northern counties, desiring them to meet him at Norham in the beginning of June. These writs are now extant. Some of them were addressed to Bruce, Baliol, Comyn, and others, who were lords both in England and Scotland. Not the least secresy, surprise, or circumvention, then, could there be.

On the 10th of May, however, the king and the Scottish lords met. He had no army; he had merely his ordinary retinue. He asked them whether they recognized him as lord paramount. They hesitated. He gave them till the next day, and afterwards extended the time to three weeks, to decide upon their answer. They were to return to Scotland, and to reassemble after one-and-twenty days. Bruce, Baliol, and Comyn all knew full well that by that time the king would have a few thousand men around him. They also, if they pleased, were equally at liberty to bring up their retainers. Where, then, is the "betrayal" or the "circumvention," of which Hume and Mackintosh speak? It is as absolute a fiction -a fabrication-as ever was imported into history. Yet it is upon this alleged fact that the charge against Edward, of unscrupulosity, mainly rests.

One similar representation, which is alike groundless, ought to be noticed. Hume tells us, that Edward, "by six different summonses, on trivial occasions, required Baliol to come to London; plainly meaning to enrage him by these indignities, and to engage him in rebellion, in order to assume the dominion of the state as a punishment of his treason."

This is an unjustifiable exaggeration. Mr. Sharon Turner speaks with more accuracy, as follows:

"For four years Edward did nothing incompatible with the continuance of the Scottish royalty; and it was the wilful hostility of Scotland which forced him into the field. From 1292 to 1296, though he received an appeal against Baliol's judgment, and summoned Baliol into his parliament to answer it, yet this was the extent of his adverse conduct. And so far was Edward's behaviour from being revolting to Scottish feeling, that Bruce, the competitor of Baliol, having died, his family desired Edward to receive its homage, and willingly performed it."

One appeal there was, on the part of the earl of Fife, which Edward could not refuse to hear the other five, which are added to swell the account, were mere legal formalities.

The best answer, however, to this charge, that Edward, in 1292-1296, was seeking to enrage Baliol, in order to provoke him to rebel, is found in the obvious fact that nothing could be more unfortunate, nothing more calamitous, to Edward, than Scotland's rebellion at this particular moment. It was in 1293-4 that the quarrel with France broke out, and Philip seized upon Guienne. Edward's instant determination was to

reconquer that important possession. To effect this, required all his power. Hence, to imagine that at this moment he was desiring to drive the Scots into rebellion, is to regard him, at one moment, as one of the most foolish of men; while, at others, they represent him, in the words of Walter Scott, as "the most sagacious and resolute of English princes." It is quite impossible to doubt, on a review of the whole case, that Edward must have been desirous of Scotland's friendship and alliance at this moment; and that the representation that he was trying to drive Baliol into rebellion is one of the most absurd calumnies that ever was invented.

3. There remains only the very common and popular charge of vindictiveness and cruelty. And first let us dispose of the question of modes of punishment. These differ with the fashions of the time. Men deem a ruler to have been cruel, merely if they find him ordering a punishment which is deemed cruel at the present day; forgetting that perhaps no human being thought it cruel at the time when it was inflicted. Edward loved his queen very fondly, yet after her death, and probably at her own desire, he caused her remains to be divided, and her heart to be placed in one church, her bowels in another, and the rest of her body in a third. In the same manner Bruce, when dying, ordered his heart to be taken out of his body, and to be carried to Jerusalem. When such ideas prevailed, the thought of beheading and quartering a great criminal had nothing very shocking about it. Nor was it until recently that gentler tastes and habits prevailed. John Wesley, Samuel Johnson, and William Cowper were accustomed to see without horror, human heads on Temple Bar; and the English ministry which included Pelham, Hardwicke, Stephen Fox, and the elder Pitt, did not shrink from exhibiting, at one time, eighty human heads from various scaffolds.

The main question, then, concerns, not the mode of capital punishment which prevailed in England for five centuries, but Edward's readiness, or his unreadiness, to take away human life. And on this point history is very clear. There is scarcely a sovereign in all the English annals whose reign shows anything resembling the clemency of Edward. During five-andthirty years the political executions, amidst troublous times, were only three in number, until we come to the assassination of Comyn.

David of Snowden, an English peer, deeply indebted to Edward for many favours, was guilty of high treason and murder. "He was tried by the whole baronage of England,' and was sentenced to death. Had Mr. Smith O'Brien, like David of Snowden, attacked a castle in the dead of night, and slain many of its defenders, would his punishment, even under the gentle sway of Victoria, have been lighter? In India,

within the last five years, we have seen native princes not a few put to death in a much more summary manner.

Thomas Turberville, a knight, had entered into a traitorous compact with Philip to deliver up to the French one of the Cinque Ports. He died the death of a traitor; with less severity, however, than was inflicted on the Jesuit priests who conspired against Elizabeth.

Walleys, or Wallace, had swept England from Newcastle to Carlisle, "leaving nothing behind him but blood and ashes." He had burnt a church full of men and women, a school full of boys, &c. &c. Yet-singular lenity !-if he would have thrown himself upon Edward's mercy, his life would have been spared. He preferred to remain an outlaw, was seized, and died upon the scaffold. These three were all the political executions which took place in England from the first year of Edward's reign until the thirty-fourth.

But in that year Comyn, the greatest lord in Scotland, whom Edward had never known but as an open, manly opponent, was inveigled, unarmed, into a church, and was there assassinated by Bruce, who had been Edward's obsequious follower and professed friend. The traitorous deceit of Bruce, and the circumstances of this assassination, filled Edward with abhorrence. He assembled a council at Lanercost, and issued an ordinance, which adjudged the punishment of death to all who had been concerned in Comyn's murder. Under the like circumstances, would any lighter punishment be inflicted for such a crime even in our own day? Yet, even in this ordinance, we find clemency prevailing; for it is added, that such as were merely guilty of high treason and rebellion "should be imprisoned at the king's pleasure."

Under this ordinance of Lanercost about sixteen persons, who had been implicated in the assassination of Comyn, were apprehended and sent to the scaffold. "Their execution," observes Lingard, "cannot substantiate the charge of cruelty against Edward. Some were (actual) murderers; all had repeatedly broken their oaths of fealty, and had been repeatedly admitted to pardon." The one crime, however, on which they were all condemed, was that of having been in some way concerned in the cowardly assassination of a brave and honourable

man.

Such, then, is the acquittal of Edward from the charge of vindictive cruelty. There is no following reign in English history, for several centuries, which can compare to this fiveand-thirty years for rarity of capital punishment for political offences. In the days of Edward II. and III., in the wars of York and Lancaster, in the reigns of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, the scaffold is in constant requisition, and the heads of prelates and great nobles fall by scores. Under Edward these

fearful occurrences were almost unknown. A single Welsh rebel, a single traitor-knight, a single Scotch barbarian-marauder, form the whole catalogue for four-and-thirty years. And, assuredly, we know of no parallel to that act of mercy by which Wallace, after deeds of cruelty exceeding those of Nena Sahib an hundred-fold, was yet "to be received if he would throw himself on the king's mercy."

Such is the vindication of Edward's character which is here attempted. We have indicated, as rapidly as possible, the author's line of argument; and those of our readers who desire to acquaint themselves thoroughly with the subject will do well to possess themselves of this deeply-interesting

volume.

REV. R. TWOPENY ON THE EXTENT OF THE MOSAIC DELUGE. To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

DEAR SIR,-Will you permit me to offer a few remarks upon that paragraph in the last month's "Christian Observer" which refers to the universality of the Deluge ?

After close examination, I have long since come to the conclusion that all the Scripture calls upon us to believe, and, therefore, all that is necessary for us to believe, respecting it, is, that this flood was caused by the direct interposition of the Almighty, on account of the wickedness of men; that by it the whole race of mankind then living was destroyed, with the exception of Noah and his family, and that from them is the whole earth overspread.

These truths, so pregnant with moral and religious instruction, are clearly revealed, and no believer in the inspired word of God will hesitate about receiving them. But the collateral incidents connected with this stupendous miracle-such as the secondary causes by which the waters were made to cover the whole world, on one supposition, or how they were restrained within certain limits on another-are not necessary for us to know; and therefore are no more attempted to be explained than how the sun stood still upon Gibeon, or the moon in the valley of Ajalon, or how the shadow went back ten degrees on the dial of Ahaz.

Still, "the works of the Lord," however great, may, with scriptural sanction, be "sought out of all them that have pleasure therein;" and we ought gladly and thankfully to avail ourselves of all those recent discoveries, and accumulating acquisitions of knowledge, which may in any way tend to elucidate the Scriptures. And, in these times more especially ought we to be carefully on our guard that we give no handle to the imputation, that Christianity is adverse to the progress of knowledge, nor suffer any arbitrary or preconceived notions of our own respecting the right interpretation of some of the more obscure passages of Scripture, to prevent us from giving their due weight to any

just deductions of modern science. We have seen some hurtful effects from the neglect of this caution in the celebrated "Papal Decrees against the Motion of the Earth," and some injury has also been done in our own days, by attempting to set the Scripture in opposition to the conclusions of Geology. It is true that geology, at present, is in so imperfect a state, that it ought rather to be called a study than a science. But we may feel very sure that all its discoveries, when rightly interpreted, will, as far as they bear on the subject, tend to throw light and clearness upon many passages now obscure. And, to some extent, this has already been done. We ought to regard all the progress in science which God has enabled the mind to make, not as an opponent, but a help and auxiliary to a clearer understanding of His word.

I trust that, consistently with the utmost reverence to the Scripture, and with a full belief in its inspired truth, we may apply these considerations to the history of the Deluge.

The notion that the whole surface of our globe was submerged always places in my way this difficulty, which I am unable to surmount. Whenever a new country has been discovered, it has always been found that the animals, and all those land birds which are not migratory, are entirely different from any that had been known before. Thus, for instance, on the discovery of America, not one of the animals or land birds was found to be the same with those which existed in what was then called the Old World, with the exception of some few in the north, where the land communication was evident.

The same is found true with respect to Australia and New Zealand. Their fauna is as peculiar to themselves, and as unknown also to America, as it is to the other parts of our hemisphere. Yet these various species of animals, however different in kind, are not less in number than those which are found in countries which have been longer known.

Now I suppose that no one, taking all the attendant circumstances into account, will suppose these animals to have migrated into their respective habitats from the ark. How, then, were they preserved, if the whole earth were submerged? Shall we attempt to get over this difficulty by suggesting that these creatures have been created since the flood? This supposition would lead us into another diffi culty, and would seem to imply a retrograde step in the work of creation; for a great part of these animals, especially in Australia, are of the type of those which are usually considered as of a lower formation than our own. In Australia, for instance, all the native animals are of the order of marsupialia, or pouched animals; a class not found in any other part of the world, with the exception of a few species of opossum in America, but a class very common among the fossil remains. The fauna, also of Australia, is remarkable for not containing a single quadruped of the ruminating, or a single bird of the gallinaceous tribe-the tribes most useful for the wants and sustenance of man.

Surely there is nothing inconsistent, either with the revealed attributes of the Almighty, or with the summary narrative given in the Scripture, if we suppose that the Flood being a penal infliction for the sin of man, the punishment did not extend beyond the limits of the