“Be it your charge, my lord, to see performed the tenor of our word,” says the King to the Chief Justice; and Falstaff, though sorely wounded in feelings, is still not without hope. But see what a royal word, or what _this_ royal word is! The Monarch has no sooner passed on his way, than the Chief Justice fulfils its meaning, by ordering Sir John Falstaff and all his company to be close-confined in the Fleet! The great dignitary does this with as much hurried glee as we may conjecture Lord Campbell would have had, in rendering the same service to Miss Agnes Strickland, when the latter accused the judge of stealing her story of Queen Eleanor of Provence. However this may be, the royal ingratitude broke the proud heart in the bosom of Sir John. He took to his bed, and never smiled again. “The King has killed his heart,” is the bold assertion of Dame Quickly, at a time when such an assertion might have cost her her liberty, if not her life. How edifying too was his end! He did not “babble o’ green fields.” Mr. Collier has proved this, to the satisfaction of all Exeter Hall, who would deem such light talk trifling. But he died arguing against “the whore of Babylon,” which should make him find favor even with Dr. Cumming, for it is a proof of the knight’s Protestantism--and “Would I were with him,” exclaims honest lieutenant Bardolph, with more earnestness than reverence--“Would I were with him, wheresome’er he is; either in heaven or in hell.” If this has a profane ring in it, let us think of the small education and the hard life of him who uttered it. There was more profanity and terrible blasphemy to boot, in the assertion of Prince Menschikoff, after the death of the Czar Nicholas, namely, “that his late august master might be seen in the skies blessing his armies on their way to victory!” Decidedly, I prefer Bardolph to Menschikoff, and Falstaff to both.