Two precedents belonging to the earlier period deserve to stand apart, not only for historic importance, but for applicability to our times. The first was the effort to institute mediation between King Charles the First and his Parliament, attempted by Cardinal Mazarin, that powerful minister, who, during the minority of Louis the Fourteenth, swayed France. The civil war had been waged for years; good men on each side had fallen,--Falkland fighting for the King, and Hampden fighting for the Parliament,--and other costliest blood been shed on the fields of Edgehill, Newbury, Marston Moor, and Naseby, when the ambitious Cardinal, wishing to serve the King, promised, as Clarendon relates, “to press the Parliament so imperiously, and to denounce a war against them, if they refused to yield to what was reasonable.”[58] For this important service he selected the famous Pomponne de Bellièvre, of a family tried in public duties,--himself President of the Parliament of Paris and peer of France,--conspicuous in personal qualities as in place, whose beautiful head, preserved by the graver of Nanteuil, is illustrious in Art, and whose dying charity lives still in the great hospital of the Hôtel Dieu, at Paris. Arriving at London, the graceful ambassador presented himself to that Long Parliament which knew so well how to guard English rights. At once every overture was rejected in formal proceedings, from which I copy these words: “We do declare that we ourselves have been careful to improve all occasions to compose these unhappy troubles, _yet we have not, neither can we, admit of any mediation or interposing betwixt the King and us by any foreign prince or state_. And we desire that his Majesty, the French King, will rest satisfied with this our resolution and answer.”[59] On the committee which drew this reply was John Selden, unsurpassed for learning and ability in the whole splendid history of the English bar, in every book of whose library was written, “Before everything, Liberty,” and also that Harry Vane whom Milton, in one of his most inspired sonnets, addresses as “Vane, young in years, but in sage counsel old, Than whom a better Senator ne’er held The helm of Rome, when gowns, not arms, repelled The fierce Epirot and the African bold.” The answer of such men is a precedent for us, especially should England, taking up the rejected policy of Mazarin, presumptuously send any ambassador to stay the Republic in its war with Slavery.