tions should be confined to the limits expressed in the charter. That wills and administration of personal property should be allowed. That fines for offences should be moderate and just. That earls and barons should be fined by their peers, and according to the nature of their offence. That heirs should be protected in their inheritance. That widows should be protected in their jointure and dower. That lands were not to be seized for debts, if there were sufficient goods. That sureties were to be protected, while the debtor was able to pay. That the widow's dower was not to be answerable for the debts of the deceased; nor the necessary support of the children to be taken for the payment of the same. That there should be one uniform measure and weight throughout the whole kingdom. That the ingress and egress of all merchants should be free and uninterrupted; but that foreign ones, when their countries were at war with England, might be arrested, till it was known how the English merchants were treated in the alien country. That every one might leave the realm and return, saving his allegiance; except

in time of war, and excepting prisoners and outlaws, and merchants of a country at war with England.*

By the Charta de Foresta, the following were the most important reliefs which the subject obtained from the oppressive burthen of forest law. 1st. A disafforestation of all the lands thrown into forest by Henry I.

2d. An exemption of those who dwelt without the boundaries of a forest, from attending its courts.

6th. A prohibition of various impositions of forest offices..

11. A mitigation of the punishment for stealing deer, from the loss of life and limb to imprisonment for a year and a day.

12. A permission for every archbishop; bishop, earl, or baron, passing through a forest to court, to take one or two deer, either before the forester, if he be present, or on blowing a a horn, if he be absent.

15th. A prohibition of exactions for thé carriage of goods, or the driving of cattle, through forests.

• A translation of Magna Charta is given by Henry. Hist. vol. vi. App. No. 11.

16th. A permission for all persons who had been outlawed, for offences committed in forests, to reverse the outlawry:*

These concessions to the subject were the principal alterations in the old forest law, made by the charter of John, and ratified by succeeding monarchs, they continue to this day to be the basis of our forest ordinances.

BIOGRAPHICAL ILLUSTRATIONS.

Our author has sufficient authority, both from history and legend, for the portrait which he has drawn of the "lion-hearted" Richard.

His character," says Mr. Turner, "bears. "the nearest resemblance to the Homeric portrait of Achilles, that modern Europe has "exhibited. Haughty and irascible, a towering and barbaric grandeur, verging some"times into barbarian cruelty, distinguished "his actions. Valiant beyond the common "measure of human daring; unparalleled in

• Brady's Append. Hist. Eng. vol. i. p. 141.

"his feats of prowess; inferior to no man in "hardihood, strength, and agility; stern and "inflexible in his temper; rapacious and "selfish, yet frequently liberal to profusion; gorgeous to ostentation, yet often gay, fami"liar, satirical, and jocular; unshaken by "adversity, resolute to obstinacy, furious in "warfare, fond of battle, and always irresist

ibly victorious,-his life seems rather the "fiction of a poet's imagination, than the sober portrait, which it is, of authentic history."

The theatre on which Richard chiefly displayed these striking but inconsistent features of character, was the Holy Land. He had, indeed, at the early age of sixteen, given full proof of his unequalled prowess and gigantic strength, in the reduction of the refractory province of Poitou (the gift of his father) to complete subordination; and had also imbibed, by his attachment to, and his patronage of, the Troubadours, (the romantic poets of his time,) a chivalric spirit, of the most intense character; but it was not till he had taken the sacred emblem of the cross, that a

. History of England, vol. i. page 300.

scope was afforded him commensurate to his almost super-human capacities of action and endurance, and peculiarly fitted to their full developement.

So impatient was Richard for the strange warfare of Palestine, and so anxious to recover the city of Jerusalem, which had surrendered to the arms of Saladin, that one of the first acts of his reign was, to compleat the preparations of his father, and embark in an expedition to the Holy Land. But it was impossible that the fiery king should reach this distant destination without many intervening adventures. While tarrying in Sicily, he engaged in a quarrel with its king; took the capital, Messina; and obliged Tancred, the reigning monarch, to satisfy the claims of his sister on that crown by a large pecuniary compensation. Offended at the inhospitality of the King of Cyprus, (in which island he married Beringaria, the daughter of the King of Navarre,) he attacked and defeated the Cypriots, and received the unqualified submis sion of the king and his people. Arrived at length in the Holy Land, he approached the