plotter, and very nearly reached the altitudes of the gallows
as well as those of Parnassus.

March 1605 was the date, and Coleshill, in Hertfordshire, the place, of
the birth of our poet. He was of an ancient and honourable family
originally from Kent, some members of which were distinguished for their
wealth and others for the valour with which, at Agincourt and elsewhere,
they fought the battles of their country. Robert Waller, the poet's
father, inherited from Edmund, _his_ father, the lands of Beaconsfield,
in Bucks, and other territory in Hertfordshire. These had been in 1548-9
left by Francis Waller, in default of issue by his own wife, to his
brothers Thomas and Edmund, but Thomas dying, Edmund inherited the
whole. Robert, on receiving his estates, quitted the profession of the
law, to which he had attached himself, and spent the rest of his life
chiefly at Beaconsfield, employed in the manly business and healthy
amusements of a country gentleman. He died in August 1616, and left a
widow and a son--the son, Edmund, being eleven years of age. It was at
Beaconsfield. We need hardly remind our readers, that a far greater
Edmund--Edmund Burke--spent many of his days. It was there that he
composed his latest and noblest works, the "Reflections on the French
Revolution," and the "Letters on a Regicide Peace;" and there he
surrendered to the Creator one of the subtlest, strongest, brightest,
and best of human souls. Shortly after Burke's death, the house of
Beaconsfield was burnt down, and no trace of it is now, we believe,
extant.

Mrs. Waller's brother, William, was the father of John Hampden. His
wife, Elizabeth Cromwell, the aunt of the great Oliver, was, however,
and continued to the end, a violent Royalist; and Cromwell, although he
treated both her and her son with kindness, and on the terms of their
relationship, was so provoked at hearing that she carried on a secret
correspondence with the Stewart party, that he confined her under a very
strict watch in the house of her daughter, Mrs. Price, whose husband was
on the side of the Parliament. It is exceedingly probable that from the
"mother's milk" of early prejudice was derived that spirit of
partisanship which distinguished alike the writings and the life of the
poet. It is possible, too, that contact with men so far above moral
heroism and rugged mental force as Cromwell and Hampden, instead of
exciting emulation, led to envy, and that his divergence from t