It is useless to attempt, without authentic materials, to fill in the faint outline of an historic figure. But judging from such indications as we have, we should be inclined to say that Falkland, instead of being a man of extraordinarily serene and well-balanced mind, was rather excitable and impulsive. His tones and gestures are vehement; where another man would be content to protest against what he thought an undeserved act of homage by simply keeping his hat on, Falkland rams his down upon his head with both his hands. He goes most ardently with the popular party through the early stages of the revolution; then he somewhat abruptly breaks away from it, disgusted with its defects, though they certainly did not exceed those of other parties under the same circumstances, and feeling in himself no power to control it and keep it in the right path. He is under the influence of others, first of Hampden and then of Hyde, to an extent hardly compatible with the possession of a mind of first-rate power. When he is taxed with inconsistency for going round upon the Bill for removing the Bishops from Parliament, his plea is that at the time when he voted for the Bill "he had been persuaded by that worthy gentleman (Hampden) to believe many things which he had since found to be untrue, and therefore he had changed his opinion in many particulars as well to things as persons." Hampden himself would hardly have been led by anybody's persuasions on the great question of the day. Clarendon tells us that his friend, from his experience of the Short Parliament, "contracted such a reverence for Parliaments that he thought it really impossible they could ever produce mischief or inconvenience to the kingdom." We always regard with some suspicion Clarendon's artful touches, otherwise we should say that there is a pretty brusque change from this unbounded reverence for the Short Parliament to an appearance in arms against its successor, especially as the leader and soul of both Parliaments was Pym.