"_June_ 18.--Mr. Hampden wounded in trying to keep off Prince Rupert's plunderers, until Lord Essex came. Lord Essex did not come in time, and Mr. Hampden went off the field sorely wounded. They say he felt himself death-stricken, and turned his horse towards the house of his first wife, whom he loved so dearly, that he might die there. But his strength failed. It was as much as he could do to make one last effort, and spurring his horse over a little brook which bounded the field, to find his way to the nearest village, and home. "_June_ 24.--Mr. Hampden died, thinking to the last more of his country than himself. In the midst of terrible pain he wrote (my Father tells us) to entreat Lord Essex to act with more vigour, and to collect his forces round London. He received the sacrament, and spoke with affection of the services of the Church of England, although not altogether so of her bishops. He received the Lord's Supper, and for himself looked humbly and peacefully to God. But for England his heart looked sorrowfully onward. And his last words were, 'Lord, have mercy on my bleeding country;' and then another prayer, the end not heard by mortal ears. My Father writes: 'His love for his country will scarce fail in the better country whither he is gone. But his counsel and all his slowly garnered treasures of wisdom are lost to us for ever.'" The next death marked is-- "_September_ 20.--A battle at Newbury, in Gloucestershire. Lord Falkland killed. Once Hampden's friend, and now (must it not be?) his friend again. A good man, and gentle, and wise, they say. I wonder how it all looks and sounds there where they are gone." And the next-- "_November_.--Mr. Pym is dead. They have buried him among the kings in Westminster Abbey. I wonder how many of the people who began the war will be fighting at the end of it, and whether they will be fighting for the same things as when they began." Then, mixed up with these notices of the dead, are long accounts of skirmishes and fights, which every one thought all-important then, but which no one thinks of now, save those who have their beloved dead lying beneath the fields where they were fought. And through it all a steady going downward and downward of the Parliament cause, from that fatal June, 1643, when Hampden died, to near the close of the following year. "_June_ 30, 1643.--The Fairfaxes defeated at Atherton Moor. "_July 13_.--Sir William Waller (once vainly boasted of as William the Conqueror) defeated, and his army scattered, in Lansdowne. "_July_ 22.--Prince Rupert took Bristol."