, escorting a young
lady, who bending down to the headstone of Goffe's grave, examined it a
few minutes attentively, and then started up, and went away with her
happy protector, exclaiming, "I must leave it to Old Mortality, for I
can see nothing at all." I found it as she had said, and left it without
any better satisfaction; but, during the evening, happening to mention
these facts, I was shown a drawing of both Goffe's and Whalley's
memorials; by help of which, on repeating my visit early next morning, I
observed the very curious marks which give them additional interest.
Looking more carefully at Whalley's headstone, one observes a 7 strongly
blended with the 5, in the date which I had copied; so that it may be
read as I had taken it, or it may be read 1678, the true date of
Whalley's demise. This same cipher is repeated on the footstone, and is
evidently intentional. Nor is the grave of Goffe less curious. The stone
is at first read, "M. G. 80;" but, looking closer, you discover a
superfluous line cut under the M, to hint that it must not be taken for
what it seems. It is in fact a W reversed, and the whole means, "W. G.
1680;" the true initials, and date of death of William Goffe. If Dixwell
was not himself the engraver of these rude devices, he doubtless
contrived them; and they have well accomplished their purpose, of
avoiding detection in their own day, and attracting notice in ours.

There was something that touched me, in spite of myself, in thus
standing by these rude graves, and surveying the last relicts of men
born far away in happy English homes, who once made a figure among the
great men, and were numbered with the lawful senators of a free and
prosperous state! I own that, for a moment, I checked my impulses of
pity, and thought whether it would not be virtuous to imitate the Jews
in Palestine, who, to this day, throw a pebble at Absalom's pillar, as
they pass it in the King's Dale, to show their horror of the rebel's
unnatural crime. But I finally concluded that it was better to be a
Christian in my hate, as well as in my love, and to take no worse
revenge than to recite, over the ashes of the regicides, that sweet
prayer for the 30th of January, which magnifies God, for the grace given
to the royal martyr, "by which he was enabled, in a constant meek
suffering of all barbarous indignities, to resist unto blood, and then,
according to the Saviour's pattern, to pray for his murderers."

Two hundred ye