BOOKS.

wAliBURTON'fi PRINCE RUPERT AND THE.CAVALIERS.* ALruorrow the name of the fiery Rupert is familiar to every reader of English history, yet it is only as a meteor of the Civil War. At all the rain battles of the Great Rebellion, Prince Rupert and his Cavaliers rush like a living torrent upon their Roundhead opposites, sweep them away, follow in headlong pursuit the headlong route, and return to the field ex- hausted and disorganized, unable to turn the balance of the battle, or (when victory, under Cromwell and Fairfax, decidedly inclined to the Par- lament) to prevent defeat from becoming destruction. In the intervals of battle, Rupert is famous as a daring partisan officer, falling upon the enemy's convoys, beating up their quarters, and insulting their march with unvarying success : he is less creditably known for plun- dering the country, and for the reckless conduct and behaviour of his Cavaliers. Yet as soon as the war is over, he vanishes from the scene as completely as Fairfax — he is without beginning or end. Many who can say that he was the son of Elizabeth of Bohe- mia, hardly realize the idea, if they reach the facts, that his mother Was the sister of Charles the First, and that the Eleatress Sophia of Hanover, through whom the house of Brunswick mounted the British throne, was the younger sister of Prince Rupert. Of his biography few know anything either before or after the Prince's emergence in the Civil War ; yet it had variety and adventure enough to fill the mind. His father was the Elector Palatine, and for a brief space King of Bohemia, whose misfortunes and popularity as a Protestant prince and husband of Elizabeth, daughter of James the First, form so frequent a topic in the narrative of her father's reign. Rupert himself was born the son of a King; but the fatal battle of Prague made his parents fugitives, and in the confused flight which followed the defeat the baby Prince was nearly lost. "Meanwhile, young Rupert was sleeping soundly in his nurse's arms, undis- turbed by the tumult and distraction round him. fhe terrified woman laid down her charge to hurry after the fugitives ; and Baron Dllona, the King's Chamber- lain, found him still asleep upon the ground. There was then no time for cere- mony; the Chamberlain flung the Prince into the last carriage just as it dashed away from the Strahoff. The rough jolting soon wakened the poor child, who had rolled into acme indescribable recess they call a boot '; his lusty cries at- tracted attention; and he was restored in safety to his mother."

The career thus inauspiciously begun was continued as roughly, and, considering Prince Rupert's family and expectations, as unfortunately, till its close. During his childhood and youth, his parents suffered the poverty of=deposed princes; the family was dependent on the Dutch Republic and on the voluntary collections of the English people for support. In boyhood, Prince Rupert had a taste of war at the siege of Rhynberg, under the care of the Prince of Orange. He made his first campaign when only sixteen, as a volunteer in the Life.Guard of the

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same Prince; "rejecting all distinction of his rank, discharging all the duties and sharing all the hardships of the private soldier." Two years after, in 1638, he planned, in conjunction with his elder brother Louts, a collperation with the Swedes in order to recover the Palatinate. The ex- pedition was 3310fe like an adventure of knighterrantry than a soberly-con- ceived operation. It ended in the defeat of the small force of the Princes, and the capture of Rupert. For three years he was imprisoned in the castle of Lintz ; but was at length released, in 1641, by the diplomacy of his uncle Charles the First, the friendship of the Archduke Leopold, and the prayers of the Empress. In August 1642, Prince Rupert sailed for England ; and on the 22d of the same month, he assisted his uncle at the ill-omened "setting up" of the Royal standard at Nottingham. Till the total destruction of the cause, Prince Rupert's life is historical. When he left England he served for a short time in the French armies against the Spaniards ; and afterwards in a species of adventurous naval warfare in the narrow seas, whose object was plunder, though he held a commission from the Prince of Wales, exercising kingly functions for bis father. When the Parliamentary fleet became too strong and vigilant, Prince Rupert started on a roving expedition, which Mr. War- burton compares to an ancient viking's, though in :moth it was more Pike a contemporary buccaneer's. The fleet visited Ireland, Portugal, the Mediterranean, Africa, the Cape de Verd and Western Islands, and the West Indies ; taking English and Spanish " prizes" enough to . Pay all expenses and yield a profit, though part of the ill-gotten' gains were lost in a storm, in which Prince Maurice, Prince Ru- pert's brother, was drowned. The expedition returned to Europe in 1653; and till the Restoration Rupert's life was passed in obscurity, of a more reputable kind than that of his royal cousins. He is said to have served both the Emperor and the Swedes ; and he is known to have spent some time in active-minded retirement, perfecting his invention of mezzo- tint, and making various experiments in physical and mechanical science. Except an occasional campaign with the British fleet, the life of the princely adventurer from the Restoration till his death in 1682 was more regular and settled than it had ever been before. He had a pen- sion from Charles the Second of 1,5001. a year ; he recovered from the Emperor a sum of money due to him by treaty ; and an estate fell to him in Germany. Luckily, perhaps, for the house of Brunswick, his fortune prevented him from marrying in his own rank of life ; but he left two na- tural children by two different mothers. His son was carefully educated, and inherited his father's military tastes : he was killed at the age of twenty, in 1686, at the siege of Buda in Hungary, in a last desperate at- tempt to scale the walls. His daughter, by Mrs. Hughes an actress, glared with her mother his personal property, which was considerable for those days and his means. This lady married General Howe ; and "Prince Rupert's blood is still continued through her line in the family of 'Sr Robert Bromley."

°Memoirs of Prince Rupert, and the Cavaliers ; including their Private Correspond- ence, now first published from the Original Manuscripts. By Eliot Warburton, author of The Crescent and the Cross." in three volumes. Published by Bentley. Though Prince Rupert has not the historical eminence of Eugene, he is remarkable for the incidents of his life, and for his character as a prince of fortune. Deprived in boyhood both of means and prospects, he did not sink into a courtly hanger-on, or a disreputable adventurer, but passed his youth and manhood in a course of action becoming his birth, and in the cause of his family. When reduced to inaction and obscurity, he occupied his time in philosophical experiment, and in realizing the ideas that an active-minded observation had suggested to him during his busy life. When comparative prosperity dawned upon him, he lived quietly in an age of political intrigue and violence, and respectably in a time of profligacy and extravagance on an income narrow for his rank. As the inventor of mezzotint engraving, and the improver of some me- chanical arts, he may be ranked among those who have advanced society. As a cavalry officer.he was probably the first in the world, for no charge appears to have been like his charge • as a general he was naught, let Mr. Eliot Warburton say what he will. He ever committed the same and the obvious fault of recklessly rushing from the field after a beaten enemy ; and he did it at Marston Moor, and the still more fatal field of Naseby, even when the responsibility of command was upon him, and when Cromwell, at Marston Moor, had shown how victory was gained by an opposite conduct. His much censured surrender of Bristol seems to have originated in his want of the qualities of a commander. A de- sire to spare the inhabitants the horrors of an assault, and to save his soldiers and officers from a massacre, doubtless weighed with him, for he was a humane man out of the field ; but his impetuosity could not brook with patience the confinement of walls. Where Fabian tactics were ne- cessary Rupert was out of place.

Although better entitled to the honours of biography than many men who have received them, no life of Prince Rupert has yet appeared, be- yond the pamphlet notices published about his own time and the lives in biographical collections. This neglect was perhaps in some degree owing to the lack of papers, which though in existence were almost un- known, or too scattered to induce the task of collection without the pos- session of a nucleus that should stimulate the labour. Both these points meet together in the composition of the volumes before us. Mr. Bentley's enterprise got possession of the Rupert collection; Mr. Warburton's in- dustry induced him to search repositories for scattered documents. The character of the original materials thus collected is described by Mr. Warburton in his preface.

'" This collection is derived from Colonel Bsnett, Prince Rupert's secretary. It contains upwards of a thousand letters, written by the leading Cavaliers to their loung chief during the war, together with many of a later date. Besides such etters, there are considerable materials, in various stages of preparation, for a forthal biography of the Prince: of these some are fragulitits, each containing an episode of their hero's life, apparently ready for publication, and corrected by Be- pert himself. His biography was of more importance to this prince than to most men: no person, perhaps, except his royal master, was ever more exposed to ca- lumny, or less defended. He seems to have superintended the preparation of his memoirs about the year 1657, in order to meet the misconstructions of his actions which he apprehended in England, the country of his adoption. On the Restora- tion he found that his popularity was already restored, in the same hour with that of his royal kinsman; and from this time the preparations for his biography

appear to have ceased. • • • •

"The Benett Collection consists of the following documents— "First, Upwards of one thousand original letters from the leading Cavaliers. Of these I have only been able to use a comparatively small proportion • but an alpha- betical index and abstract of them all will be found at the end of this volume, which I trust will prove of some importance to the historian and to the student of history. Among them are numerous letters from Kings Charles L and IL, the Dukes of York, Richmond, and Buckiugham; Lords Worcester, Hertford, Newcastle, Cla- rendon, Goring, Digby, Langdale, Culpepper, Hopton ; from Will. Legge, Ash- burnham, Berkeley, and many other persons. " Secondly, A MS. relating to Prince Rupert's early life. This is imperfect and fragmentary; I have, therefore, only quoted from it. "Thirdly, A MS. of some length recording Prince Rupert's adventures as Ad- miral of the Royal Fleet, and his corsair expedition among the Western Islands and on the Spanish Main. With this is a sort of ' log' or journal of the cruise from September 1651 to March 1653, which will be found in the appendix to the third volume.

" Fourthly, Another MS., which I have called, in the references to it, Prince Rupert's Diary.' It is not an autograph of his, however, but a somewhat vague chronological collection of anecdotes relating to the Prince: it appears to have been written at different times, on the authority of different eye-witnesses of the actions or other circumstances that it relates.

" In addition to these original sources, I have availed myself of the Lansdowne, Harleian, Bodleian, Aehmalean, Sloane, and other MSS. open to the public, toge- ther with the vast collection in the State Paper Office; which last, 1 regret to say, were very imperfectly explored.

" From private collections I have gratefully to acknowledge very generous contributions. The scarcity of Royalist correspondence daring the Civil Wars is not surprising, when we consider the devastations to which Cavalier property was subjected by the conquering Roundheads, and the careful suppression of each documents on the part of those who had to fear the vengeance of their enemy. I have sought amongst many of the descendants of the leading Cavaliers for such letters, but in very few instances with success. I am therefore the more deeply indebted for those which I have obtained through the kind liberality of the Duke of Beaufort, the Duke of Somerset, Lord Denbigh, Lord Dartmouth, Lord Craven, Lord John Fitzroy, Lord Wrottesley, Lord Hastings, Mr. Ormsby Gore, and oft others, who have assisted me by their local knowledge and information.° It will be seen that Mr. Warburton's judgment upon his materials was soundly critical. He saw that there is no particular virtue in unpublished letters, especially upon business, unless they illustrate the times, or are distinguished by character or by literary merit in the writer. With this exception, their use is limited to those who can make use of them. The writer whose previous studies have rendered him familiar with the mi- nutest actions and persons of the age, and who, reading with a biogra- phical object, sees a bearing or conclusion where others perceive nothing, extracts honey from very common flowers. But though Mr. Warburton inculcates this truth, a zeal for his subject and a liking for the history of the age have induced him to break through his own rules. Prince Ru- pert and the Cavaliers is not merely a life of the hero, with sketches of the individual enterprise and dashing affairs of the Civil War : there is in addition a review of the history of James the First, with a fal- ler narrative of the civil history of Charles the First, and then the military story of the Rebellion. Often as this has been done, the period is so interesting, the subject so seemingly inexhaustible, that it might perhaps have borne to be done again. But the mixture of history, biography, personal notices, military exploits, and original ma- terials, (for Mr. Warburton quotes copiously from his papers,) flattens the interest by distracting the attention. The work is also encumbered by an unusual variety of notes on subjects that should have appeared in the text if anywhere. It may perhaps be doubted whether Mr. War- burton's previous habits of study and mode of composition have alto- gether fitted him for the task he has undertaken. His style, admirable iu presenting the results of original observation on scenery and particular incidents, has hardly strength and body enough for history; while the manner is somewhat too artificial—it is Macaulay without his power. Neither does Mr. Warburton seem to have much knowledge of the period beyond what he has gained from the popular literature of the day and such original authors as he has read up for the present occasion. Two points, however, he impresses with greater distinctness than we remem- ber to have seen before : the miseries in daily life produced by the Civil War, and the resemblance of mob influence and authority in the earlier days of the Parliamentary contest to that same influence daring the French Revolution, allowing for the differences of age and nation.

The child is father to the man : at his first actual essay in war, at the siege of Breda, Rupert discovered the same daring courage and unceasing watchfulness that formed his great merit throughout life.

" Prince Maurice accompanied Rupert, and, with a love that was constant to his death, shared all his dangers and exploits. They found several Englishmen of future note in our own wars serving there: Monk, Astley, Goring, and many others. The siege was being pressed with vigour; the defenders were resolute. Rupert revelled in dangers as in a delightful excitement, rushing into every breach that was attempted, and forward in every. forlorn hope: even whilst others rested he was restlessly and pertinaciously hovering round the doomed city. One night there was a pause in the almost perpetual conflict; the soldiers of attack and de- fence both rested their wearied limbs, the besiegers in deep sleep. Rupert's watchful ear detected some sounds within the walls, now plainly audible and now so faint that he feared to give what might have proved a false alarm. He waken- ed his brother Maurice, who likewise heard some doubtful sounds rising from among the red gables of the old leaguered town. The brothers moved away through the mist, and crept up the glacis so silently and so near the enemy that they could detect the forming of troops for a sortie and even their appointed des- tination. Retiring to their own camp as silently as they had left it, they basted to Prince Frederic's quarters, and before the enemy had crossed their drawbridge the Hollanders were drawn up in battle order to receive them. " Soon after this, the Prince of Orange resolved to attack a horuwork which commanded the town and its approaches. Monk, who served as lieutenant to Goring, was to lead the attack, which was expected to be a desperate service: for this reason, and for his mother's sake, the Prince of Orange appointed Roped _to attend him, in order fa'keep him from temptation the Prince, however, Laving given the word toadvanee, Rupert anticipated the aide-de-camp, flew to the storm- ing party, delivered the order, and flinging himself from his horse, rushed forward with the foremost to the assault. The fort was carried, after desperate fighting; Wilmot and Goring were wounded, and many of their brave countrymen slain. The surviving officers flung themselves down to rest upon a ramparcwhile the soldiers stripped the slain who lay piled around them. Suddenly up started one of the apparent corpses, naked as the spoilers had left him, and exclaimed, 'Mes- sieurs, est-il point de quartier id ?' whereupon they laughed heartily, and took him to the camp ; and he bore the name of Falstaff to his dying day.'" The following passage refers to the time of Rupert's service in France after the destruction of the Royal party in England. It is taken from one of the autobiographies drawn up under the Prince's eye, and is curious as an indication of manners, but chiefly for the watchful observation of the Prince and the warlike auguries he drew from trivial circumstances. "Being at La Besse, [Marshal] Gassion invites the Prince one day to take the air, and his Highness was pleased to bear him company; but his business, it seems, was to carry him to Eysters, to talk with his bailiff ;bout oats and hay and other country affairs. He took some fourscore horse of the guards along with him. This being taken notice of by a certain boor, the fellow ran presently to Armentiers and fetched a party of about one hundred firelocks to try to intercept them in their return. As they came back, the Prince discovered a dog sitting upon his breech, with his face towards the wood; whereupon his Highness gave Sir William Reeves, who was then his page, his cloak, and riding through the party up to Gassion, who was about forty yards in the head of them, with some officers about him, Have a care, sir,' says the Prince, there is a party in the wood.' The word was no sooner spoken but they had a salvo from the enemy's ambush, both before and behind, so that they were forced to break through the fire. Sir William Reeves, with some others, being taken prisoners, the Governor of Armentiers very civilly returned him again. So soon as they had broken through, Gassion faced about towards the enemy: 'Mort Dieu,' says he, '11 faut rompre le col I ces coquina 11 —let us break the necks of these rogues; and then taking his foot out of the stirrup,' pied ii terre,' says he. The Prince with some few officers understood it that he was alighting, and that the whole party should do the like, and so fall in upon the ambush with sword and pistol. The Prince and some officers dismounted; but Gassion, in the mean time, marched away with the horses, the enemy following his Highness, and the officers with him, on foot. His Highness here received a shot in the head; from whence he returned to La Besse, and so to Bethune to be cured ; from whence, after his recovery, his Highness went into France, where he passed his next winter, with as much satis- faction as the tenderness he felt for the state of his Royal uncle's affairs would permit. 'It must not be omitted that Cession staying for the Prince after he had re- ceived his wound, his Highness recovered the party; and as they were upon their march;' Monsieur; says Gassion to the Prince, 'je suis Bien fasciae que vous ester blesse,'—' sir, it troubles me that you are wounded." Et moi aussi; says the Prince; and truly so does it me too.' After this Gassion went to besiege Lens, where he was killed by a musket-shot in the head."

In this anecdote relating to the period of his imprisonment, the fiery youth seems to hit better than any lawyer the reason why we may in fair- ness construe deeds strictly.

"There was some delay in the Prince's delivery from his prison: it was sti- pulated that. he _should never fight against Ferdinand; and to this be demurred, as considerably mu-rowing his field of future action, seeing that almost all Europe was opposed to the Empire. However, Charles, when referred to insisted that the promise should be given; and so at length it was. Colonel Leslie cannily de- sired have this promise in writing, and the Prince indignantly agreed: but,'

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sayd hee, if it is to bee a lawyer's business, let them look well to the wording.' Whereupon they preferred his peroll, and he gave his hand upon it to the Em- perour.'"

The following passage describes, in a rather flowery way, the principal

discoveries of Prince Rupert daring his four or five years' retirement, circa 1656-1660.

"It was during this lull in the stormy life of Rupert, that he discovered r improved upon his art of mezzotinto. So long ago as 1637, when humored in the Castle of Lintz, he had exercised his active genius in some etchings that „al remain, and bear that date. He now returned, in his voluntary retirement, to ths objects that had then charmed his enforced leisure. His varied biography pre. cents no more striking period than this, when his name was hidden from the world that had been busied with it for so many years. The plumed helmet, the cuirass, and gallant war-horse are laid aside; the good sword that so often hewed his fearless way through fiercest danger hangs idly on the wall ; the stout ship that so long stemmed the storm, and explored strange seas, lies rotting on the banks of Loire. The beauties of Paris are forgotten, calumny itself is silent. The young philosopher, royal, warlike, and renowned, has retired from the world, and adopted the student's bravely ascetic life; the same energies that once led legions along. the battle-field, and fleets across the ocean, are now devoted to the dis. coveries of science and the creations of art.

"Among the former, the Prince turned his first attention to those that related to his own profession—of arms. He laboured heartily at his own forge, and applied himself to the practical as well as the theoretical details of science. The writer of his funeral ode, which is quoted from in the first chapter of this work, describes him as forging the thanderbolts of war, his hands so well could throw: The Transactions of the Royal Society record his mode of fabricating a gunpowder of ten times the ordinary strength at that time used; likewise a mode of blowing up rocks in mines, or under water, an instrument to cast platforms into pro- spective, an hydraulic engine, a mode of making hail-shot, an improvement in the naval quadrant. Amongst his mechanical labours are also to be reckoned his improvement in the locks of 'fire-arms and his guns for discharging several bul- lets very rapidly. Amongst his chemical discoveries, were the composition now called Prince's metal, and a mode of rendering black lead fusible, and rechanging it into its original state. Perhaps to him is also to be attributed the toy that bears his name as Rupert's drop ; that curious bubble of glass which has log amused children, and puzzled philosophers. ' " This philosophical puzzle was introduced by Rupert into England in 1660, and communicated by Charles IL to the Royal Society at Gresham College. It was so well known when lIudibras' was written as to be used in popular illne. tration. In part ii. canto 2, we have- " Honour is like that glassy bubble

That finds philosophers such trouble,

Whose least part erack'd, the whole does fly,

And wits are crack'd to And out why."

"This bubble is in form somewhat pear-shaped, or like a leech; it is formed by dropping highly-refined green glass, when melted, into cold water. Its thick end is so hard that it can scarcely be broken on an anvil, but if the smallest particle of its taper end is broken off, the whole flies at unce into atoms and dis- appears. The theory of this phenomenon is that its particles when in fusion are in a state of repulsion, but on being dropped into the water its snperficies is annealed, and the particles return into the power of each other's attraction; the inner particles still in a state of repulsion, being confined within their outward covering. Philosophical Transactions, vol. xlvi. p. 175, &c. Though simple in structure, these drops amdifficult to make: they are, however, sold cheitPly at31. Fleet Street. Prince Rupstt altievered a method of boring gnus, Web was ,afterwards carried into execution in Romney Marsh by a speculator; but Au secret contrivance of annealing the metal was not understood except by the Prince, and the matter died with him. The mode of tempering the Kirby fish-hoofyt was amongst his lesser discoveries."

The original narrative of the sea-roving expedition does not contain much strictly biographical matter concerning Rupert, but is carious for its exhibition of the ideas of the age touching booty, and for some of its sketches of natives and scenery both in Africa and the West Indies.