And the refluent tide swept him and his fortune before it.

Oh that my King, ere he died, might have seen the fruit of his counsels !

Nay, it is better thus, the Monarch piously answer'd;
Here I can bear the joy; it comes as an earnest of Heaven.

Righteous art Thou, O Lord! long-suffering, but sure are thy judgements.

Then having paused awhile, like one in devotion abstracted,
Earthward his thoughts recurr'd, so deeply the care of his country

Lay in that royal soul reposed: and he said, Is the spirit

Quell'd which hath troubled the land? and the multitude freed from delusion,
Know they their blessings at last, and are they contented and thankful?

Still is that fierce and restless spirit at work, was the answer;

Still it deceiveth the weak, and inflameth the rash and the desperate.
Even now, I ween, some dreadful deed is preparing;

For the Souls of the Wicked are loose, and the Powers of Evil

Move on the wing alert. Some nascent horror they look for,

Be sure some accursed conception of filth and of darkness

Ripe for its monstrous birth. Whether France or Britain be threaten'd,
Soon will the issue show; or if both at once are endanger'd,1

For with the ghosts obscene of Robespierre, Danton, and Hebert,

Faux and Despard I saw, and the band of rabid fanatics,

They whom Venner led, who rising in frantic rebellion

Made the Redeemer's name their cry of slaughter and treason.

IV.

THE GATE OF HEAVEN.

THUS as he spake, methought the surrounding space dilated.

Over head I beheld the infinite ether; beneath us

Lay the solid expanse of the firmament spread like a pavement:
Wheresoever I look'd, there was light and glory around me.

Brightest it seem'd in the East, where the New Jerusalem glitter'd.
Eminent on a hill, there stood the Celestial City;

Beaming afar it shone; its towers and cupolas rising
High in the air serene, with the brightness of gold in the furnace,
Where on their breadth the splendour lay intense and quiescent:
Part with a fierier glow, and a short quick tremulous motion,
Like the burning pyropus; and turrets and pinnacles sparkled,
Playing in jets of light, with a diamond-like glory coruscant.
Groves of all hues of green their foliage intermingled,
Tempering with grateful shade the else unendurable lustre.
Drawing near, I beheld what over the portal was written:
This is the Gate of Bliss 2, it said; through me is the passage
To the City of God, the abode of beatified Spirits.
Weariness is not there, nor change, nor sorrow, nor parting;
Time hath no place therein; nor evil. Ye who would enter,
Drink of the Well of Life, and put away all that is earthly.

O'er the adamantine gates an Angel stood on the summit.
Ho! he exclaim'd, King George of England cometh to judgement !
Hear Heaven! Ye Angels hear! Souls of the Good and the Wicked
Whom it concerns, attend! Thou, Hell, bring forth his accusers!
As the sonorous summons was utter'd, the Winds, who were waiting,

The murder of the Duke of Berry, and the Cato-street piracy, were both planned at the time of the King's

h.

The reader will so surely think of the admirable passage ante, which was in the writer's mind when these lines composed, that I should not think it necessary to notice

the imitation, were it not that we live in an age of plagiarism; when not our jackdaws only, but some of our swans also, trick themselves in borrowed plumage. I have never contracted an obligation of this kind, either to contemporary, or predecessor, without acknowledging it.

Bore it abroad through Heaven; and Hell, in her nethermost caverns,
Heard, and obey'd in dismay.

Anon a body of splendour

Gather'd before the gate, and veil'd the Ineffable Presence,

Which, with a rushing of wings, came down. The sentient ether
Shook with that dread descent, and the solid firmament trembled.

Round the cloud were the Orders of Heaven... Archangel and Angel,
Principality, Cherub and Seraph, Thrones, Dominations,

"

Virtues, and Powers. The Souls of the Good, whom Death had made perfect,

Flocking on either hand, a multitudinous army,

Came at the aweful call. In semicircle inclining,

Tier over tier they took place: aloft, in the distance,

Far as the sight could pierce, that glorious company glisten'd.
From the skirts of the shining assembly, a silvery vapour
Rose in the blue serene, and moving onward it deepen'd,
Taking a denser form; the while from the opposite region
Heavy and sulphurous clouds roll'd on, and completed the circle.
There with the Spirits accurst, in congenial darkness enveloped,
Were the Souls of the Wicked, who wilful in guilt and in error,
Chose the service of sin, and now were abiding its wages.
Change of place to them brought no reprieval from anguish ;
They in their evil thoughts and desires of impotent malice,
Envy, and hate, and blasphemous rage, and remorse unavailing,
Carried a Hell within, to which all outer affliction,

So it abstracted the sense, might be deem'd a remission of torment.
At the edge of the cloud, the Princes of Darkness were marshall'd:
Dimly descried within were wings and truculent faces;
And in the thick obscure there struggled a mutinous uproar,
Railing, and fury, and strife, that the whole deep body of darkness
Roll'd like a troubled sea, with a wide and a manifold motion.

V.

THE ACCUSERS

On the cerulean floor by that dread circle surrounded,
Stood the soul of the King alone. In front was the Presence
Veil'd with excess of light; and behind was the blackness of darkness.
Then might be seen the strength of holiness, then was its triumph,
Calm in his faith he stood, and his own clear conscience upheld him.

When the trumpet was blown, and the Angel made proclamation—
Lo, where the King appears! Come forward ye who arraign him!
Forth from the lurid cloud a Demon came at the summons.
It was the Spirit by which his righteous reign had been troubled ;
Likest in form uncouth to the hideous Idols whom India
(Long by guilty neglect to hellish delusions abandon'd)
Worships with horrible rites of self-immolation and torture.
Many-headed and monstrous the Fiend; with numberless faces,

Numberless bestial ears erect to all rumours, and restless,

And with numberless mouths which were fill'd with lies as with arrows:
Clamours arose as he came, a confusion of turbulent voices,

Maledictions, and blatant tongues, and viperous hisses;

And in the hubbub of senseless sounds the watchwords of faction,
Freedom, Invaded Rights, Corruption, and War, and Oppression,
Loudly enounced were heard.

But when he stood in the Presence,

Then was the Fiend dismay'd, though with impudence clothed as a garment,
And the lying tongues were mute, and the lips which had scatter'd
Accusation and slander, were still. No time for evasion

This, in the Presence he stood: no place for flight; for dissembling
No possibility there. From the souls on the edge of the darkness,

Two he produced, prime movers and agents of mischief, and bade them

Show themselves faithful now to the cause for which they had labour'd.
Wretched and guilty souls, where now their audacity? Where now
Are the insolent tongues so ready of old at rejoinder?
Where the lofty pretences of public virtue and freedom?

Where the gibe, and the jeer, and the threat, the envenom'd invective,
Calumny, falsehood, fraud, and the whole ammunition of malice?
Wretched and guilty souls, they stood in the face of their Sovereign,
Conscious and self-condemn'd; confronted with him they had injured,
At the Judgement-seat they stood.

Beholding the foremost,

Him by the cast of his eye oblique, I knew as the firebrand
Whom the unthinking populace held for their idol and hero,
Lord of Misrule in his day. But how was that countenance alter'd
Where emotion of fear or of shame had never been witness'd;
That invincible forehead abash'd; and those eyes wherein malice
Once had been wont to shine with wit and hilarity temper'd,
Into how deep a gloom their mournful expression had settled!
Little avail'd it now that not from a purpose malignant,
Not with evil intent he had chosen the service of evil;
But of his own desires the slave, with profligate impulse,
Solely by selfishness moved, and reckless of aught that might follow.
Could he plead in only excuse a confession of baseness?

Could he hide the extent of his guilt; or hope to atone for

up by numbers of different ballads, sung or roared in every street) requiring gentlemen and ladies of all ranks, as they passed in their carriages, to shout for Wilkes and liberty, marking the same words on all their coaches with chalk, and No. 45. on every door, which extends a vast way along the roads in the country. I went last week to Winchester, and observed that for fifteen miles out of town there was scarce a door or window-shutter next the road unmarked: and this continued here and there quite to Winchester, which is sixtyfour miles.

1 "Our New World," says M. Simond, "has generally | diately carrying it for the principal county. The mob (spirited the credit of having first lighted the torch which was to illuminate, and soon set in a blaze, the finest part of Europe; yet I think the flint was struck, and the first spark elicited, by the patriot, John Wilkes, a few years before. In a time of profound peace, the restless spirits of men, deprived of other objects of public curiosity, seized, with avidity, on those questions which were then agitated with so much violence in England, touching the rights of the people, and of the government, and the nature of power. The end of the political drama was in favour of what was called, and in some respects was, the liberty of the people. Encouraged by the success of this great comedian, the curtain was no sooner dropt on the scene of Europe, than new actors hastened to raise it again in America, and to give the world a new play, infinitely more interesting, and more brilliant, than the first."

Dr. Franklin describes the state of things during the reign of Wilkes and liberty. He says, "There have been amazing contests all over the kingdom, twenty or thirty thousand pounds of a side spent in several places, and inconceivable mischief done by drunken mad mobs to houses, windows, &c. The scenes have been horrible. London was illuminated two nights running, at the command of the mob, for the success of Wilkes in the Middlesex election; the second night exceeded any thing of the kind ever seen here on the greatest occasions of rejoicing, as even the small cross streets, lanes, courts, and other out-of-the-way places, were all in a blaze with lights, and the principal streets all night long, as the mobs went round again after two o'clock, and obliged people who had extinguished their candles, to light them again. Those who refused had all their windows destroyed. The damage done, and the expense of candles, has been computed at fifty thousand pounds. It must have been great, though probably not so much. The ferment is not yet over, for he has promised to surrender to the court next Wednesday, and another tumult is then expected; and what the upshot will be, no one can yet foresee. It is really an extraordinary event, to see an outlaw and exile, of bad personal character, not worth a farthing, come over from France, set himself up as a candidate for the capital of the kingdom, miss his election only by being too late in his application, and imme

Even this capital, the residence of the king, is now a daily scene of lawless riot and confusion. Mobs patrolling the street at noon-day, some knocking all down that will not roar for Wilkes and liberty; courts of justice afraid to give judgement against him; coal-heavers and porters pulling down the houses of coal-merchants that refuse to give them more wages; sawyers destroying saw-mills; sailors unrigging all the outward-bound ships, and suffering none to sail till merchants agree to raise their pay; watermen destroying private boats, and threatening bridges; soldiers firing among the mobs, and killing men, women, and children, which seems only to have produced an universal sullenness, that looks like a great black cloud coming on, ready to burst in a general tempest. What the event will be God only knows. But some punishment seems preparing for a people who are ungratefully abusing the best constitution, and the best king, any nation was ever blessed with; intent on nothing but luxury, licentiousness, power, places, pensions, and plunder, while the ministry, divided in their councils, with little regard for each other, wearied by perpetual oppositions, in continual apprehension of changes, intent on securing popularity, in case they should lose favour, have, for some years past, had little time or inclination to attend to our small affairs, whose remoteness makes them appear still smaller.

All respect to law and government seems to be lost among the common people, who are moreover continually inflamed by seditious scribblers to trample on authority, and every thing that used to keep them in order."

Thence in natural birth sedition, revolt, revolution;

France had received the seeds, and reap'd the harvest of horrors; ..
Where... where should the plague be stay'd? Oh, most to be pitied
They of all souls in bale, who see no term to the evil

They by their guilt have raised, no end to their inner upbraidings!

Him I could not choose but know, nor knowing but grieve for.
Who might the other be, his comrade in guilt and in suffering,
Brought to the proof like him, and shrinking like him from the trial?
Nameless the libeller lived, and shot his arrows in darkness;
Undetected he pass'd to the grave, and leaving behind him
Noxious works on earth, and the pest of an evil example,
Went to the world beyond, where no offences are hidden.
Mask'd had he been in his life, and now a visor of iron
Rivetted round his head, had abolish'd his features for ever.
Speechless the slanderer stood, and turn'd his face from the Monarch
Iron-bound as it was,.. so insupportably dreadful

Soon or late to conscious guilt is the eve of the injured.

Caitiffs, are ye dumb? cried the multifaced Demon in anger
Think ye then by shame to shorten the term of your penance?
Back to your penal dens!... And with horrible grasp gigantic
Seizing the guilty pair, he swung them aloft, and in vengeance
Hurl'd them all abroad, far into the sulphurous darkness.
Sons of Faction, be warn'd! And ye, ye Slanderers! learn ye
Justice, and bear in mind, that after death there is judgement.1
Whirling, away they flew. Nor long himself did he tarry,

Ere from the ground where he stood, caught up by a vehement whirlwind,
He too was hurried away; and the blast with lightning and thunder
Vollying aright and aleft amid the accumulate blackness,
Scatter'd its inmates accurst, and beyond the limits of ether
Drove the hircine host obscene: the howling and groaning
Fell precipitate, down to their dolorous place of endurance.
Then was the region clear; the arrowy flashes which redden'd
Through the foul thick throng, like sheeted argentry floating
Now o'er the blue serene, diffused an innocuous splendour,
In the infinite dying away. The roll of the thunder

Ceased, and all sounds were hush'd, till again from the gate adamantine
Was the voice of the Angel heard through the silence of Heaven.

VI.

THE ABSOLVERS.

Ho! he exclaim'd, King George of England standeth in judgement !
Hell hath been dumb in his presence. Ye who on earth arraign'd him,

Come ye before him now, and here accuse or absolve him!

For injustice hath here no place.

From the Souls of the Blessed

Some were there then who advanced; and more from the skirts of the meeting,
Spirits who had not yet accomplish'd their purification,

Yet being cleansed from pride, from faction and error deliver'd,
Purged of the film wherewith the eye of the mind is clouded,

They, in their better state, saw all things clear; and discerning

Now in the light of truth what tortuous views had deceived them,
They acknowledged their fault, and own'd the wrong they had offer'd;
Not without ingenuous shame, and a sense of compunction,

More or less, as each had more or less to atone for.

One alone remain'd, when the rest had retired to their station:
Silently he had stood, and still unmoved and in silence,

With a steady mien, regarded the face of the Monarch.

"Discite justitiam moniti, et non temnere Divos."—Virgil.

Thoughtful awhile he gazed; severe, but serene, was his aspect;
Calm, but stern; like one whom no compassion could weaken,
Neither could doubt deter, nor violent impulses alter;
Lord of his own resolves,.. of his own heart absolute master.
Aweful Spirit! his place was with ancient sages and heroes:
Fabius, Aristides, and Solon, and Epaminondas.

Here then at the Gate of Heaven we are met! said the Spirit;
King of England! albeit in life opposed to each other,
Here we meet at last. Not unprepared for the meeting
Ween I; for we had both outlived all enmity, rendering

Each to each that justice which each from each had withholden.

In the course of events, to thee I seem'd as a Rebel,

Thou a Tyrant to me; ... so strongly doth circumstance rule men
During evil days, when right and wrong are confounded.

Left to our hearts we were just. For me, my actions have spoken,
That not for lawless desires, nor goaded by desperate fortunes,
Nor for ambition, I chose my part; but observant of duty,

Self-approved. And here, this witness I willingly bear thee,..
Here, before Angels and Men, in the aweful hour of judgement, . .
Thou too didst act with upright heart, as befitted a Sovereign
True to his sacred trust, to his crown, his kingdom, and people. 1
Heaven in these things fulfill'd its wise, though inscrutable purpose,
While we work'd its will, doing each in his place as became him.

Washington! said the Monarch, well hast thou spoken and truly,
Just to thyself and to me. On them is the guilt of the contest,
Who, for wicked ends, with foul arts of faction and falsehood,
Kindled and fed the flame: but verily they have their guerdon.
Thou and I are free from offence. And would that the nations,
Learning of us, would lay aside all wrongful resentment,
All injurious thought, and honouring each in the other
Kindred courage and virtue, and cognate knowledge and freedom,
Live in brotherhood wisely conjoin'd. We set the example.
They who stir up strife, and would break that natural concord,
Evil they sow, and sorrow will they reap for their harvest.

VII.

THE BEATIFICATION.

WHEN that Spirit withdrew, the Monarch around the assembly
Look'd, but none else came forth; and he heard the voice of the Angel,..
King of England, speak for thyself! here is none to arraign thee.

1 I am pleased to find (since the first publication of this poem) the same opinion forcibly expressed by Cowper. "It appears to me," he says (writing in 1782), “that the king is bound both by the duty he owes to himself and to his people, to consider himself, with respect to every inch of his territories, as a trustee deriving his interest in them from God, and invested with them by divine authority, for the benefit of his subjects. As he may not sell them, or waste them, so he may not resign them to an enemy, or transfer his right to govern them to any, not even to themselves, so long as it is possible for him to keep it. If he does, he betrays at once his own interest, and that of his other dominions. It may be said, suppose Providence has ordained that they shall be wrested from him, how then? I answer, that cannot appear to be the case, till God's purpose is actually accomplished; and in the mean time the most probable prospect of such an event does not release him from his obligation to hold them to the last moment, forasmuch as adverse appearances are no infallible indications of God's designs, but may give place to more comfortable symptoms when we least expect it. View

ing the thing in this light, if I sat on his Majesty's throne, I should be as obstinate as him, because if I quitted the contest while I had any means left of carrying it on, I should never know that I had not relinquished what I might have retained, or be able to render a satisfactory answer to the doubts and enquiries of my own conscience."

The wise and dignified manner in which the late King received the first minister from the United States of America is well known. It is not so generally known that anxiety and sleeplessness, during the American war, are believed by those persons who had the best opportunity for forming an opinion upon the subject, to have laid the foundation of that malady by which the King was afflicted during the latter years of his life.

Upon the publication of Captain Cook's Voyages, a copy of this national work was sent to Dr. Franklin, by the King's desire, because he had given orders for the protection of that illustrious navigator, in case he should fall in with any American cruisers on his way home.