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with no foe that can match them, until they recoil at last before the plebeian pikes of the London train-bands. Nor can even Rupert's men claim to monopolize the courage of the King's party. The brilliant "show-troop" of Lord Bernard Stuart, comprising the young nobles having no separate command,--a troop which could afford to indulge in all the gorgeousness of dress, since their united incomes, Clarendon declares, would have exceeded those of the whole Puritan Parliament,--led, by their own desire, the triumphant charge at Edgehill, and threescore of their bodies were found piled on the spot where the Royal Standard was captured and rescued. Not less faithful were the Marquis of Newcastle's "Lambs," who took their name from the white woollen clothing which they refused to have dyed, saying that their hearts' blood would dye it soon enough; and so it did: only thirty survived the battle of Marston Moor, and the bodies of the rest were found in the field, ranked regularly, side by side, in death as in life. But here at Chalgrove Field no such fortitude of endurance is needed; the enemy are scattered, and, as Rupert's Cavaliers are dashing on, in their accustomed headlong pursuit, a small, but fresh force of Puritan cavalry appears behind the hedges and charges on them from the right,--two troops, hastily gathered, and in various garb. They are headed by a man in middle life and of noble aspect: once seen, he cannot easily be forgotten; but seen he will never be again, and, for the last time, Rupert and Hampden meet face to face. The foremost representative men of their respective parties, they scarcely remember, perhaps, that there are ties and coincidences in their lives. At the marriage of Rupert's mother, the student Hampden was chosen to write the Oxford epithalamium, exulting in the prediction of some noble offspring to follow such a union. Rupert is about to be made General-in-chief of the Cavaliers; Hampden is looked to by all as the future General-in-chief of the Puritans. Rupert is the nephew of the King,--Hampden the cousin of Cromwell; and as the former is believed to be aiming at the Crown, so the latter is the only possible rival of Cromwell for the Protectorate,--"the eyes of all being fixed upon him as their _pater patriae_." But in all the greater qualities of manhood, how far must Hampden be placed above the magnificent and gifted Rupert! In a congress of natural noblemen--for such do the men of the C
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