wished to rid the world of such a monster. According to others he died from an act of gluttony.

As I have mentioned the cathedral at Worcester, and shall have to mention it again presently, and as I am speaking to an audience of lawyers, I can not refrain from saying that there also lies our old friend Littleton, whom we know mostly through the writings of Coke. Perhaps a new edition of his works, in their old Norman French, would not sell quite so extensively as some of our modern novels; yet he did a good work in his day. Death makes strange bedfellows. Here lies the old hardworking lawyer, who first sought to explore in a thorough manner the occult mysteries of the feudal tenures, within a few paces of the last resting place of the king who by his crimes laid the axe to the root of the feudal system in England. Littleton ceased from his labors and entered upon his rest in 1481.

The tomb of John is the earliest royal monument ornamented with an effigy erected in England. It bears no inscription; but in another part of the cathedral is an old epitaph carved on a slab in the pavement, without name or date, marking the last resting place of some person unknown, whom "disaster followed fast and followed faster," and consisting of the single word Miserrimus. Surely if epitaphs were negotiable or interchangeable, King John could have had no better epitaph than this; for few men have had lives more wretched, more unloved. David Hume, one of the ablest apologists of royalty, has left behind him this picture of John:

"The character of this prince is nothing but a complication of vices, equally mean and odious, ruinous to himself, and destructive to his people. Cowardice, inactivity, folly, levity, licentiousness, treachery, ingratitude, tyranny and cruelty; all these qualities appear too evidently in the several incidents of his life to give us room to suspect that the disagreeable picture has been in any wise overcharged by the prejudice of the ancient historians."

I must demur, however, to the word "inactivity," as few men have been more active than this baleful and ill-starred monarch.

When Nero died, loaded down with universal execration, some one came in the night time, and sprinkled flowers on his grave. By some kindly deed he had attached to him some not

ungrateful heart. Of John, alive or dead, we have no such reminiscence; but in lieu thereof the assertion of his chronicler, who, in speaking of his death, tells us that "Hell felt itself defiled by the presence of John."

During the reign of the feeble son and successor or john, King Henry III, the Great Charter was confirmed in 1216, 1224, 1236 and 1253. In 1264 the commons were summoned to Parliament. Thus in less than half a century the Magna Charter brought about a complete revolution in the entire system of government, and England entered upon a new career. The Charter revived hope in human destiny at a time when hope seemed to be expiring in universal gloom.

Of the several duplicates of the Charter deposited in the different cathedrals, that which is to seen in the cathedral of Lincoln is said to be in the best state of preservation. Two of them are to be found in the British Museum. One of them was badly scorched by the fire that occurred at Westminster on the twenty-third day of October, 1731, which destroyed the building containing the Cottonian and Royal Libraries. It is a curious circumstance that that part of this copy which remains most legible, and which is indeed perfectly legible, is that portion that guarantees personal liberty and trial by jury, compared by Coke to the gold of the refiner. According to an account that we have, Sir Robert Cotton discovered this copy of the Charter at his tailor's just as he was about to cut it up for a pattern, and bought it for a trifle.

Of all the triumphs of light over darkness the Magna Charter stands conspicuous. In this heterogeneous world few are the great triumphs that are not stained with blood, and that do not bring in their train some kind of disappointment or disaster. But the revolution inaugurated by the Magna Charta was the greatest and the most peaceful that has ever been known. No Revolutionary Tribunal was established in Westminster Hall, no guillotine erected at Charing Cross. The Tower was not destroyed by a howling mob, intent on murder, to fix the date of an anniversary for national rejoicing. The school for kings endowed at Runnymede has been perpetuated; it represents the law, and is only terrible for the enemies of liberty.

Strange thoughts come to one that looks at the ancient Charter in the British Museum. Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Jack Cade these words:

"Is not this a lamentable thing,

That of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment;

That parchment being scribbled o'er, should undo a man?"

So this parchment on which the Great Charter is written is the skin of an innocent lamb that once bleated in the English fields, which, being scribbled o'er with words of magical import, written in a language long since dead, while it brought the heads of Laud and Strafford and Charles to the block, has given life and hope to the oppressed, has opened the prison door for the persecuted and the friendless, and shall do so again for all generations, world without end. What a strange potency in this little sheet of parchment. A breath of wind might blow it away. But the head of the church on earth had invoked the wrath of heaven upon it, kings had renounced it, physical fire had charred it, and in the irony of fate a pair of tailor's shears had threatened it; and yet here it remains, powerful and indestructible as ever, announcing its deathless and indelible message, speaking from eternity to eternity. This little sheet of shriveled parchment has revolutionized the history of the world. Without it the growth of England and the political existence of America would never have been.

If we confine our attention to England alone how great has been the change. Standing today on the battlements of the Norman Keep at Windsor one sees unrolled before him a rural landscape of wide extent, whose quiet beauty is not surpassed the whole world over. The castle, gray with age, is the most imposing relic of the feudal time; the home of the English sovereigns for eight hundred years. Its massive bastions and towers produce an impression of strength, reminding us that here for ages the principle of monarchy has symbolized itself in enduring stone. But the prison beneath, where Lady Bramber and her son were starved to death, where a Scottish king and many others pined in captivity in the ages gone by, is tenantless; and all around on the open lawns, the green grass, the unfolding flowers, the waving trees, the clinging

vines, the absence of military signs and emblems, declare that if this is the home of royalty it is the home of a royalty that is no longer an object of dread and terror, but a royalty which, however high, is peacefully sheltered under the wing of the law. As the eye wanders where the gleaming river cleaves its emerald banks, two villages are seen near together, some miles away. These are the villages of Egham and Staines. Between Staines and Windsor the silver current of the river is seen to divide so as to enclose a small island, a gem set in its rim of shining waters. On the island a cottage from which a column of white smoke curls upward in the sunshine above a clump of trees. Well may the eye rest on that vision with a sense of pride and rapture; for there the greatest victory of all time was won; and a glory hovers over that field that never shone even on Marathon; for that island is Magna Charta Island, and the valley is the valley of Runnymede. Peaceful as it seems today, it was there that the embattled barons marshaled their hosts, and held King John at bay.

There is something dramatic, impressive, and even aweinspiring, about the manner in which the great Charter came upon the stage of human action in an age of profound darkness and discouragement. It was if another sun had risen on the horizon; as if part of man's ancestral sin had been forgiven. It seemed too good to be true that a lot of unlettered men, aided by a learned ecclesiastic, had been able to roll back the immemorial tide of despotism that for centuries had held the world in thrall, rising higher than forty cubits above the tops of the highest mountains. Such a triumph naturally awakened incredulity. Could this victory, pursued only to meet a dire emergency, seemingly a mere temporary expedient, change forever the whole current of history? Compared with this question the rise and fall of empires might well have been regarded as trivial and insignificant; King John and all his tribe as no more than the dust of the balance.

Judging from the past the future was dark and uncertain. What did the debased and servile flatterers of Tiberius care for the memory of the Gracchi? Did not the Greeks preserve the Pyrric dance when the Pyrric phalanx had been long forgotten? How many martyrs had lain down their lives in vain. oblation?

To the doubter and the man of little faith the Charter was merely a ripple on the stream of time. In the nature of things it must soon pass away and die with the impulse in which it had its origin. In point of fact these prognostications were seemingly fulfilled.

Curran said that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." But there can be no liberty that is not based on law. That is what the barons knew; and that is why they reduced the Charter strictly to the form of law. When the law is gone the fabric of liberty, deprived of all support, crumbles to its very foundations, as happened in the long and ruinous wars of the Roses, during which the Charter drifted completely out of sight. The governments of Henry VIII of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth were as thoroughly despotic as that of King John. James I. preached the doctrine of the divine right of kings and the duty of implicit and unquestioning obedience of their subjects in his pedantic and maudling way as the most important of all divine truths; but he had not the courage of his convictions. But, partly because of the invaluable truths that it announced, and partly because of the striking and spectacular manner in which it had its birth, the Charter was bound to triumph over oblivion. If liberty seemed to have perished along with law the Charter was the talisman that was destined to awaken it to life again. The rebellion against Charles I. was but a second Runnymede.

The long series of councils held at Runnymede, known now only by vague tradition, was closed when the barons dispersed. They had builded better than they knew; and humanity had been baptized into a higher life. Kings and priests might say what they pleased about the great Charter; but, being once sealed, it entered on an independent existence of its own. The mighty words once spoken could never be recalled. Henceforth the Charter was a part of man's inalienable inheritance. Generations would come and go, but the work of the barons was like the Bass Rock, around which the northern seas may rage and break in vain. The indispensable doctrine of personal liberty came into the world like Minerva full armed from the brain of Jupiter. The very phrases of the Great Charter remain our watchwords yet. It is not only in England and its vast possessions, and in America, that its stimulating influence has been