent excitement followed. The
Commons forcibly compelled their weeping Speaker
to sit in his chair. In the tumult blows were
struck. A message arrived from the king, in
obedience to which the old sergeant-at-arms
advanced and laid hands upon the mace. It was
replaced, and the door of the house was locked
on the inside. Then Eliot delivered in shorter
form, the Declaration, and the Protestation of
the Commons against levying or paying tonnage
and poundage, or other charges contrary to law.
And for myself, he said, as he sat down, "I
further protest, as I am a gentleman, if my
fortune be ever again to meet in this honourable
assembly, where I now leave, I will begin again.''
Eliot's three resolutions were carried by
acclamation, the door was then unlocked and out
rushed the members in a body, sweeping before
them the king's officer, who was about to bring
up the guard of pensioners to force an entrance.

There was not another parliament in England
for eleven years.

Proceedings were immediately commenced.
against the leaders of the Commons, and Eliot
passed from the sight of his countrymen into
the Tower. There, by letter and labour, he took
thought for his children. The ignoble king never
relaxed his hold upon that noble prisoner; and
when Eliot, used to a country gentleman's life of
active exercise, was known to be fading away in
his smoky and cold dungeon, he was left to die
therein. Nay, after he was dead, the king denied
his very body to his children. But, of the free mind
that found no prison within those stone walls, and
of the great life that linked itself to the best life
of England, nothing has died. Much was
forgotten; but all now lives again, and shall live,
while there are Englishmen to read it, in these
pages of a biographer whose work is equal to
his theme, and whose gallant exposition of a
gallant career is a high service rendered to our
Literature, our Freedom, and our Country.

SHAKESPEARE NOT A MAN OF
PARTS.

COMMEMORATE the birth of Shakespeare
indeed! If you knew as much of Shakespeare as
I do, or had suffered as much at his hands, you
would curse the day that he ever was born. I
tell you that Shakespeare has written more bad
parts than any dramatic author living, or dead.
I ought to know, for I have been acting in his
plays all my life, at least ever since I began to
act, and that was when I was young and a fool,
and didn't know better. I won't subscribe to
his monument; there. Why should I? What
has Shakespeare done for me? Done? Why,
made my life a misery and a torment. Look at
the parts he has written for me. There's
Reynaldo, that's a pretty bit of character, isn't it?
"I will, my lord;" "My lord, I did intend it;"
"Ay, very well, my lord;" "But, my lord;"
"Ay, my good lord;" "Very well, my lord."
And you have to put on a velvet shirt and a
pair of tights to say that. There's Rosencrantz
and Guildenstern in the same play. A lively
pair, they are. I've played both— might have
been put to double them, if that had been
possible— and never got a hand for either. It's
my belief that Shakespeare wrote the part of
Rosencrantz to spite somebody. He's got nothing
to do, and has some of the hardest sentences
to speak in the whole play. Try to get
this into your head, and then when you have
got it, try and speak it: "The cease of majesty
dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
what's near it, with it: it is a massy wheel,
fixed on the summit of the highest mount, to
whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
are mortised and adjoin'd; which, when it falls,
each small annexment, petty consequence, attends
the boisterous ruin." That's Rosencrantz's
best speech. Through one whole scene he has
to stand with Guildenstern, like a knife and fork
— that's what we call them in the country — and
hasn't got a single word to say. In the scene
following, his best point is, " Ho, Guildenstern!