THE DOCTOR. OJ 



iron despotism so discernible throughout the whole of Henry's 



M. R. S.L. 



reign.* 



THE DOCTOR. 



If the permanence of our first impressions be sometimes an evil, 

 thereby perpetuating the errors of infancy from the child to the 

 father, from the father to the child, until sin and sorrow grow into 

 an hereditary doom, yet how much of happiness do we owe to the 

 lastingness of first impressions, belonging to a period of sinlessness 

 and innocence when the tender affections were expanded like the 

 opening petal to every beam of light and brightness — impressions 



that, as the sacred volume had been the companion and solace of his impri- 

 sonment, he might open on some passage which might strengthen him in his 

 last conflict. Having thus prayed, he opened the book — let not the Chris- 

 tian say fortuitously — and his eyes rested on the following passage of Saint 

 John : — * This is life eternal, to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus 

 Christ whom thou hast sent.' He again closed the book with joy, and the 

 consolatory declaration was the subject of his meditations, until his mortal 

 existence was terminated by the hand of the executioner." — Carwithen's 

 History of the Church of England^ v. i., p. 143 — 144. 



• In the subsequent reigns of the first James and the first Charles, this 

 revolting spectacle of the judges bowing to the supremacy of the power of 

 the crown, instead of presenting themselves as ramparts against the excesses 

 of political tyranny, and so protecting the subject from the most odious of 

 all wrongs, the most vexatious of all injustice, has been strongly pointed out 

 by Clarendon. The very spirit of the English constitution seems to speak 

 in him, when he says, — " The damage and mischief cannot be expressed that 

 the crown and state sustained by the undeserved reproach and infamy that 

 attended the judges by being made use of in acts of power. In the wisdom 

 of former times, when the prerogative went highest, never any court of law, 

 very seldom any judge or lawyer of reputation, was called upon to assist in 

 any act of power. The crown well knowing the moment of keeping those 

 the objects of reverence and veneration with the people, and that, though it 

 might sometimes make sallies upon them by the prerogative, yet the law 

 would keep the people from any invasion of it ; and that the king could never 

 suft'er whilst the law and the judges were looked upon by the subject as the 

 asylum for their liberties and security." — History of the Rebel fion,hooV i. 



