sooner out of this room of death, but the floor, that hung upon great hinges on one side, was let fall by artificial engines, and the poor vermin, Butler, dropped into a precipice, where he was never more heard of.”*

But however favourable the predictions of these same "learned Thebans" might be to the wishes of the duke for permanent power and confirmed prosperity, the decree had gone forth that should belie them all, and number this minion of fortune with the many other impressive instances of the instability of mortal greatness, so finely imaged by the poet of human nature:

"This is the state of man; to-day he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope; to-morrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honours thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost,
And when he thinks, good easy man, full sure
His greatness is a ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls."

He was now, at the early age of thirty-six, the Right High and Right Mighty Prince, George Villiers, Duke, Marquis, and Earl of Bucking

* Wilson's Life of King James, p. 791.

ham; Earl of Coventry; Viscount Villiers; Baron of Waddon; lord high admiral of England, Ireland, and the principality of Wales; governor of all the castles, and sea forts, and of the royal navy; master of the horse to his Majesty; lord warden, chancellor, and admiral of the cinque ports, and the members thereof; constable of the castle of Dover; justice in eyre of all his Majesty's forests, parks, and chases, on this side the Trent; constable of the royal castle of Windsor; gentleman of the king's bedchamber; counsellor of estate of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland; knight of the most noble Order of the Garter; lord president of the council of war; chancellor of the university of Cambridge; and lord general of his Majesty's forces in the Isle of Rhee ;* had taken the command of the fleet and army at Portsmouth, and was, probably, anticipating a revenge at Rochelle for his disgrace at the Isle of Rhee, when "a blow, as fearful as strange, from a poor tenpenny knife of Felton's, setting

* Granger's Biog. Hist. vol. ii. p. 278.

home," as Welldon expresses it,† unexpectedly laid himself and all his honours in the dust. The duke, on receiving the wound, seized the hilt of his sword, exclaiming, "God's wounds! the villain hath killed me." Being conveyed into an apartment, and laid upon a table, he pulled the knife out of his side, struggled with death for a quarter of an hour, breathed out his spirit,

"And left a name, at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale."

Felton, the assassin of the duke, was a lieutenant of infantry, who had served under his Grace at the Isle of Rhee, and conceived a mortal hatred against him, because the duke refused him the captaincy of the company, when its commander was killed in that unfortunate expedition. There seems to have been a predisposition to insanity in his constitution, which was developed by this and other disappointments. Though it is not improbable that the dark cast of his religious feelings might have furnished motives, also, to the atrocious

+ Court of King Charles, p. 46, 48.

deed. He was a gloomy enthusiast; and Buckingham having abandoned the puritans, and associated himself with Laud, in consequence of his quarrel with Dr. Preston, the head of the puritan party;* Felton might conceive that he was doing God service, by removing from the world so powerful an enemy of what, in his opinion, was the only true system of faith and discipline. The murderer was hung in chains at Portsmouth.

GEORGE HERIOT.

One of the most respectable personages in the novel of Nigel is George Heriot, or, as his Majesty (who delighted in imposing nicknames on his friends) was pleased to denominate him, "gingling Geordie," King James's goldsmith; and what renders the character

* In Mr. D'Israeli's new series of Curiosities of Literature, vol. iii. page 347, is a very entertaining article on this subject, entitled, "Buckingham's Political Coquetry with the Puritans."

the more interesting is the assurance that it has been copied from an equally amiable original. He was born in Edinburgh in 1563; carried on his lucrative trade in that city till James's accession to the throne of England; followed his master to his new kingdom; settled in London; and died rich, beloved, respected, and honoured, at the age of sixtyone, at his house in the parish of St. Martin's in the Fields, in the month of February, 1624. The large fortune which he accumulated during life, and so nobly disposed of at his death, was the necessary result of active industry, and steady prudence, operating, through a long course of business, in a trade at that time peculiarly gainful. The splendid discovery and conquest of the regions of gold and silver in the West, at the close of the fifteenth and the commencement of the sixteenth centuries, and the facilities of a trade with India, another world of gems and ingots, offered to adventurous spirits by the bold voyage of Vasco de Gama round the Cape of Good Hope, had thrown into Europe such a vast mass of bullion, as quickly rendered the dealers and manu