nature, would have relied upon so poor a trifle? Yet even this inconsiderable bias was much more than balanced by another of the same kind but in the opposite direction. Colonel Hammond was nephew to the king's chaplain, but in the meantime he was the husband of Cromwell's niece; and upon Cromwell privately, and the whole faction of the Independents politically, he relied for all his hopes of advancement. The result was, that, from mere inertia of mind and criminal negligence in his two attendants, the poor king had run right into the custody of the very jailer whom his enemies would have selected by preference. Thus, then, from fear of being made a prisoner Charles had quietly walked into the military prison of Carisbrook Castle. The very security of this prison, however, might throw the governor off his guard. Another escape might be possible; and again an escape was arranged. It reads like some leaf torn from the records of a lunatic hospital, to hear its circumstances and the particular point upon which it split. Charles was to make his exit through a window. This window, however, was fenced by iron bars; and these bars had been to a certain extent eaten through with _aqua fortis_. The king had succeeded in pushing his head through, and upon that result he relied for his escape; for he connected this trial with the following strange maxim or postulate, viz., that wheresoever the head could pass, there the whole person could pass. It needs not to be said, that, in the final experiment, this absurd rule was found not to hold good. The king stuck fast about the chest and shoulders, and was extricated with some difficulty. Had it even been otherwise, the attempt would have failed; for, on looking down from amidst the iron bars, the king beheld, in the imperfect light, a number of people who were not among his accomplices.