But that may not be.  Had Hampden’s earlier counsels prevailed, Rupert never would have ventured on his night foray; had his next suggestions been followed, Rupert never would have returned from it.  Those failing, Hampden has come, gladly followed by Gunter and his dragoons, outstripping the tardy Essex, to dare all and die.  In vain does Gunter perish beside his flag; in vain does Crosse, his horse being killed under him, spring in the midst of battle on another; in vain does “that great-spirited little Sir Samuel Luke” (the original of Hudibras) get thrice captured and thrice escape.  For Hampden, the hope of the nation, is fatally shot through the shoulder with two carbine-balls, in the first charge; the whole troop sees it with dismay; Essex comes up, as usual, too late, and the fight at Chalgrove Field is lost.

We must leave this picture, painted in the fading colors of a far-off time.  Let us leave the noble Hampden, weak and almost fainting, riding calmly from the field, and wandering away over his own Chiltern meadows, that he loves so well,—­leave him, drooping over his saddle, directing his horse first towards his father-in-law’s house at Pyrton, where once he wedded his youthful bride, then turning towards Thame, and mustering his last strength to leap his tired steed across its boundary brook.  A few days of laborious weakness, spent in letter-writing to urge upon Parliament something of that military energy which, if earlier adopted, might have saved his life,—­and we see a last, funereal procession winding beneath the Chiltern hills, and singing the 90th Psalm as the mourners approach the tomb of the Hampdens, and the 43d as they return.  And well may the “Weekly Intelligencer” say of him, (June 27, 1643,) that “the memory of this deceased Colonel is such that in no age to come but it will more and more be had in honor and esteem; a man so religious, and of that prudence, judgment, temper, valor, and integrity, that he hath left few his like behind him.”

And we must leave Rupert to his career of romantic daring, to be made President of Wales and Generalissimo of the army,—­to rescue with unequalled energy Newark and York and the besieged heroine of Lathom House,—­to fight through Newbury and Marston Moor and Naseby, and many a lesser field,—­to surrender Bristol and be acquitted by court-martial, but hopelessly condemned by the King;—­then to leave the kingdom, refusing a passport, and fighting his perilous way to the seaside;—­then to wander over the world for years, astonishing Dutchmen by his seamanship, Austrians by his soldiership, Spaniards and Portuguese by his buccaneering powers, and Frenchmen by his gold and diamonds and birds and monkeys and “richly-liveried Blackamoors";—­then to reorganize the navy of England, exchanging characters with his fellow-commander, Monk, whom the ocean makes rash, as it makes Rupert prudent;—­leave him to use nobly his declining years, in studious toils in Windsor Castle, the fulfilment of Milton’s