to confirm his anticipations, and to tell him it was the king's pleasure that he should suffer at nine o'clock that morning. He received the news with utter composure. 'I am much bounden to the king,' he said, 'for the benefits and honours he has bestowed upon me; and so help me God, most of all am I bounden to him that it pleaseth his Majesty to rid me so shortly out of the miseries of this present world.'

Pope told him the king desired that he would not 'use many words on the scaffold.' 'Mr. Pope,' he answered, 'you do well to give me warning, for otherwise I had purposed somewhat to have spoken; but no matter wherewith his Grace should have cause to be offended. Howbeit, whatever I intended, I shall obey his Highness's command.'

He afterwards discussed the arrangements for his funeral, at which he begged that his family might be present; and when all was settled, Pope rose to leave him. He was an old friend. He took More's hand and wrung it, and, quite overcome, burst into tears.

'Quiet yourself, Mr. Pope,' More said, 'and be not discomfited, for I trust we shall once see each other full merrily, when we shall live and love together in eternal bliss.'

As soon as he was alone, he dressed in his most elaborate costume. It was for the benefit, he said, of the executioner who was to do him so great a service. Sir William Kingston remonstrated, and with some difficulty induced him to put on a plainer suit; but that his intended liberality should not fail, he sent the man a gold angel in compensation, ‘as a token that he maliced him nothing, but rather loved him extremely.'

'So about nine of the clock he was brought by the lieutenant out of the Tower, his beard being long, which fashion he had never before used, his face pale and lean, carrying in his hands a red cross, casting his eyes often towards heaven.' He had been unpopular as a judge, and one or two persons in the crowd were insolent to him; but the distance was short and soon over, as all else was nearly over now.

The scaffold had been awkwardly erected, and shook as he placed his foot on the ladder. 'See me safe up,' he said to Kingston. For my coming down I can shift for myself.' He began to speak to the people, but the sheriff begged him not to proceed, and he contented himself with asking for their prayers, and desiring them to bear witness for him that he died in the faith of the holy Catholic Church, and a faithful servant of God and the King. He then repeated the Miserere psalm on his knees; and when he had ended and had risen, the executioner, with an emotion which promised ill for the manner in which his part in the tragedy would be accomplished, begged his forgiveness. More kissed him. "Thou art to do me the greatest benefit that I can receive,' he said. 'Pluck up thy spirit, man, and be not afraid to do thine office. My neck is very short. Take heed therefore that thou strike not awry for saving of thine honesty.' The executioner offered to tie his eyes. 'I will cover them myself,' he said; and binding them in a cloth which he had brought with him, he knelt and laid his head upon the block. The fatal stroke was about to fall, when he signed for a moment's delay while he moved aside his beard. 'Pity that should be cut,' he murmured; 'that has not committed treason.' With which strange words, the strangest perhaps ever uttered at such a time, the lips most famous through Europe for eloquence and wisdom closed for ever.

'So,' concludes his biographer, 'with alacrity and spiritual joy he received the fatal axe, which no sooner had severed the head from the body, but his soul was carried by angels into everlasting glory, where a crown of martyrdom was placed upon him which can never fade nor decay; and then he found those words true which he had often spoken, that a man may lose his head and have no harm.'

This was the execution of Sir Thomas More, an act which was sounded out into the far corners of the earth, and was the world's wonder as well for the circumstances under which it was perpetrated as for the preternatural calmness with which

it was borne. Something of his calmness may have been due to his natural temperament, something to an unaffected weariness of a world which in his eyes was plunging into the ruin of the latter days. But those fair hues of sunny cheerfulness caught their colour from the simplicity of his faith; and never was there a Christian's victory over death more grandly evinced than in that last scene lighted with its lambent humour.

J. A. FROUDE.

THE PILGRIMS AND GIANT DESPAIR.

Now there was, not far from the place where they lay, a castle, called Doubting Castle, the owner whereof was Giant Despair, and it was in his grounds they now were sleeping; wherefore he, getting up in the morning early, and walking up and down in his fields, caught Christian and Hopeful asleep in his grounds. Then with a grim and surly voice he bid them awake, and asked them whence they were, and what they did in his grounds. They told him that they were pilgrims, and that they had lost their way. Then said the giant, 'You have this night trespassed on me by trampling in and lying on my grounds, and therefore you must go along with me.' So they were forced to go, because he was stronger than they. They also had but little to say, for they knew themselves in a fault. The giant, therefore, drove them before him, and put them into his castle, into a very dark dungeon, nasty and loathsome to the spirits of these two men. Here, then, they lay from Wednesday morning till Saturday night, without one bit of bread or drop of drink, or light, or any to ask how they did; they were, therefore, here in evil case, and were far from friends and acquaintance. Now, in this place Christian had double sorrow, because it was through his unadvised haste that they were brought into this distress.

Now Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence; so when he was gone to bed, he told his wife

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what he had done, to wit, that he had taken a couple of prisoners, and cast them into his dungeon for trespassing on his grounds. Then he asked her also what he had best to do further to them. So she asked him what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound, and he told her. Then she counselled him, that when he arose in the morning he should beat them without mercy. So when he arose, he getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel, and goes down into the dungeon to them, and there first falls to rating of them as if they were dogs, although they never gave him a word of distaste. Then he falls upon them, and beats them fearfully in such sort that they were not able to help themselves, or to turn them upon the floor. This done, he withdraws, and leaves them there to condole their misery, and to mourn under their distress so all that day they spent their time in nothing but sighs and bitter lamentations. The next night, she, talking with her husband further about them, and understanding that they were yet alive, did advise him to counsel them to make away with themselves. So, when morning was come, he goes to them in a surly manner, as before, and perceiving them to be very sore with the stripes that he had given them the day before, he told them that since they were never like to come out of that place, their only way would be forthwith to make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison; for why, said he, should you choose to live, seeing it is attended with so much bitterness? But they desired him to let them go. With that he looked ugly upon them, and, rushing to them, had doubtless made an end of them himself, but that he fell into one of his fits (for he sometimes in sunshiny weather fell into fits), and lost for a time the use of his hands; wherefore he withdrew, and left them as before to consider what to do.

Well, towards evening, the giant goes down into the dungeon again, to see if his prisoners had taken his counsel. But when he came there, he found them alive, and, truly, alive was all; for now, what for want of bread and water,

and by reason of the wounds they received when he beat them, they could do little but breathe. But, I say, he found them alive; at which he fell into a grievous rage, and told them, that seeing they had disobeyed his counsel, it should be worse with them than if they had never been born.

At this they trembled greatly, and I think that Christian fell into a swoon: but coming a little to himself again, they renewed their discourse about the giant's counsel, and whether yet they had best take it or no.

Now night being come again, and the giant and his wife being in bed, she asked him concerning the prisoners, and if they had taken his counsel; to which he replied, "They are sturdy rogues; they choose rather to bear all hardships than to make away with themselves.' Then said she, ‘Take them into the castle-yard to-morrow, and show them the bones and skulls of those thou hast already despatched, and make them believe, ere a week comes to an end, thou wilt tear them in pieces, as thou hast done their fellows before them.'

So when the morning was come, the giant goes to them again, and takes them into the castle-yard, and shows them as his wife had bidden him. 'These,' said he, 'were pilgrims as you are, once, and they trespassed on my grounds as you have done; and when I thought fit, I tore them in pieces; and so within ten days will I do you. Go, get you down to your den again,' and with that he beat them all the way thither. They lay therefore all day on Saturday in lamentable case as before. Now when night was come, and when Mrs. Diffidence and her husband the giant were got to bed, they began to renew their discourse of the prisoners; and withal the old giant wondered that he could neither by his blows nor counsel bring them to an end. And with that his wife replied, 'I fear,' said she, 'that they live in hopes that some will come to relieve them, or that they have picklocks about them, by the means of which they hope to escape.' 'And sayest thou so, my dear?' said the giant; 'I will therefore search them in the morning.'