ts ecclesiastical, shall be regarded, in like manner,
as one of the more striking characteristics of the _Rebellion_ of
the present day.

Sir Matthew Hale, as most of our readers must be aware, was a devoted
Royalist. He was rising in eminence as a barrister at the time the
Civil Wars broke out, and during that troublesome period he was
employed as counsel for almost all the more eminent men of the King's
party who were impeached by the Parliament. He was counsel for the
Earl of Strafford, for Archbishop Laud, for the Duke of Hamilton, for
the Earl of Holland, and for Lords Capel and Craven; and in every
instance he exhibited courage the most unshrinking and devoted, and
abilities of the highest order. When threatened in open court on one
occasion by the Attorney-General, he replied that the threat might be
spared: he was pleading in defence of those laws which the Government
had declared it would maintain and preserve, and no fear of personal
consequences should deter him in such circumstances from doing his
duty to his client. When Charles himself was brought to his trial, Sir
Matthew came voluntarily forward, and offered to plead for him also;
but as the King declined recognising the competency of his judges, the
offer was of course rejected. We all know how Malesherbes fared for
acting a similar part in France. The counsel of Louis XVI. closed his
honourable career on the scaffold not long after his unfortunate
master: his generous advocacy of the devoted monarch cost him his
life. But Cromwell, that 'least flagitious of all usurpers,' according
to even Clarendon's estimate, was no Robespierre; and were we called
on to illustrate by a single instance from the history of each the
very opposite characters of the Puritan Republicans of England and the
Atheistical Republican of France, we would just set off against one
another the fate of Malesherbes and the treatment of Sir Matthew.
Cromwell, unequalled in his ability of weighing the capabilities of
men, had been carefully scanning the course of the courageous and
honest barrister; and, convinced that so able a lawyer and so good and
brave a man could scarce fail of making an excellent judge, he
determined on raising him to the bench. At this stage, however, a
difficulty interposed, not in the liberal and enlightened policy of
the Protector, who had no objections whatever to a conscientious
Royalist magistrate, but in the scruples of Sir Matthew, who at first
doubted