one English monarch for
another,--a virtuous prince for a false and a sanguinary king. True,
that the change from rose to rose had been so common amongst the
greatest and the bravest, that even the most rigid could scarcely
censure what the age itself had sanctioned. But what other man of his
stormy day had been so conspicuous in the downfall of those he was now
as conspicuously to raise? What other man had Richard of York taken
so dearly to his heart, to what other man had the august father said,
"Protect my sons"? Before him seemed literally to rise the phantom of
that honoured prince, and with clay-cold lips to ask, "Art thou, of all
the world, the doomsman of my first-born?" A groan escaped the breast of
the self-tormentor; he fell on his knees and prayed: "Oh, pardon, thou
All-seeing!--plead for me, Divine Mother! if in this I have darkly
erred, taking my heart for my conscience, and mindful only of a selfish
wrong! Oh, surely, no! Had Richard of York himself lived to know what
I have suffered from his unworthy son,--causeless insult, broken faith,
public and unabashed dishonour; yea, pardoning, serving, loving on
through all, till, at the last, nothing less than the foulest taint that
can light upon 'scutcheon and name was the cold, premeditated reward for
untired devotion,--surely, surely, Richard himself had said, 'Thy honour
at last forbids all pardon!'"

Then, in that rapidity with which the human heart, once seizing upon
self-excuse, reviews, one after one, the fair apologies, the earl
passed from the injury to himself to the mal-government of his land, and
muttered over the thousand instances of cruelty and misrule which
rose to his remembrance,--forgetting, alas, or steeling himself to the
memory, that till Edward's vices had assailed his own hearth and honour,
he had been contented with lamenting them, he had not ventured
to chastise. At length, calm and self-acquitted, he rose from his
self-confession, and leaning by the open casement, drank in the reviving
and gentle balm of the summer air. The state apartments he had left,
formed as we have before observed, an angle to the wing in which
the chamber he had now retired to was placed. They were brilliantly
illumined, their windows opened to admit the fresh, soft breeze of
night; and he saw, as if by daylight, distinct and gorgeous, in their
gay dresses, the many revellers within. But one group caught and riveted
his eye. Close by the centre window he recog