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A portion of it, which has since been cleaned and dried, is of a beautiful dark-brown color. That of the beard was a reddish-brown. On the back part of the head it was not more than an inch in length, and had probably been cut so short for the convenience of the executioner, or perhaps by the piety of friends after death in order to furnish memorials of the unhappy king. On holding up the head to determine the place of separation from the body, the muscles of the neck had evidently contracted themselves considerably, and the fourth cervical vertebra was found to be cut through its substance transversely, leaving the face of the divided portions perfectly smooth and even--an appearance which could have been produced only by a heavy blow inflicted with a very sharp instrument, and which furnished the last proof wanting to identify Charles I." [Illustration: HERNE'S OAK.] A highly-edifying spectacle this must have been to the prince regent and his brother Cumberland. The certainties of the past and the possibilities of the future were calculated to be highly suggestive. A French sovereign had but a few years before shared the fate of Charles, and a cloud of other kings were drifting about Europe with no very flattering prospect of coming soon to anchor. Napoleon was showing his banded foes a good double front in Germany and Spain. His dethronement and the restoration of the Bourbons were not as yet contemplated. The Spanish succession was whittled down to a girl--that is, by Salic law, to nothing at all. The Hanoverian was in a similar condition, or worse, none of the old sons of the crazy old king having any legitimate children. The prince regent himself was highly unpopular with the mass of his people; and the classes that formed his principal support were more so, by reason of the arrogance and exactions of the landed interest, the high price of grain and other heavy financial burdens consequent on the war, the arbitrary prosecutions and imprisonment of leaders of the people, and the irregularities of his private life. But these sinister omens proved illusory. Leigh Hunt, Wraxall and the rest made but ineffectual martyrs; the Bourbons straggled back into France and Spain, with such results as we see; George IV. weathered, by no merit of his own, a fresh series of storms at home; the clouds that lowered upon his house were made glorious summer by the advent of a fat little lady in 1819--the fat old lady of 1875; a
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