On both sides of the sea
Date: 2025-03-29T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Great Britain -- History -- Commonwealth and Protectorate; 1649-1660 -- Fiction; Great Britain -- History -- Restoration; 1660-1688 -- Fiction

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Title: On both sides of the sea

A story of the Commonwealth and the Restoration

Author: Elizabeth Rundle Charles

Release date: March 29, 2025 [eBook #75741]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1867

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75741

Credits: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA ***

On Both Sides of the Sea:

A STORY OF

The Commonwealth and the Restoration

A SEQUEL TO

"THE DRAYTONS AND THE DAVENANTS"

BY THE AUTHOR OF

"Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family."

NEW YORK:
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY,
PUBLISHERS.

CARD FROM THE AUTHOR.

"The Author of the Schonberg-Cotta Family wishes it to be generally known among the readers of her books in America, that the American Editions issued by Mr. M. W. Dodd, of New York alone have the Author's sanction."

Contents

Chapter

I. Olive's Recollections
II. Olive's Recollections
III. Lettice's Diary
IV. Lettice's Diary
V. Olive's Recollections
VI. Olive's Recollections
VII. Olive's Recollections
VIII. Olive's Recollections
IX. Notes by Magdalene Antony
X. Lettice's Diary
XI. Lettice's Diary
XII. Lettice's Diary

On Both Sides of the Sea.

ON BOTH SIDES OF THE SEA.

CHAPTER I.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

Since England was, such an event was never witnessed within sound of her seas, as that which darkened London on the fatal 30th of January, 1649. In the recollection of such moments it is difficult to disentangle feeling from fact, what we saw with our eyes and heard with our ears from what others told us, from what we saw with the imagination and heard with the heart.

In my memory that day lies shrouded and silent, as if all that happened in it had been done in a city spell-bound into silence in a hushed, sunless, colorless world, where all intermediate tints were gathered into funereal black and white, the black of the heavily-draped scaffold and the whiteness of the frosty ground from which it rose into the still and icy air; whilst behind the palace slept, frost-bound, the mute and motionless river, imprisoning with icy bars the motionless ships.

From early in the day the thoroughfares and squares and open gathering-places of the city were filled with the Commonwealth soldiers. I remember no call of trumpet or beat of drum; only a slow pacing of horsemen, and marching of footmen, silently, to their assigned positions, the tramp of men and the clatter of the horse-hoofs ringing from the hard and frosty ground, and echoing from the closed and silent houses on the line of march.

It was no day of triumph to any. To the army, and those who felt with them, it was a day of solemn justice, not of triumphant vengeance. To the Royalists it was a day of passionate hushed sorrow and bitter inward vows of retribution; to the people generally a day of perplexity and woe.

Old Mr. Prynne, who owed the king nothing, as he said, but the loss of his ears, the pillory, imprisonment, and fines, had pleaded for him generously in the House, before the House had been finally "purged."

And the most part of the men, and well-nigh all the women, I think, would have said "Amen" to Mr. Prynne. If the king's captivity and trial and condemnation had been a solemn drama enacted to win the hearts of the people back to him, it could not have been more effectual. Political and civil rights, rights of taxation and rights of remonstrance, seemed to the hearts of most people to become mere technical legal terms in the presence of Royalty and Death. Pillories and prisons were dwarfed into mere private grievances beside the scaffold on which the king, son of so many kings, kings of so many submissive generations, the source of power, the only possible object of the dreadful crime called treason, was to die the death of a traitor.

The trial brought out all that was most pathetic in royalty and most noble in the king. The haughty glance which had been resented on the throne, was simply majestic when it encountered unflinchingly the illegal bench of judges on whom his life depended.

The Parliament, mutilated to a remnant of fifty; the High Court of Justice, who could not agree among themselves, whose assumption of legal forms sounded (to many) like mockery, whose trappings of authority sat on them (many thought) like masquerade-robes, were a poor show to confront with that lonely majestic figure defying their sentence and their authority, a captive in the ancient Hall of Justice from which, throughout the centuries, not a sentence had issued save by the sanction of his forefathers.

The royal banners, which drooped from the roof above him, taken from his Cavaliers at Edgehill, Marston Moor, and Naseby, seemed to float there rather in his honor than in that of his judges. Many felt that adversity had restored to him his true royalty, and that he sat far more a king now, arraigned at the bar, than when, eight years before, at the last trial those walls had witnessed, he sat as a helpless spectator of the proceedings which brought Strafford, his greatest minister, to the scaffold.

It was well for his adversaries that those days of the king's humiliation were not prolonged. Irrepressible veneration and pity began to stir among the crowds who beheld him, and the cries of "Justice! justice!" were changed more than once into murmurs of "God save the king."

But the pity was a slowly-rising tide of waves now advancing and now recoiling. The determination for "justice on the chief delinquent" was a strong and steady, though narrow current; and it swept the ration on irresistibly to its end.

The soldiers, foot and horse, had taken up their position. My brother Roger and Job Forster were posted opposite Whitehall. Roger waved his hand as he passed our windows. His face, as was his wont in times of strong emotion, was fixed and stern. He was riding in a funeral procession, which for him led to more graves than one.

At ten o'clock His Majesty walked through St. James's Park to Whitehall, passing rapidly through the bitter cold, under the bare branches of the silent trees, through a crowd in appearance as cold as silent. His face, men said, was calm and majestic as ever, although worn; his beard had become gray, and his form had a slight stoop, although he was not fifty years of age, but his step was firm. He disappeared through the Palace gates, from which he was never to step forth again. Then followed six hours of suspense and terrible expectation, the crowds surging uneasily to and fro, unable to rest, repelled and yet attracted by the terrible fascination of the empty, expectant scaffold, whose heavy funereal draperies fell from the windows of the Banqueting Hall on the frosty ground beneath. There were whispers that the ambassador of the United Provinces was pleading not hopelessly with Lord Fairfax; that the Prince of Wales had sent a blank letter signed by himself, to be filled with any conditions the Commons chose to demand; but that the king had burned this letter, and refused the ministrations of any but the clergy of the Episcopal Church of the realm;—so that if he was indeed to die, it would be as a martyr to the rights of the Crown and the Church.

And through these soberer reports ever and anon rose wild rumors of approaching deliverance, of risings in the Royalist counties, of avenging fleets approaching the Thames, of judgment direct from heaven on the sacrilegious heads of the regicides.

But to us who knew of the purpose which had been gathering force in the army since that prayer-meeting at Windsor six months before, those mid-day hours were hours not of doubt or suspense, but of awful certainty, as minute by minute the hour approached when that scaffold was to be empty no more.

We knew that within the still and deserted halls of that palace, the king was preparing to meet his doom; and (all political questions and personal wrongs for the time forgotten) from a thousand roofs in the city went up prayers that he might be sustained in dying, and might exchange the earthly crown which had sat on his brow so uneasily, for the crown of life which burdens not, nor fades away.

At length three o'clock, the moment of doom, came. "It was the ninth hour," as the Royalists loudly noted. Save the guard around the scaffold, and those who attended his dying moments on it, none were near enough to hear what passed there. It was all mute; but the spectacle spoke. In most royal pageants, the thing seen is but a sign of the thing not seen. In this the thing to be seen was no mere sign, but a dread reality, a tremendous event. The black scaffold, the wintry silence, the vast awe-stricken crowd gazing mute and motionless on the inevitable tragedy; a few plainly dressed men at last appearing on the scaffold around the well-known stately figure of the king, richly arrayed "as for his second bridal;" "the comely head" laid down without a struggle on the block "as on a bed;" the momentary flash of the axe; the severed head raised an instant on high as "the head of a traitor;" a shrouded form prostrate on the scaffold;—and then, as good Mr. Philip Henry, who was present, said, "at the instant when the blow was given, a diurnal universal groan among the thousands of people who were within sight of it, as if with one consent, such as he had never heard before, and desired he might never hear the like again, or see such a cause for it."

The multitude were not left long to bewail their king. One troop of Parliament horse rode instantly, by previous order, from Charing Cross towards King Street, and another from King Street towards Charing Cross; and so the crowd were scattered right and left, to lament as they might each man under his own roof, and to read in secret the "Eikon Basilike," which it is said the king composed, copies of which were distributed under his scaffold, and will, doubtless, be reverently treasured in every Royalist household; not in the library, but in the oratory, beside the Bible and the Prayer-book, enkindling loyalty from a conviction into a passion, deepening it from a passion to a religion, while they compare the king's trial to that before the unjust judge of old, his walk to the scaffold to that along the Dolorous Way, his sayings to those last words on which dying men and women have hung ever since.

Every one knows the heaviness with which even a day of festivity closes, when the event of the day is over. The weight with which that fatal day closed it is hard for any who did not feel it to imagine.

Scripture words repeated with ominous warning by ministers, Presbyterian and Episcopal, echoed like curses through countless hearts: "I gave them a king in my anger and took him away in my wrath." "Who am I that I should lay hands on the Lord's anointed?"

Death gave to the king's memory an immaculateness very different from the technical, "the king can do no wrong of the ancient constitution."

And even with those whose resolution remained unwavering to the last, this was not the time for speech. The extremity of justice had been done, there was nothing more to be said. It would have been an ungenerous revenge far from the thoughts of such regicides as Colonel Hutchinson and General Cromwell to follow it with insulting words, and their own self-defence they were content to leave to events. Mr. Milton's majestic Defences of the English People came later.

Ours was a silent fireside that winter night, as Roger, weary and numb, came at last to warm himself beside us.

As lie entered, I was saying to my husband, "The terrible thing is, that he who lived trampling on the constitution and the rights of conscience, seems to have died a martyr to the constitution and conscience, doomed by a few desperate men."

"We must concern ourselves as little as possible, sister," Roger said very quietly, "with what seems."

"I fear this day will turn the tide against all for which you have fought throughout the war."

"The tide will turn back," he said.

"But what if not in our time?" I said.

"Then in God's time, Olive," he said; "which is the best."

But he looked very worn and sad. I repented of having said these discouraging words, and weakly strove to undo them as he asked me to unlace the helmet which his benumbed hands could not unloose.

"I would rather a thousand times," I said, "have you with Colonel Hutchinson, and General Cromwell, and those who dared to do what they thought right in the lace of the world, than with those who thought it right yet dared not do it. The nation will recognize their deliverer in General Cromwell yet."

"I do not know that, Olive," he said; "but it will be enough if General Cromwell delivers the nation."

"At least the generations to come will do you all justice," I said.

"I am not sure of that," he said. "It depends on who writes the history for them. There is one Judgment Seat whose awards it is safe to set before us. Before that we have sought to stand. That sentence is irrevocably fixed. What it is we shall hear hereafter, when the voice of this generation and all the generations will move us no more than the murmur of a troubled sea a great way off, and far below."

Yet he could not touch the food we set before him; and as he sat gazing into the fire, I knew there was one adverse verdict which he knew too well, and which moved his heart all the more that it had not been able to move a hair's breadth his conscience or his purpose.

Many sorrows met in Roger's heart, I knew, that night; the pain of pity repressed driven back on the heart by a stern sense of justice; the pain of being misjudged by some whom we honour; the pain of the resignation of the tenderest love and hope; the pain of giving bitter pain to the heart dearest to him in the world. But one pain, perhaps the worst of all, he and men who, like Cromwell and Colonel Hutchinson, had carried out that day's doom fearlessly before the world because in unshaken conviction of its justice before God, were spared—the enervating anguish of perplexity and doubt. And this, perhaps, is the sorest pain of all.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

"'The space between is the way thither,' Mr. Drayton said. It may be; it ought to be. But is it? That seems to me precisely the one terrible question which, when we can get cleared, all life becomes clear in the light of the answer, but which it is so exceedingly hard to have cleared.

"The days, as they pass, whether clothed in light and joy, as the old time at home was when I had a home, and a mother, and so many hopes—or in darkness that may be felt, as so many of these later days have been to me, are indeed surely leading us on to old age, to death, to the unseen world, and the judgment. But are they indeed leading us on to new youth, to changeless life, to heaven, and the King's 'Well done?'

"If I were as sure of the last as of the first, for me and mine, I think (at least there are moments when I think) I would scarcely care whether the days were dark or bright. For life is to be a warfare. All kinds of Christian people agree in that. And having learned what war means, I do not expect it to be easy or pleasant.

"But I am not sure. For myself or for any one.

"Roger thinks the execution of the king was a terrible duty. I think it was almost an inexpiable crime.

"Olive, I know, thinks I am breaking plighted faith, and betraying the most faithful affection in the world in parting from Roger. Mistress Dorothy thinks I am fulfilling a sacred duty, doing what was meant when we were commanded to pluck out the right eye. As to the pain, I am sure she is right. If I could only be as sure as to the duty! For if it is right, it must be good, really, in the end for him as well as for me. How, I cannot imagine. For it seems bad as well as bitter for me. And Olive says it will be bad and embittering for him.

"Happy, happy people, who lived in the old days of dreams, and visions, and heavenly voices, saying, 'This is the way; walk in it;' when God's will became manifest in pillars of fire and cloud, in discriminating dews and fires of sacrifice, and such simple outward signs as poor perplexed hearts like mine can understand.

"Holy people say these days of ours are in advance of those, that the light has increased since then. I suppose it has, for holy people, who have grown up to it, and have eyes to see those inward leadings, and ears to hear those inward voices, which to me are so dim. But I feel as if I were still a child, and would fain have lived in that simple childhood of the world, when God spoke to men in plain ways as to children.

"Since I came here, I saw at the door of one of the churches a very awful piece of sculpture of the souls in purgatory, all aglow with the fires in which they were burning, stretching out piteous hands through iron bars for help and prayers from those still living on the earth.

"Mistress Dorothy was with me, and she clasped her hands over her eyes in horror, as she turned away.

"But to me it did not seem so horrible. At least not for the souls in purgatory. If there were a purgatory. Because the thought of its being purgatory, must take away all that is unendurable out of the anguish of the flames. There are hearts on earth tormented in fires as real. But the sting of their anguish is, they cannot be sure they are purgatorial fires. The anguish is clear enough. If we could only be as sure as to the purification. That the pain is from the remedy, not from the disease; that the flames are on the way to heaven, not mercifully confronting us on the other way to turn us back.

"It always seemed as if, by Roger's side, I should have grown good like him. How am I to grow good without him, severing myself from him? Oh, mother, mother! why must you leave me just now, when no one else in the world could have told me what to do. Because, while loving me more than yourself, you loved God's will far more than my pleasure.

"But Mistress Dorothy says, when I am tempted with 'vain reasonings' and 'debatings of the flesh,' I must go back to the first sacred impulse, when, by my mother's death-bed, I felt the death of the king for whom she would have died must place an impassable barrier between me and those who slew him, or consented to his death.

"First thoughts, says she, are often from above; second thoughts from within or from below. And if we endure to the end, third thoughts will come crowning the divine impulse of the first with a calm divine assurance.

"I will try to endure to the end. At least I will wait.

"To strengthen my resolve, let me go back to that sacred impulse, and through all it led to, up to this day.

"It was during those terrible days of early January, when hope and fear had passed, with uncertainty; and I sat by my mother's bedside, all my heart and soul absorbed in watching her depart, and in relieving any suffering or supplying any want for her so fast passing away from all suffering and from all our service.

"The east winds were careering across the Fens, and broke fiercely against the old house, and one night there was a crash of the great scarred elm-tree falling close outside the windows. But she heeded it not; and I remember feeling a strange kind of despairing triumph over all the violence of the elements. They might rage as at the Deluge; but they could neither hinder nor hasten the slow, silent progress of the awful power which was silently removing her from us.

"Before, in days of doubt and hope, I had been wont to watch the winds with a kind of superstitious solicitude, as if there were some mysterious sympathy between nature and men, and the ravings of her storms had been ominous of evil to us. But now that spell seemed broken. The sympathy between us and nature ceased with death. To her it was natural, a link in her endless chain of ever-recurring changes. To her, life and death were but as day and night, bright or dark phases of her ceaseless revolutions. She could see her children die as calmly as her suns set. To us death was unnatural, a convulsion, a horror, a curse. The terrible thing which seemed to assimilate us to her, in reality rent us from her sphere altogether. A week before, when we began to fear there was danger, I trembled at the wind wailing in the dead branches of the elms, or at a bird beating its wings against the window. Now that she was dying, I could have smiled at an earthquake or a tornado.

"All the outward and visible world, the terrors of its stormy nights as well as the sweet familiar delights of its dawns and days, seemed to lie outside me like a world of shadows, as for the first time I learned in my inmost heart that we are but strangers, not belonging to it, but passing swiftly through. As I gazed into the eyes which so soon were to cease to be the portal where my soul could meet hers, my own body seemed to become a mere phantasm, the innermost shell of this world of phantasms, where we stay a little while, to read its lessons and experience its changes, and then vanish, we from it and it from us. It was not so with the conflict then going on about the king. There, consciences were concerned, and right and wrong. And by her dying bed, right and wrong seemed the only realities left. I dared not break on the calm of her spirit with one word that might recall the conflicts of parties. Thus Love itself severed her spirit from me before death had sealed her eyes. And this was terrible beyond all. For as I sat there, the conviction became clearer and clearer that to put the king to death was crime, a crime she would have abhorred, a crime which, if he persisted in the doing it, must sever me from Roger.

"But alas, when Death came, this was all terribly reversed.

"When the feeble voice which had called on the Heavenly King, and the eyes whose tender smiles for me had changed at the last into the awed yet joyful intensity of the gaze with which her spirit seemed to welcome heaven and enter it, the whole unseen world seemed to vanish from my heart with her, and nothing was left but the eyes which could never look at me, and the lips which could never speak to me more.

"For this horror I was wholly unprepared. I thought, when she went, she would have left me standing, if but for one never-to-be-forgotten moment, on the threshold of an opened Paradise! She left me shivering on the brink of an impenetrable darkness. I could not feel even on the brink of an abyss. To have believed in an abyss even would have been an infinite relief. The horror was whether the darkness hid anything, whether there was a beyond at all.

"Could it be, indeed, that all, absolutely all, any one saw of death was just the heaving breast, the labouring breath, the few, faint, intermittent sighs; all which, in all animated creatures, marks the dissolution of natural life, and nothing to mark the distinctive, continuing, spiritual life of man?

"Was faith, then, to step so absolutely alone, unlighted by the least glimmer of the old familiar light, into the unknown?

"No one else around me seemed to experience this terrible darkness.

"They recalled the last words she spoke; they spoke of the pure raiment, clean and white, in which her spirit was clothed, of the golden streets she was treading, of the 'harps of God' to which she was listening. But the words fell altogether outside me, like some sweet, pathetic story of faëry or romance, such as she used to tell me.

"I, too, from my childhood had delighted in those fair pictures of a Paradise beyond the grave, of the city with gates of moon-like pearl, and walls of radiant gems; of trees whose leaves were healing and whose fruit was life; of waters clear as crystal, able to satisfy immortal thirst. I had delighted in those pictures, my fancy floating on them as on the glowing clouds of twilight, caring not to discriminate what was cloud, what were the bright glorified heights of earth, and what were heavenly, enduring stars; caring not to separate symbol from fact.

"But now all this was changed. What were fair pictures to me, brought face to face with this visible, terrible fact, that the spirit which had been my guide before I could remember, that my mother herself had gone where no cry of passionate entreaty, no tender ministry of love could reach, no agony of prayer avail to win the faintest sign that she heard, or cared, or existed?

"A few hours since she had said, 'Throw my warm old mantle round thee, Lettice, the nights are chill.' She had taken food from my hands, and murmured, smiling, 'Once I gave it thee.' And now the farthest star that sent the faintest ray from the utmost verge of the world, was near, compared with the impassable gulf of distance between her and me. What were fair visions of angels to me? What had they been to the Magdalene of old? If she lived, she was the same loving, tender saintly mother still, unlike any one else in the universe; not a white-robed angel lost in an overwhelming multitude of other white-robed angels, singing.

"My heart ached, and cried to heaven for one word, one syllable, one touch, to show that she was there. Would God give me instead, only fair pictures of an innumerable multitude far off, serenely singing as if they had not left any on earth bitterly weeping?

"I scarcely dared to think those thoughts, much less to utter them, until one day, the dreadful day when we left the house with the precious burden through which she had been all she was to me, and returned with nothing, the passion of my grief overcame me.

"Olive and Dr. Antony had left. Mistress Dorothy was standing on one side of the fire, in the wainscotted parlour which they had reserved for me.

"It was not her wont to dwell much on symbols and pictures, whether painted with words or colours. And seeing me sit with clasped hands in a kind of stupor, for I could not weep, she said, not in a tone of consolation so much as of rebuke,—

"'Child, sorrow not as those without hope. It is a sin. Thy mother is with God.'

"There was something in her words which went more to my heart than all the tenderest consolations had done. They did not seem said so much to comfort me, as simply because they were true.

"'If I could hope, I would not sorrow,' I murmured.

"'There is much reason to hope,' said she. 'Papists even have been saved, I doubt not, at least before the Reformation. And Lady Lucy was not a Papist. I doubt not that the Spirit of God dwelt in her as his temple. The Lord, indeed, of old suffered neither idol nor trafficker in his temple. But, mayhap, the traffickers are worse than the idols. And, indeed, dear heart,' she concluded, 'I do think sometimes we Protestants are like the later Jews, if the Papists and the Papistically inclined are like the earlier. We have cleared out the idols; but we keep the tables of the money-changers, mayhap the basest idolatry of all.'

"She had entirely misunderstood my perplexity. That she should imagine my mother's title to blessedness required defence to me, would have stung me to an indignant reply at other moments; but I was too cast down to be angry, and I only said,—

"'It is not of my mother I doubt, but of heaven; of everything. It seems as if all my old faith had vanished like a dream.'

"I scarcely thought of the weight of my words, until their own echo startled me; and I trembled at what effect they might have on Mistress Dorothy.

"But, to my surprise, her first words, spoken as if to herself, were,—

"'Thank God; the good work has begun.' Then laying her hand with unwonted tenderness on mine, she said, 'The tempter is cruel, dear heart; he is cruel indeed. But fear not, poor, torn, forsaken lamb. The eye of the Shepherd is on thee, and none shall pluck thee out of His hand. The tempter is cruel, not because he is strong, but because he is weak; he rages, not because he is victorious, but because he is vanquished; vanquished on behalf of all the flock, vanquished for thee, since the Lord is leading thee. His first lesson is ever to show the emptiness and the darkness; and He has shown thee this. Do not strive to hasten His handiwork by blending it with thine. Give thyself up to Him to be poor and blind, to walk in darkness, to have no light, as long as He wills. He will lay His hands on thee when the hour is come. He has begun, and He will finish. But thou must tread this part of the way alone. Take heed how, by conferring with flesh and blood, thou break the silence He is making in thy heart. Hitherto thou hast been dreaming. We are near waking when we dream that we dream."*

* These words are in "Novalis."—Editor.

"And she left me alone. But although she did not say so, I knew she would go and wrestle for me alone till I had won the victory.

"There was help in the thought.

"Yet, I could not think she was altogether right. I could not think all my former life a dream; that all the prayers which, childish and weak as they might have been, had helped me to bear painful things and to do difficult things, were delusions; or that the thoughts I had had about God's loving-kindness, and the joy in His works, were unreal fancies, that came not from Him. I could not give the lie to all that had been heavenly and holy in my efforts and aspirings. I could not draw a sharp border-line between one part of my life and the other, and say, Beyond that all is heathendom, where no God is; and here God begins. It seemed to me either He had been always with me and was near me now, or all was delusion, and I could never reach Him. Besides, it was of my mother my heart was full, not of myself. And the words of Mistress Dorothy which remained with me were,—

"'Thy mother is with God.'

"They turned the current of my thoughts from the future state to the Living Presence. Fancy, being of the brain, lay dumb and motionless, her fairy wings folded, as I think they ever must be, at the touch of real sorrow. Imagination, being of the heart, after vainly striving to penetrate to the heart of things, sank, dazzled by the impenetrable darkness, blinded by the ineffectual effort to gaze into the blank out of which she could avail to shape nothing but emptiness and darkness, no form and no light,—the bare negation of all she knew.

"Then Faith, turning away from the sepulchre with its impenetrable darkness, looked up into heaven, and listening, heard the living words,—

"'Thy mother is with God.'

"Dust to dust; spirit to Spirit; love to Love; weakness with Power; the mortal with the Eternal. The thought did not bring a softening gush of tenderness, but a solemn repose of awe; a silence, a hush, a subjection, in which my poor, weary, tossed heart seemed to gather strength.

"The words were the last with me at night; they made a calm in my heart, and I slept. They were the first with me in the morning; and through the days they rose from my heart like a prayer.

"Strong in that calm, on the Sunday after her chamber had been made empty, I ventured into it alone, to read the service for the day once more where I had read it so often to her. I came to the Apostles' Creed. The snow lay on the ground, hushing the earth with a death-like hush. All the world, seen and unseen, earth and heaven, seemed to me full of silence. I could only think of heaven itself as a vast snow-white mountain of God, silent and spotless, where the white-robed angels silently came and went on ministries of mercy, and the white-robed human creatures neither came nor went, but rested and adored, absorbed in the unutterable light around them.

"Silence in her death-chamber; silence on the cold snowy earth; silence in the pure light of heaven; silence in my heart.

"But as I sat there, a little robin came and perched on the snowy window-sill, turning his quick eyes from side to side, as if looking for the crumbs my mother never let me forget to scatter for him. Then he hopped off to a neighboring spray, and poured out a brief happy carol there, leaving the print of his pretty crimson feet on the snow.

"The silence of the earth was broken by his song.

"There was still a Master's table from which the crumbs fell for him.

"The silence in my heart was broken by the rush of tearful recollection his little song had brought, and I wept and sobbed as if my heart were breaking. Yet through all I felt it was not breaking, but being healed, as never before.

"For a word came to me which seemed to change the silence in heaven and earth into music.

"'I believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord.'

"The Father and the Son.

"This is the fountain-truth of Christianity. This is God. No mere solitary immutable Unity, but the living, eternal communion of Eternal Love. Not merely immutable, incomprehensible Being; but ever-creating, all-comprehending Life.

"This is Eternal Life; the fruitful source of all life. This is Eternal Love, not an attribute without object, but the Father and the Son eternally loving—the loving rejoicing fountain of all love sending forth the Spirit of power and love.

"This is heaven. Where the Father and the Son abide, and the holy angels and the redeemed: not absorbed in the contemplation of far-off separate light, but folded into the communion of eternal present love. 'That the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them and I in them.'

"God is called the Father, not in condescension to our understandings, because a human father's love is the best image human creatures can have of Him, but because He is the eternal Father, and the love of the Father and the Son is the root and bond of all creation.

"Heaven is called the Father's house, not because a human home is the purest picture our poor dim hearts can form of heaven, but because it is the Father's house—the parent-home and sacred health of the universe.

"And therefore the immortality of pure human love, of all that is truly human (not a perversion of original humanity) is ensured not by an Almighty Fiat, not even fundamentally by the incarnation of the Son in whom God is manifest to us, but by the very nature of God.

"It was to this love my mother had been taken up, and into the unutterable fulness of this joy—'My joy'—the joy of the Son. What images could be glowing enough to picture it?

"If the heavenly visions of the Apocalypse had been blotted out to-day, it seemed to me as if they must have sprung up spontaneously around the Apostles' Creed to-morrow.

"Living fountains of water, trees of life and leaves of healing, gates of pearl and walls of precious stones, raiment white as the light, rivers bright as crystal, harpers with the harps of God, songs like the sound of many waters; the very pavement which the feet of the 'many sons' were to tread, the sea by which they stood, radiant with combinations of glory impossible on earth, 'water mingled with fire,' 'pure gold like transparent glass,'—what are these but faint pictures in such colors as earth and earth's skies can furnish of the unutterable joy enshrined in the words, 'I in them, and thou in Me;' 'Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved Me?'

"I began to understand how my mother could be still herself, no tender touch of the old familiar affection lost, yet full of a joy which must overflow in the new song.

"For as I listened my heart recognized a distinction in the music.

"Not like an angel's her heart; not like an angel's was her song.

"The pathetic human tone should never vanish from the songs of the redeemed. The agony of redemption, the rapture of reconciliation, should never be forgotten there.

"To all He is the Father of Spirits. To each of the lost sons He is the Father who saw him while a great way off and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him, and said, Rejoice with me, for this my son was lost and is found.

"To all He is the Eternal Son. To us He is the Son who became the Lamb, who bore our sins and carried our sorrows, and redeemed us to God by His blood.

"I suppose my face shone with something of the joy in my heart, for Mistress Dorothy said solemnly to me that evening, as she bade me Good-night in my room, 'Has the tempter departed, and have the angels come and ministered to thee?'

"Then I told her something of the new light in which the old truths had come to me in my mother's chamber. She seemed to take hope concerning me, but not without fear, and questioned me as to whether I had experienced this and that, and through what instruments this deliverance had come.

"I could only say, 'I think it was thou, Mistress Dorothy, and the Apostles' Creed, and the robin redbreast.' She looked doubtful.

"'I never heard of any being led in such a way as that,' said she, 'and I cannot quite make it out. Doubtless, however, the Word of God is still His Word if it be written on the Pope's mitre, much more in the Apostles' Creed. Only be sure it is a Word from Him thou art resting on. Nothing else will stand when the heavens and the earth are shaken. And as to the robin,' she added, 'no doubt the Almighty once used ravens; and He might use robins. I have hope of thee, dear heart, but I would fain be more assured. I never heard of any soul being brought into the fold by such a way before.'

"But do any two wandering souls come back by the same way?

"It seem as if the ways back were countless as the wanderings: the Door is one, being the One who stands there to let us in.

"Nor am I sure that that was my first coming to the fold.

"It seems to me as life were in some sense one long course of conversion, one series of translations from darkness to light. Is not the sun always converting the sun-flowers by shining on them?

"Once and for ever in one sense; day by day in another.

"It seems to me as if every fresh sorrow or joy opens new depths in our hearts, which must be filled with fresh springs of the living water or else become empty and waste; as if every new revelation of life needs to be met by a new and deeper revelation of God.

"That Sunday, so full of peace to me, was the 28th of January.

"On the 30th the fatal scaffold stood outside the Banqueting Hall, and the king was led forth to die the death of a malefactor, in the presence of his people and of all the nations.

"On the evening of the next day the news reached Netherby.

"Mistress Dorothy entered my room after I had laid down to rest.

"'It is done!' she murmured under her breath. 'They have laid their hands on the Lord's anointed. The irremediable crime is committed.' And then, as usual with the Puritans in moments of strong emotion, falling into Bible language as into a mother-tongue, 'The crown is fallen from our heads,' she said; 'Woe unto us that we have sinned!'

"I could not speak.

"'Before the windows of his palace!' she continued, 'at mid-day, in face of heaven and of all the people.'

"'And not a voice to plead for him,' I said; 'not one arm lifted to rescue!'

"'Of what avail? the Ironsides were there,' she replied bitterly. 'They girded the scaffold like a wall of brass. They would not suffer the poor people to come near enough to listen to a word from the dying lips of their king.'

"My eyes met hers.

"'The Ironsides were there!' it was all I could say or think. For before me rose the figure of Roger Drayton on horseback amongst his men, stern and motionless, his soul masked in iron more rigid than his armour, not suffering the grief and pity at his heart to relax one muscle of the rigid resolution of his face.

"And between him and me for ever that scaffold and the shrouded corpse of the martyred king!

"I had, as it were, been living in heaven with her who was at rest there; and now the words came to me with a terrible desolation, 'I am no more in the world, but these are in the world.' Around her, rest, and peace, and songs of joy. Around me crime, and separation, and the terrible necessity to resolve.

"Mistress Dorothy spoke again, and her voice trembled,—

"'This is no longer a home for thee or for me, dear heart. I feared that thy joy had been sent thee to arm thee for some uncommon woe!'

"'No more a home for me, indeed,' I said; 'but how no longer for thee?'

"'I told my brother long since that if ever this crime was consummated, and neither he nor Roger lifted up their voices against it, I could not sleep another night under his roof, lest I should seem to embrue my hands in sacred blood. It is not for us to be like Pilate, languidly washing our hands of the crime we or ours might have averted.'

"'But whither will you flee?' I said.

"'I have a small tenement at Kidderminster, where godly Mr. Baxter dwelleth, a man who is as true to his king as to his God. There, if thou wilt, shall be a shelter for thee and me. It will be no palace, but the best I have shall be thine; and with Mr. Baxter's ministry that may suffice us both.'

"The generous offer touched me; but I felt that my father's home was the only one for me, now that Roger's way and mine must part for ever.

"She shook her head when I said so.

"'Thy father is among papists and idolaters,' she replied. 'It is written, "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me."'

"'If my father is in a place of peril,' I said, 'all the more my place is by his side.'

"She was silent some minutes; her eyes cast down, her lips set, and her hands grasping each other.

"'Child, thou art right. The heart is deceitful above all things. I thought I was pleading for God, and I was pleading for myself. I will take thee to thy refuge in France, and then I will go to my house alone. Canst thou be ready by to-morrow? I have vowed never to sleep nor to break bread under this roof again.'

"'The sooner the better,' I said; for I felt as if nothing but the overhanging shadow of that dreadful scaffold could strengthen me for the sacrifice. I dreaded lest time might make the treason against the king sink in my eyes into a mere political error, and my own departure seem more and more like a treason against those to whom I owed so much, and whom I loved so well.

"I spent the night, under Mistress Dorothy's direction, in packing the few things I might carry with me.

"In the morning, when Mr. Drayton's step was first heard on the stairs, Mistress Dorothy went out and followed him into his room below. For a few moments they were alone; then I heard her step re-ascending the stairs. It was not brisk, as was her wont, but slow, like the tread of an aged person. She re-entered the chamber, looking very white.

"'It is settled, child,' she said. 'My brother will not hinder us.'

"She would not be present at the family-prayer that morning, nor at breakfast, true to her vow.

"Immediately afterwards, Mr. Drayton requested an interview with me in his room.

"'My child,' he said, laying his hand on my shoulder, 'conscience is sacred. Are you sure that in this deed you are obeying, not my sister's conscience, nor even your mother's, but your own?'

"The question opened a labyrinth I could not disentangle.

"'It is so difficult to tell what is our own and what we inherit,' I said. 'My mother was my conscience, and I believe I am doing what she would have desired. Politics she said women must leave to men. But loyalty was like religion or affection. To the king every subject is personally related as to a parent or to God. That is what she believed and I believe. I dare not debate with myself. I dare not reason about what I feel to be a crime, or remain with those who sanction it. I dare not, Mr. Drayton, trust myself any longer to all that tempts me to stay.'

"He walked up and down the room once or twice with hasty steps.

"'Then, my child,' he said at length, 'neither dare I debate with thee nor hinder thee. I have loved thee as I love Olive, and hoped to have a right to call by a name as dear. But if thou wilt go, God forbid I should make my house a prison. By noon, an escort shall be ready to convey thee and my sister to the coast.'

"He was as good as his word. By noon we had left the old house. By the morrow we were on the sea on our way to France.

"In the dusk, before we sailed, a boat came to the ship's side, and a tall, muffled figure sprang on board. Of what happened, from the time the vessel began to toss on the short waves, I knew not much, buried in cushions among the luggage. But when the French coast was within reach, and we were waiting for the tide to enter the harbour of Calais, there was some little stir about a boat putting off from the ship; and as I lay gazing towards the harbour, I saw this boat struggle through the breakers to a point of rock, where one of the crew sprang on shore.

"The next morning we landed. We were met by the keeper of a hostelry, who courteously told us that our apartments were ready. And on the morrow, as I was sitting alone after breakfast, whilst Mistress Dorothy had gone to make preparation for our journey, there was a clatter of a horse's feet in the court-yard, and in a few minutes my father strode into the room and bade me welcome.

"'But by what miracle, father, couldst thou know we were here,' I said; as soon as I could speak for his kisses and my tears.

"'Didst thou not know? No miracle; only Roger Drayton riding through the night to tell me.'

"It was Roger, then, who had crept on board in the dusk, whose boat I had watched struggling through the breakers to the coast. And I dared not trust myself to ask where he was or when he would depart!

"'A brave and gallant gentleman he is,' said my father; 'a thousand pities such should lend their swords to traitors.'

"Then I began to tell him of all Mr. Drayton's goodness, and how Mistress Dorothy had undertaken the voyage in her motherly care of me.

"At that moment she re-appeared, and my father poured out his thanks.

"But she was very reserved and grave.

"'Sir Walter,' she said, at last. 'Little thanks I deserve for bringing this innocent lamb hither. I have seen awful things to-day. At the door of a church I saw a number of frightful images in a cage, standing in painted flames, and stretching out their hands through the bars, begging for money to buy them out of torment. And while I was looking on this, a procession of boys and men, in white clothes, passed me, bearing aloft something under a canopy, and wherever it came the people fell on their knees and worshipped. I asked a sober-looking woman what it was, and as far as I could understand she said it was "our Lord." They thought they were carrying God. I had heard much of Papistry, but I had not thought to come to places like Gaza and Ashdod almost within sight of England.'

"'It was the Host, good mistress Dorothy,' replied my father, explanatorily; 'the Holy Sacrament. Doubtless there is superstition in their reverence. But I must not forget my message from your nephew. Roger Drayton desires to know whether you will be ready to sail under his care to-night.'

Mistress Dorothy gave a questioning glance at me, and hesitated.

"'Let us persuade you,' my father said, 'to tarry awhile with us.'

"'God forbid, Sir Walter,' she replied, 'that I should tarry a night longer than I need, among these Philistines. And God forgive me,' she added solemnly, 'for bringing this lamb of the flock among them.'

"'Must I then tell Mr. Drayton you will accompany him?'

"Mistress Dorothy hesitated again.

"'It is a sore perplexity,' she said, at last, 'to have to choose between this land of idolaters and the company of those who, kith and kin of mine though they be, have embrued their hands in sacred, though I may not say innocent blood.'

"'Had Roger Drayton aught to do with that monstrous iniquity?' my father exclaimed fiercely.

"'Alas, was he not one of General Cromwell's Ironsides?' replied Mistress Dorothy. 'The heart of youth is too easily misguided.'

"'Ay,' said my father, with a strong Cavalier oath, 'and woe to those who misguided them—the quiet and sober Presbyterians and Parliamentarians, who made a breach in the dykes, and now wonder to see the country flooded by the ocean.'

"Again Mistress Dorothy had to lift up her voice in testimony; and in the midst of it Roger Drayton entered. The three chief elements of the civil war were comprised in the little English company gathered in the chamber of that Calais hostelry.

"My father, sorely irritated by what he considered Mistress Dorothy's Puritanical cant, lost all control of his temper. There were high and fierce words; and bitter epithets were freely exchanged. I only remember that in the end Mistress Dorothy, after embracing me with many a warning word, decided to depart with Roger, and that throughout it all Roger said not one intemperate or uncourteous word, bitterly as my father assailed him and those whose honour was dear to him as his own.

"When Mistress Dorothy and Roger had left, my father, after some rapid pacings of the room, and some severe soliloquising on the state of England, gradually become cooler, and then his courtesy returning he said,—

"'Ungracious return I have made for their generous kindness to you, Lettice; stay, and make ready for the journey, while I go and see if I can do anything for that fiery old lady. It would disgrace us if she were not well-sped on her homeward way. And I know the outlandish ways of this place better than they do.'

"I went to the window, saw him join them, watched them cross the court, and then sank down in a chair and hid my face in my hands, and was weeping vain and hopeless tears when the door of the room opened gently, with the quiet words, in Roger's voice,—

"'My aunt left her mantle.'

"I rose and he came to my side.

"'I had not meant this, Lettice,' he said, 'yet you need not have fled without one farewell. Your convictions are as sacred to me as yourself.'

"'I knew it,' I said, scarcely knowing what I said. 'I was not afraid of you but of myself.'

"'Lettice,' he said, 'it cannot be always so. It is impossible that such a difference can separate us forever. I must hope. If, as I trust, General Cromwell saves our England and makes her noble and great as ever she was before, say I may hope.'

"'What can I hope?' I said. 'Can I believe a thing a crime, and look forward to not always so believing it? Right and wrong are right and wrong for ever.'

"I think I never saw on his face such a look as then. Reverence, and honour, and love, and grief. I shall never see such a look on any face again. But he only said very softly,—

"'And love is love for ever.'

"There was a faltering in his tone which made it like an appeal, and I answered,—

"'For ever!'

"He wrung my hand once and was gone.

"I scarcely know if after all I should not have called him back, but for the memory of that look.

"Better to be separated from him all my life than to be dethroned from his heart by one wavering or unworthy thought or word. Yet even that dread scaffold seems sometimes a shadowy ghost to part love like ours. I would (at times) it were some plain, homely woman's duty that separated us instead. Then there might be heart-breaking, but scarcely this heavy mist of perplexity and doubt.

"I have to say to myself again and again, as if the words were a spell,—

"'It is not politics that part us, but right and wrong; what my mother would surely have deemed a monstrous crime. And dare I deem it less?'"

CHAPTER II.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

The next morning, the 31st January, the nation awoke a Republic. The king had died "a traitor" (they said) "to the nation;" and in the space before his scaffold it had been proclaimed, that whoever presumed to call his son, Charles Stuart, king, was a traitor to the Commonwealth. It was a strange, dreary dawning. As I opened my casement and looked across the black frozen river to London Bridge, with its "Traitor's Gate" and the towers of Southwark rising above from the marshy flats beyond, to the one long cold bar of brazen light which parted the dark clouds on the horizon from the heavy vault of snowclouds above, everything seemed hard and metallic—the heavens "iron and brass," the waters steel, the earth and her living creatures motionless, rigid, as if turned to stone.

What kind of a day was this to be? The king was dead; though the remains of the Westminster Assembly, and many of the Independent ministers, and well-nigh all the Parliament had protested against his execution, and well-nigh all the nation bewailed him. The king was dead. What authority had sentenced him? and what power was to rule in his place? Half, at least, of the nation looked on his death as a murder—but there was to be no mourning; the rest, as the terrible but victorious close of a terrible conflict—but there was to be no triumph.

No funeral pomp was to darken the streets that day, as for a king slain. No triumphal procession was to make them festive, as for an enemy vanquished. It was to be a day without mark or sign; and yet since England was first one nation surely such a day had never dawned on her. "The first day of freedom, by God's blessing restored," said the Commonwealth coins; the first day of England's widowhood, said the Royalists, widowed and orphaned at one blow.

Yet there was no disorder, no interruption of employment. The sounds of day began to awake in the busy city, the cries of countrymen bringing their vegetables from the fields, the ringing of the hammer on a forge near our house, the calls of the bargemen and boatmen locked in by the ice; and then, as the day went on, all distinction of sound lost in the general hum, like the sound of many waters, which marks that a great city is awake and at work.

Looking westward, I could see the gardener sweeping the snow from the walks in the gardens behind Whitehall, as if no terrible black scaffold had that day to be taken down in front.

Yet, I suppose, in well-nigh every heart, man or woman's, in London that morning, the first conscious thought was, "the king is dead;" all the more because there were few lips that would have uttered the words.

"What are we to do to-day, Leonard?" I said, when we had breakfasted.

"Do! dear heart," quoth he; "it is not thy wont to need thy day's tasks set thee by any."

"Nay; but to-day seems like a work-day with out work, and a Sabbath without services," I said.

"There will be a service," he replied. "The great Dr. Owen is to preach before the Parliament in St. Margaret's Church."

"The Parliament!" I said; thinking pitifully of the fifty members who still bore the name.

"You scarcely recognize the Rump as the Parliament," he said, answering my tone rather than my words.

"I scarce know what to recognize or reverence," I said. "I was wont in the old days at Netherby to think I had politics of my own, and would have belonged to the country party by free choice, if all around me had deserted it. But since our own people have split and divided into so many sections, I begin to fear, after all, it was nought but a young maid's conceit in me to think I had any convictions of my own. Aunt Dorothy and the Presbyterians think the killing of the king a great crime; my father and the old Parliamentarians think the forcible purging of the Parliament a manifest tyranny; Roger and the army think these things but the necessary violence to introduce the new reign of justice and freedom. But I know not what to believe, or whom to follow. What is to come next? Who are to rule us? We must have some to honour and obey; if not the king, and if not the Parliament, then whom?"

"Sweet heart," said he, "if the government of the three kingdoms has been resting on thy shoulders, no wonder thou art cast down and weary. But thou and I are among the multitude who are to be governed, not among the few who govern. Let us be thankful, as good Mr. Baxter saith, for any government which suffers people to be as good as they are willing to be. And let us be willing to be as good as we can. That will give us enough to do."

"But," I said, "all these years we have been learning that the country is as a great mother who demands fidelity from her most insignificant child; that Liberty is no mere empty name for schoolboys to make orations about, and Law no mere confused heap of technicalities for lawyers to disentangle, but simple sacred realities mothers are to teach their children to reverence; that the glory and safety of a nation depends on their political rights being sacred household words. We have been taught to look to Jewish and Roman matrons as our examples. Are we to unlearn all this now, and go back to the old saws we have been taught to think selfish and base; that politics are to be left to rulers, and laws to lawyers, and our liberties and rights to whoever will defend or trample on them?"

"Not go back, I think," he said gently, looking a little surprised at my vehemence; "only go deeper. Some precious rights, I believe, have been won. Let us use them. That is the best way to secure them. We are free to do what good we can, to unloose what burdens, and to hear and speak what good words we will. Let us use our freedom. No one can say how long it may last. This morning I must go to visit Newgate, and other gaols, in which there has been much sickness. For although the prisons are no longer filled by the Star Chamber, or the High Commission, they are unhappily still kept too well supplied by a tyrant more ancient and more universal than these. Moreover, Olive," he added, "there is still one sect not tolerated. The number of the imprisoned Quakers is increasing; and in Newgate there is one poor Quaker maiden whom I think thou mightest succour. A few days since thou wert desiring a maiden to wait on the babe. This Quaker maiden is a composed and gentle creature, and with kind treatment, such as she would have from thee, might, I think, be led into ways which seem to us more sober and rational."

My husband's words opened a prospect of abundant work before me. Already we had four washing-women of four different unpopular persuasions.

And I would have preferred choosing a nurse for the babe, on account of her qualities as a serving-wench, rather than as a Confessor. Moreover, what he intended to be re-assuring in his description, alarmed me rather the more. For of all fanatics, I have found gentle fanatics the most incorrigible, and of all wilful persons, these whenever "discompose" themselves, or put themselves wrong by losing their tempers, are certainly the most immovable. However, I repressed such selfish fears as quite unworthy of Leonard Antony's wife. And, accordingly, when he returned from the gaol, I was quite prepared to welcome the Quaker. And so I told him as we joined the sober throng who were going to hear Dr Owen preach at "Margaret's" before the Parliament.

A scanty Parliament indeed! No Lords, and about fifty Commons; and among them scarce one of those whose words and deeds had made its early years so strong and glorious.

Hampden lay among his forefathers in the church of Great Hampden; Pym among the kings in Westminster Abbey. Denzil Hollis and Haselrigge had been expelled from it; old Mr. Prynne, who had been liberated by its first act, had vehemently denounced its last; even the young Sir Harry Vane had for the time deserted its austere counsels.

Nevertheless the congregation was great and grave. And when Dr. Owen spoke, he led our thoughts at once to spheres compared with whose sublime chronology the length of the longest Parliament is indeed but as a moment. He came of an ancient Welsh ancestry; his bearing had a courtly grace; his tall and stately figure had the ease and vigor of one used to manly exercises; his voice was well-tuned, as the tones of one who loved music as he did should be; his eyes were dark and keen.

To the death of the king on that dreadful yesterday he barely alluded. There was neither regret nor triumph in his discourse. His exhortations were addressed not to the vanquished, but to the victorious party. If he alluded at all to the oppressions and vices of the late government, it was in order to conjure those now in power not to tread in their steps. His text was: "Let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them. And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brazen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee: for I am with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the Lord."

God's judgments, he said, are a flaming sword turning every way. Not in one of these ways, but in all, He resists those who resist them. "How do we spend our thoughts to extricate ourselves from our present pressures! If this hedge, this pit were passed, we should have smooth ground to walk on; not considering that God can fill our safest paths with snares and serpents. Give us peace; give us wealth; give us to be as we were, with our own, in quietness. Poor creatures! suppose all these designs were in sincerity; yet if peace were, and wealth were, and God were not, what would it avail you? In vain do you seek to stop the streams while the fountains are open; turn yourselves whither you will, bring yourselves into what condition you can, nothing but peace and reconciliation with the God of all these judgments can give you rest in the day of visitation. You see what variety of plagues are in His hand. Changing of condition will do no more to the avoiding of them, than a sick man turning himself from one side of the bed to another; during his turning he forgets his pain by striving to move; being laid down again he finds his condition the same as before.

"It was nothing new," he said, "for the instruments of God's greatest works to be the deepest objects of a professing people's cursings and revilings. Men that under God deliver a kingdom may have the kingdom's curses for their pains.

"Moses was rewarded for the deliverance of Israel from Korah by being told 'ye have killed the Lord's people.' Man's condemnation and God's absolution do not seldom meet on the same person for the same things. 'Bonus vir Caius Sejanus, sed malus quia Christianus.' What precious men should many be, would they let go the work of God in their generation!

"Yet be tender towards fainters in difficult seasons. God's righteousness, His kindness, is like a great mountain easy to be seen. His judgments are like a great deep. Who can look into the bottom of the sea, or know what is done in the depths thereof? When first the confederacy was entered into by the Protestant princes against Charles V., Luther himself was bewildered.

"It is by a small handful, a few single persons—a Moses, a Samuel, two witnesses—He ofttimes opposes the rage of a hardened multitude. His judgments ofttimes are the giving up of a sinful people to a fruitless contending with their own deliverers, if ever they be delivered. God, indeed, cannot be the author of sin, for He can be the author of nothing but what hath being in itself (for He works as the fountain of beings). This sin hath not. It is an aberration. Man writes fair letters upon a wet paper, and they run all into one blot; not the skill of the scribe, but the defect in the paper, is the cause of the deformity. The first cause is the proper cause of a thing's being; but the second of its being evil." Not, I understood him to mean, that sin is natural, but that the faculties of nature are perverted.

Then he fervently warned against fear of man, covetousness, ambition; against turning to "such ways as God hath blasted before our eyes, oppression, self-seeking, persecution."

And at the close he said, "All you that are the Lord's workmen, be always prepared for a storm. Be prepared. The wind blows; a storm may come."

Opinions about the sermon were various. On the whole I think it was hardly popular. Some said it was pitiless, that the harshest of his enemies would not have grudged one generous word for the fallen king. Others deemed it half-hearted, and declared that if John Knox, or one of the mighty men of old, had been in the pulpit, they would have made all true hearts thrill, and all false hearts tremble at the sentence of terrible justice just executed.

"What was thy mind about it, Olive?" my husband asked, when he, and Roger, and I had returned to the quiet of our little garden-parlor.

"I thought Dr. Owen very wise," I said, "in that he directed his discourse to those who were there to hear. I never could see the profit of denunciations of Popery addressed to those who hate it enough already; or of arguments addressed to Arminians who are not present to be crushed; or of railing at people who will not come to church, for the edification of those who do. It set me questioning myself whether God is indeed at work among us, and praying that if He is, none of us may mistake His hand."

"May it but have set every heart on the same questioning!" said Roger. "How can any call those words of Dr. Owen's an uncertain sound?" he added. "To me every tone was as clear as the trumpet-signals before a battle. God has sent you deliverance, has sent you a deliverer, he seemed to me to say, as Moses to Israel in bondage, as Luther to the Church in bondage. All depends on whether we acknowledge him—not, indeed, as to the Promised Land being reached at last, but everything as to when it is reached, everything as to our reaching it at all. Events seem to me constantly saying to us, 'If ye will receive it, this is Elias which was for to come.'"

The revenges of the Commonwealth were few. Three Royalist noblemen beheaded without torture or insult in Palace Yard. As far as Oliver Cromwell's rule extended there was not one barbarous execution. Baiting was not a sport he encouraged, whether of bulls and bears or of men.

During the ten years of the Commonwealth, the pillory, the whipping-post, the torture-chamber, were scarcely once used, and not one Englishman suffered the savage punishment awarded to traitors.

It was difficult to see what most men had to complain of. Good men of every party but one, the Royalist Episcopal, were encouraged.

Nevertheless, from every party rose murmurs of discontent. Before the king had been executed four months, General Cromwell had to subdue opposition in the Parliament, the city, among the peasantry, in the army itself.

Roger grieved sorely at what he deemed the blindness of the people.

Mr. Baxter preached and wrote against General Cromwell and his measures, at Kidderminster, to Aunt Dorothy's heart's content, propounding twenty unanswerable queries to show why none should take the "Engagement to the Commonwealth now established without King or Lords," and having in reserve twenty other queries equally unanswerable.

Colonel Hutchinson, the Republican, forbore not to exhort and rebuke him, seeing, as Mistress Lucy, his stately wife, said, how "ambition had ulcerated his heart."

Colonel Rich, Commissary Staines, and Watson, made a design on his life. The Council would have punished, but the General pardoned them. Men in general were indeed moved by such generosity. But it could not "blind" the penetrating eyes of Mistress Lucy Hutchinson, or of Mr. Baxter. If Oliver did magnanimous deeds in public, it was "to court popularity;" if little kindly acts in private, it was "to cajole weak members." If his plans succeeded, it was a "favor of fortune." If his enemies were vanquished, it was because they were "slaves or puppets," whom he, with marvelous prescience, had "tempted to oppose him for the easy glory of knocking them down." If he pleaded with almost a tearful tenderness against the coldness of old friends, it was "dissimulation;" if he sought to approve himself to good men, it was "because his own conscience was uneasy." If he disregarded their opinions, it was because he was "inflated with pride, or hardened to destruction."

Yet Roger thought much of this misapprehension would pass away. It was, he hoped, but the dimness natural to the twilight of this new dawn.

The greatest dangers to the new liberty, he thought, were from the hopes which it had created.

The first time this danger opened on me was from a conversation between Job Forster and Annis Nye.

The gentle Quaker maiden had been installed for some weeks as the nurse of baby Magdalene, who seemed to find a soothing spell in her still serene face, and quiet even voice.

As yet, no unusual or alarming symptoms had appeared in Annis, nothing to indicate her being capable of the offence for which it was said she had been cast into prison, which was that, one Sunday, she had confronted a well-known Presbyterian minister in his pulpit, at the conclusion of a sermon against "the Papal and Prelatical Antichrist" and in a calm and deliberate voice had denounced him in face of the indignant congregation as himself a "false priest," "hireling shepherd," and "minister of Antichrist."

Yet there was something in her different from any one I had yet seen. You could by no means be always sure of her responding to converse on good things; but when she did, it was like some one listening to a far-off heavenly voice and echoing it, and very beautiful often were the things she said.

Her neglect of ordinary gestures and titles of respect seemed in no way disrespectful in her. "Olive Antony" and "Leonard Antony" from her soft voice had more honour in them than titles at every breath from ordinary people, and when she called us "thou" and "thee," even the bad grammar which accompanied the custom had a kind of quaint grace from her lips. If asked her reasons for these customs she gave them. These customs were false, she said; a hollow compliance with the hollow world. The honour was rendered universally, and therefore insincerely; and to call a single person "you" was an untruth which "led to great depravation of manners." Having given these reasons, she never debated the point further; they satisfied her; if they did not satisfy you, she could not help it.

Occasionally there was inconvenience arising from the difficulty of knowing when any command might cross the non-observances she held sacred. Nevertheless, her presence had a kind of hallowing calm in it which compensated for much.

My husband had sympathy with her sect on account of their large thoughts of the love of God to mankind. And he said we ought to wait to see what portion of divine truth or church history it had been given to the Quakers to unfold, he sharing Mr. Milton's belief, that truth is found on earth but in fragments either in the world or the church. So, for the sake of my husband, and the free development of church history, and a growing love to the maid, I continued to accept from Annis such services as her conscience permitted, and to make up the deficiencies myself.

Job Forster, who, for Rachel's sake, had much reverence for feminine judgment, had frequent converse with Annis when he came to solace himself with our little Magdalene. For between him and the babe there was the fullest confidence and love, the little one never seeming more at home than in his brawny arms.

Job thought Annis "a woman of an understanding heart," and had hopes of reclaiming her from the error of her way. He did not for a long time discover that Annis was the most patient of listeners to his arguments simply as the Cornish cliffs are patient with the beat of the waves; and that when she "dealt softly" with him, it was not because she was convinced by his reasoning, but because she compassionated his blindness.

It was, therefore, with some surprise that I found him one April evening in 1649 listening with indignant gesticulations to Annis, as she stood, with clasped hands and eyes looking dreamily forward, repeating in a low monotonous voice, like a chant, the words,—

"Woe unto those that build with untempered mortar! Woe unto those that would build the temple of the Lord with the dust of the battle-field! Woe to those who run to and fro and cry, Lo here! and Lo there! The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, not with observation. The kingdom of God is within you, within you, within!"

Her voice died away into a sigh, and I confess it moved me not a little.

But Job, on whom the words came in the heat of debate, was by no means calmed thereby.

"It is no fair fight, Mistress Olive," he said, appealing to me; "she does not know when she is beaten. Only yesterday, she quite gave in, and had never a word to say, and to-day it's all to be begun over again. It's them poor honest fellows down in Surrey she means, and it's a sin to cast up all those Bible texts at them as if they were blinded persecutors, instead of poor true men striving to hasten the coming of the Kingdom. Mistress Annis," he concluded, for there was something in her which compelled from others the titles she refused to any, "did I not give you chapter and verse until you had never a word to gainsay? Is it not written so plain, that he who runs may read, that the Jews are to go in and possess the land, and did I not show thee that the Saxons are the lost tribes, the descendants of the Jews?"

But Annis had meekly resumed her knitting, and simply said,—

"A concern was upon my spirit regarding thee. I have spoken; the rest belongs not to me. There is the Power and the Anointing. But these are not with me." And she relapsed into silence.

"That is her way, Mistress Olive," exclaimed Job, much ruffled. "You shall be judge if any rational discourse can proceed on such principles. You bring forth Scripture enough to silence a council of rabbis—to say nothing of reasons. She listens as patient as a lamb, has not a word to answer—and this is the end."

Annis made no defence, she only said,—

"I had hopes, Job Forster, thee had been reached. But it seemeth otherwise."

For if Annis heeded not the arguments of others, neither did she rely on her own. Her confidence was not on the power of her words, but on the Power in and with them. But this Job did not perceive.

"Reached!" he exclaimed, looking hopelessly at me. "She speaks of me as if I were a babe in swaddling-clothes; and I old enough to be her grandfather."

"What was the matter in debate?" I asked.

"There was no debate!" said Job, still agitated. "Debates are only possible with people who are amenable to Scripture and reason. I was but speaking of the peasants at St. Margaret's Hill in Surrey, and the great work they are beginning there."

"What great work? Is there some great preacher risen among them?" I asked, thinking he meant some great work of conversion.

"There is a prophet among them, mistress," said Job solemnly, "by name Everard, once in the army. The work may seem small to the eye of flesh. As yet they are but thirty. But the Apostles were but twelve. And soon they may be thousands."

"But what is the work?" I said.

"Simple work enough," he replied mysteriously. "They began with digging the ground, and sowing beans therein."

"Surely none will gainsay them," I said, "if it is their own ground they are digging. But what is to come of beans except the bean-stalks?"

"It is not exactly their own ground," Job replied; "it is common-ground. And they invite all men to come and help them to make the barren land fruitful, and to restore the ancient community of the fruits of the earth, to distribute to the poor and needy, and to clothe the naked. Gospel words, Mistress Olive, and gospel deeds, let the Justices say what they may."

"The Justices interfered, then?" I said.

"Doubtless," he replied. "Justices do, in all the books of the martyrs I ever read. Justices are a stiff-necked race."

"And so it ended?" I said.

"So it began, Mistress Olive," Job replied mysteriously. "The country-people also were blinded, and two troops of horse were sent against them. They were brought before General Fairfax. Master Everard spoke up to him like a lion, and told him how the Saxon people were of the race of the Jews, how all the liberties of the people were lost by the coming of William the Conqueror, and how, ever since, the people of God had lived under tyranny worse than their forefathers in Egypt. But that now the time of deliverance was come, and there had appeared to him a vision, saying, Arise, dig and plough the earth, and receive the fruits thereof, and restore the creation to its state before the curse."

"What does General Cromwell say?" I asked.

"He has not yet got the light," replied Job. "But his eyes will be opened, for he is of them that sigh and cry for the iniquities of the land. The light must be flashed a little stronger in his face, and he will see."

"But the General is taking away oppression; he has destroyed slavery," I said. "And there are so many curses, Job, besides the thistles and thorns. Yet even our Lord took them not away. How can these thirty countrymen hope to do it by sowing beans in the Surrey commons? Our Lord did not take hard things away. He changed them into blessings. The sweat of the brow, the thistles and all; even death."

"That is what I was trying to explain to Mistress Annis," replied Job. "There are the Two Kingdoms. One cometh not with observation; the other cometh like the lightning which lighteneth from one end of heaven to the other."

"But I do not see how digging up the Surrey sand-hills is like either," I said.

"No," said Job, shaking his head pitifully; "I daresay not, Mistress Olive. Others must do their part of the work first. There are the 'men as trees walking' and there is the 'shining more and more.' But I did think Mistress Annis would have had understanding. For these country folk were like to those she calls Friends. They would not take arms to defend themselves against the powers that be, but would wait and submit. And when asked why they did not take off their hats to General Fairfax, they said, Because he was their fellow-creature."

But not even this orthodoxy as to "hat-honour" moved Annis.

"Not with observation," she said; "not in bean fields, nor battle-fields, nor in king's palaces. Within you—within!"

Job rose, and gently laying little Magdalene in my arms, took his hat, and went away without further farewell.

"She will not see the Two Kingdoms," he murmured. "This generation will have to be roused by louder voices. The foxes must be hunted with beagles of other make. Those who will not wake at the lark's singing will be startled when the trumpet peals. Five Monarchies," he added, turning to us from the threshold; "Two Kingdoms and Five Monarchies. Four have been, and are not. One is yet to come; cut out of the mountain without hands—to crush the remnants of the four and fill the world. Take heed that ye fail not of the signs of its coming."

Job's words made me uneasy. They seemed to betray a subterranean fire of wild hopes, and wild distrusts, and tumultuous purposes, which might burst up beneath our feet any day anywhere is a volcano of wilder deeds.

"What does Job mean," I said to my husband afterwards, "by his Fifth Monarchy and his Kingdom coming like the lightning, and his 'beagles to hunt foxes'?"

"He means precisely what is endangering the Commonwealth most of all at this moment," my husband said. "So many evils have been removed, that sanguine men think it is nothing but faint-heartedness in the leaders which suffers any to remain. Now that the Star Chamber and the persecutions are suppressed, they seem to think it is only Cromwell's half-heartedness that prevents the devil being suppressed also, instantly, with all his works. Now that fines and persecutions are swept away, and the laws which sanctioned them, and the men who made the laws; what, they think, is to hinder poverty being swept away, and unaccountable inequalities of station, and avarice, and luxury, and waste, and want, and all the old tangle of too much toil for some and too much idleness for others? But we must see after this. There are mischief-makers abroad. 'Free-born John Lilburn' is scattering fire-brands from his prison in the Tower, about England's 'new chains;' and we must not suffer Job Forster to be among his victims. To-morrow we will tell Roger of the danger, that he may counsel Job."

But on the morrow it was too late. In the night (the 23th of April) there was much stir in the city; sudden sharp alarms of trumpet and drum, and galloping to and fro of horsemen, not on parade.

A troop of Whalley's regiment, quartered at the Bull Inn, Bishopsgate mutinied; why, it was not clear, but with some vague intention of bringing in swiftly the thousand years of liberty and universal happiness.

General Cromwell and Lord Fairfax extinguished the fire for the time. Five ringleaders were seized and condemned, and out of them one, Sergeant Lockyer, was shot the next day in St. Paul's Churchyard.

They were practical times. It mattered very much what people's opinions were about prophecy, when they expressed them by insurrections and mutinies.

But, naturally, executions did not alter the convictions of the people who believed the prophets.

Of all the assemblies the old church and the houses round the churchyard had witnessed, I think there had scarce been a sadder than when young Trooper Lockyer was led out there to die. No crime was laid to his charge, but this unpardonable military crime of mutiny. He was but twenty-three. At sixteen he had joined the army of freedom, and had fought bravely in it seven years. Blameless and brave, all the fervour of his early manhood had burnt pure in aspirations for a Kingdom of God on earth, a free and holy nation, where the poor and needy should be judged and saved, and deceit and violence should cease, and the oppressor should be broken in pieces. And thousands with him had prayed for it by the camp fires at night, and had fought for it on many battle-fields by day for seven years. And the poor and needy had been saved, and deceit and violence avenged, and many oppressors broken in pieces. The Bible had promised it, and with prayers and strong right arms they, the army of freedom, had done it. But the Bible promised more. One set of workers after another had been set aside, they thought, "as doing the work of the Lord deceitfully." They were prepared to do it thoroughly—to pray and fight on till every wrong in England was redressed, and every chain, new and old, was broken, till every valley should be exalted, and every mountain and hill should be laid low, when avarice with its base hoards of gold, and ambition with its lordly palaces, should vanish, and every home in England should be a home of plenty and of well-rewarded toil; the praises of God going up from every holy city and happy hill-side through the land, till the whole earth stopped to listen, and the thousand years of the better Eden began.

And for hopes such as these young Trooper Lockyer was led out to die; for carrying out a little too swiftly what all Christian men hoped to see; for "doing the Lord's work," "not deceitfully," but too hastily, at the wrong time, and not altogether in the right way.

There was nothing new to him in facing death. He stood to receive the fatal volley; and when he fell, the great crowd of men and women broke into bitter weeping and bewailed him.

That Saturday and Sunday were sad days in the city. There was a sense of hushed murmurs and tears all around us among the people. We knew the corpse was being solemnly watched night and day with prayers weeping in the city. The death of the king, alone and gray-haired, had smitten the people with awe; the execution of this brave young soldier touched them with a passionate reverence and pity.

Nothing was to be seen of Job during those days. Roger had seen him once; but he looked gloomy, and would be drawn into no discourse. He was among the watchers over the dead, nursing wild hopes of the Fifth Kingdom, and bitter distrusts of those who hindered its coming.

On Monday the feeling of the people manifested itself in a solemn procession passing through the city to Westminster.

Ceremonial, funereal or festive, was so foreign to our Puritan people, that the few occasions on which the irrepressible feeling burst forth into such manifestation had a terrible reality.

A soldier's funeral is heart-stirring enough at any time; but to me, scarce any procession, before or since, seemed so moving as this which bore Trooper Lockyer to his grave in Westminster Churchyard.

There were none of the rich or great among them. First, a hundred men, five or six in file. Then the corpse of the poor brave youth, with the sword he had long used so well, stained now with blood, and beside it bundles of rosemary, also dipped in blood. Then the horse he had ridden to many battle-fields, moving uneasily under his heavy mourning draperies, and beside it six men pealing on six trumpets the soldier's knell. Behind, thousands of men, marching slow and silent in order like soldiers. And after all a crowd of mourning women; all, men and women, with bunches of black or sea-green ribbon on their hats and breasts.

At Westminster they were met by thousands more, "of the better sort," it was said. And so the young man died, for trying to fulfil men's best hopes at a wrong time and in a impracticable way, and was buried, not without honour.

The crime was not one which moved men to vengeance. The doom was one which moved men much to pity.

So the fire went on spreading in the army. On May the 9th, the mutinous sea-green ribbons appeared among the soldiers at a review in Hyde Park.

General Cromwell with one of those speeches of his which critical gentlemen pronounced so confused, but which those to whom they were addressed found so plain, made the men in general understand that to be a soldier meant to obey commands. If they declined to obey, they should receive arrears of pay and be dismissed. If they decided still to be soldiers, they must obey, or suffer the penalties of martial law, under which they had put themselves.

I suppose his words told, as usual, for the sea-green ribbons disappeared, and no further mutiny followed in London.

Meantime Mr. John Lilburn, for whom General Cromwell had once pleaded with so vehement a passion when he was Mr. Prynne's servant in danger of the pillory and the whipping-posts, continued to disperse his incendiary pamphlets from the cell to which he had been committed in the Tower. And at length the news came that the conflagration had burst out in the army in three places at once, two hundred mutineers at Banbury, at Salisbury a thousand, in Gloucestershire more.

Job Forster had gone westward within those weeks with scarce a word of farewell to any. With a grave and glooming countenance, and avoiding all discourse. We feared sorely to hear that he was among the mutineers.

On Sunday, May the 14th, Roger called to bid us farewell, ready booted and spurred to ride off with Fairfax and Cromwell and their troops for Salisbury, to quell the mutiny there.

It was an uneasy Sabbath for us who were left behind. John Lilburn was in the Tower, and somewhere around the Tower were dwelling the thousands of grave and determined men who had borne Trooper Lockyer to his grave scarce a fortnight before. And the only voice which seemed able to command the stormy waves was out of hearing, heartening his men on their rapid march through Hampshire towards Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire; as they tracked the mutineers northward till they came on them at midnight taking uneasy rest at Burford.

But London remained quiet, to all outward seeming. Whatever vows were being made in homes where the "Eikon Basilike" was being read secretly, with a passionate devotion, together with the proscribed liturgy, the hopes cherished were of a "blessed restoration" and "vengeance on bloody usurpers;" or, on the other hand, in homes where Trooper Lockyer was the martyr, and the hopes were of a speedy millennium with vengeance on all who hindered it,—they did not disturb the quiet of that Sabbath. Leonard and I went to the morning exercise in "Margaret's," and the preaching in the abbey, and Annis to her obscure meeting of Friends. And little Magdalene welcomed us back with crowings "significant" (we thought, as my Diary records), "of a remarkable vivacity of intelligence." And as in the evening we looked on the Lent-lilies and primroses Aunt Gretel had sent from Netherby, making the little garden behind the house faintly represent the woods and fields, it seemed to us that the city had even more than its usual Sabbath stillness, while we listened to the evening family psalm rising from the open lattices of many houses around us.

Yet all through that Sabbath-day those who were keeping the peace with their good swords for us, were chasing the mutineers from county to county and from town to town, making meanwhile such Sabbath melodies in their hearts as best they might.

The story of the pursuit I heard afterwards from Job. All through the Monday the chase went on.

"We thought to cross into Oxfordshire at Newbridge, and join our fellows at Banbury," said Job. "But they had been before us? the bridge was guarded. We had to double and swim the river. By this time it grew dusk, and when we reached the little town of Burford on Monday evening it grew dark. At the entrance of the street we made a halt. Little welcome had we found at town or village. The name of him who was chasing us had been our shield and boast too long not to weight against us now.

"For the first time these two days since first they came nigh us, we missed the tramp of the horse in pursuit. Some of us hoped they were off the scent. Others knew better than to think the General was to be baffled so. We knew his ways too well. But be that as it might we were fain to stay. The horses stumbled and would not be spurred further. We had to cross fifty miles of country that day, to say nothing of doublings. We turned the poor brutes out to grass in the meadows by the river, and, wet and weary as we were, turned in to get such sleep as we might.

"Running away is work that breaks the heart of man and beast, and Oliver had not used us to it.

"But as midnight boomed out from the tall old steeple, we found what the silence of the pursuers had meant.

"They had been lying quiet in ambush outside the town. On they came, clattering into the narrow streets, with the old cries we had joined in with them so long. It was enough to make any man's heart fail to have to go against the old watchwords, to which we had charged and rallied scores of times together. But worse than all was Oliver's voice. Few of us could stand that. It had been more than a thousand trumpets to us for years. A few desperate shots were fired, and all was over. We were caught and clapped up together to await the sentence. We went to sleep thinking we might yet be the Lord's handful to bring in the Millennium. We woke up and found we were nothing better than a lot of traitorous mutineers.

"Two days of waiting followed, and they finished the work for most of us. Some still braved it out, and talked of martyrdom, and of paving the way to the Kingdom with our corpses. But the greater part were downcast and heart-stricken, and in sore bewilderment of soul. We minded Oliver's prayers before so many battles, and the cheer of his voice in the fight, and his thanksgivings afterwards; and how he had praised the Lord and praised us, and made as though he owed all to us, while we felt we owed all under God to him. We minded how he had never thought it beneath him to write up to Parliament to claim reward for any faithful service of any among us, and had never claimed honor or reward for himself. More than one among us minded how a glance from his eye singled us out, and had made our hearts swell like a public triumph, though not a soul saw it besides; how it had been enough reward for any toil to know that the General knew we had done our best. All of us had heard his cheery voice joining in joke and laugh, and more than one had heard it in low tones beside the dying, breathing words which could make a man brave to face the last enemy of all.

"And now his eyes had rested on us in grave displeasure, and grieved disappointment. He had thought we knew him, his sorrowful eyes had said; he had thought we could have trusted him to do the good work, and would have helped him in it.

"The Royalists hated him, good Mr. Baxter and the Presbyterians distrusted him, but he had thought we knew him!

"And so we did! And before those two days were over, there were many among us who would have asked no better from him or from Heaven than that we might have one chance of following him to the field, and showing how faithful we could be to him again.

"So we came to the Thursday. The court-martial sat and gave sentence. Ten out of every hundred of us were doomed to die. We were taken up to a flat place on the roof of the old church to see our comrades shot in the church-yard and to abide our turn. Cornet Thompson came; he and his brother had been at the bottom of it, and he had no hope of pardon. But he spoke out bravely, and said that what befell him was just; God did not own the ways he went; he had offended the General; he asked the people to pray for him; he told the men who stood ready with loaded guns, when he should hold out his hands to do their duty. I suppose he gave the sign. I was too sick at heart to look. But the volley came and he fell. Next came two corporals—made no sign of fear, said no word of repentance, looked the men in the face till they gave fire, and fell. Then came Cornet Dean—confessed he had done wrong, after a short pause received pardon from the generals. And so we, standing sentenced on the roof of the old church, waited what would befall us next.

"The shooting was over. Oliver had us called into the church. There he preached us a sermon none of us are like to forget. Not long nor under many heads, but home to every heart. Some say the General is blundering in speech, and no man knows what he would say. We always knew. And all I knew of the sermon that day, is that blundering or not, he made us all feel we had blundered sorely as to the Almighty's purposes—blundered as to him. There were silence enough in the old church that day, but for the weeping. The sobs of men like some of ours are catching to listen to; Oliver's Ironsides are not too easily moved. But that day I believe we all wept together like children. We had lost our lives and we had them given back to us; we had lost our way in the wilderness and we had found it again. We had lost our leader and we had found him, and it will be hard if any noisy talker, free-born John Lilburn or other, tempt us to leave his lead again. We Ironsides are not going to use our Captain as the children of Israel used their Moses. Thank God, we have another chance given us, and we are ready to follow him to Ireland, or to the world's end.

"The General is breaking the chains fast enough, and opening the prisons, and breaking in pieces the oppressors. And God forbid we should hinder him again. And as to the millennium, the Lord must bring it about in His own way, and in His own time. I for one will never try to hurry the Almighty again, nor the General."

The Surrey labourers went home to sow beans in their master's fields. The army Levellers, after being sent for a while to the Devizes, were restored to their own regiments, and were eager to prove their fidelity to General Cromwell by following him to the new campaign in Ireland.

It rejoiced me to hear that Dr. John Owen was going to Ireland as General Cromwell's chaplain. His strong calm words were such as were able to move and to quiet men like the Ironsides, who were not to be stirred with zephyrs, or quieted with sweet murmurs as of a lady's lute;—words plain and strong as their own armour. The sound of a trumpet was in them, Job said, and the voice of words.

Often and often his words echoed back to me as we heard them before the Parliament in St. Margaret's, on the day of humiliation, the 28th of February.

"How is it that Jesus is in Ireland only as a lion, staining all His garments with the blood of His enemies, and none to hold Him out as a lamb sprinkled with His own blood to His friends? Is it the sovereignty and interest of England that is alone to be there transacted? For my part, I see no further into the mystery of these things, but that I could heartily rejoice that, innocent blood being expiated, the Irish might enjoy Ireland so long as the moon endureth, so that Jesus Christ might possess the Irish. In this to deal faithfully with the Lord Jesus—call Him out to the battle, and then keep away His crown? God hath been faithful in doing great things for you; be faithful in this one, do your utmost for the preaching of the gospel in Ireland."*

* "On the sinfulness of Staggering at the Promises."

And again in the great sermon on the shaking of heaven and earth, on the 19th of April.

"The Lord requireth that in the great things He hath to accomplish in this generation all His should close with Him; that we be not sinfully bewildered in our own cares, fears, and follies, but that we may follow hard after God, and be upright in our generation.

"God does not care to set His people to work in the dark. They are the children of light, and they are no deeds of darkness which they have to do. He suits their light to their labour. The light of every age is the forerunner of the work of every age.

"Every age hath its peculiar work, hath its peculiar light. The peculiar light of this generation is the discovery which the Lord hath made to His people of the mystery of civil and ecclesiastical tyranny.

"The works of God are vocal-speaking works. They may be heard, and read, and understood. Now what, I pray, are the works He is bringing forth upon the earth? What is He doing in our own and the neighbouring nations? Show me the potentate on earth that hath a peaceable molehill to build a habitation upon. Are not all the controversies, or most of them, that are now disputed in letters of blood among the nations somewhat of a distinct constitution from those formerly under debate? those tending thereof to the power and splendour of single persons, and these to the interest of the many. Is not the hand of the Lord in all this? Is not the voice of Christ in the midst of all this tumult? What speedy issue all this will be driven to, I know not: so much is to be done as requires a long space. Though a tower may be pulled down faster than it was set up, yet that which hath been building a thousand years is not like to go down in a thousand days.

"Let the professing people that are among us look well to themselves. 'The day is coming that will burn like an oven.' Dross will not stand this day. We have many a hypocrite yet to be uncased. Try and search your hearts; force not the Lord to lay you open to all.

"Be loose from all shaken things. You see the clouds return after the rain; one storm on the neck of another. 'Seeing that all these things must be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation?' Let your eyes be upwards, and your hearts be upwards, and your hands be upwards, that you be not moved at the passing away of shaken things. I could encourage you by the glorious issue of all these shakings, whose foretaste might be as marrow to your bones, though they should be appointed to consumption before the accomplishment of it.

"See the vanity and folly of such as labour to oppose the bringing of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus! Canst thou hinder the rain from falling? Canst thou stop the sun from rising? Surely with far more ease mayest thou stop the current and course of nature than the bringing in of the kingdom of Christ in righteousness and peace. Some are angry, some are troubled, some are in the dark, some full of revenge; but the truth is, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear, Babylon shall fall, and all the glory of the earth be stained, and the kingdoms become the kingdoms of our Lord Jesus Christ."*

* "On the Shaking of Heaven and Earth."

On the 7th of June, Dr. Owen preached again at "Margaret's" before the Parliament, on the great thanksgiving day, when the city feasted the Parliament, and distributed £100 to feast the poor.

Aunt Gretel and my father, who had come up from Netherby, heard him, with us. About the same time, Annis Nye returned from one of the two "threshing-floors,"* where the "Friends" had been suffered publicly, by "searching words," to sift the chaff from the wheat; and a "prelatical" friend of ours came in to tell us of his having joined in the ancient Common Prayer at St. Peter's Church on Paul's wharf, and heard good Archbishop Ussher preach.

* These two threshing floors are first spoken of a few years later, in 1655.

Whereon Aunt Gretel, who (believing far more in the power of light than in that of darkness) was ever wont to be seeing the clouds breaking, before others could, remarked to me,—

"Surely, sweet heart, the years of peace are already in sight. Quakers, Prelatists, and Puritans free to do what good they can in their different ways, what is that but the lion lying down with the lamb?"

"Ah, sister Gretel," said my father, "lions and lambs have lain down together in cages, with the keeper's eye on them, many a time before now, when they were well fed, and could not help it. It remains to be seen what they will do when the keeper's eye is removed. General Cromwell saith all sects cry for liberty when they are oppressed, but he never yet met with any that would allow it to any one else when they were in power."

And as we passed the kitchen door on our way upstairs, we heard sounds of scarcely millennial debate.

I am afraid Annis Nye had been taking a feminine advantage of the failure of her antagonist's cause to remind him how she had forewarned him. For Job was saying,—

"Convinced we are not to look for the Fifth Monarchy because we poor soldiers blundered about the ways and the times! As little as a man would be convinced the sun was never to rise because some idle watch-dog waked him up too soon by baying at the moon. Moved from the error of my ways! Moved at farthest from the First of Thessalonians to the Second. Not a whit farther. But that folks should call themselves Friends of Truth, who are not to be brought round by chapter and verse, is a marvel. General Cromwell knows what he is about in letting such have their 'threshing-floors.' There are those that think another sort of threshing-floor might be best to sift such chaff away. Eden is before us, Mistress Annis; before as well as behind. And the best Paradise is to come."

"The lion and the lamb are scarcely at peace yet, sister Gretel!" said my father.

But when we were all seated together in the parlour that evening, my father said,—

"How many hearts, like Job Forster's, have believed they saw the breaking of the dawn, which was to usher in the golden age, when it was only the breaking forth of the moon from the clouds, or perhaps only the deepening of the darkness, which they thought must be the darkest hour preceding the dawn. The Thessalonians of old; the early Church in her persecutions; Gregory the Great at the breaking up of the Empire; the Middle Ages in the year One Thousand, with a trembling expectation which led men, not indeed to sow beans on commons to make the whole earth fruitful, but to sow nothing, believing that earth's last harvest was at hand."

"Yet were they far wrong?" said my husband. "The moonlight and the morning both draw their light from the sun. The dawn shows that he is coming, but all light worth the name testifies that he is. In the moon, which dimly lights our night, it is already day. So that the moonlight, in truth, is as sure a promise of the day as the dawn."

CHAPTER III.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

"Rouen.—We have not yet been able to enter Paris. The city is in great excitement with the wars of the Fronde. The queen-mother, Anne of Austria, and the young king Louis XIV., have been compelled to fly to St. Germains. It is strange to be exiled from one Civil War to another. The French Court is so poor in consequence of these tumults, that they have had to dismiss some of their pages; and it is reported that our own youngest princess, Henrietta, was obliged to stay in bed to keep herself warm for lack of fuel to light a fire.

"I have not had to wait long for the fulfilment of my murmuring wish, that some simple, homely woman's duty were separating me from Roger, instead of a political crime.

"When my father returned from paying such farewell courtesies as he might to Mistress Dorothy, he said, fixing a penetrating look on me (who, if I cast down my eyes, could not hide from him my eyelids swollen with weeping),—

"'Master Roger Drayton was longer than need be in fetching Mistress Dorothy's mantle. I trust, Lettice, thou gavest him no cause.'

"Then I told him all, as well as brief words might tell it.

"'Thou hast done well,' said he. 'Could I think daughter of mine would have felt otherwise to one of those who have made England a reproach and a curse on the earth, I would sooner she had died. For to eternity my curse would rest on her, and never would I see her face again.'

"Then seeing me grow pale, he added, in a cheery voice,—

"'But what need to speak of curses? Thou art a true maiden, Lettice, as true as fair. And many a hand there is that would be glad to be linked with this little hand, none the less that it has rejected a traitor.'

"Then I gathered courage once for all, and said,—

"'Father, they were good as angels to mother and to me. I shall always love them better than any in the world, save thee; I shall always think them holier and wiser, and more true and good than any in the world, save mother. For my sake, father, say no ill of them. It wounds me to the heart. And, father, say no more of any other wooer. I will live for thee and for no other.'

"He was not moved as I hoped by my pleading. He only smiled and said,—

"'No need for me to say anything of other wooers, child. They may speak for themselves. But as to living for me, I fear thou wilt find me a rough old tyrant enough to live with, say nothing cf living for. See already, when I meant to cheer thee I have made thee weep. Maidens are mysterious,' he added, going to the window and whistling uneasily. Then returning, he laid his hand kindly on my shoulder, saying, 'Come, come child. Thou shalt be as good to me as thou wilt. And I will say as little evil of any thou carest for as I can, though as to picking my words it is what I am little used to. Only no tragedy, Lettice, and no heroics! Your mother knew I had no capacity for the heroics, and she never troubled me with them. I knew that she loved the mountain-tops, and now and then I should hear her singing there as it were like a lark or an angel. But she never expected me to climb. She had her divine songs, and her heroic epics, and her lays, and her romaunts, and I loved her all the better for them, but to me she always talked in prose, so that we understood each other. Thou and I will do the same."

"And then the horses were ready, and we rode away together to Rouen.

"But his words are very mournful to me. Are only the streets and market-places, as it were, of our souls to be open to each other, and the inmost places, the hearth and the church, always to be closed?

"Yet there is a kind of unreasonable consolation in the prohibition of my father's as to Roger. It is a terrible strain to have to keep that door closed myself; whilst, at the same time, the barrier of another's will seems less impenetrable than that of my own purpose.

"May 3rd.—I am not sure that my father's words were not the best medicine in the world for me. It is so much better to have to meet others than to expect them to meet us.

"I have not to erect my cross into an idolatry, serving it with a ritual of passionate kisses and tears. I have to carry it; and to do my work carrying it.

"'Si tu crucem portas; ipsa te vicissim portabit,' saith my mother's A Kempis.

"Shall I indeed ever prove that? Not as a sufferer only, but as a conqueror? Then how? Not surely by looking at my cross, but by bearing it. Not by bearing it with downcast eyes, but with eyes upward to the redeeming Cross now empty;—to the living Conqueror who once suffered there!

"May 4th.—Mistress Dorothy left a sermon of Dr. Owen's with me. It was preached on occasion of a Parliament victory over the king at Colchester and Romford. She asked my forbearance with the occasion. 'Not difficult to exercise (I said), since victor and vanquished, King and Parliament, are both banished now before this new usurpation.'

"I read it with interest. Little of the cant some think characteristic of the Puritan speech there. Dr. Owen calls Colchester, Colchester, and not Gilead or Manasseh; and England, England, not Canaan; and Naseby, Naseby, not Jezreel or Armageddon; and his enemies their own English names, not bulls of Bashan, or Amorites, or Edomites, or Hagarenes.

"But it is for what he saith therein on trouble, that she gave it me. The text is the prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shigionoth. Shigionoth, saith the doctor, means 'variety, a song in various metres.' 'Are not God's variable dispensations held out under these variable tunes, not all alike fitted to one string? Are not several tunes of mercy and judgment in those songs? "By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us." Nothing more refreshes the panting soul than an "answer" of its desires; but to have this answer by "terrible things"—that string strikes a humbling, a mournful note.

"'We are clothed by our Father in a party-coloured coat; here a piece of unexpected deliverance, and there a piece of deserved correction. The cry of every soul is like the cry of old and young at the foundation of the second temple. A mixed cry is in our streets.

"'A full wind behind the ship drives her not so fast forward as a side wind that seems almost as much against her as with her; and the reason, they say, is, because a full wind fills but some of her sails, which keep it from the rest that they are empty, when a side wind fills all her sails, and sends her speedily forward.

"'Labour to have your hearts right tuned for these variable songs, and sweetly to answer all God's dispensations in their choice variety. It is a song that reacheth every line of our hearts, to be framed by the grace and Spirit of God. Therein hope, fear, reverence, with humility and repentance have a space, as well as joy, delight, and love, with thankfulness.

"'That instrument will make no music that hath but some strings in tune. If, when God strikes on the string of joy and gladness, we answer pleasantly; but when He touches upon that of sorrow and humiliation, we suit it not; we are broken instruments that make no melody unto God. A well-tuned heart must have all its strings, all its affections, ready to answer every touch of God's finger. He will make everything beautiful in its time. Sweet harmony cometh out of some discords. When hath a gracious heart the soundest joys, but when it hath the deepest sorrows? When hath it the humblest meltings, but when it hath the most ravishing joys?

"'In every distress learn to wait with patience for the appointed time. Wait for it believing, wait for it praying, wait for it contending. Waiting is not a lazy hope, a sluggish expectation.

"'Ye must be weary and thirsty, ye must be led into the wilderness before the rock-waters come. Yet (to those who wait) they shall come. Though grace and mercy seem to be locked up from them like water in a flint, whence fire is more natural than water,—yet God will strike abundance out of Christ for their refreshment with His rod of mercy.

"'He would have His people wholly wrapt up in His all-sufficiency. Have your souls never in spiritual trial been drawn from all your outworks to this main fort? God delights to have the soul give up itself to a contented losing of all its reasonings even in the infinite unsearchableness of His goodness and power. Here He would have us secure our shallow barks in this quiet sea, this infinite ocean whither neither wind nor storm do once approach.

"'Those blustering temptations which rage at the shore, when we are half at land and half at sea, half upon the bottom of our own reason and half upon the ocean of Providence, reach not at all into this deep. Oh, that we could in all our trials lay ourselves down in these arms of the Almighty, His all-sufficiency in power and goodness. Oh, how much of the haven should we have in our voyage; how much of home in our pilgrimage, how much of heaven in this wretched earth!'

"Words of strong consolation, Dr. Owen, to reach even to us 'malignant' exiles in this foreign land.

"May 4th.—It was well I copied these words out; for my father, seeing the superscription of the pamphlet, grew very fierce at it, called it a firebrand and a seditious libel, and bade Barbe, our servant, light her next fire therewith.

"And to-day he hath brought me the 'Icon Basilike,' daintily bound like a missal.

"'Here is reading fitter for a loyal maiden,' quoth he. Since which I have done little else but lament ever the sorrows and heavenly patience of His Sacred Majesty.

"If Olive and the rest could but see this, they would surely be melted to repentance, and enkindled to counterwork their sad misdoings. And who shall say any repentance is vain?

"My father is full of hope at present. We have had fearful accounts of the disorders in the city of London and in the army; the very strongholds of the rebels. The whole country seems to be in a blaze. Executions, funeral processions in honour of the people executed, mutiny suppressed only by the strongest measures. Surely this tumult must spend itself, or exhaust the nation soon. And, as if smitten with madness, they say the substance of the army and its greatest chiefs are to depart for Ireland, leaving this half-suppressed conflagration behind them.

"These things nourish great hopes among us.

"Meanwhile, from Scotland there are the most encouraging tidings, the whole nation seeming to be awaking to their duty. His Majesty the young king will depart before long, to be a rallying point for this reviving loyalty."

August 20, Paris.—The tumults of the Fronde are over. The French Court has returned to Paris, and it is my work at present to give as much a look of home as I can to these four or five great rooms on one floor of an hotel belonging to one of the ancient decayed nobility, where we are to make our sojourn. (Abode is a word I will never use in relation to this land of our exile.)

"These rooms open into each other, and command an inner courtyard, where a fountain flows all day from a classical marble urn held by a nymph. The cool trickle is very pleasant to hear in this great heat. On this nymph and on other classical statues, the cook of the French family who live below us irreverently hangs his pots and pans to dry singing, meanwhile, snatches of chansons, which end high up in the scale, with all kinds of unexpected and indescribable flourishes.

"Our family is enlarged. Besides our own cook, we have a French waiting-maid, who also does work about my rooms. She has wonderfully lissom fingers, turning everything out of her hands, from my coiffure to my father's chocolate, with a finish and neatness which give to our little household arrangements such a grace and order as if we had a splendid establishment. Indeed, few of our fellow-exiled have the comforts we have. Our revenues come to us regularly, my father knows not (or will not know) how. But I feel little doubt to whose hands and hearts we owe them. They enable us to keep something like an open table in a simple way for our countrymen, so that we hear much of what is going on.

"August 26th.—Our rooms do begin to have something of a home feeling. My youngest brother, Walter, has joined us. Roland, now our eldest, is not hopeful as to the king's prospects while Oliver Cromwell lives, and has offered his sword to the Spanish Court. But Walter is a marvellous solace and delight to us. He was always the gayest and lightest-hearted of the band of brothers, and (except Harry) the kindest and gentlest. In all other respects he resembled my mother more than any of us. The bright auburn hair (such a crown, when flowing in the Cavalier love-locks); the soft eyes. And, next to Harry, he was most on her heart. In a different way—Harry as her stay and rest; Walter as her tenderest anxiety. So much she thought there was of promise in him, yet so much to cause solicitude. None amongst us were so moved in childhood by devotional feeling. As a child, he said lovely things to her, having an angelic insight, she deemed, into the beauty of heavenly truth. She would weep in repeating these sayings, and say she feared ('but ought to hope') it betokened early death. But this passed away with early childhood. As a boy, he was the merriest, and, in some ways, the wildest of all; the oftenest in difficulties, though the soonest out of them. But she had ever the strongest influence over him. And up to her death, although he had done many things to make her anxious, he had done nothing to make her despond.

"In her last illness she spoke of him more than of any one, and charged me to care for him.

"And now he is once more at home with us, and seems to cling to me with much of the fond reverence he had for her. In the twilight on Sundays he likes me to talk of her, and sing the heavenly songs she loved.

"And for his sake mainly I tune my lute, and sing old English songs, and learn some new French ones, and mind the fashions of the Court; not that for my own sake I like to have ill-made or miscoloured clothes. (I think, too, there is one who would care; and whether he ever see me again or not, I have a kind of self-regard due to him. Who can tell if Oliver might repent, or die, and England be England once more?)

"August 27th.—This day my father has presented me to a sweet aged French lady, Madame la Motha St. Rémy. She knew my mother, in long past days, at the English Court, and for her sake has welcomed me as a child (having none of her own), embracing me tenderly, kissing me on both cheeks. A most lovely lady, with a sweet grandeur in her demeanour, which made me feel as if I had been given the honour of the Tabouret at Court, when she seated me on a low seat beside her, clasping my hands in hers.

"When we were left alone together, after some conversation on indifferent topics, pushing my hair back from my forehead, she said,—

"'The same face, my child! but different tints; and a different soul. More colour, I think, without and within. The brown richer, the gold brighter, the eyes darker, and a look in them which seems to say, life will not easily conquer what looks through them. Of colour here,' she said, stooping and kissing my cheek, 'perhaps I must not judge at this moment. Pardon me, my child, that I spoke as if I was speaking to a picture. When we see the children of those whom we loved in early years, we see our youth in their faces. To me thou art not only Mademoiselle Lettice, thou art a whole lost world of love and delight. When I look at thee I see not thee only, I see visions and dream dreams. Ah, pardon, my child, I have made thee weep; I have brought back her image indeed into thine eyes.'

"Tell me of her, madame,' I said.

"How shall I tell thee of her? She was a St. Agnes—a beautiful soul lent for a season to this world never belonging to it. Some called her an angel; that she never was. When first I knew her, she was simple, joyous, guileless as a child, but always tender, with tears near the brim, a heart sensitive to every touch of delight or pain; not strong, radiant, triumphant, like the angels who have never suffered.'

"'She had suffered even then,' I said, 'when you knew her, madame?'

"'She never told thee? Ah then, perhaps, I make treacherous revelations. What right have I to lift the veil she kept so faithfully drawn?'

"'You can tell me nothing of my mother, madame,' I said, 'which will not make her memory more sacred.'

"'Again, that look is not hers! Your face bewilders me, my child. This moment soft like hers; now all enkindled, full of fire; to do battle for her, I know,'—she added. 'But, as thou sayest, there is nothing which needs to be concealed.'

"'Madame,' I said, 'her life belongs to me, does it not? any recollection of her is my legacy and treasure. I also may have to endure. Most women have.'

"'It was my brother, my child,' she said. 'The sorrow was half mine, which perhaps gives me some right to speak. He was in the embassy in London, and I, recently married, was there also. They loved each other. They were all but betrothed. But they were separated. Calumnious cabals, I know not what. The misery of these things is, that one never knows how they go wrong. A bewildering mist, a breath of gusty rumour, and the souls which saw into each other's depths with a glance, which revealed to each other life-secrets in a tone, which were as one, which are as one, lose each other on the sea of life, drifting for ever further and further apart, beyond reach of look, or tone, or cry of anguish. So it was with them. He came back to France, bewildered, despairing; sought death on more than one battle-field; at last found it. And then we learned how true she was to him; what a depth of passionate love dwelt in the child-like heart. But two years afterwards your father entreated and your grandfather insisted, till at length she yielded and was married. They thought the old love was dead. But when I &aw her afterwards, pale, meek, and passive, like the ghost of herself, I thought it was not the love that was dead, but the heart.'

"'But her heart was not dead, madame,' I said. 'She loved us all at home with a love tender, and living, and fervent as ever warmed heart or home.'

"'Without doubt, my child,' said madame. 'Duty was a kind of passion with her always. She was ardent in goodness, as others are in love. There is the passion of maternal love, and there is the flame of devotion. A great passion may leave fuel for other fires in a pure heart, but it leaves no place for a second like itself. But why should I speak to thee thus? thou who art but a child. After all, have I been a traitor?'

"'It is my English fairness and colour, perhaps, which make madame think me younger than I am. Do not repent what you have told me; I may need such memories yet to strengthen me.'

"She smiled, one of those smiles which always bring youth into the faces that have them; a smile from the heart, which lit up her dark eyes so that my heart was warmed at their light—and turned the wrinkles into dimples, and seemed to bring sunshine on the silky white hair.

"'No, no, my friend,' she said, 'thou wilt never suffer as she did. Thou wilt conquer thy destiny.'

"'She conquered,' I said; 'she was the joy and blessing of every heart that knew her.'

"'As to heaven and duty, yes, my child; she was a saint. But thou wilt conquer as to earth also; I see it in thine eyes.'

"How little she knows!

"This history has made so many things clear to me. I know now what my mother meant when she said I could never save Sir Launcelot by marrying him, unless I loved him. I know now how it was she bore so passively some things which I could have wished otherwise at home. She felt, I think, that, give what she might in patience, and duty, and loyal regard, she could not give my father what he had given her. And therefore, perhaps, she could not, as he said, help him to 'climb.' She could come down to him in all loving, lowly ministries and forbearances; but love only (I think), in that relationship, can have that instinctive sympathy, that secret irresistible constraint which, with a thousand wilfulnesses and blunderings, yet could have drawn his soul up to hers. When so much of the strength of the nature is spent in keeping doors of memory rigidly closed, perchance too little is left to meet the little daily difficulties of life with the play and freedom which makes them light. And this awakens a new strong hope in my heart, binding me as never before with a fond, regretful reverence to my father. Something she has left me to do.

"Something, perhaps, which she could never have done for him. I (so far beneath her!) may, by virtue of there being no locked-up world of the past between us, help a little more to lead him to those other heights which he protested to her he could never climb. By virtue, moreover, of not having to stoop from any heights to him, but being in the valley with him, so that I can honestly say and feel, 'we will try to climb together.'

"For in this at least I am sure the Puritans are right. The up-hill path is no exceptional supererogatory excursion for those who have a peculiar fancy for mountain-tops; it is the one necessary path for every one of us, and it is always up-hill to the end; the only other being, not along the levels, but downward, downward, every step downward, out of the pure air, out of the sun-light; downward for ever!

"August 23d.—To-day I kissed our queen's hand. She embraced me, and said gracious words about my mother. She was in deep mourning; and with her was the little Princess Henrietta, a child cf marvellous vivacity and grace. Her Majesty graciously have taken me into closer connection with her Court, and with the French Court also. But my father seems not solicitous for this. He is all the more an Englishman for being an exile; and he misliketh their Popish doings, and some other doings of which probably the Pope would disapprove as much as the Puritans. He saith the French courtiers, many of them, seem to think of nothing but making love, without sufficiently considering to whom; not making love and settling it once for all like reasonable people, but going on making it the amusement of their lives all the way through, which is quite another thing. And he thinks the less I hear of all this the better.

"He saith, moreover, that the company around the young king, if fit enough for His Majesty and for young men like Walter, who 'must sow their wild oats on some field,' is not the fittest for me.

"But it seems to me I should be ten thousand times safer in such company than Walter, impetuous and gay, and easily moved, and with no great love in his heart to keep it pure and warm. I would I could find him some such French maiden as Madame la Mothe must have been when she was young. Are these wild oats, then, the only seeds in the world that yield no harvest? My heart aches for Walter in that bad world where I cannot follow him, and whence he so often comes back flushed, and hasty, and impatient, and unlike himself.

"Last Sunday we attended the English service, which our queen has obtained permission to be held in a hall at the palace of the Louvre. Bishop Cosins officiated.

"It was the happiest hour I have spent in this strange land. The sacred old words, how they come home to the heart. Not heaven alone is in them; but England, home, childhood.

"Unhappy Puritans! to have banished the old prayers from parish-church, hall, and minster.

"Unhappy Papistical people! to banish them into a dead ancient language. The other day I went with my father into the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The priests were chanting in Latin at the altar. Those Catholic children can have none of the memories so dear to us of the gradual breaking of the light into the dear old words, as in our childhood we wake up to them one by one to see they are not music only, but words: to find a joyful significance in each sentence of the creeds and hymns and prayers.

"I wonder what they have instead?

"September 8th.—To-day Madame la Mothe came into my bed-chamber. Seeing the little table with the picture of the Crucifixion my mother loved, resting on it, and her Bible and A Kempis on it (with the 'Icon Basilike'), she crossed herself and embraced me, pointing to the picture.

"'It was my mother's,' I said.

"'Had she then come back to the Church?'

"'She was always in the Church, madame,' I said; 'she was no Sectary.'

"'Excuse me, I do not understand your English terms. I mean the true, the ancient Church,' she rejoined.

"'My mother believed ours to be the ancient Church, madame,' I said. 'We are not mere Calvinists or Lutherans.'

"'No doubt, my child, I would not give you offence; but it is not to be expected a Catholic should recognize those little distinctions among those we must consider heretics. You understand, I mean no offence, it is simply that I am ignorant. Perplex me not with those subtleties, my child; I ask, can it be possible that thou and thine are returning to allegiance to His Holiness the Pope, and the holy Roman Church?'

"'Our Church does not indeed acknowledge the Pope, madame, nor the Roman Church,' I said, trying to recall some of the debates I had heard on the matter, which had in itself never much occupied me. 'We are English, not Roman. But I have heard our chaplain speak with the greatest respect of some popes who lived, I think, a little more than a thousand years ago, and say he would gladly have received consecration from them.'

"'No doubt, my friend, no doubt,' said madame, becoming a little excited, 'but the priests of to-day cannot be consecrated by popes who lived a thousand years ago. I would ask, are any of you willing to return to the popes of to-day? We used to hear your Bishop Laud well spoken of, and were not without hopes of you all at that time. It was once reported he had been offered a Cardinal's hat—of course on conditions. Have you advanced a little nearer since then? Are you coming back to the fold in earnest?'

"'To the Pope who lives now, madame?' I said; 'I do not think the archbishop or our chaplain ever dreamed of that. Our chaplain was always hoping the Church of Rome would come back towards us.'

"'Towards you! towards heresy, my child! You speak of what you know not,' she replied, waving her hands rapidly, as if to brush away a swarm of insects. 'Any one of us, our priests, His Holiness himself may indeed move towards a Protestant, as the good Shepherd towards the wandering sheep, to bring it back. But the Church, never! She is the rock, my friend, on which the world rests. She moves not. The world moves, the sand shifts, the sea beats, but she is the rock.'

"'But, madame, pardon me,' I said, 'the chaplain thought the Church of Rome had changed. There is a Rock, he thought, on which all the Churches rest. All we want (he said) is to remove some accumulations with which the lapse of time has encumbered this rock; and then he thought we might all be one again.'

"'My child,' she replied, 'the Church does not move; but most surely she builds, or rather she grows. She is living, and all things living grow. She is as one of our great cathedrals. Age after age adds to its towers, its chapels, its side aisles. Heart after heart adds to its shrines. But it is still one cathedral. We do not need to hunt out obsolete books to see if we are building according to the oldest rules. New needs create new rules. When we want to know what to believe, we do not need to send for antiquaries. We do not need to grope back among the far-off centuries and see what those excellent popes, of whom your good chaplain spoke, said a thousand years ago. We have a living Pope now. He is the vicar of Christ; we listen, he can speak, he can teach, he can command. We do not need to go to ancient worm-eaten books for our creeds. They were living voices in their age, and spoke for it. We have the living voice for our age, and we listen to it. Tell me then, quite simply; are your English people, or any of them, coming back to the true ancient Catholic Church?'

"'Many among us have sighed for a union with the rest of Catholic Christendom,' I said. 'Our chaplain used to speak much of it. We are not of the sects, he said, who have overrun Germany and other Protestant countries, Lutheran, Zwinglian, Calvinist, Huguenot. He used to speak much of their errors. One or two little concessions, he said, and all might be one again.'

"'Concessions from us, my child!' said madame, shaking her head. 'What would you have? The doors of the Church stand open. You have but to enter. The arms of His Holiness are outstretched. You have but to fly to them. You have pardon, welcome, reconciliation, not a reproach for the past, all forgotten! What would you have more?'

"'Madame,' I said, 'we think we are in the Catholic Church.'

"'Ah, my charming child,' she said, smiling compassionately. 'I see it is in vain to speak of these things. In your island you have the ideas of an island. You have so many things to yourselves that you think you may have everything to yourselves. You have your constitution, your seas, your mountains and plains, your clouds, your skies, all to yourselves. But the Catholic Church! Ah, my child, that is impossible; you are a remarkable people, and have remarkable ambitions. But there are things possible and things impossible. You cannot have a Catholic Church all to yourselves. It is not a thing possible.'

"Then the slight excitement there had been in her manner passed away, and she said,—

"'My child, we will not perplex ourselves much with these difficult things. I have a very holy cousin among the ladies of Port Royal. Perhaps one day I may introduce her to you. For women, happily, if they can help to welcome each other within the sacred doors, have not the keys to close them. And with regard to thy mother, all this has nothing to do. Heavenly beings are not subject to earthly laws. And that among the heathen there were such, my director assures me there is no doubt. I trust even there were such among the Huguenots; for some of my ancestors were unhappily 'gentlemen of the religion.'"

"'Did any of them suffer in the St. Bartholomew?' I asked; 'and do you know if any among them took refuge in London?'

"'I have heard there is one of their descendants established in London as a physician,' she said.

"'I know him, madame,' I said. And it made me feel a kind of kindred with the gentle French lady that a connection of hers, however remote, had married Olive.

"But this evening, when Barbe, the waiting-woman, was arranging my hair, and I was consoling her with telling her some of Dr. Owen's thoughts about sorrow (for Barbe has lately lost her mother, and is a destitute orphan, and has had a sorrowful life in many ways), she said, in a choked voice,—

"'Ah, if mademoiselle could only hear the minister at the prêche. For the people of the religion are allowed to meet again, in a quiet way.'

"'You belong to the religion then, Barbe?'

"'Without doubt, mademoiselle. Have not my kindred fought and been massacred for it these hundred years? This is what made me so glad when the chevalier engaged me to wait on mademoiselle. I knew at once it was the good hand of God. For the English are also of the religion, my father said; and although they have sometimes perplexed our people by promising much and doing little for us, we always knew these were mere Court intrigues; and that in heart we were one.'

"'But, Barbe,' I said, with some hesitation, wishing not to mislead, nor yet to pain her, 'we are not exactly of "the religion." The English Church is not like yours. We are not Calvinists. We have bishops and a liturgy, and have changed as little as possible the old Catholic ritual.'

"'Ah, what does that matter?' replied Barbe, unmoved; 'to each country its customs! These little distinctions are affairs of the clergy. They aro not for such as me. And I have known from my infancy that the English are Protestant. They do not acknowledge the Pope nor the Mass. They do not burn for these things; on the contrary, they have been burned for them. They may, indeed, have their little eccentricities,' continued Barbe charitably. 'Bishops even, and a Book of Prayers! Do they not live on an island? Which in itself is an eccentricity. But they are Protestant. I have always known it, and now I see it. Mademoiselle does not go to Confession; she does not adore the Host. Every morning and evening she reads her Bible in her own language. She consoles me with the excellent words of a Protestant minister, as good as we hear at our prêche. Therefore mademoiselle is doubtless of "the religion." And to me it is a privilege, for which I thank God day and night, that I am called to wait on her.'

"It is very strange how differently things look a little way off. Neither Barbe nor Madame la Mothe seem able even to perceive the differences which to us have been so important. In spite of all I can say, Madame la Mothe regards me as outside; 'very good, very dear, very charming,' but still outside; as a heretic, as a Huguenot. And in spite of all I can say, Barbe regards me as within; of her community, of her Church, of her religion, of her family; as a sister.

"What are we to do?

"We offer our hands courteously to all the ancient Churches. And they turn scornfully away, saying, On your knees, as penitents, we will receive you, but, otherwise, never! You are outcasts, prodigals, in the 'far country.'

"On the other hand we turn away from the new Protestant Churches saying, In some respects you are right, but you have lost the ancient priesthood you have rent yourselves from Catholic antiquity. And nevertheless they persist in embracing us, in calling us kindred, sisters and brethren.

"What are we to do?

"In England it was in comparison easy. We had things to ourselves. Across the seas, where these foreign Churches loomed on our vision in rocky masses through the mist and distance, it was easy to maintain our theory about them. But here, where we are amidst them, and Churches break into communities of men and women, it is difficult to continue stretching out peaceable hands to those who scornfully pass by on the other side, and not to clasp in brotherly greeting the hands held out in welcome to us. Barbe and her Huguenots (since they have will it so) I must then acknowledge as kindred.

"Yet whether they heed or not, I must and will also honour as our brethren every Catholic who is just, and good, and Christian. Their treasures of goodness are ours, in as far as they are our delight and our example, and none can deprive us of the possession.

"It seems to me, if the English Church shuts her heart against the Protestants on one side, and the Roman Church on the other, her fold becomes the narrowest corner of Christendom a Christian can creep into. But if, on the contrary, she stretches out her hands to both, bound on one side by her creeds and liturgies to the Catholic past, and on the other free to receive all the truth yet to be revealed in the free Word of God, what field on earth so fertile and so free, enriched by all the past, free to all the future?

"It is those who exclude who are really the excluded. The more our hearts can find to love and honour, the richer they are.

"The outlaws, I think, in God's Church are not those who are cast out of the synagogue, but those who cast others out."

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

At five o'clock on the evening of the 10th of July, 1649, the trumpets sounded again in London streets, not for a soldier's funeral, and not for a triumph, but for an army going forth to war. To battle with a whole nation in insurrection, or rather in tumult; every man's hand practised in cruel and treacherous warfare against every man through those blood stained eight years since the massacre of 1641, now all combined against the Commonwealth and Oliver.

With hopeful hearts they went forth with Cromwell, as Lord-Lieutenant.

It was the first time General Cromwell had taken on him much show of outward state. But men said it seemed to fit him well, as I think state must which grows out of power, like the pomp of summer leaves around massive trunks. He rode in a coach drawn by six gray Flanders mares; many coaches in his train; his life-guard eighty gentlemen, none of them below the rank of an esquire; the trumpets echoing through the city, stirring the hearts of the Ironsides, who, when he led them, "thank God, were never beaten." His colours were white, as of one who made war to ensure peace; who was going not as a soldier only and a conqueror, but as a ruler and judge to bring order into chaos, and law into lawlessness. This state beseemed the occasion well.

The army went with a good heart, and in unshaken trust that he was leading them to a good work, and that it was "necessary and therefore to be done;" the most part, like Roger, proud of being the men who had never mistrusted him; a few, like Job Forster, all the more eager in their loyalty for the shame of having once mistrusted; and many, like the chief himself, all the stronger in this and every work for sharing his conviction that all earthly work (to say nothing of pleasure), compared with the inward spiritual work from which it drew its strength, was only done "upon the Bye."

But we women who watched them go, looked on them with anxious hearts. They were plunging into a chaos, which for hundreds of years no man had been able to bring into light and order. What they would do there seemed doubtful; who would return thence terribly uncertain; that all could never return terribly certain.

Poor Bridget Cromwell, then young Mistress Ireton, and many beside, could the veil have been lifted, would, instead of festive white banners, have seen funeral draperies, and for the call to arms would have heard the trumpets peal for the soldier's knell.

Mistress Lucy Hutchinson needed not to speak scornfully of the fine clothing which became General Cromwell's daughters "as little as scarlet an ape." They did not wear it long. And indeed holiday garments at the longest are scarcely worn long enough in this world for it to be worth while that any should envy or flout at them.

For the rest, the Lord-Lieutenant's life was no holiday; nor did he or his Ironsides look that it should be. Not for merry-making or idling, he thought, but "for public services a man is born." If victories and successes came, "these things are to strengthen our faith and love," he said, "against more difficult times."

We are always in a warfare, he believed; the scenes change, but the campaign ends not.

As Mr. John Milton wrote of him: "In a short time he almost surpassed the greatest generals in the magnitude and rapidity of his achievements. Nor is this surprising, for he was a soldier disciplined to perfection in the knowledge of himself. He had either extinguished, or by habit had learned to subdue, the whole host of vain hopes, fears, and passions which infest the soul; so that on the first day he took the field against the external enemy he was a veteran in arms, consummately practised in the toils and exigencies of war."

The portion of the army which went before the General gained a victory in July over the Marquis of Ormond, who was besieging Dublin; so that when Oliver landed, with hat in hand, and spoke gently to the people in Dublin, and told them he wished, by God's providence, to spread the gospel among them, to restore all to their just rights and liberties, and the bleeding nation to happiness, many hundreds welcomed him and vowed they would live and die with him.

Three letters are preserved among my old Diaries which came to us during that Irish Campaign. One was from Job not long after the storming of Wexford.

"We have had to do 'terrible things in righteousness,'" he wrote. "For years the land has been like one of the wicked old Roman wild-beast shows in the Book of Martyrs; the wild beasts first tearing the Christians in pieces, and then in their fury falling on each other. This the General is steadfastly minded shall not any longer be. Whereon all the people of the land have for a time given over rending each other in pieces, to fall on us. We, how ever, praised be God, are not, like the ancient Christians, thrown to the wild beasts unarmed, nor untrained in fighting. For which cause, and through the mercy of God, the wild beasts have not slaughtered us, but we not a few of them. And the rest we hope in good time to send to their dens, that the peaceable folk may have rest, may till their fields in peace, and may have freedom to worship God.

"For peaceable folk there are in the land. It has lightened my heart to find that the natives are not all savages, like the Irish women with knives we found on the field at Naseby. Many of the more kindly creatures, well understand fair treatment, and generously return it. Their countenances are many of them open, and their understandings seem quick, to a marvel, for poor folks who have been brought up without knowing either the English tongue or the Christian religion. It seems as if they had been seduced with evil reports of us; for at first they ran away, and hid themselves in caves and dens of the earth, whenever we came near them. But since they understand that we are no persecutors nor plunderers, the common people begin to come freely to the camp, and bring us meat for man and horse, for which we pay.

"The Lord-General is very stern against all misuse or plundering of these poor folk. Two of ours have been hanged for dealing ill with them; which was a wonderful sight to the natives, and hath encouraged them much.

"The storm of Tredah was no child's-play. The Lord-General offered the garrison (mostly Englishmen) mercy. 'But if upon refusing this offer, what you like not befalls you,' he said, 'you will know whom to blame.' They refused mercy. Wherefore, after winning the place by some hard fighting (being once driven back, a thing we were not used to), the garrison had justice. They were three thousand. Scarce any of them survived to dispute on whom to lay the blame. It was not so bad as some of the things Joshua had to do; the judgment not going beyond the fighting men. But praised be God, that for the most part it pleases Him to work his terrible things by the stormy winds, the earthquakes, and pestilence, and not by the hands of men.

"The General saith, 'I trust this bitterness will save much effusion of blood, through the goodness of God.'

"And truly, after Tredah, few garrisons waited for our summons, and fewer still refused the Lord-General's mercy. We had but one piece of storming work since then. That was at Wexford. There was some confusion; the Lord-General wishing to save the town from plunder. His summons by words scorned, he summoned them by batteries. Then the captain would have yielded the castle, and the enemy left the walls of the town, whereon our men got the storming ladders, and scaled the walls. In the market-place there was again a hot fight, and near two thousand of the enemy fell; some were drowned in trying to escape in boats by the harbour. A notable judgment, we thought, for some eight score of poor Protestants, who had been sent out not long before in a ship into the harbour, then the ship scuttled, and they left to sink; also for other Protestants shut up in one of their mass-houses, and famished to death.

"Since then the enemy has been scattered before us like dust before the whirlwind. Their strong places yield to our summons one by one. Please God we may have no more of the work of the whirlwind and pestilence to do! For these poor towns, on the day after the storming, with the blackened walls and the empty houses, from which the poor foolish folks have fled away into the fields, are a sad desolation to behold. It hath cast some little light on the slaying of the women and little ones in the Bible; in that when the men are slain, the lot of the widows and orphaned little ones is sure to see. But war is not peace; and they who try to mix up the two, most times but put off the peace, and in the end make the war more cruel. The surgeon who laid down his knife at every groan of the patient, would make a sorry cure. The Lord-General has great hope of yet bringing the land to be a place for honest and godly men and women to live in, which, they say, it hath not been since the memory of man. But one thing will by no means be suffered; and that is the Mass. Some say this is cruel mercy (since the deluded people hang their salvation on it); and that it is contrary to the Lord-General's promises of freedom of conscience. But liberty to think is one thing, and liberty to do another. The poor folk may believe what lies they will; but that they should be suffered to act falsehoods in the sight of a godly Church and army is an abomination not to be borne."

The letter from Roger came later. In it he wrote much of the Lord-Lieutenant. It was dated February, from Fethard in Tipperary, which, with Cashe, and other towns in the west, had lately come under the Commonwealth.

"Six months since," Roger wrote, "only three cities were for the Commonwealth—Dublin, Belfast, and Derry, and Derry besieged. The Lord Lieutenant stormed two, after mercy refused, with severity of the severest—Tredah and Wexford, since which, none but have yielded in time to avoid the same fate: and in a little while, we have good hopes, if matters go on as they have, not a town or a stronghold will be left in the enemy's hands. The misery and desolation of the country is sore indeed; but it has not been the fruit of only these six months' war. Scarce, I think, of the terrible eight years' tumult since the massacre of 1641; rather, perhaps, of no one can say how many centuries of misrule, or no rule at all.

"The people united at first against us; loyal Catholics of the Pale, disloyal Catholics beyond the Pale, Presbyterian Royalists, and Papists of the massacre. Now their union seems crumbling to pieces again, being founded, not on love, but on hatred; and out of hatred no permanent bonds can, I think, be woven, even as my Lord-Lieutenant told them last month in his Declaration.

"Divers priests met at the Seven Churches of Clonmacnoise, on the Shannon, to patch up this crumbling 'union' against us, if they could. Upon this was issued the 'Declaration for the Undeceiving of Deluded and Seduced People;' wherein the Lord-Lieutenant told these clergymen many things which, perhaps, they thought little to the point, but which to him (and to us) are the root of all things, and therefore must naturally be to the point, especially when it is a question of uprooting.

"'The terms "laity and clergy,"' he said, 'are dividing, anti-christian terms.

"'Ab initio non fuit sic. The most pure and primitive times, as they best know what true union is, so in all addresses unto the churches, not one word of this.

"'The members of the churches are styled "brethren," and saints of the same household of faith; and although they had orders and distinctions among them for administrating of ordinances (of a far different use and character from yours), yet it nowhere occasioned them to say contemptim, and by way of lessening or contra-distinguishing, "laity and clergy." It was your pride that begat this expression; and ye (as the Scribes and Pharisees of old did by their "laity") keep the knowledge of the law from them, and then be able in their pride to say, "This people that know not the law are cursed."

"'Only consider what the Master of the apostles said to them—"So shall it not be among you: whoever will be chief shall be servant of all." For He Himself came "not to be ministered unto but to minister." And by this he that runs may read of what tribe you are.

"'This principle, that people are for kings and churches, and saints are for the pope and churchmen, begins to be exploded.

"'Here is your argument. "The design is to extirpate the Catholic religion. But this is not to be done but by the massacring and banishing or otherwise destroying the Catholic inhabitants; ergo, it is designed to massacre, banish, and destroy the Catholic inhabitants." This argument doth agree well with your principles and practice, you having chiefly made use of fire and sword in all the changes in religion you have made in the world. But I say there may be found out another means than massacring, destroying, and banishing, to wit, the Word of God, which is able to convert.

"'Therefore in these words your false and twisted dealing may be discovered. Good now! Give us an instance of one man, since my coming into Ireland, not in arms, massacred, destroyed, or banished, concerning the massacre or destruction of whom justice hath not been done or endeavoured to be done.

"'If ever men were engaged in a righteous cause in the world, this will scarce be second to it. We are come to ask an account of innocent blood that hath been shed. We come to break the power of a company of lawless rebels, who, having cast off the authority of England, live as enemies to human society. We come, by the assistance of God, to hold forth and maintain the lustre and glory of English liberty; wherein the people of Ireland, if they listen not to seducers such as you are, may equally participate in all benefits; to use their liberty and fortune equally with Englishmen, if they keep out of arms.'

"Then the Lord-Lieutenant offers peace, their estates, and fortunes, to all except the leading contrivers of the Rebellion, to soldiers, nobles, gentle and simple, who will lay down arms and live peaceably and honestly; and promises justice on all soldiers or others who insolently oppress them.

"The which (Roger wrote) we have hopes the people will listen to; and so, some ringleaders being banished, some of the murderers of the massacre of 1641 having after fair trial been hanged, this terrible war end in order and blessing to all who will be orderly. It hath been no beating the air, this campaign in Ireland. Of courage there is no lack among this people. And many of ours have suffered by the country sickness, which, with the famine, came in the train of such wild lawlessness and fierce factions as have long desolated this unhappy country. The Lord-Lieutenant himself has been but crazy in health, and has been laid up more than once. But, as he said, God's worst is better than the world's best. He writes to the Parliament that he hopes before long to see Ireland no burden to England, but a profitable part of the Commonwealth. And we are not without hope that our rough work here has ploughed up the land for better harvests than it has yet yielded."

Then, some weeks later, another letter from Job to Rachel, mentioning the storming of Clonmel on the 10th of May, 1650, after many hours fiery fighting.

"Against the stoutest enemy," Job writes, "we have yet encountered in Ireland. Not that the Irish are enemies to be despised. Their faculty for fighting seems of the highest, indeed it seems their taste, and the thing they like best, since they are always ready, it seems, to be at it at the shortest notice, and for the smallest cause, or none—which is not the way of the Ironsides. We are peaceful quiet men, as thou knowest, and went into the fighting, not for the love of it, but for the love of what they would not let us have without fighting. Which is a difference.

"It is said our Oliver hath permitted such officers as lay down their arms to gather regiments of such as will join them and to cross the seas to Spain or France, there to fight for whoever will pay them, They say 45,000 of these Kurisees are going. Which seems to me pretty nearly the worst thing human beings can do. Worse than slavery, inasmuch as it must be worse for men to sell themselves than to be bought and sold. Who can say what such courses may end in? For the Almighty does not buy his soldiers; He has no mercenaries. But the devil has. And he pays; though not as he promises. However, no doubt the country is better without them."

We thought again often of Job's words, when three regiments of these "Kurisees" were found, in after years, massacring and torturing the peaceable Vaudois peasants in their valleys, in the pay of the Duke of Savoy, doing some of the direst devil's work that perhaps was ever done on this earth.

This letter reached us at Netherby, where about this time our little Dorothea was born.

I remember well how it cheered my heart as I sate at my open chamber-window in some of the soft days which now and then break the sharpness of our early spring, and are as like a foretaste of heaven as anything may be, to think that perchance the long night of tumult and disorder which had hung over that distracted land was passing away, and a new kingdom was arising of liberty and righteousness and truth.

Our little Magdalen (Maidie) playing at my feet with the first snowdrops she had ever seen, and the baby Dorothea (Dolly) asleep on a pillow on my knee. Spring-time, I thought, for the earth, and for these darling; and for the nations. When life is given, who minds through what throes or storms?

The old home was much changed by the absence of Aunt Dorothy. I missed the force of her determined will and her sharp definite beliefs and disbeliefs. The music seemed too much all treble. I missed the decisive discords which give force and meaning to the harmonies. There seemed no one to waken us up with a hearty vigorous No!

In the village, too, her firm straight-forward counsels and rebukes were missed. Aunt Gretel and my father seemed to have grown quieter and older. Forcible, truthful, militant characters like Aunt Dorothy's make a healthy stir about them, which tends to keep youth alive in themselves and those around. They are as necessary in this world, where so much has to be fought against, as the frosts which destroy the destructive grubs. The foes of our foes are often our best friends; and none the less because they are the foes of our indolent peace.

My father had been, moreover, not a little shaken by the loss of his arm. He had withdrawn from war and politics, and had thrown himself with new vigor into his old pursuits, investigating the earth and sky and all things therein.

But the more we stay together the more needful we all grew to each other. Maidie especially so twined herself around her grandfather's heart, that we made a compact to spend the larger portion of the years henceforth together; we with them in the summers at Netherby, and they with us in the winters in London. In this way, moreover, my father would be able to attend the meetings and weekly lecturings of the association of gentlemen, for the prosecution of the "new experimental philosophy," which met during the Commonwealth chiefly at Gresham College, and was, after the Restoration, incorporated as the Royal Society.

Aunt Dorothy's absence, with the cause of it, was much on my mind during those quiet spring days. Every error, she thought, had seeds of death in it, and carried out to its consequences must lead to death; therefore no error ought to be tolerated. This perplexed me much, until I learned a lesson from the old beech tree outside my chamber window.

"Aunt Gretel," I said one day as we were sitting there quietly with the babes, "I have learned a lesson which makes me glad."

"From whom?" said she.

"From that old beech-tree," I said. "The old dead leaves are hanging on it still. Now, if the world were governed on Aunt Dorothy's principles, strong winds would have been sent to sweep every one of them away weeks ago. But God carries on his controversy with dead things, simply by making the living things grow. The young leaves are pushing off the old, one by one, and will displace them all when the hour is come when all things are ready. It seems as if the old things hold on just as long as they have any life left in them wherewith to serve the new."

"Yes, that is it, sweet heart," she said as if assenting to what she had long known. "I, at least, know no way of fighting with what is wrong, like helping everything good and true to grow."

So April grew into May. The snowdrops, hawthorns, and blue hyacinths, and all the early flowers were lost in the general tide of colour and song which suffused the earth. These "first-born from the dead" were succeeded by the universal resurrection which they prefigured and promised.

The first forerunners of spring which come one by one, like saints or heroes, bearing solitary witness to the new kingdom of life, which meanwhile is secretly and surely expanding round their roots, had fought the fight with snows and storms, had borne their testimony and then had vanished in the growing dawn of the year.

A thousand happy thoughts came to me as I wandered in the old gardens, and sat on the old terrace, with Aunt Gretel and Placidia, while Placidia's little Isaac and our little Maidie played around us; and none of them were happier than those suggested by little Isaac himself. Again and again he recalled to me Aunt Gretel's words, "The good God has more weapons than we wot of, and more means of grace than are counted in any of our catechisms and confessions. The touch of a little child's hand has opened many a door through which the Master has afterwards come in, and sate down and supped."

It seemed as if the child were ever leading his mother on (all the more surely because so unconsciously to him and to her,) opening her heart to love, and, what is not less essential, opening her eyes to see the truth about herself. For it in not only through their trustfulness and their helplessness that little children are such heavenly teachers in our homes. It is by their truthfulness, or rather by their incapacity to understand hypocrisy. They are simply unable to see the filmy disguises with which we cover and adorn our sins and infirmities. The disguises are invisible to them. They see only (and so help to make us see) the reality within; and thus confer on us, if we will attend, the inestimable blessing of calling our faults by their right names.

I remember one little incident among many.

I was sitting by the fireside in the Parsonage hall, and had just finished reading a letter from Roger, and telling my father about the Irish war.

"It is a conflict between light and darkness," said my father. "And the Mornings of the Ages do not dawn silently like the morning of the days, but with storms and thunders, like the spring, the morning of the year."

As he spoke, I looked out through the door to the sunshine. Placidia was sitting at the porch at her spinning-wheel, Maidie at her feet pulling some flowers to pieces with great purpose and earnestness, singing to herself the while, when little Isaac came running to her across the farmyard hugging a struggling cackling hen, which he plumped in a triumphant way into Maidie's lap. "I give it you, Maidie," said he, "for your very own." But Maidie, far more overwhelmed by the hen than by the homage; began to cry; whereon Placidia, leaving her spinning-wheel, rescued the hen and Maidie, and said—

"I was very foolish, Isaac. You should ask me before you give presents. Maidie is too little to understand hens. If you wanted to give her anything, you should have asked mother."

"But I was afraid you might say no," said Isaac. "And I had been planning it all night. I thought it would be so nice for Maggie."

"Maggie is a very little girl," rejoined Placidia; "and if you wanted to give her something, a very little thing would please her quite as much. There is your little gilt bauble, that you used to play with when you were Maidie's age. It is of no use to you now, and it would be nice for her."

"But," said Isaac scornfully, "that would not be giving, that would be only leaving. I want to give Maidie something. And I love Maidie dearly, and and so I want to give her the nicest thing I have. Don't you understand, mother," he continued, in the eager hasty way natural to him, knitting his brows with earnestness. "I want to give something to Maidie. There is no pleasure in throwing old things away, to Maidie or any where else. It is giving that is so pleasant."

The colour came into Placidia's face. She said in a hesitating way,—

"But the hen will lay ever so many eggs, Isaac. You could give Maidie the eggs, and keep the hen, which would lay more."

"But I want the hen to lay the eggs for Maidie," he replied. "I have thought of it all. It is a great pity you don't understand, Maidie," he continued, seriously appealing to Maidie's reason in a way she could not at all appreciate. "It is the prettiest hen in the yard, and she will give you a new egg every morning, and it would be your very own, and you could give it Aunt Olive yourself."

But this extensive future was entirely beyond Maidie's powers of vision. She shook her head, apparently hesitating between encountering a fresh assault from Isaac and the hen, and sacrificing the precious bits of flowers she had so diligently pulled to pieces and thought so beautiful; until at length, as Isaac again approached, terror won the day, and gathering up her treasures as best she could, in her lap, she fled to me for protection, and hid her face in my skirt.

"It is a great pity Maidie cannot understand," murmured Isaac in the porch, not venturing, however, to follow and renew his homage. "But mother, don't you understand?"

It is not the mother, it was the child that did not understand. But she made no further explanation nor opposition. She only said softly,—

"Never mind, Isaac. You shall have the pleasure of giving. You shall keep the hen for Maidie, and give it her when she is old enough to know what it means."

She would not, for much, that her child should see into the dark place he had revealed to her in her own heart. So ennobling it is to be believed incapable of being ignoble.

I seemed to see the mother, through the coming years, led gently away from all that kept her spirit down, and on to the best of which she was capable by the hallowing trust of the child.

It seemed to me that a conflict between light and darkness was going on in the quiet parsonage at Netherby, as well as on the blood-stained fields in Ireland.

And I thought that hour had witnessed one of its silent victories.

CHAPTER IV.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

September 1649, Paris.—'Put not your trust in princes.'

"The young king hath left for Jersey; whither further, time will show. Regret at his departure by this hollow French Court is scarce even feigned. Walter is gone to join the gallant Marquis of Montrose. And perilous as the enterprise is, it is a kind of relief to us; so far greater seem to us the perils of the king's idle court than those of the field.

"We are not made to feel so very welcome here as to make our lives a festival. Cardinal Mazarin, who, with the Queen-Mother, ordereth all things (the king, Louis XIV., being but a boy of eleven or twelve years of age), lets it be seen but too plainly that they would not be sorry to see the young king, and even the Queen Henrietta herself (though a daughter of France), translated to any other asylum. His Majesty but lately dismissed some Commissioners from Scotland (where they had the grace to proclaim him in February). They were Covenanted persons, and made so much parley as to the conditions on which they would be subject to him, that it seemed as if their true purpose was but to make him subject to them. The negotiations were broken off all the more abruptly, in consequence of the over-zeal of some followers of the gallant Marquis of Montrose, who assassinated the Ambassador of the 'Parliament' at the Hague. This deed made the Scottish Commissioners more stiff in their ways, so that their Commission ended in nothing. My father, with the most zealous of the king's followers, much misliketh these dealings with men 'whose very Covenant (saith he) constitutes them rebels.'

"'If the Scottish people are happy enough to get their king back,' he protests, 'after basely selling his father (of sacred memory), they must take him as a king, not as a scholar or slave of their arrogant preachers. Otherwise, better remain king of his faithful exiles here, of loyal Jersey and the Isle of Man (which the noble Countess of Derby still holds for him), and bide his time.'

"For my father liketh not subtleties, and the double ways of Courts. The Marquis of Montrose (with his followers) he thinks well-nigh the only Scottish man worthy the name of loyal; he who writ on his master's death—

"'I'll sing thine obsequies with trumpet sounds,
And write thine epitaph in blood and wounds.'

"October 15th.—Good Mr. Evelyn, who came to kiss the king and the queen's hand (an honour few covet now), hath brought us heavy tidings to-day of a dire massacre at Tredah in Ireland; the flower of the Marquis of Ormond's army cut off, and such a panic struck through the land that one stronghold after another has yielded. It was Cromwell's doing. When will the awful career of this man of blood be brought to an end? Not a few among us think he must be master of some dread sorceries. How else should he cast his wicked spells around the good men who, alas! follow him?

"Some even think there are mysterious allusions to him in the Book of the Revelations. Certain Greek figures there, which are also letters, being capable, if ingeniously taken to pieces and put together again, of being made to spell the number of his name, or the name of something belonging to him. Of this I cannot judge, not knowing Greek. And I think it scarce wise to build too much on it, because I understand these same figures have been diversely applied before by various interpreters to their various enemies. And perhaps it is better (at least for people who do not know Greek) to wait until the prophecies are fulfilled before they thus interpret them. It would be a pity (if we should, after all, be mistaken) to find we had been misapplying the Holy Scriptures into a vocabulary for calling people ill names withal. That this terrible man is, however, indeed as a terrible 'Beast,' trampling on kings and peoples and nations, 'dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly, having iron teeth, devouring and breaking in pieces, and stamping the residue with his feet,' no Royalist can doubt.

"This loss of Tredah, good Mr. Evelyn saith, forerunneth the loss of all Ireland. His Majesty, when he heard of it, is reported to have said, 'Then I must go and die there too.' But these melancholic and heroical moods, my father saith, do not last long with His Majesty.

"Jan. 30th, 1650.—A day ever to be remembered with fasting, and weeping, and bitter lamentation.

"So I wrote this morning, and just after, sweet Madame La Mothe came to bid me to a fête. She came into the room in a glow of kindly animation with the pleasure she hoped to give me, but started appalled at my robe of deep mourning (which of late, at my father's wish, I had lightened), and the grave face which too unfeignedly accompanied it.

"'My child,' she said, 'what new calamity? Thou shouldst have let thy mother's old friend share it.'

"'No new calamity, madame,' I said; 'or, at least, a calamity always new until it is expiated. This is the anniversary of the martyrdom.'

"'The fête of a martyr, my friend?' said she 'I thought your English Church had no martyrs, or, at least, no calendar. Besides, we keep our martyrs' days as festivals.'

"'Scarcely, madame,' I said, 'when only a year old. It is the day of the death of our martyred king.'

"'Ah!' she said, drawing a long breath. 'Doubtless the death of the late king of England was a was a sad tragedy. All the Courts of Europe acknowledged it to be so. Most of them went in mourning at the time.'

"But she was evidently much relieved.

"'It matters not, my loyal child!' she said. 'To-day you shall devote to your pious lamentations. I will defer the little fête I promised myself on your account till to-morrow.'

"And with an embrace she left me.

"But I think scarcely anything before has made me feel so much what it is to be an exile. To her the sovereign for whom we have willingly sacrificed so much, and were ready to sacrifice all, is merely 'the late king of England;' the anniversary of his martyrdom is no more than that of St. Pancras or St. Alban; and an ample lamentation for his death is a Court mourning!

"My father commended me for my loyal black draperies. But when Barbe began and concluded our dinner with the meagre soup which I thought the only fare appropriate for such a day, he looked a little anxiously for something to follow; and when nothing came, and I reminded him what day it was, and asked him to finish with a grace he said a little hastily,—

"'The grace at the beginning is enough, I think, child, when the end follows so close upon it.'

"Then when Barbe had withdrawn, he went to the window looking into the court and whistled a cavalier tune; and then, checking himself, threw himself into a chair, and murmured,—

"'It has a fearful effect on an English gentleman's brain to be shut up for months in streets, like a London haberdasher. With such a life one might sink into anything in time; a Roundhead—a Leveller—anything! No wonder the Parliament found their adherents in the towns.'

"Then moving uneasily again to the window, he said,—

"'Lettice, can't you get some fellow to stop that doleful broken-nosed woman from everlastingly letting the water drop out of her pitcher? It is enough to drive a man crazy. It is like a perpetual rainy day, and takes away the only comfort one has left in this den of a place, which is the weather.'

"I persuaded him to listen to a little of the 'Icon Basilike' to soothe him. But he even took exception to His Majesty's words. At length he cried,—

"Lettice, my child, prithee stop. It is very excellent, but it is very dismal. I suppose His Majesty did write it all, poor gentlemen, though how he could find it a comfort I cannot imagine. However, there is no saying what a man may be driven to comfort himself withal, if kept months together in one chamber. A day makes me feel like an idiot.'

"Then I took my embroidery, and sought to tempt him to converse.

"But he only went from one melancholy topic to another—the assassination of Dr. Dorislaus at the Hague ('a disgrace to the good cause,' he said); the folly of listening to Covenanting Scottish men; the incivilities of the cardinal and the French Court; the baseness of the Spanish Court in calling the young king the Prince of Wales, and scarce receiving his ambassadors except as private friends. The only topic which he seemed to dwell on with any satisfaction was the wickedness of Cromwell and the Ironsides, which he said was too bad to be tolerated long even in such a wretched place as Puritans and Papists had made of this world. But on this it gave me no delight to hear him expatiate, which he noticed with some irritation, saying,—

"'Between your loyalty, and your objection to hear things said against the rebels, Lettice, and that confounded woman who can never get her pitcher emptied, and Cardinal Mazarin, it is really no easy thing for a man to keep up his spirits.'

"And he paced out of the room, leaving me alone. Thereupon, I went faithfully over the bitter steps of the 'dolorous' way trodden by those royal feet so recently; the while I thought how good Mistress Dorothy was doubtless keeping a Puritan fast at Kidderminster on the same occasion; and my heart wandered involuntarily to other sorrows of a dolorous way not yet finished, and I hugged my crosses until I felt rather like celebrating my own martyrdom as well as the king's. Thus I wept much, and was beginning to feel very wretched, and to hope I was the better for it, when my father returned.

"His countenance was lightened, and he kissed me very kindly on the cheek.

"'Poor pale child!' he said. 'Well, it can't be helped. I hope the fasting does thee good. But it does me none. It makes me, not a saint, but a sour old curmudgeon; as I have proved pretty forcibly to thee, sweet heart. It never suited me when things were cheerful. I always told your mother I could never take it up until she found some Protestant Pope who could grant dispensations when necessary. And now that everything is dismal, it is a great deal more than I can bear. So, my dear, I have told Barbe to bring me the remains of that venison pasty and a flask of Burgundy. And I feel better for the thought of it already. The times are altogether too melancholic for fasts, Lettice. Fasts are all very well for comfortable cardinals like this Mazarin, who know they can dine like princes to-morrow; but not for poor dogs of exiles, who may have to dine with Duke Humphrey any day without getting any benefit out of it for body or soul.'

"Barbe duly appeared with the pasty and the wine, and as I sat beside my father the words came to me, 'Be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance,' and a chill seemed to pass away from my heart. I began to wonder whether, after all, I had been keeping the right kind of fast; and I said something cheerful to my father.

"'Well, sweet heart,' he replied, 'the fast seems to do thee no harm. What wast thou doing while I was away?'

"'Reading the Acts of the Martyrdom,' I said. 'Going over the king's parting with the royal children, and his walk from St. James's to Whitehall through the biting frost, and what he said to Bishop Juxon on the scaffold, and his taking off the George, and all.'

"'But, dear heart,' said he, 'that is all over! To whom dost think it does good for thee to cry over it all again? Not, of course, to the king, who is on the other side of it; nor to the queen; nor to the young king, who seems able enough to take consolation in one way or another. To whom, then? Because if it is only to thyself, it seems a great deal of pains to take. There are so many people suffering now, whom one might perhaps comfort by weeping with them, that life seems to me scarce long enough to weep for the sorrows of those who weep no more.'

"'He spoke diffidently, as if on ground on which he felt his footing doubtful. And when for a while I did not reply, he rejoined,—

"'Do not speak if it troubles thee, child. Never heed an old Cavalier's confused thoughts. I know there are mysterious rites which only the initiated understand.'

"'Father,' I said, drawing close to him, and sitting on a footstool at his feet. 'I know no mysterious sanctuary which we cannot enter together. We will go everywhere together, will we not? I think your kind of fast seems the Bible kind. I am sure any fast which leaves the head bowed down like a bulrush, cannot be the right kind. And if we live till this day next year, I will try and find out some sorrowful people whom our sympathy might comfort, and our bread might feed. And that will, surely, not make either of us of a sad countenance.'

"'He smiled, and began to tell me what he had seen in his absence. And as he kissed me to-night, he said,—

"'Lettice, child, what didst thou mean by our going everywhere together? I am not such a heathen as to hinder thee from being as good as thou wilt. I lived too long with the sweetest saint on earth for that.'

"'I meant that we will both try to be as good as we can,' I said.

"'True, true,' he said; 'but a man's goodness is one thing, and a young maiden's another. A Cavalier's virtue is to be brave and loyal and true, generous to foes, faithful in friendship, and (as far as possible), in love, faithful to death to the king. For a few slips by the way, if these things are kept to in the main, it is to be hoped there is pardon from a merciful Heaven.'

"'And a young maiden's goodness?' I said. He hesitated,—

"'All this of course, and something pure and tender, and gentle and heavenly, beside. Ask thine own heart, child!' he added; 'what do I know of it?'

"'All this, father,' I said, 'and no failures by the way? Is that the difference?'

"'Nay, saucy child, never flatter thyself,' he said. 'Thou hast perplexed me too often by thy pretty poutings and elfish tricks and wilful ways, that I should say that.'

"Then I ventured to say,—

"'Are the Cavalier's slips by the way forgiven if they do not ask forgiveness, and do not try to mend?'

"'Come, come, I am no father-confessor to meet thy pretty casuistry,' he said; and then gravely, 'Many of us do ask forgiveness. God knows we need it. And when an honest man asks to be forgiven, no doubt he means to do better.'

"'Then where is the difference?' I said.

"'Belike,' he said thoughtfully, 'belike there might be less! So, good-night, child! I trow thou never forgettest thy prayers. And I suppose there is something left in them of what thou wast wont to ask when I used to listen to thee a babe lisping at thy mother's knee; "Pray God bless my dear father and mother and brothers, and make us all good, and take us to Thee when we die." That prayer is answered, surely enough, for two of us. Try it still, child; try it still.'

"Words which made me go to rest with little temptation to be, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance.

"April.—The gallant Marquis of Montrose has landed with foreign recruits in Caithness, to venture all for the king, in fair and open war. The king, meanwhile, has been entertaining Commissioners from the Covenanting party, who hate Montrose to the death; writing secretly to assure the marquis of his favour, and openly receiving the marquis's mortal enemies. My father is sick at heart, he and many other of the noblest of the Cavaliers, at these courtly double-dealings.

"May.—My father came in to-day sorely dispirited.

"'There,' he exclaimed bitterly. 'A letter from Walter. He is safe, poor boy, in some desert mountain or other, among the wild deer and wild men. But the best of us is gone; the only Scottish captain I would have cared to serve under, Montrose, debated at Invercarron in the Highlands, his foreign hirelings a hundred of them killed, and the rest, with the Highlanders, scattered; the marquis himself taken by those "loyal" Covenanters and hanged at Edinburgh!

"'He died the death of a hero,' he pursued, after a pause; 'it might be well if we were all with him, away from these fatal clever tricks of policy. The king's most faithful servant hanged at the Tolbooth, and the king going to Scotland hand in glove with the canting hypocrites who murdered him; making promises without stint, and meantime encouraging his old followers by promising never to keep them! How can any man know what promises he does mean to keep? A curse on this hollow French Court, and all that comes of it! It would take little to drive many of us back to our English homes, to the farm and the chase, and let these Puritans and politicians hunt each other as they please.'

"'But the brave marquis?' I said, wishing to turn him from bitter thoughts on which I knew he would never act.

"'Deserted by his men, changing clothes with a poor country fellow; taken in this disguise by the enemy, delivered up to General David Lesley, dragged about from town to town, and exhibited to the people in his mean dress, in the hope he would be insulted. But the poor common folk jeered him not—they pitied him; so that in this Lesley's malice was disappointed. Then taken in an open cart through Edinburgh, his arms tied to the sides of the cart, his hat taken off by the hangman, and so dragged in base triumph through the streets of the city. He gave the driver money for conducting what he called his triumphal car. Then persecuted and cursed in the form of prayers, by ministers and men calling themselves judges, for two days, and at last hanged on a gallows thirty feet high, with the book recording his deeds around his neck; a more honourable decoration, he said, than his Order of the Garter which he lost in his last battle. One thing only of the traitor's doom was spared him. They did not torture him, but hanged him till he was dead. His limbs were quartered. When they threatened him with that, he said he would he had flesh enough to be distributed through every town in Christendom, as a testimony of the cause for which he suffered. A brave end; no death on a victorious battle-field more worthy of a loyal gentleman!'

"'But the king will never trust himself with Montrose's murderers?' I said.

"'He will go with them immediately,' was his reply, 'accepting all their conditions, spite of all that Mr. Hyde and other counsellors, who love him and love truth, can say. Not one of his old friends and counsellors permitted to be with him, nor one who fought for his father against the Parliament, without taking the Covenant. And he is to take the Covenant himself. How is it he cannot see (as Mr. Hyde says), that "to be a king but in name in his own kingdom, is a far lower degradation than to be a king but in name anywhere else?" How is it he cannot see, that promises made to be broken, ruin the soul in making and the cause in breaking? But it is all the Queen Mother's doing, and those hollow French Papistical ways. Tossed to and fro between Papists and Covenanters, what can a sanguine and good-natured young king of twenty do?'

"Thus having relieved himself by some hearty abuse of the French politicians and the Scottish preachers, my father's loyalty began to blaze bright again, and he concluded,—

"'And we shall have to go to him, and get him out of his Covenanting jailers' hands as best we may.'

"So His Majesty has landed in Cromarty, having to sign the Covenant before they would suffer him to tread on Scottish ground. He is being led about listening to sermons containing invectives on his father's tyranny, his mother's idolatry, and his own malignity; rebuked by preachers on their knees, in humble postures, but in very plain terms.

"July.—A letter from Mistress Dorothy, full of hopeful expectation, rejoicing that the best hopes are entertained of His Majesty's salvation, temporal and eternal. She understands that he is desirous of being instructed in the ways of the Lord, listens with marvellous earnestness to gospel sermons in which he and his are not spared, and has already signed the Solemn League and Covenant. The only thing to be wished, saith she, is that the instructions could have preceded the signing. Marvellous, she thinks, are the ways of the Almighty; that 'out of the ashes, as it were, of the late king, who, whatever his excellences, it could not be denied had prelatical predilections and prejudices strongly opposed to the Covenant, should spring a young monarch of so docile a disposition and so hopeful a piety, for the everlasting sanctification and benediction of the three kingdoms.'

"My father gave a low significant whistle when I read him this passage.

"'Poor Mistress Dorothy!' he said; 'and poor young king!'

"July 3.—Another letter from Mistress Dorothy, in a strain unusual with her, speaking of increasing infirmity, and hinting that she may not be able to write often again to me. It is only me, saith she, to whom she does write. By my father's permission I have written to tell Olive.

"August 14.—Oliver Cromwell is on his way to Scotland. There will be fighting. The king and the Covenanted Scottish Puritans against the Ironsides and the uncovenanted English Puritans! A strange jumble! My father is set on going, to take his share of the fighting. He is to leave me under the care of Madame la Mothe, who has designs of making me acquainted with some of her friends of Port Royal.

"August 16.—My father has left to-day.

"'Don't turn Puritan or Papist, Lettice,' he said, 'and do not forget thy old father in thy prayers.'

"'Nor you me, father,' I whispered, 'in yours.'

"'The men the fighting, and the women the praying, is an old soldier's rule,' he said.

"'But not ours, father,' I said, half afraid to say so. 'There must be quiet times before the and after them.'

"'Not very quiet,' he said, 'where Oliver is. However, there is always quiet enough for old Sir Jacob Astley's prayer—or the publican's;' he added reverently.

"And with a kiss, and a blessing in a faltering voice, he was gone.

"Never so entirely bound to each other as the moment before parting; never so free from heart-barriers as when time and space are about to interpose their impenetrable barriers between us.

"This feeling must be a promise, not a terrible mockery. Surely it must mean that the barriers are made of corruptible things, the bonds of the incorruptible."

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

When we came back to London from Netherby, my husband and I, Maidie and the babe and Annis Nye, on the 31st May 1650, the whole city was awake and astir with the triumphal welcome of Oliver Cromwell on his way home from the Irish war. In Hyde Park the Train-bands and salvoes of artillery; through the streets eager crowds thronging around him, shouting welcomes, as he rode to the royal lodgings the nation had assigned him in "the Cockpit" at Whitehall, whither Mistress Cromwell and her daughters had moved (not very willingly, some said) a few weeks before.

In a short time Roger came into the house.

"At last the nation acknowledges him, Roger!" I said; "and now, we may trust, the wars are over, and we may begin to reap the fruit."

"Always hoping still, Olive!" he replied, with a quiet smile. "Always thinking we are getting out of the Book of Judges into the Book of Ruth; out of the 'Book of the wars of the Lord,' into the greetings of the reapers and the welcome of the gleaners. Not yet, I am afraid. The Scottish Covenanters are even now making ready to welcome their Stuart king; and that matter will have to be settled before there is peace."

"But, meantime," I said, "it must cheer the Lord-Lieutenant's heart to be thus received."

"I am not sure, Olive," he said. "I just heard that a person said to him, thinking to please him, 'What a crowd to see your lordship's triumph!' but that he replied, 'There would be a greater crowd to see me hanged.'"

"I do not believe that, Roger," said I. "I do not believe his is a heart not to be stirred by a people's welcome."

"Perhaps it was stirred, Olive; only a little more deeply than to a ripple of pleasure. Perhaps he thought of the poor peasants trying to till the Millennium in on the Surrey hills, and the poor soldiers trying to fight it in at Burford, and of the mutiny in Bishopsgate Street among his bravest troopers, and of the many who began the struggle at his side now in deadly opposition to him; and of that ancient crowd whose hosannas and palm-branches were so quickly changed."

"Roger," I said, "you and General Cromwell have been wanting us and home! It is not like you to look in this melancholic way on things."

And I took him into the nursery to see Maidie and the babe; a sight which, my husband used to say, I superstitiously thought a charm against well-nigh any despondencies.

Maidie had forgotten him, and went through a number of pretty, shy, feminine tricks, before she would be coaxed to come near him. The plain Ironsides' armour was not so attractive to her as would have been the Cavalier plumes and tassels. Her approval, however, once won, she became completely at her ease, subjecting Roger entirely to her petty tyrannies, and making the room ring with her merry little voice; while the babe looked on, serious and amazed, expressing her sympathy in the festivities by senselessly crowing, and by vainly endeavouring to embrace her own rosy toes, as if she had been a benighted baby of the Dark Ages, instead of an enlightened infant of the Commonwealth.

So we talked no more politics that evening. And in the morning, Roger's views of the world seemed to me more hopeful. Indeed, there was work to be done, and so no more time for despondency; a bitter root which needs leisure to make it grow.

In June, General Cromwell was appointed Captain-General of the Forces instead of General Fairfax, and set off at once with his troops for Scotland, Roger and Job Forster among them.

My husband also accompanied them.

My father soon afterwards took Aunt Gretel to pay a visit they had been desiring to make to Germany ever since the Thirty Years' War had ended (in 1648); two years before.

Early in August, a letter came from Lettice Davenant, telling me that, from a letter she had received, she thought ill of Aunt Dorothy's health, and deemed that she stood in need of succour and sympathy, which, rigid to her vow, and all its consequences, she would never ask.

If this was true, there was no time to be lost, Nor was there anything to detain me from Aunt Dorothy. The old house at Netherby was, for the time, deserted, and London just then, in the sweet summer time, seemed to me a wilderness and solitary place.

Moreover, our departure was made all the easier, in that it gave me an opportunity of doing a kindness to one of my husband's prison friends, good Dr. Rich, an ancient clergyman whom Leonard had found in gaol on account of his having given aid to the Royalists, and to whom, being now liberated but deprived of his benefice, our house might offer a welcome asylum. Dr. Rich was a sober, devout, and learned gentleman; a man who dwelt much in the past, and was more interested in the present as illustrating the past, than for its own sake.

Nothing gave him more satisfaction than tracing the pedigree of doctrines, heterodox or orthodox, to the primitive centuries, in which he assured us were to be found the parents, or the parallels, of all the heretics and sectaries of our own day, from the monks to the Quakers; including the Fifth Monarchy men, who, he declared, were nothing but a resuscitation of certain deluded persons called Chiliasts, who had been convincingly refuted by I know not how many Fathers.

Meantime (the fifth of the revenue of his benefice, allowed to deprived ministers by the Parliament, being but irregularly paid), Dr. Rich, Mistress Rich, and his eleven children found a parallel in their own circumstances to the primitive poverty of the earliest centuries too obvious to be pleasant; and it was a delight to be able to offer them a home under the guise of taking care of our house in our absence.

He was a man at all times pleasantly easy to practise upon with little friendly devices, having little more knowledge than the birds of the air as to the storehouse or barn whence his table was supplied, and being always diverted by a little subtlety from the perplexing cares of the present to the perplexed questions of a thousand years ago.

Accordingly, with little parley, or preparation, Dr. Rich and his family were lodged in our house, and we were ready to depart. If Aunt Dorothy's stronghold was to be entered, it must be by surprise or storm; surrender was not in her dictionary, much less entreaties for succour.

We set off, under the care of our serving-man, Annis and I with Maidie and the babe, our cavalcade consisting of three horses, one carrying Annis on a pillow behind the serving-man; the other (a sober old roadster) bearing the babes in panniers, and me enthroned between them; the third, a pack-horse, with our luggage and provender for the way.

This mode of travelling was neither swift nor exciting. It left me much leisure to meditate by what subtleties I might avoid encounters between Annis and Aunt Dorothy, should Aunt Dorothy be sufficiently well for her orthodoxy to be in full force.

To forewarn Annis was only to bring on the conflict I dreaded with more speed and certainty; to tell her a road was dangerous being the first step towards convincing her it was right.

To forewarn Aunt Dorothy, on the other hand, was equally perilous. So I came to the conclusion that I could only let things take their course.

For without Annis I could not have come at all. Her care of the babes was pleasant. Her quiet, firm will, her stillness, and her sweet even voice kept them serene. They were as content with her as with me. She seemed to grudge no weariness or toil for them, and her temper was never ruffled. Her dainty neatness and cleanliness were like perpetual fresh air around them; and, moreover, my heart was tender to the orphan maiden with a heart so womanly, and a belief so perilous, in the midst of a rude world, which might crush her delicate frame to dust, yet never bend her will a hair's breadth.

The points at which she and her sect came into antagonism with the rest of the world were scattered all over the surface of every-day social life; and to her every one of these became, when assailed, no mere outwork, but the very citadel of her most central convictions, in which, for the time, all the forces of her mind and heart were gathered, and which she could no more voluntarily yield than could voluntarily cease to breathe.

It was a serious responsibility to have the charge of a person, every one of whose minutest convictions was to her essential as the distinctive conviction of each sect to its members, and whose convictions crossed those of the rest of the world, not only in what they profess in church on Sunday, but in what they practise at home every hour of every day.

Nor was this all. If Annis's resistance had been merely passive, there might still have been hope of escape.

But not only did all the world believe the Quakers wrong; they believed all the world wrong. Nor only this. They believed themselves commanded jointly and severally to set all the world right, a conviction which, under no conceivable form of government, is likely to lead to a tranquil life. We could never tell at what moment Annis might feel moved to tell any peaceful Presbyterian minister, in the gentlest tones, that he was "a minister of Antichrist;" or any strict Precisian matron, who would no more have indulged in a feather than in an idol-feast, that she was "swallowed up with the false and heathen customs of the world," in calling a single person you; or in "idolatrously naming the second or third day after the hosts of heaven."

However, the duty had been assigned me by my husband, and was bound fast on me by the pity and love I felt for Annis. This did not hinder her being a far more anxious charge to me than my babes.

On the occasion, however, we owed a brotherly welcome to her.

We were benighted on the Surrey hills, to which we had turned aside with a view of lodging at a friend's house.

The babes began to mewl and be weary. The place was solitary, sandy, with sweeps of barren heath. It was St. George's Hill, and I began to recall wild stories of the poor peasants "called Saxons, but believing themselves Jews, and inheritors of the earth," who had tried to dig the wild moors into millennial fertility a few months before, and had threatened park palings;—so that I should have half feared to ask shelter had any human dwelling appeared. Yet to camp on the wilds, with two young fretting babes, even on an August night, was unwelcome.

As I was plodding on, seeking to soothe the infant in my arms, and singing soft songs to Maidie, a wild figure issued forth from a hollow tree, at sight of whom my heart stood still. He was clad in leather from top to toe.

But his carriage was grave, not like a plunderer, and he accosted me soberly, though without any titles (as Mistress or Madam), calling me "friend" and "thou."

At once Annis recognized him, calling him "George," and greeting him as one she honoured.

After a brief conference with her, he came and bade me be of good cheer, there were some of the Children of Light dwelling not far off, to whom he would take us for shelter.

In a few minutes we came to a humble cot in a hollow of the downs, where, without many words, we found kindness and hospitality worthy of any mansion; the good woman preparing food and fire, so that the babes were soon quiet and asleep, while far into the night they entertained us with heavenly discourse, which was more restful than sleep. The goodman told us how, "when after Everard and Winstanley and their promised millennium had failed, he had gone back hopeless and dispirited to his old toils for a froward master, working early and late taking rest, knocked about by his master for an idle knave, jeered at by his mates for a lunatic, earning with all his toil scarce enough to still the hungry cries of his babes; the world, dark enough before, made dark as night by the putting out of the glory of the kingdom, which was so soon to have made it day. ("And," said the good-wife with moist eyes, "too oft with a sour word from me.") How then, when he was feeling like one forsaken of God and man, George Fox, the man in leather, from among the woods where he passed much time in solitude with his Bible, but lately battered and bruised by a mob in a market-place, where he had exhorted the people against false weights, had come to him like Elijah from the wilderness, and had told him of the universal free grace of God to all mankind, of the kingdom within, and the Light within, and the Spirit within, and the one Priesthood of the Eternal Intercessor, and the way of stillness and simplicity by the rivers of the valleys, and the true language of Thou and Thee, and the sin of war, and of all false words and looks; and how, at last, looking for the Lord within his heart, he had found in Him both the kingdom and the garden, and rivers of water in a dry place."

After him spoke George Fox himself. He could not have been more than six-and-twenty; but I confess his discourse came to me with marvellous power.

The words were sometimes confused, as if they were burst and shattered with the fulness of the thought within them. Something of the same kind we had noticed of old in Oliver Cromwell.

He seemed like one looking into depths into which he himself only saw a little way, and by glimpses; like one listening to a far-off voice, which reached his spirit but in broken cadences, and our spirits still more faintly, through the echo of his voice. Yet he inspired me with the conviction that these depths exist, and this music is going on; a conviction worth something.

He spoke somewhat of his early life—of his father, Christopher Fox, a weaver of Drayton-in-the-Clay in Leicestershire, whom the neighbours called Righteous Christer; of his mother, an upright woman, and "of the stock of the martyrs;" of the "gravity and staidness of mind" he had when very young. How he sought to act faithfully inwardly to God and outwardly to man, and to keep to yea and nay in all things. And how men said, "If George says Verily, there is no altering him."

He felt himself "a stranger in the world," and when others were keeping Christmas with jollity he kept it by giving what he had to some poor widows whom he visited.

Yet in his youth "strong temptations came on him to despair." He went to various ministers (he called them "priests"). But none helped him. One "ancient priest" reasoning with him about the ground of hie despair, bid him "take tobacco and sing psalms." But "tobacco he did not love, and psalms he was not in a state to sing."

When he was twenty-two (in 1645), as he approached the gate of Coventry, "a consideration arose in him that all Christians are believers, both Protestants and Papists," and that "if all were believers then they were all born of God, and passed from death to life, and that none were believers but such; and that being bred at Oxford or Cambridge was not enough to qualify men to be ministers of Christ."

The "darkness and covetousness of professors" troubled him sorely in London and elsewhere.

Then (said he), it was "opened in him," that "God dwelleth not in temples made with hands; but in people's hearts."

This seemed at first to him "a strange word," because both priests and people call their churches "holy ground" and "dreadful places," and temples of God.

He ceased to go near the priests, and wandered about night and day, in "the chase," in the open fields, and woods, and orchards with his Bible; until finding no help in man, at last he heard a voice which said, There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition." "He on whom the sins of the whole had been laid; He who hath the key, and openeth the door of light and life." There were "two thirsts in him, after the creature and after the Lord, the Creator." At length, "his thirst was stilled in God," his soul was "wrapped up in the love of God," and when storms came again, "his still, secret belief was stayed firm; and hope underneath held him as an anchor in the bottom of the sea, and anchored his immortal soul to Christ its Bishop, causing it to swim above the sea (the world), where all raging waves, foul weather, tempests, and temptations are."

He "found that his inward distresses had come from his selfish earthly will, which could not give up to the will of God," and that "the only true liberty is the liberty of subjection in the spirit to God;" and "his sorrows wore off, and he could have wept night and day with tears of joy to the Lord, in humility and brokenness of heart."

As I listened to him, my thoughts ebbed and flowed within me. At one time he seemed a daring self-willed youth, setting his judgment against the world; at another, as a simple lowly child who had listened to God, and must obey Him and none else; again, as one who might have been a poet, or a discoverer of great secrets of nature—so inward and penetrating seemed his glimpse into the heart of things; and again, as a reformer to break in pieces the empire of lies throughout the world.

"I saw," said he, "that there was an ocean of darkness and death; but an infinite ocean of light and love which flowed over the ocean of darkness."

Again, "one morning as I was sitting by the fire, a great cloud came over me, and a temptation beset me; but I sate still. And it was said, 'all things come by nature,' and the elements and stars came over me, so that I was in a manner quite clouded with it. But as I sate still under it, and let it alone, a living hope arose in me, and a true voice, which said, There is a living God who made all things. And immediately the cloud and temptation vanished away, and life rose over it all; my heart was glad, and I praised the living God. After some time I met with some people who had a notion that there is no God, but that all things come by nature. I had a dispute with them, and made some of them confess there is a living God. Then I saw it was good I had gone through that exercise."

His search into the reality of people's beliefs led him among strange people, some who held that "women have no more soul than a goose," whom he answered in the words of Mary, "My soul doth magnify the Lord;" others (Ranters) whom he went to visit in prison, who blasphemously held themselves to be God.

"Now," said he, "after a time was I come up in spirit into the Paradise of God. All things were new; and all the creation gave another smell unto me than before, beyond what words can utter. The creation was opened unto me, and it was showed me how all things had their names given them according to their nature and virtue."

Again, "while I was in the Vale of Beavor, the Lord opened to me three things, in relation to those three great professions in the world, physic, divinity (so called), and law. He showed me that the physicians were out of the wisdom of God, by which the creatures were made, and so knew not their virtues; that the priests were out of the true faith which purifies and gives victory, and gives access to God; that the lawyers were out of the true equity. I felt the power of the Lord went forth unto all, by which all might be reformed; if they would bow to it. The priests might be brought to the true faith, which is the gift of God; the lawyers unto the true law, which brings to love one's neighbour as oneself, and lets man see if he wrongs his neighbour he wrongs himself; the physicians unto the wisdom of God, the Word of Wisdom, by which all things were made and are upheld. For as all believe in the light, and walk in the light, which Christ hath enlightened every man that cometh into the world withal, and so become Children of the Light and of the Day of Christ;—in His Day all things are seen, visible and invisible, by the divine light of Christ, the spiritual heavenly Man by whom all things were created."

Very strange words those seemed to me for so young a man. At first I felt disposed to turn from him as one full of an amazing self-conceit, lifting himself up above all in church and the world; but I remembered what my husband always said about trying to find the real meaning of all men. And as I sate still, and thought, a strange depth opened in those words. Something true, real, and eternal (I thought he meant), some divine meaning lay at the root of all human works, and states, and callings. By this they stand, and live; By departing from this they become hollow, and at last crumble away, by returning to this they are reformed.

He spoke also of the whole of nature and history as being repeated in the wonderful world within us. How the spirit has its Egypts and its Sodom, and its wildernesses and its Red Seas; its Paradise and its mountains of the Lord's House; its Cains, and Esaus, and Judases. "Some men," said he, "have the nature of swine wallowing in the mire. Some the nature of dogs, to bite both the sheep and one another. Some of lions and of wolves, to tear, devour, and destroy; some of serpents, to sting, envenom, and poison; some of horses, to prance and vapour in their strength, and be swift in doing evil; some of tall sturdy oaks to flourish and spread in wisdom and strength. Thus the evil is one in all, but worketh many ways; therefore take heed of the enemy and keep in the faith of Christ."

These thoughts in him were no mere visionary meditations, revolving on themselves. The strange thing in him was the blending of far-reaching mystical thought with direct and most practical action.

"The Lord," said he, "commanded me to go abroad unto the world, which was like a briery thorny wilderness; and when I came in the Lord's mighty power with the word of life into the world, the world swelled and made a noise like the great raging waves of the sea. Priests and professors, magistrates and people, were all like the sea when I came to proclaim the day of the Lord among them, and to preach repentance to them."

His preaching places were no secluded chambers, or conventional religious assemblies, but the market-place, the "sitting of justices to hire servants," schools, firesides, sea-shores where wreckers watched, and, at times, the very "steeple-houses" where the "false priests" seemed to him "a lump of clay set up in the pulpit above a dead fallow ground."

By preaching repentance he did not mean crying out in general that sin was evil. He meant, like him who preached in the Desert of old, pointing out to each man, and class of men, their particular sins, telling magistrates to judge justly, tradesmen to have no false weights and measures, Cornish wreckers to save wrecked ships and shelter wrecked men, masters not to oppress servants, servants to serve honestly, soldiers to do violence to no man, excisemen to make no inequitable demands, "priests" to speak the truth.

And the results of his preaching were two-fold: everywhere priests, excisemen, soldiers, masters, tradesmen, and magistrates were enraged, seized him, beat and bruised and trampled on him, threw him into prisons; and everywhere some ministers, soldiers, tradesmen, and magistrates, and even his jailers listened, gave up their false weights, or unjust dealings, and sought to live uprightly before God.

After this discourse there was silent prayer, and the good couple insisted on yielding up their own bed in the upper chamber to Annie and me, and the babes. But it was far on in the night before I could sleep. And in my sleep I had strange confused dreams of John the Baptist in the wilderness; of a madhouse, full of Quakers clothed in camels' hair with leathern girdles; and of the world shining in a wondrous light, neither of sun nor moon, which made it like Paradise.

In the morning the poor people of the house set us on our way with great loving-kindness, and I had much ado to make them take any recompense. And I have always been thankful that through this interview I learned to distinguish those whom many confound—the Ranters, Fifth Monarchy men, and other lawless fanatics—from the true Quakers, or (as they would be called) "Friends of truth."

After that we had no adventures until we reached Kidderminster.

Our way lay past many ruins of unroofed cottages, with their blackened walls deserted and bare; gardens of herbs running wild, and orchards still flourishing, and overhanging with pleasant fruit; the open and broken casements of the charred and ruined homestead; here and there a stately castle or mansion battered and breached by cannon, while choice flowers still bloomed in patches on the trampled terraces or round the broken fountains, where fair hands had tended them.

In the heat of the day we rested. But wondrous pleasant were the sights we saw and the sounds we heard as we journeyed through the land through those summer morns and eves; the pleasant old country, well-watered everywhere with broad still rivers among the meadows, and little talking brooks among the woods, orchards, and corn-fields; and soft waving sweeps of hill and valley, all smooth and green, as if the waters of the great sin-flood of old had never torn and convulsed them, but only gently heaved and rippled over them. And as we neared Kidderminster, far off on either side rose two ranges of hills, with blue peaks pointing to the sky like church-roofs, the Malverns and the hills of Wales.

Again and again, now, as I read godly Mr. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, pictures of what I saw on that journey in old England rise before me—the "river with the green trees on its banks;" the "meadow curiously beautified with lilies, and green all the year long;" the "tempting stile into Bypath Meadow;" the "hills with gardens and orchards and fountains of waters;" the "delicate plain called Ease;" the valley of humiliation, "green through the summer; fat ground, consisting much in meadows," with its "pleasant air;" the "fruit-trees, with their mellow fruit, which shot over the garden walls;" the Delectable Mountains, not too high and savage for the shepherds to fold their flocks thereon. I can remember, also, many a Hill Difficulty, up which our horses slowly toiled, and Sloughs of Despond through which they struggled. But the "valley of the shadow of death" had nothing outward in that pleasant land to picture it. Out of the dark and rugged depths of his own despair, John Bunyan created a landscape he never could have seen.

I was the sole observer of these things among our little band: the babe saw little but me; Maidie saw nothing of hills and woods, the wild roses and honeysuckles we gathered for her were the channels through which the beauty of the world stole into her heart, as it did, making her clap her hands and laugh with delight as we rode; the serving-man, being a Londoner, thought scorn of the woods and lanes as very barbarous and ill-made places compared with Cheapside with its wares and signs; and Annis, if she saw the outward world at all, beheld it but as the mystical mirror of the world within, the waters of quietness and trees of healing among which her spirit dwelt.

And so at last, on the seventh day after leaving home, we came to a valley on the slopes of which rise the houses of Kidderminster, on each side of the river Stour—"the church on the brow above the water," as they say the name signifies in the old tongues, British and Saxon, which were spoken when first men began to make houses there.

Rich old English names; every name (like the old minsters of our land) in itself a poem, with histories imbedded in every syllable!

Fondly we transfer the familiar old words to new places in this New World. But here alas, as yet, they are no living, growing words,—only poor pathetic relics or arbitrary symbols; at least, until generations to come shall have breathed into them the new significances of a new human history.

CHAPTER V.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

It was evening when we entered the old town of Kidderminster. As we rode along the street to Aunt Dorothy's house, many of the casements were open to let in cool summer evening air; and from one and another, as we passed, rose the music of the psalm sung at the family-worship, the voices of the little ones softly blending with the deeper tones of the father and mother, or the trembling treble of age.

It was a heavenly welcome; and, by an irresistible impulse, I dismounted, for, wearied as I was with the journey, I felt it a kind of irreverence not to walk. It was like going up the aisle of a great church. The whole town seemed a house of prayer.

None of these sweet musical sounds, however, came out of Aunt Dorothy's windows as, at length, we stopped at her door; although the casements were open. But, as we paused before trying to enter, I heard the cadences of a soft voice reading in an upper chamber. I tried the latch, found it open, and, softly mounting the stairs, through a bedroom door, which stood slightly ajar, I saw a grave man, habited like a minister, with a broad collar, and closely-fitting cap on his head, sitting at a table with an open Bible before him. By his side stood a little serving-maiden, whom at the moment he was questioning in simple language, in a calm, persuasive voice and with a remarkably clear utterance, while she answered without fear. His form was slight, and his gait slightly stooping; his face worn and grave, yet not unfrequently "tending to a smile," and always lighted up by his dark, keen, observant eyes. This, I felt, could be no other than Mr. Baxter. Altogether the face made me think of portraits of saintly monks, worn with fasting and prayer, save that the eyes were quick and piercing rather than contemplative; as if he saw, not dreams and visions of Christendom in general, but just the little bit of it he had to do with at the moment, in the person of Aunt Dorothy's little maid. When the little maid had answered, he turned with a look of approval to some one out of sight, whom I knew must be Aunt Dorothy. Judging from the fact of the catechizing being held in her chamber, that she would be equal to seeing me, and that therefore I had better appear in an ordinary way, I crept softly down-stairs again, and knocked at the house-door.

Aunt Dorothy was much moved at my coming; although in words she only vouchsafed a grave remonstrance. And I was no less moved to see how feeble and shrunken she looked. She had been much enfeebled by an attack of low fever and although professing to make little of it, like most people unaccustomed to illness she believed herself much worse than she really was, and had, dear soul, gone in spirit pathetically through her own funeral, with the effect so solemn an event might be hoped to have on the hearts of her misguided kinsmen and kinswomen.

"Olive, my dear," she said to me, on the morning after our arrival, after directing me where to find her will, and a letter she had written, "thou wilt find I had not forgotten thy babes, nor indeed any of my kindred, unnatural as no doubt they think me. I wish the letter to be given to your father at once, immediately after all is over. My example and arguments have had little weight; but it may be otherwise then. I have no physician but good Mr. Baxter, who is physician both for body and soul to his people. He hath endeavoured to reassure me; but I know what that means. And yesterday he gave me his 'Saint's Rest,' which, of course, is only a considerate way of preparing me for the end."

All through that week Aunt Dorothy continued marvellously meek and gentle, her grave eyes moistening tenderly as she looked on the babes. She commended Annis as a maiden of a modest countenance and lowly carriage. (I had not ventured to inform her of Annis's peculiar belief.) She spoke tenderly of every one, and agreed as far as possible with everything; which last symptom I did feel alarming.

The kindness and sympathy of the neighbours were so great, that it seemed to me their evening psalm was only the musical Amen to the psalm they had lived all day. One brought us possets, another dainty meats, another confections for the babes; others would watch in the sick-chamber at night; another sent for the babes to play with her own, to keep the house quiet. If we gave thanks, they said Mr. Baxter "thought nothing of godliness which did not show itself in goodness." Another told us how Aunt Dorothy had been borne on their hearts at the Thursday prayer-meeting at Mr. Baxter's; and more than one came to "repeat to us Mr. Baxter's last Sunday sermon;" repeating Mr. Baxter's sermon (he only preached one on Sunday) being a great ordinance at Kidderminster. Never before did I understand so fully what the meaning of the word church is, or the meaning of the word pastor. Before I came to Kidderminster I had thought of Mr. Baxter as a godly man, rather fond of debate, and very unjust to Oliver Cromwell (as I still hold him to have been). After staying there that week, I learned that if the joys of fighting (syllogistically) were his favourite recreation (which, in spite of all his protestations, I think they were, for a true Ironsides' soul dwelt in that slight and suffering body); his work was teaching little children, seeking the lost, bringing back the wandering, supporting the weak,—all that is meant by being "shepherd" and "ensample" to the flock; going before them in every good and generous work, going after them into every depth of misery, if only he could bring them home.

As I sat by the window of the sick-chamber where I could see Mr. Baxter's house on the opposite side of the street, with the people going in to consult him, the poor patients sometimes waiting by twenty at a time at his door, and a pleasant stir of welcome all down the street when his "thin and lean and weak" figure passed out and along, Aunt Dorothy loved to discourse to me of him. She told me how in his childhood he had lived in a village called Eaton Constantine, near the Wrekin Hill, in a rustical region, where Ave Marys still lingered with paternosters in the peasants' prayers; where the clergyman, being about eighty years of age, with failing eye-sight, and having two churches, twenty miles distant, under his charge, used to say the Common Prayer without book; and got "one year a thresher, or common day-labourer, another a tailor, and after that a kinsman of his, who was a stage-player and gamester, to read the psalms and chapters." Mr. Baxter's father, "having been addicted to gaming, had entangled his freehold estate; but it pleased God to instruct and change him by the bare reading of the Scriptures in private, without either preaching or godly company, or any other books, so that his serious speeches of God and the life to come very early possessed his son with a fear of sinning." For reading the Scripture on the Sundays, when others were dancing, by royal order, round the May-pole, he was called a "Puritan."

Good books were the means of Richard Baxter's early teaching, though when his "sincere conversion" began he was never able to say. One of these books (to Aunt Dorothy's perplexity) was by a Jesuit; another was "Sibbes' Bruised Reed," brought by a poor pedler and ballad-seller to the door; another was a "little piece" of Mr. Perkin's works, which a servant in the house had. For all that while (Mr. Baxter had told her) neither he nor his father had acquaintance with any that "had understanding in matters of religion, nor ever heard any pray extempore." Their prayers were chiefly the Confession in the Prayer-book, and one of Bradford, the martyr's, prayers.

But Mr. Baxter deemed his own sicknesses and infirmities to have been among the chief means of grace to him. "The calls of approaching death on one side, and the questioning of a doubtful conscience on the other hand, kept his soul awake."

His doubts were many; for instance, "whether a base fear did not move him more than a son's love to God," and "because his grief and humiliation were no greater;" until, at last, he understood that "God breaketh not all men's hearts alike; that the change of our heart from sin to God is true repentance; and that he that had rather leave his sin than have leave to keep it, and that had rather be the most holy, than have leave to be unholy or less holy, is neither without repentance nor the love of God."

His diseases were more than his doubts, and his physicians more (and belike more dangerous) than his diseases. He had thirty-six physicians, by whose orders he took drugs without number, which, said he, "God thought not fit to make successful;" whereupon at last he forsook the physicians altogether. Under which circumstances he had doubtless reason to count it among his mercies (as he did) that he was never overwhelmed with "real melancholy." "For years," as he said, "rarely a quarter of an hour's ease, yet (through God's mercy) never an hour's melancholy, nor many hours in the week disabled from work."

Mr. Baxter's being so much indebted to good books as his teachers and comforters, was perhaps partly the reason why he wrote so many. Of his "Saint's Rest" he himself said: "Whilst I was in health I had not the least thought of writing books, or of serving God in any more public way than preaching; but when I was weakened with great bleeding, and left solitary in my chamber at Sir John Cook's in Derbyshire, without any acquaintance but my servant about me, and sentenced to death by the physicians, I began to contemplate more seriously on the everlasting rest which I believed myself to be on the borders of." He originally intended it to be no more than the length of one or two sermons; but the weakness being long continued, the book was enlarged. The first and last parts being for his own use were written first, and then the second and third. It was written with no books at hand but a Bible and a Concordance, and he found that "the transcript of the heart hath the greatest force on the hearts of others;" and for the good he had heard that multitudes have received by that writing, he humbly thanked "Him that compelled him to it."

A history which interested me much; for I delight to think of books I love as growing in this and that unexpected way from little unnoticed seeds, like living creatures, not as constructed deliberately from outside, like a thing made by hands. Doth not John Milton say that a good book is "the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life; so that he who destroys a good book commits not so much a murder as a massacre, and slays an immortality rather than a life."

Much also Aunt Dorothy had to say of Mr. Baxter's good works; how out of his narrow income he contrived to send promising young men to the university, and to relieve the destitute without stint, "having ever more to give," he said, "as he gave more;" how he had been the physician of his people, fighting against their sicknesses as well as their sins; how the old were moved by him, who had never been moved before, and little children were stirred by his eloquent entreaties, and trained by his patient teaching, so that they brought the light of love and godliness into many a home which before had been all darkness.

She said Mr. Baxter was wont humbly to attribute the wonderful efficacy of his ministry to many causes rather than to any peculiar power in his words; to the following among others:—.

1. That "the people had never had any awakening ministry before, and therefore were not sermon-proof."

2. The infirmity of his health. That "as he had naturally a familiar, moving voice, and doing all in bodily weakness as a dying man, his soul was more easily brought to seriousness, and to preach as a dying man to dying men."

3. That many of the bitter enemies to godliness, "in their very hatred of Puritans," had gone into the king's armies, and "were quickly killed."

4. The change made in public affairs by the success of the wars; "which (said Mr. Baxter), however it was done, and though much corrupted by the usurpers, yet removed many impediments to men's salvation. Before, godliness was the way to shame and ruin; but though Cromwell gave liberty to all sects, and did not set up any party alone, by force, yet this much gave abundant advantage to the gospel; especially considering that godliness now had countenance and reputation also as well as liberty; and such liberty (even under a usurper) as never before since the gospel came into the land did it possess. And" (said he) "much as I have written against licentiousness in religion, and the power of the magistrate in it, yet, in comparison of the rest of the world, I think that land happy that hath but bare liberty to be as good as they are willing to be, and toleration for truth to bear down her adversaries."

5. Another advantage was the zeal, diligence, the holy, humble, blameless lives, and the Christian concord of the religious sort.

6. The private meetings for prayer, repetitions, and asking questions, and his personal intercourse with every family apart.

7. Being able to give his writings, and especially a Bible, to every family that had none.

8. That the trade of the weaving of Kidderminster stuffs enabled them to set a Bible on the loom before them, wherewith to edify one another while at their work. For (thought Mr. Baxter) "free-holders and tradesmen are the strength of religion and civility in the land, and gentlemen (idle men, I think he meant) and beggars the strength of iniquity."

9. His own single life, "enabling him the easilier to take his people for his children."

10. That God made great use of sickness to do good to many: and then of Mr. Baxter's practice of physic; at once recovering their health and moving their souls.

11. The quality of the wicked people of the place, who, "being chiefly drunkards, would roar and rave in the streets like stark madmen, and so make that sin abhorred."

12. The assistance of good ministers around.

To these things, and such as these, said Aunt Dorothy, Mr. Baxter loved to attribute those conversions which "at first he used to count up as jewels, but of which afterwards he could not keep any number."

All this made me greatly desire the time when I might hear Mr. Baxter preach; and, at last, on the second Sunday after our arrival, Aunt Dorothy insisted on my going to church.

The only perplexity was Annis Nye. However, I trusted that Aunt Dorothy's subdued frame of mind, and Annis's being busy with the babes or in the kitchen, would avert a collision.

The sermon went far to explain to me Kidderminster and Mr. Baxter. But no written words will ever explain to those who did not hear them what his sermons were.

The pulpit was at once Mr. Baxter's hearth, his throne, and his true battle-field: the central hearth at which the piety of every fireside in Kidderminster was weekly enkindled; the throne from which the hearts of men and women, old men and little children, were swayed; the battle-field where he fought, not so much against sectaries and misbeliefs, but against sin and unbelief. He was at home there, close to every heart there; yet at home as a father among his children. All that he was, turn by turn, through the week—pleading, teaching, exhorting, consoling, from house to house—he was in the pulpit altogether; but with the difference between glow and flame, between speech and song; between a man calmly using his faculties one by one and a man with his whole soul awake and on fire, and concentrated into one burning desire to save men and make them holy; with a message to deliver, which he knew could do both. His eye enkindled, his face illumined, his whole emaciated frame quivering with emotion as he leant over the pulpit, and spoke to every heart in the church.

"Though we speak not unto you as men would do that had seen heaven and hell, and were themselves perfectly awake," he said. But it seemed to me as if he had seen heaven and hell (or rather felt them); and as if, while I listened to him, for the first time in my life, my soul was "perfectly awake" all through.

And of all this, the next generation, and those who never heard him in this, will know nothing! Instead, they will have one hundred and sixty little books and treatises, out of which they may vainly strive to piece together what Mr. Baxter was during those fourteen most fruitful years of his ministry at Kidderminster. But even if they could put the fragments together right, they would only have created an image of clay. And most likely they will piece them together wrong (as I did before I knew him). And then they will wonder at the clumsy image, and wonder what gentlemen of the neighbourhood, trained in universities, in courts, and in armies, and at the same time the poor weavers of Kidderminster, and the nailers of Dudley, who clustered round the doors and windows when he preached, could find in his words so beautiful and so moving.

Most words, written or spoken, are perhaps more spoken to one generation than men like to think. If the next generation read them, it is not so much as living words to move themselves, but as lifeless effigies of what moved their fathers. But with great orators this must be especially the case, and with great preachers more perhaps than with other orators. Nor need they complain. Their words reach far enough, moving hearts whose repentings move the angels in the presence of God. They live long enough: on high, in the deathless souls they awaken; on earth, in the undying influence from heart to heart, from age to age, of the holy lives they inspire.

The large old church was thronged to the extremity of the five new galleries which had been built since Mr. Baxter preached, to accommodate the congregation.

When he ceased speaking, there was a long hush, as of reluctance to supersede the last tones of that persuasive voice by any other sound.

And as the congregation gently dispersed, that sacred hush seemed on them still. They were treasuring up the words wherewith they would strengthen themselves and each other during the week; the housewife keeping them in her heart like a song from heaven; the weaver, as he worked with his open Bible before him on the loom, seeing them shine on its verses like the fingers of a discriminating sunbeam.

As I came home, I remember feeling not so much as if I had been in a church where something good had been said, as in a battle-field where something great had been done. Death-blows had been given to cherished sins; angels of hell had been despoiled of their false "armour of light," and compelled to appear in their own hideous shrunken shapes; hidden faults had been dragged from their ambush in the heart, and smitten; the joints of armour, deemed impervious, had been pierced at a venture; the powers of darkness had been defeated by being detected; the powers of light had been aroused, refreshed, arrayed in order of battle, and sent on their warfare, strengthened and cheered, as the Ironsides by the voice of Oliver. A battle had been fought, and a campaign set in order, and the combatants inspired for fresh conflicts. As those living words echoed in my heart, all the conflicts of armies and politicians seemed mere shadowy repetitions (like the battles in the Elysian shades) of that eternal essential conflict between good and evil waged unceasingly within and around us.

I remember that Aunt Dorothy's first words to me, when I returned, sounded as if they came up to me on a sunny height, from a strange voice in some dim region far below.

She said,—

"Olive, dear heart, it rejoices me that you have such a discerning young woman to serve you. She is, I deny not, a trifle rustical, and needs instruction as to gestures and forms of address, but, at least, she is able to perceive how sadly poor General Cromwell has been seduced from the ways of humility and uprightness, and has failed in protecting the people of God."

Nevertheless, these words were not without something consolatory in them for me. Much as Aunt Dorothy and Annis had, belike, misunderstood one another as to what they meant by the "people of God" whom the Captain-General failed to protect, it was evident they were still so far on friendly relations with each other. And it was also plain to me that Aunt Dorothy's militant faculty (and therefore she herself) was recovering.

A very opportune improvement. For on the following day came letters from Roger and Job Forster announcing the battle of Dunbar, which those who fought it looked on as an act of the great warfare between good and evil, as truly as any of Mr. Baxter's preachings. In which belief Aunt Dorothy and Mr. Baxter agreed with them; but not as to the sides on which the combatants were ranged.

The first letter from Dunbar was from Roger, dated September 2nd:—

"A word to thee, Olive, my sister, by the post who is to carry letters for the Lord-General. Ill news travel fast, and if such have reached thee before these, I would have thee know, though our case is low enough, our hearts are not daunted.

"I write in my tent on my knee—wind and rain driving across this wild tongue of land, dashing the waves against the rocks, whistling through the long grasses of the marshes, as in the sedges by old Netherby Mere. Nothing to do but to keep our powder dry, if we can, and pray.

"The enemy think us caught in a worse Pound than my Lord Essex at Fowey. Even the General thinks little less than a miracle can save us. But maybe the miracle is wrought already in the courage of our men, without a grain of earthly food to sustain it; the miracles of the New Covenant being, for the most part, inward.

"For months we have been watching them up and down the hills and the shores round Edinburgh, yet never able to tempt them to a battle. And now they deem us trapped and doomed, which may work to better purpose on them than our challenges. To all appearance their boastings are justified.

"The ships we hasted into this 'trap' to meet (sorely needing fresh victuals), are nowhere in sight. Through his knowledge of the country, the enemy has possessed himself of all the passes between us and England. His army is on the bill above us, twenty-three thousand strong, with veteran generals, threatening to sweep down, and with 'one shower, wash us out of the country.'

"We with but eleven thousand to meet them. Many of ours lying sick in the town of Dunbar.

"In all Scotland not another stronghold is ours.

"Among them is the shout of a king, 'a Covenanted king;' whatever strength may lie in that! Many of their soldiers godly men and brave.

"I think we shall not be suffered to dishonour the good cause or the General by lack of courage. But victory is not in our hands. And what may be in God's, I am no prophet to tell.

"Between us and England an army twice our number. Between England and the old tyranny, as we deem, nothing but Oliver and his eleven thousand. A thought to nerve heart and hand.

"'We are sensible of our disadvantages,' as the General saith. 'But not a few of us stand in this trust, that because of their numbers—because of their confidence—because of our weakness—because of our strait, we are in the Mount, and in the Mount the Lord will be seen; and that He will find out a way of deliverance and salvation for us.'

"The sea and the waves roaring, but as yet, God be praised, no man's heart failing him for fear. Farewell! Whatever comes to-morrow I would have thee know we are not dismayed to-day."

And, enclosed, a few lines from my husband:—

"This campaign has been one of more occupation for the leech than the soldier," he wrote. "The wild weather, and food not of the best or most plentiful, with lying out on the wet moors, always restlessly on the watch for battles which never came, have shattered the troops more than many a hard fight. Sickness is on all sides. The Captain-General saith the men fall sick beyond imagination. He himself has not escaped. The foe I fight with has left me little intermission. The prospect of a battle, such as hangs over us in the thousands gathering on Doon Hill through the day, and now ready to sweep down the slopes, seems proving already to some a better physic than any of mine. A wound is doubled when the spirit is wounded, and half healed when the spirit is cheered.

"Never fear for me, dear heart; I know I am where my task is set. And I keep as well as men for the most part do who have plenty to do and hope in doing it."

"Ah," sighed Aunt Dorothy, "snared in their own net at last! Did not Mr. Baxter write to the well-disposed in the sectarian army, warning them of the sin of going to war against the godly in Scotland; 'for which, O blindness!' quoth he, 'they thought me an uncharitable censurer.' Remarkable providence!" she concluded; "to have actually run of their own free will into a place which as if it had been ordained from the beginning to be just such a trap."

"Had we not better wait till we see whether they get out, Aunt Dorothy?" said I.

"Get out, child?" said she, fierily; "I think better of them, with all their transgressions, than to believe they are bad enough to be suffered to prosper in their evil ways! Mr. Cromwell himself was, or seemed to be, in the Covenant once."

But that very evening flew through the land the news of Dunbar victory: these letters having been delayed by coming round through London. The Scottish forces were totally routed. As Mr. Baxter said, "Their foot taken, their horse pursued to Edinburgh; when, if they would only have let Oliver's weakened and ragged army go, or cautelously followed them, it would have kept their peace and broken his honour."

For neither Mr. Baxter nor Aunt Dorothy thought it at all a "remarkable providence" that Oliver and his army had thus escaped. It was plain, on the contrary, she thought, to all right-thinking people, that their successes, so far from proving them right, only proved that they had gone too far wrong to be corrected.

A few days afterwards arrived a letter, sent me by Rachel Forster from Job.

It began:—

"See Psalm 107. (O praise the Lord, all ye nations; praise him all ye people.

For his merciful kindness is great towards us; and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever. Praise ye the Lord).* We sang it on the battle-field yesterday. The shortest psalm that is. Made on purpose, belike, for such a service and such a congregation. For we had no time for more. We sang it, Oliver and the foremost of us, on the halt, before the rest came up for the chase. The music rolled up grand, like the sea, from the hollow of the brook against the hill of Doon. We had cause to sing it, and the whole land hath cause. Never better. Do thou sing it, dear heart, at Netherby, and let Mistress Olive sing it, and the babes listen, and Mistress Annis (if she will unlearn her perverse ways); 'old men and children, young men and maidens.' For their 'covenant with death' is broken. The snare is broken, and we are delivered. And not we and England only, but all the godly throughout the three kingdoms; if they will but see. Surely they must see; kirk-ministers and all, 'spite (as the General saith) of all their sullenness at God's providences, and their envy at Eldad and Medad and the Lord's people who prophecy; their envy (saith he) at instruments, because things did not work forth their platform, and the great God did not come down to their thoughts.'

* In Mr. Rous's version:—

"O give ye praise unto the Lord,
All nations that be;
Likewise, ye people, all accord
His name to magnify.
For great to usward ever are
His loving-kindnesses;
His truth endures for evermore,
The Lord O do ye bless."

"They hung above us on the hill of Doon, twenty-three thousand strong, all through the night. A wild night it was; the waves roaring, the cold rain driving across the tongue of land where they thought us trapped. But we prayed, and watched, and kept our powder dry, which was as much as we could do. We had some scant shelter under tents and walls. They, poor souls, had none; and before dawn they put out all their matches but two to a company, and lay down under the corn-shocks. Oliver did not wait for them to burst on us; nor for the morning to break. We did not wait for his word to be on the alert. A company of us were in prayer at three o'clock, with a poor cornet (one of the Eldads and Medads), when Major Hodgson rode past and stopped to join, and found strength in it, as the day proved.

"We were to have charged before they woke. But there were delays in getting all the men forward. So before we had gathered we heard the enemy's trumpets wake up one by one in the dark, along the hill-side. Then the moon broke from a cloud, and, with the first ray of dawn, made light enough to see where we were going, when at last all the men came up, and the trumpets pealed out all along our line with the English battle-shout, and the great guns.

"Their cry and ours met: 'The Covenant!' and 'The Lord of Hosts!' And with it we and they met, met and closed in death-grapple for three-quarters of an hour; company to company, man to man. Once we were pressed back across the brook in the hollow, their horse charging desperately. No hearing the winds and waves roar then. Then we charged back, horse and foot,—such a charge (many say) as they never saw—back again across the hollow of the brook. That charge was never returned. We heard Oliver's voice, 'They run, I profess they run!' And then the sun broke across the field, and with it again Oliver's voice, 'Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered.'

"And scattered they were. Three thousand dead in the hollow of the brook. (Three thousand whose hands we would fain have held as brothers. God knows how Oliver entreated them sore, and how they gave us hatred for our love.) Ten thousand prisoners. The rest flying right and left through the land. An army gone in an hour.

"An army of brave Scottish men, godly men many of them doubtless; ministers there in store to bless them (no Eldads and Medads, but covenanted kirk-ministers), all swept away like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor.

"Will they not yet see? Not our courage did it; they were brave as we. Not our numbers; theirs doubled ours. Not our field: they chose it. The passes of the hills were theirs. What then? Can any fail to see? The lie that is among them makes them weak, the false oaths to a false Covenant sworn at their command, against his will and conscience, by the poor, false, young Stuart king. The difference is the difference in our battle-cries. 'The Covenant,' good once (far be it from us to speak scorn of it), good twice, but not good always; strong against one evil yesterday, not strong against all evil for ever. And 'The Lord of Hosts,' Almighty against all evil for ever. Not His own Covenant even, as far as it is but written in stone; much less theirs, though signed with their blood; not His own Covenant, though 'confirmed by an oath,' so much as Himself living to confirm the oath.

"As the Lord-General saith, 'What He hath done, what He is to us in Christ, is the root of our comfort; in this is stability; in us is weakness. Faith as an act yields not perfect peace; but only as it carries into Him who is our perfect peace. Rest we here, and here only.'*

* "What God hath done, what He is to us in Christ, is the root of our comfort: and this is stability; in us is weakness. Acts of obedience are not perfect, and, therefore, yield not perfect peace. Faith as an act yields it not; but only as it carries us into Him, who is our perfect peace, and in whom we are accounted of and received by the Father even as Christ Himself. This is our high calling. Rest we here, and here only."

"Truly soldiers have cause to sing the 109th Psalm who have such a General to lead and speak to them; although, in the eyes of the kirk, he be but an Eldad. I trust I meddle not with things too high for me after the lesson I have had. Often, dear heart, I long for thee, and thy comfortable speech and smile.

"Master Roger and I talk over many things by the camp-fires when most are asleep; we knowing old Netherby, and thee, and so many other things the rest know not. He is heavier and graver than I would see him, save where there is work to be done.

"I doubt there is somewhat gnawing, without noise, as worms and blights do, at his heart.

"There was the pretty lady at the hall, now among the Hivites and Perizzites (so to speak) in France. I know nothing, but that he never speaks of her and hers. And they were aye together, he and she and Mistress Olive, in the old days.

"Poor brave young heart, mine is sore for him many a time. It is not all who get such plentiful wages beforehand as I, Rachel, in thee."

Which last sentence Rachel had annotated with,—

"The goodman means no harm, Mistress Olive. But on that matter he could never be brought to see plain, say what I would."

The next Sunday a Thanksgiving was appointed by the Parliament ("the Rump") for the victory of Dunbar. This Mr. Baxter openly disregarded; using his influence, moreover, to persuade others to do the same. He did not hesitate in his sermon to warn his hearers of the sin of fighting against a loyal Scottish Covenanted army; while, at the same time, he blamed the Scots themselves for "imposing laws upon their king, for forcing him to dishonour the memory of his father, and for tempting him to take God's name in vain by speaking and publishing that which, they might easily know, was contrary to his heart."

So, in the afternoon of that Sabbath which Mr. Baxter refused to make a day of thanksgiving to Kidderminster, I held a private thanksgiving service in my own chamber.

At first, in my solitude, my spirit was too busy with protesting against Mr. Baxter to be at leisure for praise.

At the doors of some of the houses opposite, quiet groups of weavers were gathered, in their Sunday best. In all the town, Mr. Baxter rejoiced to think, there was not one Separatist. The Quakers (he fondly believed) he had silenced, at a discussion held in his church. One journeyman shoemaker, indeed, had turned Anabaptist, "but he had left the town upon it."

No "Eldads and Medads" had troubled Kidderminster with irregular prophesying; "for," said Mr. Baxter, "so modest were the ablest of the people, that they were never inclined to a preaching way, but thought they had teaching enough by their pastors."

"Among all these busy brains and stirring hearts," I thought, as I sat at my window, "not one that differs from Mr. Baxter; while Mr. Baxter differs in so many directions from so many people that fifty books have been written against him."

The thought of a whole town walking on such a narrow path, step by step after Mr. Baxter, with those fifty precipices and "bye-paths" on all sides, had something appalling in it;—appalling in its monotony, and in its precariousness. What kind of a place would England be to live in if it were all brought to this Kidderminster standard? Not very pleasant certainly for any journeyman shoemaker who was unfortunate enough to turn Anabaptist! Perhaps in the end a little wearisome even for Mr. Baxter himself, when no one was left for him to silence.

I need not have perplexed myself with such speculations. Long before the experiment reached that stage, Mr. Baxter's own eloquent voice itself was silenced, and his faithful words made doubly precious to his flock by the prohibition, on peril of imprisonment or fine, of ever listening to them again.

Nor was a slumbrous unanimity by any means the danger England had then to dread.

As I opened my Bible and read the Dunbar Psalm, and sought to make melody with it in heart, my quiet chamber seemed to become a side chapel of a vast cathedral. I felt no more alone. A thousand services of song seemed going on around me. From Dr. Jeremy Taylor silenced in Wales, and good Bishop Hall near Norwich, and numerous little companies in old halls and manors, meeting secretly to use the Liturgy banished from churches and cathedrals. From these same ancient churches and cathedrals, where hundreds of "painful ministers," like Mr. Baxter, Joseph Alleine, or John Howe, were leading the devotions of the people in psalms more ancient than any Liturgy, and prayers new as every morning's mercies. From Puritan armies in Scotland, covenanted and uncovenanted. From meetings of Quakers, many of them in prisons. Beyond these again, from Lutherans and Calvinists in Protestant Europe; and doubtless also from countless devout hearts in Catholic cathedrals and convents. And farther off still, from the Puritan villages in the wilderness on the other side of the sea.

At first this concourse of sounds scarce seemed a concert. Babel has smitten men with deeper divisions than those of speech. Too many of the prayers sounded terribly like anathemas. Too many of the psalms like war-cries.

Until, as I still listened, the roof even of this vast cathedral of Christendom seemed to melt away into the firmament of heaven. Then I found that there was a height whence all discords, which were not music, fell back to earth, and whence all the discords without which music cannot be, flowed up in one grand River of Praise, in at the Gates of Pearl.

The burden of the song seemed simply that old prayer, "Our Father which art in heaven."

But from the crystal fiery sea into which that river flowed, rolled back, as in an echo of countless ocean waves, the antiphon,—

"Great and marvellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are Thy ways, Thou King of Saints!"

Then the thought came to me, "Mr. Baxter, however, with all his moderatings and balancings cannot antedate these harmonies. Aunt Dorothy says he believes he has found the exact middle point between every extreme—Calvinism and Arminianism, Episcopacy, Presbytery, Independency. But, unfortunately, to other people it is but a point. Aunt Dorothy cannot quite balance herself on it. It is certain the whole world cannot. It is doubtful if any one can, except Mr. Baxter."

The harmony is made, not by each trying to learn the whole, but by each keeping faithfully to the part given him to learn and sing, though the part be only a broken note here and there.

And I thanked God that all the efforts of the worst men, or the best, to anticipate that majestic anthem of conflicting and embracing sound by a thin unison of voices, had never succeeded, and never could succeed, as long as men are men, and the second Man is not St. Paul, or Apollos, or St. John—but the Son of Man; the Lord from heaven.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

"Paris, 1650, September.—It is a new world in which I find myself, here, in the hotel of Madame la Mothe. Save Barbe and myself, not one Protestant is of the circle.

"The loneliness is sometimes oppressive, courteous as all are. It is not so much the condemnation of Protestant England, as an unfortunate island shattered from the rest of Christendom by the earthquake of the Reformation, which makes me feel how far off we are from each other, as their incapacity to comprehend the divisions which are convulsing our country. 'From shattering to pulverizing, the process is but natural,' a good priest said the other day. They seem to look on us as the dust of a ruined Church; and between one atom of dust and another—between atoms Episcopal, atoms Presbyterian, and atoms Independent—they have no sunbeam strong enough to distinguish.

"Paris, October 1st.—This morning Madame la Mothe, always anxious for my welfare, and now and then awakening to spasms of conviction that my welfare means my 'conversion,' took me to hear an excellent priest, called Singlin, preach.

"'I do not go often myself, my child,' she said, 'because the power of M. Singlin's sermons is redoubtable. They sweep people away from transitory ties, like a torrent. Now, while M. la Mothe lives, this is a danger to which I scarcely venture to expose myself. He is, as you see, more aged than I am. And what could he do without me? When I married him, I was a child; he a man of high reputation, who had made his mark in the world. It was considered a brilliant destiny for me. It has been a tranquil and a happy destiny. He was ever to me the most considerate of friends, guiding me through the temptations of the world like a director, generously providing me with the pleasures suited to my age, and consoling me like an angel when our only child died. I could never abandon him now.'

"Many things were strange to me in these words. This married life seemed so strangely dual, instead of one. She spoke of him rather as leading on than going with; rather as providing her joys than joining in them; rather as consoling her griefs than sharing them. And as strange seemed to me this mingled, love and dread of M. Singlin's sermons.

"We dressed, and set off for the church.

"'Surely, Madame,' I said, as we walked through the streets, 'no good man would advise you to abandon home and M. la Mothe?'

"'No, certainly,' she said; 'not advise. But he might make me feel the world so hollow and momentary, all its relationships so transitory, that an irresistible attraction would draw my heart from the world, like that of the young lady you see on the other side of the street, Mademoiselle Jacqueline Pascal. And what comfort, then, would my husband have in my going through life, by his side indeed, but as a machine wound up to its work, with the spirit elsewhere!'

"And she pointed out to me a maiden habited much like a nun, moving silently along with downcast eyes.

"'See, my child,' she whispered, 'one of the trophies of M. Singlin's eloquence, or, at least, of the doctrines he enforces. A young person of good family, daughter of M. Etienne Pascal, counsellor of the king. At thirteen she was a poetess. She charmed the Queen, Anne of Austria, and the Court, by her verses on the birth of the Dauphin, his present Majesty. She captivated all by the point of her repartees. At fourteen she won from Cardinal Richelieu her father's pardon for some political offence, by her marvellous acting in a drama. Her brother, Blaise, works miracles of science—literally miracles. He has weighed the air, and made a machine which calculates. She is beautiful, accomplished, not yet twenty-six; the most brilliant prospects open to her; the only unmarried daughter of an indulgent father who loves her tenderly. She hears M. Singlin. His words give the seal to her vocation. She renounces everything—the Court, the world, the family as far as she can, her genius, her wit, herself.'

"'You mean she renounces her genius by consecrating it.'

"'I mean she renounces. Hereafter God and the Church may consecrate. But who can say? What are our talents to Him? His Providence can destroy a navy by a whirlwind or by a little worm. Henceforth she reads only books of devotion and theology. She writes no more poetry. She denies herself the manifestation of her dearest affections. Until her father freely consents to her profession, she yields, indeed, so far as to remain in his house. But she makes her home a convent, her chamber a cell. She spends the day there in solitude—last winter without a fire, bleak as it was—reciting offices, reading books of piety. She only joins the family at meals. And of the meals, as far as possible, she makes fasts, refusing to warm herself at the fire. Charity alone, and devotion, bring her out of her retirement. When her sister's child was dying of the small-pox she nursed it night and day with devoted tenderness. She would, doubtless, have done the same for the child of a beggar; so entire is her consecration. Soon, no doubt, such piety will vanquish all objections; her father will yield (if he lives), and she will enter Port Royal. And this is one result of M. Singlin's eloquence, and of the power of his doctrine. You will confess it is a power, beneficent indeed, but formidable.

"'Formidable indeed, Madame,' I said, shuddering, for I thought of my own father. 'Fire, I think, to the brain, and frost to the heart.'

"'Alas, my child!' she said; 'how should you understand what is meant by genuine Vocation, or a thorough Conversion?'

"To me, indeed, this seemed not conversion; but annihilation.

"We were silent some way on our return from the church.

"'You were arrested,' said Madame la Mothe.

"'It reminded me of a Puritan sermon I once heard in England,' I said; 'speaking of the world as a "carcass that had neither life nor loveliness." Only M. Singlin seemed to include more in what he meant by the world than the Puritan did.'

"'That is what I should expect,' she replied. 'The higher the point of view, the more utter must seem the vanity of all below. Does he not make life seem a speck of dust, its history a moment? yet each speck of dust on the earth a world, and each moment a lifetime, as to its issues, radiating as these do through eternity!'

"When we came back, Madame la Mothe gave an ardent account of the sermon to an Abbe, a cousin of hers, who happened to be visiting at the house.

"To my surprise, he solemnly denounced the recluses of Port Royal, with M. Singlin and their directors. He called it a conspiracy.

"He said: 'A renegade Capuchin has (as they confess) been the means of the conversion of their adored Abbess, Angélique Arnauld. The Arnauld family, the soul of the whole thing, were Protestants in the previous generation; and (as the Spaniards say) it takes more than one generation to wash the taint of heresy from the blood.'

"At this point Madame la Mothe considerately introduced me.

"'With the Protestants we are on open ground, he said, bowing graciously to me. 'Mademoiselle will understand I spoke ecclesiastically. But these Jansenists are conspirators. They are digging mines underneath the altar itself. However, the Pope lives, and the Order of Jesus is awake. We shall see which will perish—the sanctuary, or the mine which was to explode it.'

"'Is it true,' I asked Madame la Mothe afterwards, 'that the Abbess of Port Royal owed her first impulse heavenward to a Protestant?'

"'They have told me, indeed, it was a renegade monk who so moved the young Abbess' heart,' she replied. 'The miserable being, it is said, spoke so forcibly on the blessedness of a holy life, and on the infinite love and humiliation of our Lord in His incarnation.'

"'Perhaps, then, he knew the blessedness of a holy life,' I said.

"'He was a wretched fugitive, escaping from his convent, my child,' she replied, a little impatiently. 'But what of that? Was not Balaam one of the prophets?'

"Two things, however, give me a kind of mournful consolation.

"One is, that, deny it as they will, there is an undying link between the holy people of Port Royal and those of the Protestant Church. I like to think that. Not only has their piety a common source in the same Sun, but it was enkindled by the touch of a poor heretic hand they would refuse to grasp in brotherhood. They will have to grasp that poor hand by-and-by, I like to think; and then, not reluctantly!

"And the other consolation is, that divisions are not confined to Protestants; a consolation both as regards the Roman Catholics and ourselves. For it seems to me, wherever there is thought there must be difference; wherever there is life there must be variety. Life and sin; these seem to me the chief sources of religious difference. God only knows from which of these two fountains each drop of the turbulent stream flows. Life, which must manifest itself in forms varied as the living, varying as their growing; sin, which adds to these varieties of healthy growth the sad varieties of disease, infirmity, excrescence, or defect.

"Paris, October 2nd.—A battle at Dunbar, on the coast of Scotland.

"Another defeat. 'A complete rout,' my father says in his letter, which is very desponding. He is very indignant with the Scots, who will not let the king's 'loyal servants and counsellors' come near him, or even fight for him, but drag him about like a culprit and preach sermons to him, 'once,' he says, 'six in succession.' (And, here, His Majesty had not the reputation of being too fond of sermons.) He is also grieved with the king himself; at his signing the Covenant, at his publicly condemning his royal martyred father's acts, and his mother's religion; and, above all, at his suffering himself to be conducted in state into Edinburgh, under the gate where were exposed the dishonoured remains of Montrose, who so gallantly died for him not six months before. 'Nevertheless,' he concludes, 'we shall all die for him when our time comes, no doubt, as willingly as Montrose did. And after all, the true mischief-makers are the priests. From the Pope to the kirk preachers, not a disturbance in the world but you find them at the bottom of it. Let all the theologies alone, sweetheart. One is as bad as another. Say thy Creed; keep the Commandments; pray the Lord's Prayer. And remember thy old father.'

"January, Chateau St. Rémi.—We have come to M. la Mothe's country chateau for the Christmas.

"The Abbey Church of Port Royal des Champs is our parish-church. Madame la Mothe often takes me there.

"The first morning after our arrival she took me to the edge of the Valley of Port Royal.

"It is rather a cup-like hollow in the plain than a valley among hills. Its sides are clothed with a sombre mantle of ancient forests,—at the further end sweeping into the plain into which the valley opens. A broad rich plain with rivers, woods, corn-fields, now ploughed into long brown ridges for sowing; towns, villages with spires and towers, all stretching far away into a blue dimness.

"The recluses who occupied Les Granges, the abbey farm on the brow of the hill where we stood. must find their prayers helped, I think, by this glimpse into the wide world of life beyond. The nuns at the bottom of the valley must lose it.

"The valley was entirely filled by the convent.

"'It is like a vase carved by the Creator Himself for the precious ointment whose odour fills all His house,' Madame la Mothe said.

"To my unaccustomed eyes it was more like a prosperous village than a monastery.

"In the midst, the great tower of the church; close to it, the convent itself, with its lofty roofs, arched windows and gateways, turrets and pinnacles; around, the infirmary, surgery, weaving-houses, wash-houses, bake-houses, wood, corn and hay stacks, the mill and the mill-pond, and fish-ponds; the new and stately hotel which is the retreat of the Duchess de Longueville, with the residences of other noble ladies; and beyond, the kitchen-gardens and meadows divided by a winding brook from the 'Solitude,' where, amidst groups of ancient trees, and under the steep slopes of the wooded hill, the nuns repair for confession and meditation. Even then, on that winter-day, I thought I perceived the gleam of their white dresses among the trees.

"As we look, Madame la Mothe told me some of the scenes which had been witnessed there within the last fifty years.

"Not fifty years since, the abbey had been a place of restless gaiety and revelry. Light songs and laughter might have been heard echoing among the woods, when the child Angélique Arnauld was appointed Abbess.

"She then described the great king Henri Quatre with his courtiers invading the valley in the eagerness of the chase, and the child Abbess with her crozier in her hand marching in state out of that grand arched gateway at the head of her nuns, and warning His Majesty from the sacred precincts; the king gallantly kissing the queenly child's hand, and obeying her behests.

"Then the renegade Capuchin, finding one night's shelter in the abbey on his flight to a Protestant country, preaching in that church of the 'blessedness of a holy life and the love of Christ,' so as to awaken the young Abbess in her seventeenth year to the vision of a new world and a new life, which, in a subsequent sickness, deepened into thorough conversion to God.

"The 'Journée du Guichet,' when the Abbess Angélique began her attempts to reform and seclude the nuns by refusing to admit her own father within the grating; by the long fainting-fit with which her resistance ended, showing him what the effort cost her, and convincing him of her sincerity.

"The reform of Port Royal. Its growing reputation for sanctity. The mission of the young Abbess to reform other convents; the thronging of new nuns under her rule, until the valley (then undrained) became too small, health failed, and all the community had to remove for fifteen years to Paris.

"The arrival of the Abbess Angélique's brother, M. Arnauld d'Andilly, and the other recluses, to take up their abode at the deserted abbey, then half in ruins, the meadows a marsh, the gardens a wilderness. The draining of the marsh and rebuilding of the abbey by the hands of these gentlemen, working to the sound of psalms.

"The return of the Abbess Angélique, with her long train of white-robed daughters, welcomed with enthusiasm by the peasants. The one meeting of the recluses and the nuns, eighteen of them of the Arnauld family; as the brothers led the sisters into the church they had worked so hard to restore, and then retired to the abbey farm, to see each other no more except at the church services through a grating.

"As I looked down, nothing struck me so much as the stillness. To the eye, the valley was a place of busy human life. To the ear, it was a solitude. No discordant noises came from it, no hum of cheerful converse, nor voices of children at play. The nuns have large schools, which they teach most diligently and intelligently; the best ever known, it is said. But the children are accustomed to play, each by herself, quietly. The nuns think they like it as much,—after a little while. They are also never allowed to kiss or caress each other. Caresses might lead to quarrels, and are, besides (the nuns think), a weakening indulgence of emotion.

"I hope they often read the little ones the gospel which tells how the Master 'took the little children in His arms.' They must need it.

"The stillness had a sacred solemnity; but there was something of a vault-like chill in it, which crept over me like a shadow, as we descended the steep path, strewn with moist dead leaves among the roots of the leafless trees.

"I should like better to have seen Port Royal when, as in the wars of the Fronde a year or two since, it became a refuge for the plundered peasants of the neighbourhood, the infirmary filled with their sick and aged, the church with their corn, the sacred napkins for the altar torn up to bind their wounds.

"Through the grand arched gateway we went into the inner court, and thence into the church, where the nuns were chanting the service.

"Their music seems all kept for the church. Sin and eternity! These two thoughts seem to hush all the music at Port Royal, except such as goes up to God. It was a solemn thing to hear the hundred voices joining in the severe and simple chants to which they tune their lives so well.

"Madame la Mothe was pleased to see me moved as I was by it.

"'In England, you have scarcely a choir like that,' she said.

"'Not quite,' I replied; yet not to mislead her with false hopes as to me I could not help adding,—'With us the singers are not gathered into a choir, but scattered through the Church; in scattered Christian homes throughout the nation. And the pauses of the psalms are filled up by family joys and sorrows, and by the voices and laughter of little children; which, it seems to me, make the psalms all the sweeter and truer.'

"But more solemn than this general assembly it was to me to see, as I have this evening, while I was in the church alone, that motionless, white robed, kneeling figure keeping watch in the dusk before the 'Sacred Host' on the altar. One silver lamp radiated a dim and silvery light into the recesses of the empty silent church; the lamp never extinguished, the prayer never ceasing.

"That kneeling worshipper seemed to me herself a living symbol and portion of the Perpetual living Sacrifice, in which the One sacrifice unto death is for ever renewed; as Christian heart after heart is enkindled to love, and sacrifice, and serve; as the Church, redeemed by Him who offered Himself up without spot to God, offers herself up in Him to do and suffer the Father's will, to drink of His cup and be baptized with His baptism; His living body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all.'

"As we came up the hill my heart was full of that thought. We turned and looked back over the valley. The massive towers threw long shadows over the meadows, silvered with dew and moonlight. The broad lake shone, like the tranquil lives of the sisterhood, mirroring the heavens.

"On the other side, on the brow of the hill, the lights of Les Granges showed where the recluses were keeping their watch. A deep-toned bell from the abbey church struck the hour.

"Then, in the deepened hush of silence which followed, the soft chant of the nuns came stealing up the slopes. As we listened, it seemed to be answered from above by the deep music of men's voices from Les Granges.

"We listened till the last notes died away. I never heard church music which so moved me as those unconscious antiphons, where the two sides of the choir could not hear each other, whilst we heard both. It made me think of so many things: of the many choirs on earth who sing a part, and cannot hear or will not recognize each other's music, while God is listening to all; of the two sides of the choir in heaven and earth; and of the voices in the higher choir which I should hear no more on earth.

"I felt lifted into a higher world. And we two walked home in one of those restful silences which sometimes say so much more than words.

"It broke a little rudely on this when, at the gate of the chateau, M. la Mothe's servant met us, exclaiming:

"'Ah, madame! M. le Comte is much agitated. He says it is ten minutes after the time when madame brings him his posset.'

"We hastened into the salon. M. la Mothe was indeed much agitated.

"'Pardon me, my friend,' she said; 'I am ten minutes late.'

"He pointed to the clock.

"'Ten, madam!' he exclaimed. 'Fourteen and a half, at the least! when the physician said every minute was of consequence. But we must bear it, no doubt. Neglect is the portion of the aged. And madame has her salvation to accomplish, no doubt! In my youth married women accomplished their salvation in accomplishing the comfort of their husbands. But times change. In a few months I shall, no doubt, be beyond the reach of neglect; and then madame can accomplish her salvation without further interruption. Heaven grant it may prove your salvation after all! Those learned gentlemen, the Jesuits, think otherwise, and they have great saints among them.'

"I shall never forget the sweet humility with which she acknowledged the justice of his reproaches, and tact and tenderness with which she soothed his feeble irritability into tranquillity again.

"'You mean well, no doubt, my poor friend!' he said at last, with a lofty air of forbearance; 'and no doubt we shall not soon have such an omission again.

"'Ah, my child!' she said to me, as she came into my room afterwards; 'if you had only known how good he was, and how patient with me, when I was wild and young! These little irritations are not from the heart, but from the brain, which is over-tasked and tired. He had no sleep last night on account of the gout, and I read aloud to him romances, insipid enough, I think, to send me asleep in a house on fire. But they had no effect on him, the pain was so acute.'

"The tears came into my eyes. She thought nothing of her own fatigue.

"'You need not pity me,' she said, with her own bright smile. 'I am an easy, happy old woman, far too contented, I fear, with the world and with my lot in it. If I have any virtue, it is good temper; and that is scarcely a virtue, not certainly a grace—indeed, merely a little hereditary advantage, like skin that heals quickly.'

"'I was not pitying you, madame,' I ventured to say; 'I was only thinking how much better God makes our crosses for us than they make them even at Port Royal.'

"'Alas, my child!' she sighed; 'there is no need for the holy ladies and gentlemen of Port Royal to make their own crosses. The Jesuits are preparing plenty of crosses, I fear, for them. But do not, I entreat you, dignify such little prickles as mine by the name of crosses.'

"I made no answer, save by kissing her hand. For I thought her crosses were none the worse discipline because to her they seemed only prickles; and her graces all the more genuine and sweet because to her they seemed only 'little hereditary advantages.'

"It is such a help to 'crosses,' in the work they have to do for us, when they have no chance of looking grand enough to be set up on pedestals and adored; and it is such a blessing for 'graces' when they are not clothed in Sunday or 'religious' clothes, so as to have any opportunity of looking at themselves at all.

"Good temper, kindliness, cheerfulness, lowliness, tenderness, justice, generosity, seem to me to lose so much of their beauty and fragrance when they change their sweet familiar home-names (which are also their true Christian names) for three-syllabled saintly titles, such as 'holy indifference,' or 'saintly resignation,' and pace demurely about in processions, saying, in every deprecatory look and regulated gesture, 'See how unlike the rest of the world we are!'

"'When saw we Thee an hungered??'—how much that means! It was not so much, I think, that the 'righteous' had not recognized the Master in their acts, as that they did not recall the acts. They did not recognize the sweet blossoms of their own graces, because His life had gone down to the root, and flowed through every stem and twig of everyday feeling, and overflowed in every bud and blossom of every-day words and works, as naturally and inevitably as a fountain bubbles up in spray. It was not His presence they had been unconscious of, but their own services. For it seems to me just the acts religious people least remember that are the most beautiful, and that Christ most remembers, because they flow from the deepest source; not from a conscious purpose, but from a pervading instinctive life.

"In such unconscious acts the noble men and women of Port Royal are rich indeed. I love, for instance, to think how M. de St. Cyran, when himself a prisoner in the Bastille, sold some of the few precious books remaining to buy clothes for two fellow-prisoners of his—the Baron and Baroness de Beau Soleil—and said to the lady who undertook the commission for him, 'I do not know what is necessary, but some one has told me that gentlemen and ladies of their condition ought not to be seen in company without gold lace for the men and black lace for the women. Pray purchase the best, and let everything be done modestly, and yet handsomely, that when they see each other they may forget, for a few minutes at least, that they are captives.' Madame de Beau Soleil's beautiful 'worldly' lace will perhaps prove a more religious robe for M. de St. Cyran than his own 'religious habit.'

"The selling of the church plate at Port Royal to relieve the poor is certainly as much a religious act as the buying it. The voluntary desecration of their church into a granary, to save the corn of the poor peasants from plunder during the wars of the Fronde, was certainly a true consecration of it. The lovely wax models which the sister Angélique makes to purchase comforts for our Royalist countrywomen, heretics though she believes us to be, seem (to us at least) a labour of love sure not to be forgotten above. The delight in acts of kindness to others, for which Blaise Pascal is said to torture himself by pressing the sharp studs of his iron girdle into the flesh, may prove to have been more sanctifying than the pain by which he seeks to expiate it. The homely services which Jacqueline Pascal rendered her little dying niece on the nights she spent in nursing her through 'confluent smallpox,' may prove to have been more 'divine offices' than those she spent so many nights, half-benumbed with cold, in reciting.

"And so, after all, from the most self-questioning religious life, as well as from the lowliest life of love that scarcely dared call itself religious, may come that same answer of the righteous. He who scarce dared lift his eyes to heaven, saying with rapture, 'Was it indeed Thee to whom I gave that cup of cold water?'—and the austere Puritan (Catholic or Protestant, saying), 'Was it indeed the feeding and clothing, those little forgotten acts of kindness I thought nothing of, that were pleasing Thee?"

"February.—I wonder what Olive is doing and learning. These misunderstandings of God and of one another perplex me at times not a little. I wonder if she has any perplexities of the same kind in England?

"This morning Madame la Mothe told me a beautiful saying of M. Arnauld d'Andilly, brother to the Mère Angélique, when some one was exhorting him to rest, 'There is all eternity,' he replied, 'to rest in.'

"This evening I repeated this to Barbe. She replied: 'It reminds me of a saying of a good pastor of ours, who said, when some one tried to comfort him in severe sickness by wishing him health and rest, "Mon lit de santè et de repos sera dans le ciel."'*

* Told of M. Drelincourt, pastor of Charenton, who died in 1669.

"The two sides of the choir again!—taking up the responses from each other without knowing anything of each other's singing! How wonderful it all is! This deafness to each other's music; these misunderstandings of each other's words! this deafness to what God tells us of Himself in the Gospels, and in the world; these misunderstandings of Him! And His patient listening, and understanding us all!

CHAPTER VI.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

As Aunt Dorothy continued to recover, I knew the dreaded clash of arms with Annis Nye could not be long delayed; and I had been casting about in my mind for some means of settling Annis for the time elsewhere, when the storm burst suddenly upon me. Maidie and I had come from a ramble near the town; Maidie enraptured with her first experience of the treasures of the woods, having that day discovered that in the autumn the trees drop showers of inestimable jewels in the form of spiky green balls, which, when opened, proved to be each a casket containing a glossy, brown lump of delight, called in the tongues of men a horse-chestnut, but in the tongue of Maidie having no word adequate to express its beauty and preciousness. I was bringing home a store of these treasures in a kerchief; while Maidie held my hand, discoursing, like a person just entered on a fortune, as to how much of her wealth she would bestow on Annis, and how much on Aunt Dorothy; baby she considered not able to appreciate; but in time, perhaps, she might grow up to it, and then she should have her share.

But at the door Aunt Dorothy met us, pale and agitated.

"Child!" she said, in the tone of one deeply wronged—"Olive! I did not look for this from thee!"

In her hand was a sheet of writing. She gave it me with a trembling hand.

"Read it, Olive," she said. "It is from George Fox, now in the House of Correction at Derby! a person concerning whom no sober person can entertain a hope, save that he may be mad. And it is sent to your maid Annis Nye; and is by her acknowledged. He is a Quaker, Olive! One of that mad sect opposed to all rule in Church, Army, and State. I knew the perilous latitude of thy husband's courses. I had even fears as to his being entirely free from Arminian heresies; but this, I confess, I had not looked for from thee!"

We came into the parlour; and while I was reading, Maidie took advantage of the silence to display her treasures.

"Poor innocent!" said Aunt Dorothy, taking her on her knee, and kissing her. "Poor innocent lamb! entrusted to a very wolf in sheep's clothing. I little thought to live to see this! Pretty! yes, pretty, my lamb!" she added, absently, as the little hands were held up to her with the new wonders.

But this reception of her treasures was far too absent and parenthetical to satisfy Maidie, who slipped off to the ground, and, calling on Annis, was making her way to the kitchen, when Aunt Dorothy anticipated her by closing the door and planting the little one summarily on the table, with an injunction to be quiet.

"The moment is come!" she said, solemnly, to me. "This house shall never be profaned by the presence of a person who calls Mr. Baxter a 'priest,' his church a steeple-house, and George Fox a servant of the Lord."

"She is fatherless and motherless, Aunt Dorothy," I said. "What would you have me to do? She cannot be turned houseless on the world to starve."

"Let her go to her Friends, as she calls them," said Aunt Dorothy—"her 'children of light!' Alas for the land! there is no lack of them. Although in the town Mr. Baxter has silenced them, by a remarkable discussion he held with them in the church, I doubt not they lie, like other foxes, in the holes and corners of the hills around. Although, in good sooth, the safest and mercifulest place for Quakers, in my judgment, is a prison, where they cannot spread their poison, or make everybody angry with them, as they do everywhere else. And to the inside of a prison, it seems, the maid is no stranger already. I am no persecutor, Olive. But when people scatter fire-brands, the only mercy to them and to the world is to tie their hands. Do you know," she added, "for what George Fox is in the House of Correction? For brawling in the church; in a solemn congregation of ministers, soldiers, and people, which had assembled to hear godly Colonel Barton preach!"

"Is Colonel Barton a minister?" I said.

"Belike not," she replied, a little testily. "I am not for defending Colonel Barton, nor the times, nor the ways of those in power ('in authority' I will not call them, for authority in these disorderly days there is none). But there are degrees in disorder. Colonel Barton preaching in the pulpit is one thing, and George Fox the weaver's son crying out in the pews is another."

"Did he say anything very bad?" I said.

"What need we care what an ignorant upstart like that said, Olive? It was where he said it that was the crime. No place is sacred to the youngster. He preaches in market-places against cheating and cozening, in fairs against mountebanks, in courts of justice against the magistrates, in churches against the ministers."

"But, Aunt Dorothy," I ventured to say, "if he must preach at all, at least this way seems to me better than preaching in church against the mountebanks, and in the markets against the priests. To tell people their own sins to their faces is more like right preaching, is it not, than telling them of other people's sins behind their backs? Whether it is wrong or not for George Fox to exhort the ministers before their own congregations who dislike it, I think it would be meaner and more wrong to rail at them in a congregation of Quakers who might like it."

"If you can defend George Fox, Olive," she said, "we may as well give up debating anything! At all events, I am thankful to say, whatever divisions there may be on other questions, the professing Church in general is of one opinion as to the Quakers. Whatever you may think of the mercy of imprisoning Quakers as regards their souls, there is no doubt it is a mercy to their bodies. For George Fox is no sooner at liberty from the prison, than he begins exhorting every one, making every one so angry that he is whipped and hunted from one town to another, and finds no rest until he is mercifully shut up in another prison. And I much doubt if you will not find it the same with Annis Nye."

I was not without fears of the kind. But I said,—

"She has shown a marvellous tenderness and love for the babes, Aunt Dorothy; and since she came to us, she has been as quiet as any other Christian. I dare not do anything to drive her forth into the cruel world; for she is tender and gentle as any gentlewoman born."

"Tender and gentle indeed!" exclaimed Aunt Dorothy. "Yes, she told me George Fox's letter was written to the Friends, and other 'tender people,' wherever they might be. I, at least, am not one of the tender people, to tolerate such ways. I hear much talk of toleration; and I will not deny that even Mr. Baxter has looser thoughts on Christian concord than I altogether like. He would be content if all Christians would unite on the ground of the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments. Whereas, in my opinion, you might nigh as well have no walls at all around the fold as walls any wolf can leap in over to devour the sheep, and any poor lamb may leap out over to lose itself in the wilderness. Why, a Socinian, an Arminian, a Papist, for I ought I know, might sign the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments (praying and keeping them is, no doubt, another thing.) Belike any one might, but a Quaker; for the Quakers will sign nothing, so that they are safe to be out of a fold that has any walls, which is some consolation. Everybody's toleration must stop somewhere; yours, I suppose, would stop at house-breaking. Mine stops at sacrilege or church-breaking; and that I consider every Quaker may be considered to be guilty of. So, Olive, you must e'en choose between Annis Nye and me. Your company, and that of the babes, poor lambs, is pleasant to me. But I have not lifted up my testimony against my mother's son, whom I love as my own soul, and forsaken the only place I shall ever feel a home on earth, to have my house made a refuge, or a madhouse, for Quakers, Jews, Turks, and Infidels."

At this point Aunt Dorothy's face was considerably flushed, and her voice raised in a way which was altogether too much for Maidie's feelings. Her eyes were fixed anxiously on Aunt Dorothy's; two large tears gathered in them, and her lip began to quiver ominously, when I caught her softly in my arms, just in time to hush a great sob on my bosom.

Poor little Maidie! I do not think she had ever seen any one really angry before, except herself; and not being able to distinguish between righteous ecclesiastical anger and ordinary unecclesiastical hastiness of temper, it was some time before she could be induced to respond to all the helpless blandishments and tender epithets which poor Aunt Dorothy lavished on her, with anything but "Naughty, naughty! go away!"—an insult which Aunt Dorothy bore in patience once, but on its repetition, observed, "That comes of Antinomian serving-wenches, Olive! The child has no idea of any one being angry about anything; a most dangerous delusion! Mark my words, Olive! the world is not Eden, and Antinomianism is the natural religion of us all; and it is too plain Maidie is not free from the infection of nature; and if you bring up the babes to look for nothing but fair weather, they will find the Lord's rough winds only the harder to bear. Thou wast not brought up altogether on sweetmeats, Olive! Though may be on too many after all. It seems, however, that her poor old aunt's ways are not to the babe's mind; so I suppose I had better withdraw."

Nothing makes one feel more helpless than the uncontrollable repugnance of a child to some one it ought to love. I knew that Aunt Dorothy loved Maidie dearly, and that her sharp voice and manner were nothing but the pain of repressed and wounded feeling. But there were no words by which I could translate those harsh tones into Maidie's language of love. On the other hand, I knew that Maidie's repugnance was not naughtiness, but a real uncontrollable terror, which nothing but soothing and caressing could allay. Yet, while thus seeking to soothe the child, I felt conscious I was regarded by Aunt Dorothy as one of Solomon's unwise parents; and I knew that, if it had been in her power, she would have sentenced me, as in our childhood, to learn a punitive "chapter in Proverbs."

My confusion was still worse confounded by the gentle opening of the door, and the sudden appearance of Annis with a bundle in her arms, at sight of whose calm face Maidie's countenance brightened, and she stretched out her hands to go to her.

Annis softly laid down her bundle and took the child in her arms, the little hands clinging fondly round her neck.

It was the last drop in Aunt Dorothy's cup and mine. "The babe at least has chosen, Olive!" she said, in a dry, hard voice. "And I suppose the mother will obey, according to the rule of these republican days." Aunt Dorothy was really "naughty" at that moment, in the fullest acceptation of the word; and she knew it, which made her worse.

Gently Annis replaced the child in my arms, but there was a tremor in her voice when she spoke.

"Olive Antony," she said, "thee and thine have been true friends to me. But it is best I should leave thee. I have gathered my goods together" (they were easily gathered, poor orphan maid), "and I am going. Fare thee well!"

My heart ached. I knew her determined ways so well; I knew so well the hard things that must await her in the world; and I felt as if by even for a moment debating in my mind the possibility of letting her depart, I was accessory to her banishment, and so betraying my husband's trust.

"Not so, Annis," I said; "this once I must be mistress. How else could I answer to my husband for his trust of the fatherless;—or, what is more, to the Father of the fatherless?"

"Thy husband had no power to entrust thee with me," she replied, gently; "nor have I the power to commit myself to the care of any mortal. God has entrusted me with myself, soul and body, and I answer only to Him."

"But think, Annis, of the ruthlessness of the world," I said; a weak argument, I felt, the moment I had uttered it, and one which with Annis would be sure to turn the wrong way. The softness which Maidie's caresses had brought into her eyes left them, and a lofty courage came instead.

"Bonds and imprisonments may await me," she said. "If it were death, who that loved God was ever turned from His ways by that?"

"But the babes," I pleaded, "the little ones, will miss thee so sorely."

A tender smile came over her face as she glanced at Maidie.

"I have thought of that. I have pleaded it rebelliously with my Lord many days," she said; "but it is of no avail. His fire burneth in me, and who can stand it? I must go."

"But whither, Annis?" I said.

"There is a concern on my spirit," she said, "for my people and my father's house. They reviled me, and drove me from them. I must return. They have smitten me on the right cheek; I must turn to them the left. Maybe they will hear; but if not, I must speak. Or if they will not let me speak, I must be silent among them, and suffer. Sometimes silence speaks best.—Fare thee well, Olive Antony, and thou, aged Dorothy Drayton! I have said to thee what was given me to say. Thou hast done me no despite. It is not for thy words I depart. If they had been softer than butter, I dared not have tarried. The Power is on my spirit, and I must go."

She kissed Maidie, and I kissed her serene forehead. Further remonstrance was in vain. I would have pressed money on her, but she refused.

"I have no need," she said, with a smile. "I shall not be forsaken. And I have not earned it. Little enough have I done for all thee and thine hath been to me."

With tears I stood at the door and watched her quietly pass down the street, not knowing whither she went. But before she had gone many steps Aunt Dorothy appeared with a basket laden with meat, bread, and wine, which, hurrying after Annis, she succeeded in making her take.

"It is written, 'Thou shalt not receive him into thy house, or bid him God speed,'" said she apologetically to me, as she re-entered the door. "But it is not written, 'Thou shalt send him out of thy house hungry and fasting.'"

"It is written, 'If thine enemy hunger, feed him,'" I said.

"I had thought of that text also, Olive," said she, "but I do not think it quite fits. For the pool maid is not mine enemy. God knows I would not have shut house or heart against her if she had been only that!"

We were very silent that day. The house seemed very empty and quiet, when Maidie's last sobbing entreaties for Annis were hushed, and, the babes being asleep, Aunt Dorothy and I seated ourselves by the fireside.

"It was a hard duty, Olive, to speak as I did; and belike, after all, the flesh had its evil share in the matter," she said, as we parted for the night. "But I did it. And I think it has been owned."

But I did not think her conscience was as easy as she tried to persuade herself.

The night was wild and stormy, and I heard her pacing unquietly about her room and opening her casement more than once, as I sat watching Maidie in a restless sleep, and reading the papers by George Fox which Annis had left behind her. The words were such as no Christian, it seemed to me, could but deem good. Some of them rang like an ancient hymn out of some grand old liturgy.

"Oh, therefore," he wrote from his prison, "mind the pure spirit of the everlasting God, which will teach you to use the creatures in their right place, and which judgeth the evil. To Thee, O God, be all glory and honour, who art Lord of all, visible and invisible! To Thee be all praise, who bringest out of the deep to Thyself, O powerful God, who art worthy of all glory. For the Lord who created all, and gives life and strength to all, is over all, and is merciful to all. So Thou who hast made all, and art over all, to Thee be all glory! In Thee is my strength and refreshment, my life, my joy, and my gladness, my rejoicing and glorying for evermore. For there is peace in resting in the Lord Jesus."

"Love the cross; and satisfy not your own minds in the flesh, but prize your time, while you have it, and walk up to that you know, in obedience to God; then you shall not be condemned for that you know not; but for that you know and do not obey."

So I read on, watching Maidie's restless tossings and her flushed cheek, hearing now and then Aunt Dorothy's uneasy footsteps, and wondering whether Annis Nye had found shelter, or whether she were still wandering along the wet and windy roads; whilst beneath these thoughts every now and then I kept falling back on the things that were never long absent from me: those two Puritan armies watching each other in Scotland, with the "covenanted king" at the head of one, and Oliver at the heart of the other, where my husband, and Roger, and Job Forster were. I thought also of my father and Aunt Dorothy journeying through the desolations made by the Thirty Years' religious war in Germany. Who could say when our war would cease, and what further desolations it would leave behind? Then my mind wandered to Lettice Davenant, from whom Aunt Dorothy had lately received a letter, which had made her uneasy, from its comparing certain godly Catholic people who live in a nunnery called Port Royal with the godly people in England. Thence, reverting to my early days I thought how small the divisions of the great battle-field seemed then, and how complicated now! And, looking fondly at Maidie and the babe, it occurred to me whether the child's simple divisions of "good" and "naughty" might not after all be more like those of the angels than we are apt to think.

Aunt Dorothy looked pale and haggard the next morning, but she betrayed nothing of her nightly investigations into the weather, only manifesting her uneasiness by looking up anxiously when a peculiarly violent gust of wind drove the rain against the windows, and by an unusual tolerance and gentleness with Maidie, who was in a very fretful temper.

In the evening, when the children were asleep, and Aunt Dorothy and I were left alone: "It is very strange!" she said; "something in that Quaker woman's ways seems to have marvellously moved my little maid Sarah. I found the child crying over her Bible, and she said, 'Annis Nye had told her God would teach her; but she wished He would send her some one like Annis again to help her to learn.'

"It is very strange, Olive," she added. "The directions about heretics coming to one's house are so very plain. But then I always thought of a heretic as a noisy troublesome person, puffed up with vanity and conceit, whom it would be quite a pleasure to put down. It is rather hard that a heretic should come to me in the shape of a poor, lonely orphan maid, for the most part quiet and peaceable, and so like a sober Christian; that I should have to send her away alone no one knows where; and that such a night would follow, just as if on purpose to make right look like wrong. I begin to see a mercy in the persecutions of the Church. When one comes to know the heretics, the natural man gets such a terrible hold of one, that it would certainly be easier to suffer the punishment than to inflict it. Although, of course, I am not going to shrink from my duty on account of its not being easy."

It was Aunt Dorothy's first experience of being at the board of the Star-chamber instead of its bar. And she certainly did not enjoy it.

The year 1651 seemed to roll on rather heavily at Kidderminster.

Aunt Dorothy kept her private fasts, in loyal contempt of the Parliament, especially that one which Mr. Philip Henry, and other Royalist Presbyterians, so faithfully held until some years after the Restoration, in memory of the death of King Charles the First.

Mr. Baxter helped to make many people good by his fervent sermons, and meantime made many good people angry by his "convincing" controversial books, calling out fifty angry, controversial books in reply.

Meantime, in a quiet hollow of the hills near the town, I discovered a small manor-house where certain Episcopal Christians met secretly to hear a deprived clergyman read the proscribed liturgy. And more than once I crept in among them to join in the familiar prayers. The calm, ancient words seemed to lift me so far above the dust and din of our present strifes. Once I heard Dr. Jeremy Taylor preach a sermon to this little company. And the rich intertwining harmonies of his poetical speech, and the golds, crimsons, and purples of his eloquent imagery, seemed to transform the plain old hall, in which we listened to them, into a cathedral glorious with organ music and choristers' voices, and with the shadows and illuminations of richly-sculptured shrines and richly-coloured windows.

So the year passed on. To us, chronicled in skirmishes and sieges and political changes; and to Maidie in daisies and cowslips, primroses, violets, strawberries, and heart-stirring promises of another Eldorado of those living jewels known among men as horse-chestnuts.

Letters came frequently, after the Battle of Dunbar, from Scotland.

One from Job Forster, forwarded by Rachel:—

"Godly Mr. Baxter puzzled me sore at Naseby by miscalling us poor soldiers who had left our farms and honest trades to fight his battles, as if we had been mere common hirelings or fanatic praters. It was a bewilderment in Ireland to see how angry the poor natives were with us for trying to bring them law and order. But all the puzzles, and bewilderments, and subtleties were nothing to these Scottish covenanted ministers and their kirk.

"They slander us behind our backs to the country people, calling us 'monsters of the world,' till the poor deluded people run away from us as if we were savage black Indians. And when the few who stay behind find we are sober Christians who eat not babes but bread (and little enough, in this poor stripped county, of that), and pay for what we eat, and the women-folk (who, I will say, have quicker wits than the men) come back and peaceably brew and bake for us, they still go on slandering us to those who have not seen us.

"They calls us names to our faces in their pulpits, 'blasphemers, sectaries,' and what not. And when we deal softly with them and are as dumb as lambs (when we could chase them into their holes like lions), and let them talk on, even that does not convince them that we mean no one any harm.

"Meantime they drag about the late king's son, poor young gentleman, until one cannot but pity him, chief mangnant as he is. For they will not let any of his old friends and followers come near him. The other day he made off, like a poor caged bird, to get among his true malignants near Perth. But his friends had no gilded cage and sugared food to suit his taste, and after spending a dismal night among them in a Highland hut, he had to creep back to the ministers, and take some more oaths, and hear some more sermons.

"Very dark it is to me the notions these Kirkmen have concerning many things, especially kings, oaths, and sermons. Concerning oaths. They seem to think the more a man swears the more he cares for it, instead of the less; as if a second oath made a first worth more, instead of showing that it was worth nothing. It is enough to make one turn Quaker—(But this I would not have known to Annis Nye, poor perverse maid)! Concerning sermons. As if they did a man good, whether he will or no, like physic, if he only takes enough of them! Concerning kings. As if dragging a poor young gentleman, like a bear in a show, with a crown on his head, about with them, and scolding him (on their knees), and doing what they like without asking him, and never letting him do what he likes, or see whom he likes, was having a king! If they have their way, and drive Oliver and us into the sea, and make their covenanted show-king into a real king, I wonder how he will show them his gratitude. Scarcely, I think, by listening to sermons, such as they like. Perhaps by making them listen to sermons such as he likes, whether they will or no.

"But, thank God, Oliver lives, though more than once this spring he has been sick and like to die; and we are little likely (God helping us) to be chased into the sea by enemies who already cannot agree among themselves. Meantime, Dr. Owen has been preaching to them with his plain words, in Edinburgh, and Oliver with his guns; and it is yet to be hoped the wise among them may open their ears and hear.

"Not that I think it any wonder that any poor mortal should blunder, and get into a maze. A poor soul that went so far astray as to misdoubt Oliver, and to think of bringing in the Fifth Monarchy by muskets and pikes, and could not be got right again without being stuck on the leads of Burford Church to see his comrades shot, has no great reason to wonder at the strange ways of others, be they Kirk ministers or Quakers."

My husband wrote:—

"I have watched by many death-beds.

"I have seen many die these last months, Olive. The hails, and frosts, and scanty food, and scanty clothing, have done more despatch than the muskets or great guns. I have saved some lives, I trust, but I have seen many die; men of all stamps, Covenanted, Uncovenanted, Resolutioners, Protesters, Presbyterians, Sectaries; and within all these grades of theological men (and outside them all) I have seen not a few, thank God, to whom dying was not death. Death brings back to any soul which meets it awake, the hunger and thirst which nothing but God can satisfy. Resolutions, Covenants, and Confessions may, like other perishable clothes, be needful enough on earth. But they have to be left entirely behind, as much as money, or titles, or any other corruptible thing. If they have been garments to fit us for earthly work, well; they have had their use, and can be gently laid aside. If they have been veils to hide us from God and ourselves, how terribly bare they leave us! Alone, unclothed, helpless, the only question then is, can we trust ourselves to the Father as a babe to the bosom of its mother?

"Does the Christ, the Son, who has died for us, offering Himself up, without spot, to God, and lives for ever; does He who, dying, committed His spirit to the Father's hands, enable us to offer ourselves up, in Him,—commit our spirits, helpless, but redeemed, into the Father's hands? Then the sting is plucked out. I have seen it again and again. Death is abolished. It is not seen. It is not tasted. Christ is seen instead. The eternal life no more begins than it ends at death. It continues. The cramping chrysalis shell is thrown off, and it expands. But it no more begins then than it ends.

"If ever there is to be a Confession of Faith which is to unite Christendom, I think it should be drawn from dying lips. For these will never freeze the Confession into a profession. On dying lips the Creed and the Hymn are one; for they are uttered not to man, but to God."

And later Roger wrote:—

"This campaign has aged the Captain-General sensibly. He has had ague, and has more than once been near death. I think the cold in godly men's hearts has struck at his heart more than the cold of the country at his life. The other day a gentleman who is much near him, said to me: 'My lord is not aware that he has grown an old man.' So do deeds count for years. For, as we know, he is barely fifty years of age. But as he wrote to one not long since, he knows where the life is that never grows old. 'To search God's statutes for a rule of conscience, and to seek grace from Christ to enable him to walk therein,—this hath life in it, and will come to somewhat. What is a poor creature without this?'

"Some, indeed, call him a tyrant and usurper; some very near him. (A hypocrite I think none very near him dare call him; though men are ever too ready to think that no one can honestly see things otherwise than they do.)

"But I know not what they mean. He would respect every trace of the ancient laws, every hard-won inch of the new liberties, and every honest scruple of the conscience,—if men would have it so. I see not what tyranny he exercises, save to keep men from tyrannizing over each other. But this power to tyrannize over others seems, alas! what too many mean by liberty.

"Sometimes, Olive, I am ashamed to feel myself growing old. Hope is faint in me sometimes for the country and myself. And when hope is gone, youth is gone, be our age what it may. In the General, I think, this youth never fails, as one who knows him said: 'Hope shone in him like a pillar of fire when it had gone out in all others.'

"P.S.—There is talk of the Scottish army faring southward with their king. Scarce credible. But if true, we shall follow swift on their trail, and swiftly be in old England and with thee."

They came, the two armies, as swiftly as Roger could have dreamed. The Scottish Covenanted-Royalist force, 14,000 strong, sweeping down through the west, by Carlisle, Lancashire, Cheshire, Shrewsbury, to Worcester; the English Uncovenanted-Puritan army through the east by Yorkshire.

Two tides to meet in deadly shock for the last time at Worcester. Two tides between which the difference became more and more apparent as they swept on: the one flowing like a summer torrent through some dark valley in a tropical country, receiving no tributaries, welcomed in no quiet resting-places, becoming ever shallower and narrower as it advanced; the other swelling as it swept on like a thing that was at home, and was to last, gathering force here, gathering bulk there, ever deepening and widening as it went.

King Charles and his Scottish leaders summoned place after place, but they met with no response. His trumpeters went to the gates of Shrewsbury and proclaimed the king, but the gates remained closed, and the unwelcome tide had to sweep sullenly past the walls. I scarce know how this came to pass. Oliver, as I think, was never popular throughout the nation; nothing of the old unquestioning loyalty which slumbered everywhere (as time proved) in the dumb heart of the people was accorded to him. Even those who acknowledged him, with some few exceptions, acknowledged him rather sullenly as a break-water against tyranny, than enthusiastically as a hero and a chief. It might be dread of the Ironsides pursuing; it might be bitter memories of the Star-chamber and of Prince Rupert's plunderings, not yet effaced by years of liberty and security. It might be, as Mr. Baxter said, that the Scots came into England rather in the manner of fugitives; it being hard for the common people to distinguish between an army going before another following it, and an army running away; and into a flying army few men will enlist. But however this may have been, all along that dreary progress scarce a note of welcome cheered the Scottish army and their king, until Worcester received them under the shadow of her Cathedral (ominously tenanted by the remains of the King of the Magna Charta), opening her gates to give them the shelter which so soon was to become to thousands of them the shelter of a grave.

Part of the Scots army passed not further than a field's length from Kidderminster; and a gallant orderly company they seemed, being governed, as Mr. Baxter said, far differently from Prince Rupert's troopers; "not a soldier of them durst wrong any man the worth of a penny." Honest, hard-fighting, covenanted men, sorely bewildered, I should think, with the ways of King and Kirk, and not a little also with the ways of Providence; but true, nevertheless, to the Covenant and to the Ten Commandments.

Divers messages were sent from the army (and, it was believed, from the king himself) to Mr. Baxter, to request him to come to them. But Mr. Baxter was at that time "under so great an affliction of sore eyes, that he was not scarce able to see the light, nor to stir out of doors; and being (moreover) not much doubtful of the issue which followed, he thought if he had been able it would have been no service to the king—it being so little that, on such a sudden, he could add to his assistance."

It was not until some days after this that Oliver and his army came up. I knew it first from my husband, who came for an hour to see me and the babes on the 2nd of September, the day before the battle, bringing good tidings of Roger and of Job Forster. I thought he might have tarried with us until after the fight, when his skill would be in request. But he took not that view of his duty. Skirmishes might occur at any moment, he said, and he must be on the spot. He had little doubt what the end would be; but he deemed the struggle would be hard, being, so to speak, a death-struggle. And so it proved.

On the 3d of September the shock of battle came. It was Oliver's White Day, the first anniversary of his victory at Dunbar (to be made memorable to England afterwards by another death-struggle, which would have no anniversary on earth to him, but which, none the less, I think, made it the White Day of his hard and toilsome life).

Soon after noon, stragglers came in and told us what was going on; and all through the rest of the day the town was in unquiet expectation, the people thronging at a moment's notice from loom, and forge, and household work, into the market-place in front of Mr. Baxter's house, to hear any report brought by any passing traveller.

The first news was that Oliver was making two bridges of boats, across the Severn and the Teme; that the young king and his generals had seen him from the spire of Worcester Cathedral, and had despatched troops to contest the passage of the river, and that a hard struggle was going on by its banks. Then, after these tidings had been eagerly turned over and over until no more could be made of them, the townsmen returned to their homes. For some hours there was a cessation of tidings, and the whole town seemed unusually still. The ordinary interests were suspended, and the minds of men were not sufficiently united for any general assembling together. There was no gathering for prayer in the church. Mr. Baxter was sitting apart in his house, unable to bear the light; certainly not praying for Oliver to win, yet, I think, scarce wishing very earnestly for the complete success of the Scots.

Aunt Dorothy, on the first rumour of the fight, had rigidly shut herself up in her chamber for a day of solitary fasting. But if we had been together, we should each have been none the less solitary; perhaps more, shut out from each other by the door of our lips. The lives dearest to us both on earth were at stake. Of these we could neither of us have spoken. The things dearest to each of us were at stake. But of these we thought not alike, and would not have spoken. It was almost a boon for me that Annis Nye had departed, so that the babes were thrown entirely on my care. It kept me from straining my hearing with that vain effort to catch the terrible sounds which I knew were to be heard not far off. It kept me from straining my heart with that vain effort to catch some intimation of what might be the will of God, and from distracting self-questioning whether I had done as much as I could, by praying, to help those who were certainly doing as much as they could for us, by fighting. And instead, it left me only leisure to lift up my soul from time to time in one brief simple reiteration: "Father, Thou seest, Thou carest; I commit them to Thee."

Towards evening further tidings came, putting an end to our suspense in one direction. After hours of stiff fighting, from hedge to hedge, the Scots army had been driven into Worcester, out of Worcester, out of reach of Worcester.

The issue of the day as to victory was no longer doubtful. But its issue as to the lives so precious to us remained to us unknown.

So the slow hours of the afternoon wore on, until the declining autumn sun threw the shadow of the opposite houses over the room, and with the babe on my knee, and Maidie singing to herself low lullabies as she dressed and undressed her wooden baby at my feet, my thoughts went back to the October Sunday nine years before (1642), when the stillness of the land was terribly broken by the first battle of the Civil War, the fight of Edgehill.

How simple it all seemed to me then; how complex now. Then there seemed visibly two causes, two ends, two ways, two armies, the choice being plainly that between wrong and right. Now so perplexed and interlaced were convictions, parties, leaders, followers, that it seemed as if to our eyes the causes and armies were legion; and to none but the Divine eyes, which see, through all temporary party differences, the eternal moral differences, could the divisions of the hosts be clear.

Partly no doubt this perplexity was simply the consequence of the armies having encountered; no longer couched expectant opposite each other on their several opposite heights, but grappling in deadly struggle on the plains between.

Partly, perhaps, also because the eternal moral differences on which we believed the final judgment must be based, had become more the basis of ours.

And Maidie and the babe, I thought, poor darlings, had all this yet to learn! How could I help them, so that they might have less than I to unlearn?

How! except by engraving deep on their hearts Aunt Gretel's trust in God. "Put the darkness anywhere but there, sweetheart; anywhere but in Him!" By slowly dyeing their hearts in grain, as Mr. Baxter would have wished, in the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, so that any after surface-colouring, if it modified these heavenly tints, should never be able to efface them.

There are qualities in some waters, it is said, as at Kidderminster, which tend to fix dyes, and give value to the fabrics of the places where they flow.

Has not God given a mother's love this fixing power for all truths that come to a child's heart steeped in its living waters?

So far, therefore, Maidie and the babe might have something through my lessons, which the combined teaching of Aunt Gretel and Aunt Dorothy, each in herself so much better than I, could not quite possess for Roger's childhood and mine.

The thought made me glad and strong; and I was still going in the strength of it, when Job Forster appeared at the door.

I ran out and met him on the threshold.

He brought good news of my husband and Roger. The fight was over. Leonard was attending to the wounded. Roger was still engaged in the pursuit. But the Scots were scattered hither and thither among the woods and harvest-fields. The reapers and labourers had taken up the pursuit, and before night-fall, probably, not a stray party would hold together strong enough to offer ten minutes' resistance.

"And His Majesty?" said a grim voice behind us.

"The King of Scots is in hiding, Mistress Dorothy," said Job controversially, but very respectfully. "No one knows the road he has taken."

"Then there is something to pray for yet," said she. "That this blood-stained land may imbrue her hands no deeper in the blood of her kings."

"Aunt Dorothy," I ventured to say, "you will give thanks as well as pray? Leonard and Roger are safe."

"I know," said she, "it is written, 'In everything give thanks.'"

And without further concession she turned back to her chamber. But on her way she halted, and said, turning to me,—

"Olive, see that Job is fed and lodged. We must make a difference. A heretic is one thing, and a rebel another."

Without giving Job the privilege of reply, she remounted the stairs.

I asked him into the kitchen. But Job was somewhat hard to persuade.

"It is hard, Mistress Olive," said he, "to have bread and shelter flung at you like a dog, without a chance to explain. When Mistress Dorothy herself was one of the keenest to set us against the oppressors! And when, but for Oliver, though I say it, she herself might have been in Newgate among the Quakers years ago."

Yet without Maidie I doubt whether I should have prevailed. She, poor lamb, seeing nothing in Job but a bit of home, and a never-failing storehouse of kindnesses, had already enthroned herself in his arms, undaunted by breast-plate or sword, and with her arms clinging around him constrained him to come into the kitchen, if it were only to set her down.

Once there, to make him stay was easier. For he was wounded in the left shoulder, so that he could not hold the horse's reins, and had little strength to walk further. But for that, indeed, he would not have been Roger's messenger. The pallor of his countenance, when his helmet was unlaced, startled me; yet, after refreshing him with ale and meat, it was with no little difficulty that I persuaded him to let me dress and bandage his wound.

After that he seemed easier, and his first inquiries were for Annis Nye, concerning whom we had had no tidings for some weeks. "When I am set up a bit, mistress," said he, "I must see after that poor maid the first thing, for she is a godly maid, although a Quakeress. And I misdoubt whether she be not in jail. It's beyond the wisest of us to keep a Quaker safe anywhere. Only," he added, "I must be set up a bit first. I don't feel sure flesh and blood could stand her discourse on the wickedness of war, until the pain's a bit less sharp. She's so terrible quiet, Mistress Olive, and so shut up against reason."

At night we were roused by the clattering of flying horsemen through the streets, Kidderminster being but eleven miles from Worcester. Then came a party of thirty of the Parliament troopers and took possession of the market-place. Then hundreds more of the flying Royalists, who "not knowing in the dark how few they were that charged them," when the Parliament troopers cried "stand," either hasted away, or cried quarter. And so, as Mr. Baxter said, "as many were taken there, as so few men could lay hold on; and until midnight the bullets flying towards my doors and windows, and the sorrowful fugitives hasting for their lives, did tell me the calamitousness of war."

So ended the last battle of the Civil War.

Maidie, terrified, clung to me and would not leave my arms. Aunt Dorothy remained in her chamber; the little maid Sarah took shelter in mine. Only the babe and Job Forster were unmoved by the noise. The babe slept peacefully on, the storm of war in the streets being no more to her on her mother's knee, than an earthquake to the planet Jupiter's satellites; and Job being wearied out with pain and fatigue, and lulled by the absence of the duty of soldierly vigilance, which had kept him on the stretch so long.

The next day Roger passed through the town, pausing a minute at the door to see me and the babes. He told us my husband would come in a few days to take us home. He told us also how complete the ruin of the enemy was.

"Now," he said, as he remounted at the door, "we shall see what peace and Oliver can make of England."

And there was a ring of hope in his voice, as ha rode away, I had not heard in it for many a day.

England he thought was to be made such a kingdom of righteousness and peace, that all the nations far and wide must see and acknowledge it. And amongst them, I felt sure he dreamed also of one fair loyal maiden, whose verdict I knew was worth more to him than he dared to own to himself.

But Job watching him up the street, turned back to us shaking his head.

"It remains to be seen, on the other hand, what England will do with peace and Oliver!" he said. "Sometimes my heart misgives me that we may have longer to wait for the Fifth Monarchy than Master Roger or most of us dream. There do seem so many things to be set right first. The Kirk ministers and the Quakers do puzzle a plain Cornishman sore!"

Roger had not been gone more than a few seconds, and we had not yet ceased looking after him, when he came galloping back to the door.

Bending low from his saddle as I went up to him, "Olive," he said, "I saw some constables in a village near Worcester taking Annis Nye to prison. I could have rescued her, but she refused my aid, saying that I was a man of war, and she chose rather to be set in gaol by a man of peace than to have her bonds broken by the carnal sword. On second thoughts, I concluded that at present she might be safer in gaol, while men's minds are so disturbed. But I thought it best to let thee know."

And he was away once more.

This tidings cost Job and me many heavy musings. At length he resolved on losing no time (his wound having proved less severe than we feared); but to set out on the morrow to rescue Annis, and bring her back, if possible to return with us to London.

Accordingly early on the morrow he went forth.

In the evening, to my relief, and to Maidie's joy, he returned, with Annis, looking very pale and worn; but with her face as serene and her eyes as steady and clear as ever.

I embraced her on the threshold. Beyond that she would not step.

"Dorothy Drayton would have none of me," said she. "We are to give our coat to him who takes away our cloak. But it never says we are to take a cloak from him that denied us his coat. I may not enter this house."

"But it is night-fall," said I. "Whither would you turn?"

"It is not the first night-fall I have been content with such lodging as the fowls of the air," said she, and quietly went her way.

I would have followed her; but Job Forster restrained me.

"Let her be, Mistress Olive!" he whispered, "She is as hard to catch as a wild colt, and far harder to hold. There be reins to turn colts, and there be corn to coax them; but there be no reins to hold and no lure to coax a Quaker. Their ways are wonderful. Let her be: maybe she'll come back of herself and, if not, neither love nor fear will bring her. It is not to be told, Mistress Olive," he added, as we reluctantly turned back into the kitchen, "what I've borne from that poor maid this day. I had some work to get her off on bail, for she had angered the justices and the constables grievously, and I had to contrive; for the Quakers will not let any one go bail for them. They're as lofty as the apostle Paul with his Roman rights, and would rather stay in prison than be set free as guilty. When I came to the gaol and gave her joy that I had come to set her free, she smiled at me as innocent as a babe, as meek (seemingly) as one of Fox's martyrs, and yet bold as a lion, and said: 'Thee cannot set me free, Job Forster. What is the bondage of bars and stocks to such bondage as thine?' And then she railed, that is, railed in her way, as soft as if she were saying the civilest things—at Oliver and the Ironsides, and the war, and all war, until it was a harder trial of patience to stand quiet before her than before any pounding of great guns. I could only get her off at last by getting her put in my charge, as if I had been a constable, to bring home to her mistress; and all the way back, from time to time she discoursed on the wickedness of soldiering,—mixing up Bible texts in a way to make a man mazed, and at times 'most think he might as well have been at home by the forge at Netherby, as raging over the world fighting the Lord's battles. Although I knew, of course, Mistress Olive, that was only a temptation. At last I gave her my mind plain. 'Mistress Annis,' I said, 'of all the fighting men of the time, it's my belief there's none who have more fight in them than you and your friends. It's very well to say you won't fight, when you rouse every drop of fighting blood there is in other people by your words. For Scripture saith there be words which are fiercer weapons of war than any swords. You talk a deal of keeping to the spirit, and not to the letter; and you talk of giving the left cheek to him that smites the right. But it's my belief, the spirit of those words is, you shall not provoke your enemies; and it's my belief that it's dead against the spirit when, by keeping to the letter and turning the left cheek, you are just doing the provokingest thing you can. It's not the virtues of war, it seems to me, you are lacking in,' I said, 'but the virtues of peace. You and yours, from first to last, have had courage enough to lead a forlorn hope. The thing you want most, to my seeming, is meekness. I would give somewhat for thee and my mistress to meet. She is real meek, and, withal, brave as a lion, if need be; and she would treat thee like a child, as thou art, instead of like a martyr—which would, belike, do thee more good. Yet she would give thee a hearty welcome, with all thy wilfulness.' And, after that, she was quiet a good bit. And then she said, quite simple and natural: 'Job Forster, I am but a child; and one day, belike, I may have a call to see thy wife. I feel as if she would be like a mother. From all thou sayest, she must be a woman of a tender spirit and an understanding heart.'"

In the morning Aunt Dorothy came down from her solitary chamber. She looked pale, but relieved in spirit. "Olive," said she, "I heard that poor bewildered maid come to the house last night, and go away; and I do not mean to pass through such another night as these two she has cost me. I have wrestled the thing out in my heart. On the one side, there is the heretic the Apostle John spake of in the epistle. But I consider that heretic was a tempter, and a man. Now Annis, poor soul, is tempted, and a maid; which makes a difference, to begin with. Then, on the other hand, there is the man who fell among thieves. I consider Annis Nye has fallen among thieves; and I don't think one of Mr. Baxter's people, in this year of our Lord sixteen hundred and fifty-one, ought to be outdone by an ignorant Samaritan, who lived in no year of our Lord at all."

"Then, Aunt Dorothy," I suggested, "there were the Samaritans all through the Gospels, and our Lord's pitiful ways with them altogether. I think the Samaritans must have been at least as wrong as the Quakers."

"Maybe, my dear; I am not so well informed as I should wish as to the theology of the Samaritans. I should think it was a great medley. But our Saviour knew all things, and could do what He pleased."

"And may not we do what pleased Him?"

"Olive," said Aunt Dorothy, turning on me, "I am not going to have Scripture quoted against me by one I taught to read it. I never did call down fire from heaven on any one, nor wished to do so, and I am not to be enticed by any smooth by-paths into such tolerations as yours and your husband's. You need not think it. But, with regard to Annis Nye, my conscience is satisfied; and you may bring her at once to the house. Besides," she added, "I do not mean to let any of you depart without bearing my testimony."

Whereon Job Forster departed in search of Annis Nye; whom, with some difficulty, he persuaded to place herself again within range of Aunt Dorothy's hospitalities and admonitions.

The day passed in much stillness. Aunt Dorothy herself moved heavily, like a thunder-cloud with lightnings in it; and the weight of her impending "testimony" made the air heavy.

Towards evening my husband came, and all thunder-clouds naturally grew much lighter to me.

He brought more tidings of the campaign in Scotland and the Battle of Worcester. He believed it would be the last of the war. Aunt Dorothy loaded us with every kind of bodily refreshment and comfort. But she kept herself apart from the conversation, and never vouchsafed to ask one question, save concerning the safety of the king, of whom no news had been heard. It was decided we were to leave on the morrow; and often I saw her eyes moisten tenderly as she glanced at Maidie, who, in her sweet trustful way, kept drawing her amongst us by claiming her sympathy with her joy in the little treasures her father had brought her.

In the night, before the dawn of the next morning, Aunt Dorothy and her little maid were astir, and wonderful cookings and bakings must have gone forward. For when we came down to breakfast, a huge basket stood laden with provisions for the way, substantial and dainty, with special reference to Maidie's tastes; little tender preparations which often brought tears to my eyes on the journey, as I found them out one by one, and thought of the self-repressed rigour of the dear old rock from which those springs of kindness flowed.

Yet all the while we were at breakfast together at the great table in the kitchen, every slightest want watched and anticipated by Aunt Dorothy, I felt as if she were looking on every morsel as a coal of fire heaped on our heads; while the weight of the impending testimony hung over us.

At length it came.

"Nephew and niece, Leonard and Olive Antony," said she, as we were about to rise; "and thou, Annis Nye and Job Forster, I have somewhat to say to you."

And then she testified against us all, and also against Oliver Cromwell, the army, and the country; comparing us to the people who built Babel to make themselves a name, to Jeroboam who made priests of the lowest of the people, to Absalom, to Jezebel, to the evil angels who speak evil of dignities, and to the Laodiceans, in a way which made the blood rush to my face on behalf of my husband. Finally, turning to Annis Nye, she launched on her a separate denunciation; beginning with the devil who clothed himself as an angel of light, and ending with the Anabaptists of Münster, and the Jesuits, who, Mr. Baxter believed, had emissaries among the Quakers.

I knew that the more tenderness Aunt Dorothy felt at heart for offenders, the more severe were her denunciations of their offences. But Annis could not be expected to be aware of this, and I trembled to see how she would bear it, lest it should drive her once more from us into the world, so hard on Quakers. The calm on her countenance, however, was not even ruffled. She kept her eyes, all the time, fully opened, fixed with an expression, not of defiance, but of wonder and compassion, on Aunt Dorothy, until Aunt Dorothy herself at length paused, apparently checked by the strength of her own language, held out her hand to Annis and added,—

"Now I have said what was on my mind. I did not mean to anger thee; but less, in conscience, I dared not say."

Annis took the hand offered to her with a tender compassion, as she might that of an aged sick person.

"Why should I be angered, friend?" said she in her softest voice. "Can thy words touch the truth? It was there when they began; and it is there when they end. And one day we shall all have to see it; whatever it is, wherever we be, thee, and Olive Antony and her husband, and all."

Aunt Dorothy had no further words to lavish on obduracy so hopeless. She only struck her palms together, shook her head slowly, and looked up in speechless dismay.

Job muttered under his breath, as he rose to saddle the horses,—

"Poor souls! poor dear souls! They have got somewhat yet to learn. They have got to learn the lesson Oliver taught us on old Burford steeple!"

But my husband only replied,—.

"Mistress Dorothy, you have been the truest of friends to me and mine. We cannot agree on all things, although I shall always honour you in my heart more than nine-tenths of the people I do agree with. But there is one admonition of Oliver Cromwell's which I should like to have engraved deep on the hearts of us all. It is one which he addressed last year, in a letter, to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland. 'I beseech you,' he wrote, 'in the bowels of Christ, think it you may be mistaken?'"

CHAPTER VII.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS

The last battle of the Civil Wars was fought. Or rather the battle-field was changed, and the long contest of the Commonwealth began, between Oliver governing and all the rest of parties and men who wished England otherwise governed, who wished it ungoverned, or who wished to govern it themselves.

The Royalists, Prelatical or Presbyterian, necessarily against him, the classical Republicans, the Anabaptist levellers, and, in their passive way, the Quakers. Indeed, it seemed as if all parties, as parties, were against him. The wonder was, that the arm which kept them all at bay should be strong enough at the same time to keep the world at bay, for England; and to keep England so ordered, that many of those who hated the Protector's rule confessed that the times—"by God's merciful sweetening (said they) of bitter waters"—had never been so prosperous as under it.

I confess that the change from Kidderminster to our home in London was in some measure a relief. It was like coming from a walled garden (admirably kept, indeed, and watered) into the open fields. It had not been my wont to live in a place so pervaded by one man as Kidderminster, or at least what I saw of it, was at that time by Mr. Baxter. He was so very active and self-denying and good, that do what I would whilst there, I could never get over the feeling of being, in some way, a transgressor if I happened to differ from him. His writings and sermons were certainly mainly directed against the great permanent evils of ungodliness and unrighteousness. But he wrote so many controversial books on every kind of ecclesiastical topic, and was so convinced that they were all convincing to all sound minds, that it was difficult, while in the Kidderminster world, to regard oneself, if not convinced, as having anything but a very sound mind.

So that it did feel like getting into a large room, to meet and converse again with people who did not think Mr. Baxter's judgment, moderate and wise as it doubtless was, the one final standard of truth in the universe. Not, certainly, that London at that time was a world free from debate and controversy of the fiercest kind. A Commonwealth in which, during the eleven years of its existence, thirty thousand controversial pamphlets of the fiercest and most contradictory kind were battering each other, each regarded by its author and his particular friends as absolutely convincing to all sound minds, was not likely to be that.

From our home, however, such debates were mostly absent. My father fled from controversy to the Bible, and to the Society for the promotion of the new experimental philosophy, which met at Gresham College; the revelation of God in His Word and in His world. Aunt Gretel had the happy exemption of a foreigner from our English debates, political and ecclesiastical, and tranquilized herself at all times by her knitting, her hymns, and the making of possets acceptable to sick people of all persuasions. And my husband had what he regarded as the advantage of differing on some theological questions from the good men with whom he acted in religious work (he having a leaning rather to Dr. Thomas Goodwin, in his "Redemption Redeemed," than to Dr. Owen, or even to Mr. Baxter); so that he had to avoid the intermediate debatable grounds, and keep to those highest heights of adoration where Christianity is incarnate in Christ, or to those lowly duties where it is embodied in kindnesses. So much of his time, moreover, was spent in what the Protector vainly endeavoured to persuade his Parliaments to keep to, namely, the "work of healing and settling" that he had little left for the "definitions" of all things in Church and State, into which those unhappy Parliaments were so continually, to the Protector's vexation, straying.

Then there were the children, Maidie and Dolly, and the two boys who came after them, renewing one by one, in their happy infancy, the golden age; the joyous little ones, around whom it was manifestly our duty to gather as many relics of Eden, and foretastes of the thousand years of peace, as were to be had in a world where thirty thousand fiery pamphlets were flying about.

The spirit of Annis Nye, meantime, abode, listening and looking heavenward, on lofty heights far above all debate, though ready for any lowly service. And in a house in our garden, on the river bank, enlarged for his accommodation, lived our High Church friend, Dr. Rich, with his eleven children, his spirit also loftily looking down on the strifes of the present, not from the heights of immediate inspiration, but from those of history; while his eleven children, lately orphaned of their mother, made no small portion of my world, with its many interests and cares.

So that, in spite of the wide divergences of judgment in our household concerning matters political and ecclesiastical (perhaps rather in consequence of the mutual self-restraint they rendered necessary), our home came to be looked on by many as a kind of haven where people might meet face to face on the common ground of humanity and Christianity.

The mere meeting face to face on common ground, if it be pure and high, or helpful and lowly, the mere taking and giving the cups of cold water in the Master's name, the mere looking into each others' faces and grasping each others' hands as kindred, has in itself, I think, something almost sacramental. How much, indeed, of the depth and sacredness of the Highest Sacrament consists in such communion union through what we are in Him instead of agglomeration through what we think; union in Him who is to us all the Way, the Truth, the Life, but of whom the best we can think is so dim, and poor, and low.

In those years we learned to know and revere many whose memories (now that so many of them are gone, and that we so soon must be going), shining from the past we shared with them, throw a sacred yet familiar radiance on the future we hope to share.

Dr. Owen, coming now and then from his post as Vice-chancellor of Oxford to preach before the Parliament on state occasions.

Mr. John Howe, the Protector's chaplain, living on radiant lofty heights, far above the thirty thousand controversial pamphlets, himself a living temple of the living truth he adored.

Colonel Hutchinson and Mistress Lucy, with that lofty piety of theirs, which, as she said, "is the blood-royal of all the virtues." He with his republican love of liberty, and stately chivalry of character and demeanour: she with her pure and passionate love; with her earnest endeavours to judge men and things by high impartial standards; and her success in so far as that standard was embodied in her husband. Much of their time, however, during the Commonwealth they spent on the Colonel's estate, collecting pictures and sculpture, planting trees, "procuring tutors to instruct their sons and daughters in languages, sciences, music, and dancing, whilst he himself instructed them in humility, godliness, and virtue."

And Mr. John Milton, blinded to the sights of this lower world by his zeal in writing that Defence of the English People which wakened all Europe like a trumpet; and by his very blindness, it seemed, made free of higher worlds than were open to common mortals. Whitehall, I think, was not degraded by his dwelling there, nor its chambers made less royal by his eyes having looked their last through those windows on

"Day, or the sweet approach of morn or even,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, and herds, and human face divine,"

before his

.....light was spent,
Ere half his days, in this dark world and wide."

For his life was indeed the pure and lofty poem he said the lives of all who would write worthily must be.

The Society of our Puritan London in those Commonwealth days was not altogether rustical or fanatical. Discourse echoes back to me from it which can, I think, have needed to be tuned but little higher to flow unbroken into the speech of the City, where all the citizens are as kings, and all the congregation seers and singers.

The first public event after our return to London was the funeral of General Ireton, Bridget Cromwell's brave husband, who had died at his post in Ireland.

He was buried in Henry the Seventh's Chapel. The concourse was great. Dr. Owen preached the funeral sermon. There was no pomp of funeral ceremonial, of organ-music or choir. The Puritan funeral solemnities were the pomp of solemn words, and the eloquent music of the truths which stir men's hearts.

The text was, "But go thou thy way till the end be; for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days." (Dan. xii. 13).

"It is not the manner of God," Dr. Owen said, "to lay aside those whom He hath found faithful in His service. Men indeed do so; but God changeth not.

"There is an appointed season wherein the saints of the most eminent abilities, in the most useful employments, must receive their dismission. There is a manifold wisdom which God imparteth to the sons of men; there is a civil wisdom, and there is a spiritual wisdom: both these shone in Ireton.

"He ever counted it his wisdom to look after the will of God in all wherein he was called to serve. For this were his wakings, watchings, inquiries. When that was made out, he counted not his business half done, but even accomplished, and that the issue was ready at the door. The name of God was his land in every storm; in the discovery whereof he had as happy an eye, at the greatest seeming distance, when the clouds were blackest and the waves highest, as any.

"Neither did he rest here. Some men have wisdom to know things, but not seasons. Things as well as words are beautiful in their time. He was wise to discern the seasons. There are few things that belong to civil affairs but are alterable upon the incomprehensible variety of circumstances. He that will have the garment, made for him one year, serve and fit him the next, must be sure that he neither increase nor wane. Importune insisting on the most useful things, without respect to alterations of seasons, is a sad sign of a narrow heart. He who thinks the most righteous and suitable proposals and principles that ever were in the world (setting aside general rules of unchangeable righteousness and equity) must be performed as desirable, because once they were, is a stranger to the affairs of human kind.

"Some things are universally unchangeable and indispensable: as that a government must be. Some again are allowable merely on the account of preserving the former principles. If any of them are out of course, it is a vacuum in nature politic, which all particular elements instantly dislodge and transpose themselves to supply. And such are all forms of government among men.

"In love to his people Ireton was eminent. All his pains, labour, jeopards of life, and all dear to him, relinquishments of relatives and contents, had sweetness of life from this motive, intenseness of love to his people.

"But fathers and prophets have but their season: they have their dismission. So old Simeon professeth, Nunc dimittis. They are placed of God in their station as a sentinel on his watch-tower, and then they are dismissed from their watch. The great Captain comes and saith, Go thou thy way; thou hast faithfully discharged thy duty; go now to thy rest. Some have harder service, harder duty, than others. Some keep guard in the winter, others in the summer. Yet duty they all do; all endure some hardship, and have their appointed season for dismission; and be they never so excellent in the discharging of their duty, they shall not abide one moment beyond the bounds which He hath set them who saith to all His creatures, 'Thus far shall you go and no further.'

"The three most eminent works of God in and about His children in the days of old were His giving His people the law, and settling them in Canaan; His recovering them from Babylon; and His promulgation of the gospel unto them. In these three works he employed three most eminent persons. Moses is the first, Daniel is the second, and John Baptist is the third; and none of them saw the work accomplished in which he was so eminently employed. Moses died the year before the people entered Canaan; Daniel some few years before the foundation of the temple; and John Baptist in the first year of the baptism of our Saviour, when the gospel which he began to preach was to be published in its beauty and glory. I do not know of any great work that God carried out, the same persons to be the beginners and enders thereof. Should He leave the work always on one hand, it would seem at length to be the work of the instrument only. Though the people opposed Moses at first, yet it is thought they would have worshipped him at the last; and therefore God buried him where his body was not to be found. Yet, indeed, he had the lot of most who faithfully serve God in their generation—despised while they are present, idolized when they are gone.

"God makes room, as it were, in His vineyard for the budding, flourishing, and fruit-bearing of other plants which He hath planted.

"You that are employed in the work of God, you have but your allotted season—your day hath its evening. You have your season, and you have but your season; neither can you lie down in peace until you have some persuasion that your work as well as your life is at an end.

"Behold here one receiving his dismission about the age of forty years; and what a world of work for God did he in that season. And now rest is sweet to this labouring man. Provoke one another by examples. Be diligent to pass through your work, and let it not too long hang upon your hands; yea, search out work for God. You that are entrusted with power trifle not away your season. Is there no oppressed person that with diligence you might relieve? Is there no poor distressed widow or orphan whose righteous requests you might expedite and despatch? Are there no stout offenders against God and man that might be chastised? Are there no slack and slow counties and cities in the execution of justice that might be quickened by your example? no places destitute of the gospel that might be furnished?

"God takes His saints away (among other reasons) to manifest that He hath better things in store for them than the best and utmost of what they can desire or aim at here below. He had a heaven for Moses, and therefore might in mercy deny him Canaan. Whilst you are labouring for a handful of first-fruits, He gives you the full harvest.

"You that are engaged in the work of God, seek for the reward of your service in the service itself. Few of you may live to see that beauty and glory which perhaps you aim at. God will proceed at His own pace, and calls us to go along with Him; to wait in faith and not make haste. Those whose minds are so fixed on, and swallowed up with, some end (though good) which they have proposed to themselves, do seldom see good days and serene in their own souls. There is a sweetness, there is wages to be found in the work of God itself. Men who have learned to hold communion with God in every work He calls them out unto, though they never see the main harvest they aim at, yet such will rest satisfied, and submit to the Lord's limitation of their time. They bear their sheaves in their own bosom.

"The condition of a dismissed saint is a condition of rest. Now rest holds out two things to us; a freedom from what is opposite thereunto, and something which satisfies our nature; for nothing can rest but in that which satiates the whole nature of it in all its extent and capacity.

"They are at rest from sin, and from labour and travail. They sin no more; they wound the Lord Jesus no more; they trouble their own souls no more; they grieve the Spirit no more; they dishonour the gospel no more; they are troubled no more with Satan's temptations, no more with their own corruption; but lie down in a constant enjoyment of one everlasting victory over sin. They are no more in cold communion. They have not one thought that wanders from God to all eternity. They lose Him no more.

"There is no more watching, no more fasting, no more wrestling, no more fighting, no more blood, no more sorrow. There tyrants pretend no more title to their kingdom; rebels lie not in wait for their blood; they are no more awakened by the sound of the trumpet, nor the noise of the instruments of death; they fear not for their relations; they weep not for their friends. The Lamb is their temple, and God is all in all unto them.

"Yet this cessation from sin and labour will not complete their rest; something further is required thereto; even something to satisfy and everlastingly content them. Free them in your thoughts from what you please, without this they are not at rest. God is the rest of their souls. Dismissed saints rest in the bosom of God; because in the fruition of Him they are everlastingly satisfied, as having attained the utmost end whereto they were created, all the blessedness whereof they are capable.

"Every man stands in a threefold capacity—natural, civil, religious. And there are distinct qualifications unto these several capacities. To the first are suited some seeds of those heroical virtues as courage, permanency in business. To the civic capacity, ability, faithfulness, industry. In their religious capacity, men's peculiar ornament lies in those fruits of the Spirit which we call Christian graces. Of these, in respect of usefulness, there are three most eminent, faith, love and self-denial. Now all these were eminent in the person deceased. My business is not to make a funeral oration, only I suppose that without offence I may desire that in courage and permanency in business (which I name in opposition to that unsettled, pragmatical, shuffling disposition which is in some men), in ability for wisdom and counsel, in faithfulness to his trust and in his trust, in indefatigable industry, in faith in the promises of God, in love to the Lord Jesus and all His saints, in a tender regard to their interest, delight in their society, contempt of himself and all his for the gospel's sake, in impartiality and sincerity in the execution of justice, that in these and the like things we may have many raised up in the power and spirit wherein he walked before the Lord and before this nation. This I hope I may speak without offence here upon such an occasion as this. MY business being occasionally to preach the Word, not to carry on a part of a funeral ceremony, I shall add no more, but commit you to Him who is able to prepare you for your eternal condition."

Often I had longed, if only for once, to hear the organ rolling its grand surges of music through the aisles of the Abbey. But when that grave voice ceased, and left a hush through that great assembly, I felt no music could be more worthy of the solemn place than those nobly reticent words of lamentation and praise; nor could England raise a nobler statue to any of her heroes than that Puritan picture of a Christian statesman.

Indeed, the public pomps of the Commonwealth which have engraven themselves most deeply on my memory were of the funereal kind.

In 1650, five years after Ireton's death, for once, by the Protector's command, the dear, long-unfamiliar sound of the old Prayer-book was heard in the Abbey, as the funeral service was read over the remains of good Archbishop Usher, buried at the Protector's expense in the great mausoleum of the nation and her kings.

In November, 1654, three years after the funeral of Ireton, Mistress Cromwell, the Protector's mother, was buried beside him among the kings.

She was ninety-four years of age. She died on the 15th of November. A little before her death (we heard) she gave the Protector her blessing, saying, "The Lord cause His face to shine upon you, and comfort you in all your adversities, and enable you to do great things for the glory of your most high God, and to be a relief unto His people. My dear son, I leave my heart with thee. Good-night!"

She, living wellnigh all those fifty-five years of his beside him, knew well that his life had been no triumphal procession, but a toilsome march and a sore battle, little indeed changed by the battle-field being transferred from moors and hill-sides to palaces and parliament-houses. At sound of a gun she was wont to tremble in that stately home at Whitehall, fearing lest some of the many plots of assassination had at last succeeded in proving to the assassin that killing her son was no murder, And once at least every day she craved to see him, if only to know that he lived.

They laid her to rest reverently among the kings in Henry the Seventh's Chapel. And so the consecrating presence of tenderly-reverenced age passed from that English home, which during the years of the Commonwealth was at the head of all the homes of the land.

And five years after came that last funeral, which was, indeed, the funeral of the Commonwealth itself.

These are the state ceremonies of the Commonwealth which have left the deepest mark on my memory. Its thanksgivings for victories, its inauguration, installation, and enthronization of the Lord Protector in Westminster Hall were not without a certain sober republican grandeur, nor did the ermine and the sceptre misbecome the true dignity of his bearing; but they did not, I think, enhance it. Clothes need some mystical links to the unseen and the past to make them glorious; and Oliver certainly did not need clothes to make him glorious. The brow, furrowed with thought for England, was his crown; the sceptre seemed a bauble in the hand that had ruled so long without it; and the robes of state that fitted him best were the plain armour of the Ironsides. Roger, however, thought otherwise. He would have had every symbol of the royalty within our "chief of men" outwardly gathered around him, even to the crown and title of king. Whatever may be the case in religion, in politics (he thought), the common people are taught by ceremonial. As the Protector said "The people love that they do know; they love settlement and know names." If Oliver, he thought, had been proclaimed king, no Stuart would have returned to proclaim him traitor.

Be that as it might, it was not done; and the omission seemed (to many) to make the rest of the state ceremonials of the Commonwealth ragged and incomplete. Crowned, Oliver might have become in the eyes of the people King Oliver; uncrowned, he seemed but Mr. Cromwell of Huntingdon, with a sceptre in his hand which did not belong to him.

But after all, the great solemnities of the Commonwealth were the sermons. Great sermons and great congregations to hear them. They were our state-music, our military-music, our church-music, all in one. The Te Deum of our thanksgiving days for victories, our coronation anthems, our requiems.

The sermons which so moved the heart of Puritan England were no empty sound of words harmoniously arranged,—a lower music, I think, than that of any true musician;—for words have a higher sphere than mere melodious tones; and, like all orders in creation, if they do not rise to the height of their own sphere, fall below the sphere below them.

It was the eloquence of men speaking to men, of things which most deeply concerned all men; of the ablest men in England speaking to her ablest men; of the loftiest spirits in England speaking to all that was loftiest in the spirit of man.

Dr. Owen's appearances in London were only occasional.

The sermons that come back on me across the years like the voice of a great river resounding with deep even flow through all the petty or tumultuous noises of the times, are those of Mr. John Howe, chaplain to the Protector.

He came to London as a country minister from his parish of Torrington, somewhere about 1654, and went to hear the preaching in Whitehall Chapel. But Oliver, "who generally had his eyes everywhere," and whose eyes had such a singular faculty for seeing men's capacity, discerned something more than ordinary in his countenance, and sent to desire to speak with him after the worship of God was over. The interview satisfied him he had not been mistaken. The great heart that so singularly honoured the worth his eyes were so quick to discern, whether those he honoured honoured him or not; and the will so strong to bend all men's wills, would not rest until he had induced the parson of Torrington, though somewhat reluctantly, to become his own chaplain.

The choice might reflect some light on the nature of the Protector's own piety.

There was abundance of vehement fiery eloquence to be had among the Puritan preachers, and (I doubt not) there could have been found too many flatterers.

But Mr. Howe so little flattered the Protector, that he deliberately preached against the doctrine of a particular persuasion in prayer, which was one of the Protector's strongholds.

And so far was his eloquence from being vehement, that its very glory was a majestic evenness of flow, which, while it swept the whole soul irresistibly on to his conclusion, seldom tossed it up and down with those changeful heavings of emotion that are the luxuries of popular orations. Any preacher who was less of a fiery declaimer and of a fanatic, or less of a brilliant popular orator than John Howe, Oliver's chosen chaplain, can, I think, scarcely be found in the history of preaching. If he had a fault, it is the difficulty of detaching any word, image, or pointed sentence from the grand sweep of his argument sufficiently to give any conception of its power to those who did not hear him. If his eloquence was a river, it was one without the dash and sparkle of rapids and eddies, steadily deepening and broadening, in a majestic current to its end. If it was a fire, it was no mere spark or flame to make the heart glow for a moment, but a steady furnace enkindling principles into divine affections. If it was a flight, it was no mere darting hither and thither, as of smaller birds; scarcely even the upward musical mounting of the lark to descend on her nest; but the soaring of the eagle with his eye on the sun. He strengthened you for duty by transporting you to the divine spring of all duty. He strengthened you against earthly care simply by lifting you above it to "the holy order of God." "Do not hover as meteors; do not let your minds hang in the air in a pendulous, uncertain, unquiet posture," he said; "a holy rectitude, composure, and tranquillity in our life, carries with it a lively, sprightly vigour. Our Saviour says that life consists not in things, but in a good healthy internal habit of spirit. What a blessed repose, how pleasant a vacancy of diseasing, vexatious thoughts, doth that soul enjoy which gives a constant, unintermittent consent to the divine government, when it is an agreed, undisputed thing, that God shall always lead and prescribe, and it follow and obey. Discontent proceeds from self-conceit, self-dependence, self-seeking, all which despicable idols (or that one great idol self thus variously idolized) one sight of God would bring to nothing."

He strengthened men for death, not by fortifying them against it as a sleep, but by regarding life as the sleep and death the waking. "It fares with the sluggish soul as if it were lodged in an enchanted bed. So deep an oblivion hath seized it of its own country, of its alliance above, of its relation to the Father and world of spirits, it takes this earth for its home where 'tis both in exile and captivity at once, as a prince stolen away in his infancy and bred up in a beggar's shed. Being in the body, it is as with a bird that hath lost its wings. The holy soul's release from its earthly body will shake off this drowsy sleep. Now is the happy season of its awaking into the heavenly vital light of God. The blessed morning of the long-desired day hath now dawned upon it; the cumbersome night-veil is laid aside, and the garments of salvation and immortal glory are now put on." "The greatest enemy we have cannot do us the despite to keep us from dying." To one whose spirit was thus itself a living Temple, even the great Abbey seemed an earthly house. The incense, the ritual, and the music of the heavenly city were around Him. "The sacrifice of Christ," he said, "is of virtue to perfume the whole world."

Yet I feel that these extracts give as little idea of the power of his preaching, as a phial of salt-water of the sea. You perceive from it that the water of the sea is salt and clear, but of the sea itself, heaving in multitudinous waves from horizon to horizon, you have no more idea than before.

The very titles of his books read like arguments of a divine poem—a Paradise Lost and Regained. "The Living Temple;" "The Blessedness of the Righteous;" "Of Delighting in God;" "The Redeemer's Tears wept over lost Souls;" "The Love of God and our Brother;" "The Carnality of Religious Contention;" "Of Reconciliation between God and Man;" "The Redeemer's Dominion over the Invisible World."

Far indeed his spirit dwelt above the small controversies of the time, engaged in the great controversy of light against darkness. "Holiness," he said, "is the Christian's armour, the armour of light: strange armour that may be seen through." "A good man's armour is that he needs none; his armour is an open breast. Likeness to God is an armour of proof. A person truly like God is far raised above the tempestuous stormy region, and converses where winds and clouds have no place. Holy souls were once darkness, but now they are light in the Lord—darkness, not in the dark, as if that were their whole nature, and they were nothing but an impure mass of conglobated darkness. So 'ye are light,'—as if they were that and nothing else. How suppose we such an entire sphere of nothing else but pure light? What can raise a storm with it? A calm serene thing, perfectly homogeneous, void of contrariety. We cannot yet say that thus it is with holy souls, but thus it will be when they awake. Glory is revealed to them, transfused through them; not a superficial skin-deep glory, but a transformation, changing the soul throughout; glory, blessedness, brought home and lodged in a man's own soul."

Blessedness, to Mr. Howe, consisted in godliness, and godliness manifested itself in goodness—as high a conception of Christian religion, I think, as has been realized before or since. His learning was not as fragments of a foreign language, intertwined for purposes of decoration with his own, but as a translation into the language of day of the converse he had held, on the high places of the earth, with his kindred among the lofty souls of the past, in the language native to them all, concerning the infinite heavens above them all. This was the kind of eloquence we listened to at Whitehall and St. Margaret's during the days of the Commonwealth. And among all the great Puritan preachers this was the one whom Oliver chose for his chaplain.

We never intruded ourselves on the Protector during his greatness. There were so many to claim his notice then. And we needed it not; having work enough to occupy us and means enough to do it, and happiness enough in it, what with the sick and the prisons and the children in the home.

But Roger was always in his service, and he brought us word continually what a burden and toil that rule was to the ruler.

Above the noisy strife of parties, men like Howe could dwell in the purer air; beneath it the people and the churches were silently prospering. But Oliver's way lay through the thick of the strife, with little intermission, from the beginning to the end. If ever "I serve" was justly a prince's motto, it was his. "Ready to serve," as he said, "not as a king but as a constable; if they liked it, often thinking indeed that he could not tell what his business in the place he stood in was, save that of a good constable set to keep the peace of the parish." Oliver's parish (Roger said) being England with all her parties, and Europe with her Protestants and Catholics, ready at a word to fly on each other. He kept the peace of his parish well. Others might concern themselves with the well-being of the nation (as he said)—"he had to consider its being." The ship which the mixed crew of Anabaptists, Levellers, classical Republicans, and Royalists, were debating in Parliament and out of it how to work according to most perfect rules, had meantime to be worked, being not in harbour but on the stormiest sea, amidst hostile fleets.

Parliament after parliament met, debated, did nothing, and was dissolved. But still the ship of the nation sailed majestically and triumphantly on, breasting stormy waves and scattering hostile fleets, with that one hand on the helm, and the eyes of that one man on the stars and on the waves.

Roger was full of hope throughout those years. The time must come, he said, when the nation would see what the Protector was doing for her. All Europe had seen it long. Ambassadors came from Spain, France, Denmark, Sweden, Austria.

All Europe felt England a power, and knew who made her so. England herself could not fail to see it soon. Then, instead of taking her greatness sullenly from Oliver's hands, she would acknowledge him as the "single person" to whom the parliaments and people owed allegiance—her sovereign by divinest right—suffer him to rule in accordance with her ancient order instead of in spite of it—grant what he passionately craved, the privilege of making her as free as he had made her strong; rise herself to be the queen of the Protestant nations.

And then the glorious day would dawn, Roger thought, for England and the world. What tender sweet hopes lay deep in his heart, as one of the roses strewn by this Aurora, I knew well. What England and the world said, one maiden's heart would surely be blind to no more!

So the years passed on. Our fleets, with Blake in command, were ranging the Mediterranean Sea, Rumours came of victories over Italian and Mussulman, of compensation for wrong, of slaves set free.

In the late king's reign the Barbary Pirates had carried off our countrymen from our shores near Plymouth Sound. Under Oliver, our fleets battered down the forts of the Pirates on their own shores, and set the captives free.

All nations courted his alliance. And from the plantations of New England (through Mr. John Cotton and others) came joyful voices of congratulation on the liberties and glories which these children of Old England felt still to be theirs.

All seemed advancing, Roger thought, like a triumph. Righteousness springing out of the earth, Truth looking down from heaven—when tidings burst upon us which stirred the heart of England to its depths, from sea to sea.

From the far-off valleys of the Alps of Piedmont came the cry of wrong. How a whole race of our fellow-Protestants, "men otherwise harmless, only for many years famous for embracing the purity of religion," had been tortured, massacred, and driven from their homes, to perish naked and starving on the mountains.

Never, since the Irish massacre at the beginning of the Civil Wars, had England been so moved with one overwhelming tide of indignation and pity. But with the indignation at the Irish massacre meaner feelings of selfish terror had been mingled. This wrong touched England only in her noblest part. For the time we seemed to reach the depths beneath all our divisions and turmoils. England felt herself one, in this common sympathy; and what was more, the Protestant Church glowed into a living unity through this holy fire of indignation and pity, which, being true, failed not to burst forth in generous deeds of succour. "For," as Milton wrote, "that the Protestant name and cause, although they differ among themselves in some things of little consequence, is nevertheless the same, the hatred of our adversaries alike incensed against Protestants very easily demonstrates."

The massacre began in December, 1654, that merciless "slaughter on the Alpine mountains cold." Six regiments were engaged in it, three of them the Irish "Kurisees," from whom the Protector had delivered Ireland.

It was the 3rd of June before the cry of distress reached Oliver at Whitehall. The hills had been flashing it for five months to heaven. For five months our brethren and their families had been wandering destitute, afflicted, tormented, on the mountains above their ruined, desolated homes.

Much frightful wrong had been wrought irrevocably, past all the remedies of earth. What remedy was still possible there was no delay in finding, and no lack of generous tenderness in applying.

The Protector at once gave £2,000 from his private purse. A day of humiliation was appointed throughout the country, "such a fast as God hath chosen, to undo the heavy burdens, to break every yoke, to deal bread to the hungry, and cover the naked." Thirty-seven thousand pounds were contributed to the suffering brethren in the Valleys. Secretary Milton wrote six State letters in the Protector's name to the princes of Europe and the Switzer Republic. Oliver showed plainly to France that he cared more for the righting of this wrong than for the most profitable alliances in the world. The Catholic world perceived for once that Protestantism meant more than mere doubt and denial, that it meant a common faith and a common life.

And as far as might be the wrong was set right, the exiles were relieved from their destitution and restored to their homes.

It was something to be an Englishwoman then.

Roger was appointed to accompany the envoys sent by the Protector to Paris. He came to take leave of us with a face all alit with hope.

"England is beginning to acknowledge her deliverer," he said. "All Europe is flashing back on her his kingly likeness, as if from a thousand mirrors. She must acknowledge him at last."

And with a farewell which had the joyous ring of a welcome in it, he went.

The joyful confidence of his tones and hope made them linger on my heart long, like music. "She must acknowledge him at last." They mingled with my dreams, and woke with me when I woke, but with a double meaning subtilely intertwined into them; as if England were personated, as in some royal festive masque, in the form of Lettice Davenant, no more weeping and downcast, as when I had seen her last, but her bright face, and her dear joyous eyes full of serene determination and unquenchable hope.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

"Paris, Twelfth Night, 1655.—My birth-day. More than four years since I wrote a word in this book. The pages begin to look faded, like my youth. I scarcely know why I have left such an interval, except that it is so difficult not to look on the whole of this life of exile as an interval; a blank space, or an impertinent episode in the history of life, which, by-and-by, when the true history begins again, we just tear out or seal together.

"All this time I have heard nothing from the old friends in England, except two letters; one from Mistress Dorothy, wherein she gave me a terrible picture of the wrong-doings and thinkings of certain religious people of an entirely new kind, whom she calls 'Quakers.' It seems that Olive brought one to her house at Kidderminster, which Mistress Dorothy thought a great wrong. As far as I can make out, Olive has no thought of becoming a Quaker; nor can I find out distinctly what the Quakers are or do, except that every one seems enraged against them, and that on that ground Olive and Dr. Antony took this Quaker maiden under their wing. Poor sweet Olive, she always had a way of getting entangled into defending people under general ban; from witches downward or upward. I suppose Annis Nye is Olive's present Gammer Grindle. In which case, Olive at least seems little changed. But that letter was written before the Battle of Worcester. From Mistress Dorothy's account they appear to be a new kind of sect, with a new elaborate ceremonial or ritual, to which they adhere very strictly. Mistress Dorothy speaks of their refusing to take off their hats, and to bow or courtesy. This must evidently be a ritual observance; because people would scarcely be sent to prison simply for keeping on their hats and not courtesying.

"Mistress Dorothy spoke, too, by the way, of Olive's two children, Maidie and the babe.

"The babe must be now a prattling child of five, and Maidie probably a little person invested with the solemn responsibilities of the eldest sister. I fancy her with Olive's fair, calm face, thinking it her greatest honour to share her mother's household occupations, or to run by her side with a basket of food to supplement Dr. Antony's medicines. I fancy Mistress Gretel smiling at the babes, and letting them entangle her knitting with the feeblest of remonstrances, and in a serene way undermining all Olive's 'wholesome' discipline. I fancy Mr. Drayton a little older, a little graver, not quite satisfied with the fruits of the war, wishing Mr. Hampden back, and Lord Falkland, and England as they might have made it; and taking refuge with the stars and his grand-children. I fancy—till I am angry with myself for fancying anything, as if it made shadows out of realities. For they live; they live, in the old solid living England. If any are shadows, it is we, poor helpless, voiceless exiles on this shadowy shore; not they. And then I begin to think not of what I fancy, but what I know. I know they are good, and kind, and godly still. And I know—yes, I know—they have not forgotten; they still love and think of me.

"Only sometimes it troubles me a little that they are going on thinking of me as the young Lettice they knew so long ago; which is scarcely the same as thinking of the middle-aged Lettice Davenant who has reached her twenty-ninth birth-day to-day.

"I think sometimes now of the scorn with which I was wont to speak of middle-states of things, saying there was no poetry in mid-day, mid-summer, middle-station, middle-age. And often and often the answer comes cheerily back, how he spoke of 'manhood and womanhood, with their dower of noble work, and strength to do it;' and how he could not abide 'to hear the spring-tide spoken pulingly of, as if it faded instead of ripening into summer; and youth, as if it set instead of dawned into manhood.' 'It was but a half-fledged poetry,' he said, 'which must go to dew-drops and rosy morning clouds for its similes and could see no beauty in noon-tide with its patient toil or its rapturous hush of rest.'—It comes back to me like an invigorating march music, now that the joyous notes of the reveille have died away, and the vesper hymns are not yet ready, and the march of noon-tide life has fairly begun.

"What, then, makes evening and morning, spring and autumn, the delight of poets? The light then blossoms or fades into colour. The light itself then is a fair picture to look at. At noon it sinks deeper no longer on the surface of clouds, but into the chalices of flowers and into the heart of fruits; it is painting pictures on the harvest-fields and orchards; it is ripening and making the world fair, and enabling us to see it. It is light not to look at, but to work by. Its beauty is in making things beautiful. And so I think it is with middle-age. Its beauty is not in itself; but in loving thought for others, and loving work for others. Looking at ourselves in middle-life, we see only the glow faded, the dewy freshness brushed away. Therefore we must not look at ourselves, but at the work the Master gives us to do, the brothers and sisters the Father gives us to love. In Olive's heart, no doubt, the thought of youth passing away scarcely arises. She sees her children growing around her, and works and plans for them, and counts the hours again as morning, not as evening hours, renewing her life in the morning of theirs. And although that lot is not mine, I have scarcely more temptation to 'talk pulingly of morning fading into noon' than she. Madame la Mothe takes me close to her heart. With her I am her friend's child. Then these revenues which come to us so much more regularly than to most of the Cavaliers, give us so many means of helping others, that this alone is an occupation. Especially as these revenues are, after all, not unlimited, and my father and Walter believe they are (as the wants of the Cavaliers certainly are), so that it requires some planning and combining to make things go as far as they can. Which in itself is a great occupation to Barbe and me, and makes our daily house-keeping as interesting as a work of charity. And since the English Service has been prohibited at the Louvre, as it has been since the Battle of Worcester, I have some happy work in a kind of little school of young English girls, amongst whom it is sweet to do what I can, that when they go back, the Holy Scriptures and the prayers of the dear old Prayer-book may not be unfamiliar to them.

"Then my father is wonderfully forbearing with me. For it has vexed him that I could not listen to some excellent Cavaliers, who wished for our alliance.

"Madame la Mothe also sometimes lectures me a little on this score with reference to a nephew of hers. But as the project was primarily hers and not his, this little proposal was much easier to decline. Only sometimes she shakes her head and says,—

"'There has been a history, my poor child! Every woman's heart has its history. But heaven forbid that I should seek to penetrate into thy secret. Yet thou art not like thy mother in all things. She suffered. Thou wilt conquer. Her eyes were as those of Mater Dolorosa by the Cross. Thine are as those of Regina Cœli above the storms.'"

"And I cannot tell her. Because I can never look on that love as a history. I know so well he could not change. It is scarcely betrothal, for there is neither promise nor hope. It is simply belonging to each other in life and in death.

"Then sometimes she smiles and kisses me and says, 'There is some little comfort even in thy being of "the religion." On that rock of thine, no torrent of Port-Royalist eloquence will sweep thee away from us into a convent. And for the rest, God is merciful; and having made islands, it is possible He has especial dispensations suited to islands.'"

"For Madame la Mothe has entirely relinquished my conversion. Seeing that I can honour the ladies of Port Royal from the bottom of the heart, without being attracted to Port Royal, she has given me up.

"She says I have no restless cravings, no void to fill, and it is to the restlessness of the heart that the repose of religion appeals.

"In one way she is right. Thank God she is right. Or rather my whole heart is one great craving unfathomable void. But Christianity fills it. Christ fills it. He Himself; satisfying every aspiration, meeting every want, being all I want. Pitying, forgiving, loving, commanding me. The commanding sometimes most satisfying of all. Always, always; all through my heart. Redeemer, that is much; Master, that (afterwards) is almost more. Father! that is all.

"There have been sorrows. After Worcester, my father was so terribly cast down and gentle. I remember it was almost a relief the first time he was really a little angry after that; although it was with me he was angry; and quite a relief to hear him begin to storm at the French Court again, when they suppressed our English Service at the Louvre, and did what they could with any civility to suppress or dismiss us, and began to pay court to the Arch-Traitor.

"Since then the success of the Usurper in making England great, and the baseness of some of the attempts to assassinate him (not discouraged, alas, by some of our Court)! have strained my father's loyalty to the utmost.

"But the sorrow is Walter; the wrong which sometimes makes us ready, in desperation, to pay our allegiance anywhere but there whence the evil came, is the sore change in him. We made some sacrifices in old times to the royal cause. But what were poor Dick, and Robert, and George, slain on the field, or even Harry laying down his life at Naseby, or even that precious mother stricken into heaven by his death, compared with a life poisoned in its springs like Walter's at this selfish wicked Court? All the fair promise of his youth turned into corruption; his very heart slain!

"Our martyred king required the lives of our dearest, and they were given willingly for him. But this king takes their souls, themselves, their life of life, not as a living sacrifice, but to be trampled, and soiled, and crushed in the dust and mire of sin, till their dear familiar features are scarcely to be distinguished by those who love them best.

"The gladness of heart my mother delighted in changed into a fickle irritability, or frozen into mockery at all sacred things human or divine. The generous spirit degraded into mere selfish lavishness, caring not at what cost to others it buys its wretched pleasures.

"And then the miserable reactions of regret and remorse which I used to rejoice in, until I learned to know they were the mere irritable self-loathing of exhausted passion, as little moral as when (at other times) the same irritation turned against my father or me instead of against himself. Until at last I dare not profane the sacred names of mother and of God, by using them as a kind of magic spell to unseal the springs of maudlin sentimental tears. Oh, how bitter the words look! Walter, Walter, my brother! tenderly committed by my mother to me, living in the house with us day by day, yet farther off—more out of reach (it seems) of pleading or prayer than those who lie on the cold slopes of Rowten Heath and Naseby! Is there no weapon in God's armoury to reach thy heart? Good Mistress Gretel used to say God had so many weapons we knew not of in His storehouses. In mine, alas, there seem none; none except going on loving. And perhaps after all that is the strongest in His.

"Going on loving. Yes; our Lord surely did that, does that. When 'He turned to the woman' in Simon's house, it was not the first time He had so turned to her. Not the first. How many times from the first! Yet at last she turned and came and looked on Him. And she was forgiven. And in loving Him a new fountain of purity was opened in her heart, the only purity worth the name, the purity of love; the purity not of ice but of fire. Yes; in Him there is the possibility of restoration.

"But, oh, for these desecrated wasted years, for the glory of the prime turned into corruption, for all that might have been and never can be, for this one irrevocable life ebbing, ebbing so fast away, for the terrible possibility of there being no restoration. For some looked, and listened, and longed, but never came!

"May.—Barbe came into my chamber this morning, weeping and wringing her hands.

"'Ah, mademoiselle!' she said; 'another St. Bartholomew—a second St. Bartholomew!'"

"'Have they risen against the Protestants in Paris?' I said. And my first thought was of Walter,—a wild thought, whether this might be the angel's sword to drive him back into the fold. If we were to be hunted hither and thither, who could say but in the severe destitution of some den or cave of refuge, or even in the prison of the Inquisition, sacred old words might come back to him, and he might turn and be saved? And then another flash of thought! If we were seized as Protestants, England would rise; Cromwell, Englishman and Protestant that he was, would demand us back. We should no more be Royalist and Rebel, but all English and Protestant; and return to England, to Netherby, and Walter with us, and a new life begin. Wild hopes, flashing through my mind between my question and Barbe's answer, delayed, as it was, by her tears.

"'Not in Paris yet, mademoiselle; that is to come. No doubt, the tyrants will not end where they began. It is the people of the valleys—the Vaudois—men of the religion, before France knew what the religion was. My mother's kindred came thence,—quiet, loyal peasants, tilling their poor patches of field and vineyard among the savage mountains. The Duke of Savoy would have them all foreswear the religion in three days. They held firm. He sent six regiments—herds of monsters, wild beasts, among the people. They tortured, killed, wrought horrors I cannot name, but which those faithful men and women had to bear.' And her sobs choked her words; until by degrees she told me all she knew of the dreadful story of outrage and wrong.

"'And is there none to help?' I said.

"'There is none;—unless it be this Mr. Cromwell,' she said, with a little hesitation, knowing how abhorred the name was amongst us. 'These poor, exiled, outraged Christians have appealed to him.'

"June 8.—My father says all the world is ablaze about this letter of Mr. John Milton, the Usurper's Latin secretary, concerning these persecuted exiles from the valleys. Its words are very strong. It seems not unlikely the French Court may be moved to interfere an their behalf. 'It is some comfort,' said my father, 'to see that the old country has a voice which must be listened to, even though she speaks through the mouth of this murderous Usurper.'

"June 9.—My father came in, with his eyes enkindled with a look of triumph such as I had not seen in them for years.

"'We must have a rejoicing, Lettice, cost what it may. There is no help for it, but an English gentleman's heart must be glad at such news! Robert Blake has been pounding them right and left—Pope and Turk, Duke and Dey. The Blakes of Somersetshire—a good old family: I knew them well. The English fleet calls at Leghorn, and the Pope and his Italians eagerly grant whatever they demand. The English fleet calls at Tunis, demanding justice from the Dey and his pirates. The Dey refuses: Blake batters down his forts, and burns his fleet in the harbour. The Dey will not refuse us our rights again. The world begins to know what the name of an Englishman means. Already these French courtiers practise a little civility. The very rascal boys in the streets seem less impudent. We must have a merry-making, Lettice. What can we do? At home we would have all the village to a feast, set all the ale-barrels flowing, and all the bells in the country ringing. But here the people, poor half-starved creatures, drink nothing but vinegar. And as to these everlasting bells, that are always dropping and trickling, no one knows why; it would do one's heart good if one could wake them up for once, and set them free all together, to burst out in the torrent of a grand old English peal. But we cannot. Who can we give a feast to, Lettice? One cannot exactly have a Cavalier dinner, because it might look like celebrating the victory of the Usurper. Yet somebody or other must be made the merrier, that the old country has done such a good stroke of work. Whom can we have?'

"I could think of no one but Barbe, her father and mother, and the seven hungry little brothers and sisters she helped to support. Accordingly the next day we made them a supper in honour of the victory over the Turks, an attention which seemed to gratify our guests much, although my father was not a little dissatisfied at having to entertain guests on what he scornfully termed 'broth, vinegar, and sugar-plums.' But I think to the end Barbe and her family remained in a very misty state of mind as to what they were to rejoice about; and but for my father's imperfect acquaintance with the French language, I am afraid the closing speech of Barbe's father, who was an old gentleman with political theories, and of a lofty and florid style of eloquence, might have caused an explosion. For the point of it was:

"'Excellent Monsieur and amiable Mademoiselle, your country is a great country; though sometimes to us Frenchmen a little difficult to understand. No doubt, this Monseigneur Cromwell has not the advantage of a descent as pure as could be wished; but he has the advantage of making himself understood in all languages. The Turks seem to have understood Mr. Blake. There is, also, Mr. Milton, who writes Latin with the elegance of the renowned Tully. The Duke of Savoy will have to understand him. The poor exiled Vaudois are to be restored to their valleys. Monseigneur Cromwell has insisted on it. He has also sent two thousand pounds of his own for their relief, and your nation has added more than thirty thousand;—a sum scarcely to be calculated by simple people. It is a pity Monseigneur should be out of the legitimate line of your country's kings. But such changes must happen at times in dynasties. Our own has changed more than once. And, no doubt, your magnanimous nation understands her own affairs, and ere long will arrange herself to the satisfaction of all parties. Monsieur and mademoiselle, I thank you in the name of my family. Such hospitality is a proof of a tender and generous heart, worthy of the great nation which has sent this princely succour to the oppressed.'

"'What does he say, Lettice?' whispered my father.

"'That England is a great nation,' I replied; 'and that it is a pity Oliver Cromwell was not of the house of Stuart.'

"For a moment my father's eyes flashed; but then, shaking his head compassionately, he only said: 'Of course, these poor foreigners cannot be expected to understand our politics. We must make allowances, Lettice; we must make allowances. Every man cannot, after all, be born an Englishman.'

"June 10.—The meaning of Barbe's father's speech is plain. The Usurper has sent an Embassy Extraordinary to the French Court and to Savoy, and all the redress he demands for the Vaudois is to be made. They are to be restored to their mountain homes, and protected from future ill usage. He styles himself 'Oliver, Protector.' The poor Vaudois, at least, are likely to think the title not undeserved.

"June 11.—My father says Roger is here. If any one in the world could help Walter, he might. Walter has been terrible lately. His reckless, mocking ways drive my father wild. He storms in righteous anger. Walter recriminates with cool, reckless jests. My father commands him to go. Walter goes; does not come back for days. My father grows more and more restless and wretched during his absence; reproaches himself; taps at my door at night, and says: 'Lettice, I shall never rest any more. I have driven the lad to destruction. I will go and seek him.' In a few hours he returns with Walter, destitute and affectionate. He returns as a prodigal; but, alas! not come to himself; aggrieved against the husks—against the beggarly citizens, who would not give him any—but chiefly against the father, who, having given him his own portion, refused him his brother's. And so, for the hundredth time, we welcome him, weep over him, make much of him, and provide him with such best robes and portions of our living as we can possibly spare. And in a day or two he meets his old associates, has some good-natured message from the king, and, before long, is drawn off into the old tide of riotous living. Away from us, heart and soul, in the far country, where we at the old home are mere shadows to him. We mere shadows to him; and he the core of our hearts to us!

"I feel that these tender changes of feelings of my father's, the very anger springing from affection, and the affection making him repent of his just anger as of a sin, are not good for Walter. I cannot help, sometimes, telling him what sacrifices my father makes for him; how ungrateful and unjust he is in return. But he merely laughs, and talks as if women were creatures with quite another edition of the Ten Commandments from men; or, sometimes, he says my Puritan friends have taken the spirit out of me; or that I should have married, and then I should have understood the world a little, and had something else to do than to educate my brothers. But when he says such things to me, he is always, or often, sorry afterwards, and tries to expiate them by some little extra gift or attention.

"And often my father also is vexed rather with me than with Walter, when he and Walter have differed. He seems to think I ought in some way to have made life more cheerful to them both. But this I know he does not mean. Such words are only as an inarticulate cry of pain. He means it no more than he means what he says far oftener and more vehemently, that he will never waste another groat, nor hazard a drop of blood again, for the heartless, faithless family ('Scottish and French not English,' saith he, in his bitterest moments), which fate has smitten England with; when I know that, at the next glimpse of a hope of Restoration, he would spend his fortune to the uttermost farthing, and his blood to the last drop, to see the young king enjoy his own again.

"June 12th.—We have met, Roger and I, for a few minutes, but those minutes, seemed to have bridged over all the years between, and it is as if our lives had been lived side by side all the time, Yet we said scarcely a connected sentence that I can recall.

"It was in one of the little tumults which now and then arise in the narrow streets out of disputes for precedence.

"I was in Madame la Mothe's coach, when we met a coach which happened to belong to a seigneur, whose lands are close to Madame la Mothe's in the country. Neither of the coachmen would give way and back his horses. It was a rivalry of centimes. As happens in so many contests, the immediate interests of the chiefs were lost sight of in the vehemence of their followers. Madame la Mothe and I were left solitary and uneasy in the coach, while the servants contended for our dignity in the street. At length the tumult of voices grew fierce, the hoofs of the horses clattered on the stones as the postillions urged them with a defiant crack of their whips, and it seemed as if the two coaches and their inmates were to charge each other bodily, as if we had been batteries or battalions.

"'There will be bloodshed,' exclaimed Madame la Mothe, 'bloodshed for a title, for my title!' and pushing open the door, she sprang on the pavement, and threw herself among the combatants with words of peace.

"The lady in the other coach seeing her descend, did the same. Advancing rapidly towards each other they made reverences to each other.

"Madame la Mothe held out her hands. 'Let us make a compromise, madame,' she said; 'we will both reascend one coach with my young friend, Let it be yours. We will then proceed together, while my coach retires. Bloodshed will be avoided. The loyal rivalry of our people will be satisfied. Your side will gain the victory, but it will be in my service.'

"The ladies embraced, and hand in hand entered the other coach. The retainers shouted long life to both the illustrious houses; and the little drama was ending in a general embrace, when an obstacle presented itself in the determination of one of Madame la Mothe's horses, which absolutely refused to sacrifice his own sense of dignity by retreating.

"The perplexity was great when Madame la Mothe, turning to me, exclaimed, 'My child, you will excuse my making you the victim of a slight ruse de guerre, to avoid wounding the honour of these excellent people. We will make it a question of national courtesy.' And having obtained the other lady's consent, leaning from the window, she said to one of the young gentlemen in attendance, in a voice that all round might hear: 'See, this young lady is of a noble English house, in exile for loyalty to the unfortunate king. All noblesse yields to noblesse sacrificing itself for royalty. Conduct Mademoiselle Davenant, I pray you, to my carriage, aid let us retire before her.'

"I wad being reconducted to Madame la Mothe's carriage, pale, perhaps a little anxious, for there were murmurs of discontent among the retainers of the adverse company, when suddenly Roger appeared before me, and in a moment my hand was in his before I knew how, and I was alone in the carriage, slowly advancing, while he walked beside the window.

"'A friend of mademoiselle's father! Move forward!' he said to the attendants, in slightly broken French, with that quiet expectation of obedience which always gave credentials to his commands. He was obeyed; and we moved slowly on.

"'You excuse me?' he said to me. His hand was on the edge of the window. 'I heard your name, and saw you looking alarmed, and before I had time to question my right to do it, I found myself taking care of you.'

"He said no more. And I said nothing. It was one of those moments which seemed not to belong to the hour but to the ages; because ore does not think of looking backward or forward while they last, the rest they bring is so complete.

"But as we came to the end of the narrow street, and were about to turn into a broader place, there was again a little tumult which delayed us. Looking out, I saw it was caused by a company of young cavaliers arrogantly pushing the crowd aside. Among them I saw the faces of one or two whom I recognized as friends of Walter's, and I thought I caught a glimpse of Walter himself.

"Then I forgot everything but Walter, the longing I had so often had that he could know Roger and the possibility of Roger saving him.

"'Roger,' I said, 'you remember Walter the youngest of us, the boy my mother thought so much of. Those are some of our king's courtiers. They are Walter's friends. They are bad friends. They are ruining him for life and for ever. I have thought sometimes if you could have been his friend, it might have been different.'

"'I will do all what I can, Lettice,' he said, and that was all. But his 'what I can,' and his 'Lettice,' are volumes that need no commentary.

"Madame la Mothe re-appeared.

"I introduced Roger as best I could.

"She lavished thanks on him, and kept him some little time in conversation, while the men were setting something right about the harness.

"But he replied only in monosyllables.

"For some time after he had taken leave we drove on in silence.

"I was thinking whether I had done right. In committing my brother to Roger had I not, as it were, made him my knight, set him forth on a sacred enterprise for my sake, which he might interpret into an atonement for that terrible deed which separated us?

"That terrible deed which all the blood in the world, and all the good deeds in the world cannot expiate, which nothing but repentance can blot out! And Roger will never repent.

"They came sweeping back on my heart with his voice, all the old familiar sacred recollections, my mother's affection for him, the touch of her hand clasping ours, the sound of her voice blessing us. And far away, like a ghost, at cock-crowing, glided that dreadful scaffold. 'Politics!' did not every one say; 'what have women to do with politics?'

"And after all, what had Roger to do with that terrible deed? He had sat near on horseback, as a soldier of Parliament, while it was done. As a soldier of the Parliament, what could he do otherwise? As a man, would he not rather have risked his life to save the royal sufferer's life? All the consequences of rebellion are involved in the first act of rebellion. War means life or death, victory or death to all involved. All the terrible results were unfolded in the first fatal lifting up of the rebel standard at Edgehill; a shot might have ended His Majesty's life then as easily as the axe years afterwards. Roger's loyalty is to England, and, for her sake, to whomsoever he believed will rule and serve her best. That first act of disloyalty once committed, in the choice of a wrong leader, the more loyal the character the more disloyal must be the acts ever after. It was Roger's fatal hereditary misbelief which had enlisted him in Cromwell's army. And that my mother knew, and knowing, had sanctioned his love. But once enlisted, it was the very loyalty of heart which would have led him to die with Montrose for the king's cause, however hopeless, which had lead him thus to guard the king's scaffold, however he hated to be there. For I know he did hate to be there! If he would but once confess that his heart had bled at the sight, as I am sure it did! But I knew too well how that fatal loyalty of nature which had prevented his resisting the worst deed of his traitorous leader, would keep his lips sealed for ever from disclaiming his share in it, when done.

"But if I knew his heart, ought I not to accept the reverent pity which I knew must have moved him, and made his presence at the martyrdom a torture to him, in place of any mere words which a heart less true than his would have uttered so easily? Indeed, whether I accepted it or not, had not it been already understood and accepted above? As the mistakes of Port Royal were understood and forgiven, and of Aunt Dorothy, and, as we trust, our own mistakes will be.

"Then came the thought,—

"'You are getting sophistical. Right and wrong are right and wrong for all and for ever. If you try to put yourself into the place, and feel the temptations of every criminal, as he feels them, you will end in condemning no crime.'

"Thus as I sat silent by Madame la Mothe's side, while in a few moments all those arguments rushed in conflict through my heart, there was anything but silence within.

"At last Madame la Mothe spoke. Very quietly she laid her hand on mine, and without looking at me, said,—

"'My child, forgive me. I shall never ask what your secret is again, nor wonder why you keep your heart sealed like the doors of Port Royal.'

"'It is no secret, madame,' I said. 'We were betrothed by my mother's sanction. Only this dreadful war has separated us.'

"'Your young Cavalier is not on the king's side?' she said. 'It is a pity. He has the manners of the ancient chivalry. Deferential and stately, his politeness has something at once protecting and lofty in it, as if he were a king, and all women as queens to him. Alas, for these English politics and these consciences!'

"'It is not politics that separate us, madame,' I said, almost mechanically; 'it is the king's death.'

"'Surely the young Cavalier was too noble to be concerned in that!' she said.

"'He was a soldier of the Commonwealth, madame,' I said, 'and as a soldier had to obey.'

"I found myself defending him in spite of myself.

"'The king's death was not the work of the soldier, was it?" she said, 'but of the headsman.'

"'The soldiers guarded the scaffold,' I said.

"'This young Cavalier was among those who guarded the scaffold,' she said. 'Was that all? Being a soldier, what would you have had him do? Surely there is absolution on earth and in heaven for such a mistake as that.'

"'He does not repent, madame.'

"'Ah, my child,' she said, 'see what it is to be a Protestant; you have to be your own Supreme Tribunal, even when your conscience is on the Judgment-seat, and your own heart at the bar, to be broken by the sentence. Now, if you would only believe the Pope and the Church, whatever the unavoidable pain of the sentence, you would at all events escape the torture of at once inflicting and enduring it.'

"'Alas, madame,' I said, 'can the sisters of Port Royal escape the torture of being their own tribunal? Can they believe a fact is a fact because a Pope says it? They distinguish, indeed, between fact and right; but are not rights really but facts of a higher sphere, if we only knew them? And as unalterable? We only want to know what is right, madame. It seems to me no decision on earth, or in heaven, can make a thing right, any more than it makes it true.'

"'My poor child,' she said tenderly, 'heaven guide you. Only take care your heart does not get into the judgment-seat, and persuade your conscience that the very anguish of the sentence is a proof of its justice. Noble hearts have made such mistakes ere now. One, I think, very dear to thee and to me.'

"She was silent some minutes, and then said in a more cheerful tone,—

"'He was silent, this young Cavalier. His character is perhaps rather grave?'

"'It is a way of all the men of our nation who are worth anything, madame,' I said. 'Your countrymen have a natural eloquence. Feeling enkindles them into speech. With us it oftener fuses men into silence. An Englishman who has no dumbness in him is not to be trusted.'

"She smiled.

"'Ah, my friend,' she said, 'if I defend, you attack; if I attack, you defend. I will leave you to defend your own cause against yourself.'"

CHAPTER VIII.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

Roger brought back from Paris an account of the life led by the son of the late king and his companions, that might perhaps have enfeebled Aunt Dorothy's prayers for his restoration, could she have believed it, which, however (having her belief much under the control of her will), she doubtless never would, on any evidence we could have brought. Of the Davenants he said little. But he had seen them, and from his tone I judged that the intercourse had done more to cheer than to sadden him. Sir Walter's face, he thought, looked somewhat lined with care; but, as far as I could gather, he saw no change in Lettice. To him she was the same he had parted from seven years before, the same he had held in his heart all the seven years through.

"Was she looking older?" I asked.

"In one way, not an hour," he said; "in another seven years."

"Paler?"

He could not tell; "her colour always came and went like sunshine; like her smile."

"As loyal as ever?"

"To the late king, and to royalty; yes."

"Graver?"

"They spoke of grave things. He thought, with all the old changefulness in her countenance, the calm beneath seemed deeper."

"Then she must be fairer than ever?"

"He thought not. She was the same."

And to him that was evidently the utmost he desired. If she had in any way changed, it had only been as he had changed, keeping parallel with him; therefore from him evidently no more was to be learned. Yet something in his interview had evidently strengthened him, like a new dawn of hope. Sir Walter, no doubt, would not hear of alliance with an adherent of "the Usurper;" yet he accepted, with scarcely disguised triumph, the glory England had won under the Usurper. A little more experience of what the Court of the young king was like to be; a little more proof of what free England could be; a little more of the hallowing touch of time, on the new Power's new glories; perhaps the Title belonging to the Power, once boldly claimed, recognized by the nation; and in the end for the sake of the old England the new dynasty might be recognized.

So Roger hoped; and to him, therefore, the debates in 1657, on the Protector's assuming the title of king, had a twofold interest.

The year 1656 closed, and the year 1657 began, stormily.

On the 27th of December my husband came to the house looking dispirited, and, catching up Maidie in his arms, he said to me,—

"I have a mind to sell all we have, and seek our fortunes in the wilderness, among the Indians."

Then he told me the scene he had just witnessed, Annis Nye and Job Forster standing by whilst he narrated how the poor fanatic, James Naylor, had stood in the pillory in front of the Exchange, weakened by the terrible scourging four days before from Whitehall to the Exchange, while his tongue was bored with a hot iron by command of the Parliament "for blasphemy."

"Twenty years have rolled away," he said; "countless precious lives have been sacrificed, a dynasty displaced, the king and the archbishop executed, the Star Chamber destroyed; and here stands the pillory again in the open day, with fierce fire in the hearts of those in power, to carry out a sentence cruel as any of Archbishop Laud's, to the uttermost."

"But the people?" I asked.

"As pitiful as in the days when Prynne, Bastwick, and Barton suffered in Palace Yard! Scarce an insulting word or gesture. While the cruel iron was at work, the crowd stood bareheaded, and Mr. Rich, the brave merchant, who had waited at the doors of the Parliament House imploring the members for mercy from eight till eleven this morning, held the sufferer's hand all the while, and afterwards licked his wounds."

"But they say the poor wretch was indeed guilty of blasphemy," I said. "His crime was at least very different from Mr. Prynne's."

"It was indeed mad blasphemy," he replied; "the madness of spiritual vanity veiling itself under some mystical notion that the homage was paid to Christ in him. The poor wretch suffered half-a-dozen deluded men and women to lead his horse into Bristol, scattering branches and garments before him, and crying hosannas."

Job, who was near, could not let the occasion pass.

"Take warning, Mistress Annis," he said, in a low voice aside to her; "this is what your Quaker inspiration leads to."

"I have need of warnings, Job Forster," she replied, "and so hast thou. This is what your tyranny over men's consciences leads to. This is what ambition has led thy Oliver Cromwell to; once a man of whom George Fox had hope, and over whose soul the Friends have been very tender."

"The Lord Protector protests against this cruelty," said my husband.

"His work is not to protest, Leonard Antony," said she, "but to prevent. But he has been faithfully warned. George Fox hath told him what will come upon him if he heeds not; and George's warnings are not to be scorned. Before now, more than one who has despised them has come to a fearful end."

For once my husband was roused. "Annis Nye," he said, "you and your Friends are as unmerciful in heart as the rest. The Voices that denounce God's lightnings for their own private wrongs are moved by the same spirit as the hands that heat the irons for the pillory. Verily ye know not what spirit ye are of. Denunciatory prophecies are the persecution of the persecuted." And he turned sadly away.

Aunt Gretel wept many tears when she heard the narrative of James Naylor's sufferings, afterwards completed by a second scourging at Bristol, the scene of his mad and blasphemous entry. But she reached the source of consolation sooner than any of us. Looking, according to her wont, beyond all the middle distance which is the battle-field of the great national questions of churches and governments, and seeing in the whole primarily the Good Shepherd seeking the sheep and leading the wandering flock, she said, wiping her eyes,—

"Poor foolish creature! if Annis speaks right, he was once a humble and devout Christian. He had fallen deep and wandered far. Perhaps he will have to thank the good Lord that he has found the ways of the wilderness so cruel. Perhaps even now, if we could see, he is beginning to creep back, torn, maimed, and bleeding as he is, body and soul, to the feet of the Good Shepherd. Thou wilt not forget him, Leonard, when thou visitest the prison."

My husband did not, and afterwards brought us word how, during his imprisonment in Bridewell, James Naylor came to true repentance, and published his confession of his fall, when "darkness came upon him, and he ran against that Rock to be broken which had so long borne him, and whereof he had so largely drunk, and of which at last he drank in measure again, praising God's mercy in delivering him, and greatly fearing ever to offend again, whereby the innocent truth, or the people of God might suffer."

After that the poor restored penitent's career was brief, but blameless.

Aunt Gretel watched it to the close with a tender pity. He survived his fall and punishment four years, dying at the age of forty-four. And Aunt Gretel was wont to keep the record of what he spoke shortly before his death among her treasury of trophies of the triumph of God's good over men's evil. The words were these:—

"There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, and hopes to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty. If it is betrayed, it bears it; for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind."

And two hours afterwards, the brief journey, so full of bewilderment and pain and repentance, was over. To a heart burdened with the dishonour of that blasphemous entry into Bristol, the pillory in Palace Yard and in the City must, I think, have been a dishonour not bitter to bear, but rather one for which he would bless God who suffered him to suffer it. Perhaps those, his judges, who had in their memories the dishonour of issuing and enforcing such a sentence, had also in their turn their sentences to suffer, for which they also afterwards learned to bless God.

For the wheel went quickly round in those days. Laud in the Star Chamber, Prynne in the pillory; the Presbyterians and Prynne in the Parliament, the archbishop on the scaffold; Naylor in the pillory; his judges in the prisons of the Restoration.

A quarter of a century accomplished it all. But no one saw the wheel turning. Each revolution, as it came, seemed the last. For there was a pause between each. And in the pause the people who were uppermost looked round on the earth, and shouted, "Now the Kingdom is come, and the world will stand still;" while the people who were underneath looked to heaven, and sighed, "Will the years of peace never come? O Lord, how long?"

But I think it a noble trait in the Quakers that, accused as they were on all sides of fanaticism, and strong as the temptation must have been to disown any connection with such a fallen man as Naylor, nevertheless, although they faithfully rebuked him in secret, they generously stood by him in his degradation, and did not leave him until they had brought him to repentance, and tenderly welcomed him back among them.

With James Naylor's torturing sentence, the year 1656 closed. The year 1657 began with stratagems and plots.

Towards morning, on the night of the 8th of January, the drowsy voice of the bellman, speaking benedicites on our home, and calling us to "hang out our lights," had just died away at the corner of the silent street, and his bell was faintly echoing in the distance, mingling with the dream it had broken, when a call at the door aroused us.

It was Job Forster.

His first words as my husband opened the house-door to him (I listening on the stairs), were an alarming assurance that we need not be alarmed. In a minute I was wrapped in my mantle and beside them.

Job's face was haggard and his eyes ringed with dark circles of anxiety.

"All danger is over!" he said. "The assassin has been taken after a hard struggle. He is in the Tower. Miles Sindercombe, an old comrade of mine," added Job with a groan, "one of those that were sentenced with me at Burford!" It was another attempt on the Lord Protector's life. Some time since, the assassin (having received £1,500 from the baser spirits among the Royalists for the purpose) had hired a room at Hammersmith, on the road by which Oliver rode every Saturday to his Sabbath rest at Hampton Court, watching for an opportunity to murder him. But in vain. And at length this night the attempt was to have been made at Whitehall. At midnight the sentinel had smelt fire, a match had been found close to a basket of wildfire, the locks of the doors were discovered to have been picked, and all prepared for a conflagration, in the confusion of which Oliver was to have been assassinated. But it had been found out in time, the danger was averted, and the Protector had refused to have the city alarmed, or the train-bands roused. "But, oh!" groaned Job, "Mistress Olive and Master Antony, think of what a pit I stood on the brink! 'Mutiny the first step;' and the last, murder. No doubt the poor deluded wretch went down easy enough after that first step. And I had taken the first!"

He was very gentle and subdued, and said nothing at breakfast. Not even Annis Nye's gentle "hope that the Protector would take warning at last, and see that the poor Friends' prophecies had some meaning in them," could rouse him. He only shook his head and said,—

"Poor maid! She has got to take her lesson by Burford steeple yet."

The excitement in the city that day was great. It was one of the few occasions which I remember in which a strong and general display of personal feeling was called out towards the Protector.

The Parliament ordered a Thanksgiving Day, and numbers went to offer congratulations. One sentence of Oliver's reply Roger repeated to us,—

"If we will have peace without a worm in it," said the Protector, "lay we foundations in justice and righteousness."

Roger kept full of hope through all. This danger of death to its head, as with so many refractory families, had at last (he thought) roused the nation to gratitude.

The offer of the title of King followed. Roger believed the Protector would accept it. King was a name dear to the English people, who "love not change," and "love settlement and familiar words." King was a name known to the laws, "honoured, and bounded" by the laws. Any other name, said the Protector in comparison, was too "large and boundless." The power he possessed—and on that he suffered no debate; the end of all the fighting, he said, had been settlement. A Parliament voting itself to sit constantly, and debating everything, from the nation's faith to the forms of governing—"debating three months the meaning of the word encumbrance"—"committees elected to fetch men from the extremest part of the nation to attend committees set to determine all things," Oliver considered would never lead to "settlement." Between this nation and general "topsy-turvying" he had submitted to take his stand; and there, while he lived, whether honoured or reviled, he would stand, whether as King, Protector, or Constable, to keep the peace of the parish; "not so much hoping to do much good as to prevent imminent evil;" to "keep the godly of all judgments from running on each other;" to keep some men from the kind of liberty which consisted in "liberty to pinch other men's consciences;" to keep other men from such liberty as resulted in license or "orderly confusion;" to keep all Protestants from ruin; to keep England from becoming "an Aceldama." This the Protector regarded as the thing God had given him to do; and by whatever weapons, by whatever title, he was determined to do it; and then was ready, as he wrote to his son-in-law, to "flee away and be at rest," being meantime lifted above men's judgment by the consciousness of "some little sincerity in him." Roger said that the new work could have been better done under the old names; so much necessary change in substance being made more acceptable to the common people by the least possible change in forms (the principle, according to Aunt Gretel, on which Luther had carried out his Reformation). And so, he believed, thought the Protector. But his son-in-law, Fleetwood, and so many of the best men around him, either considered the very name of king doomed with the dynasty which had abused it, or valued the forms of a republic as of the essence of liberty—that his Highness yielded what to him would indeed have been nothing more than a "feather in a man's cap;" an adornment at no time sacred or precious to Puritan men for its own sake.

Thus the debate on the kingly title ended in the solemn inauguration of Oliver as Lord Protector.

It was on the 25th of June, in Westminster Hall, that the last great ceremonial of the Commonwealth, except the Great Funerals, took place. The old stone of the Scotch kingdom, the purple robe, the canopy of state, the sword, the Bible, the sceptre given by the Speaker of the Commons to be "the stay and staff of the nation," into the hands that, as we believed, had been their stay and staff so long; the foreign ambassadors of all nations around him, they at least, recognizing him openly as England's ruler and deliverer; and, outside, the multitudes shouting "God save the Lord Protector,"—the hearts of all men still aglow with the news of the great victory of Blake over the Spaniards in the harbour of Santa Cruz, in Teneriffe.

There was no lack of enthusiasm; nor, indeed, of colour and music. Some picture our Puritan times as draped in funereal black. The Puritan ministers had a very different impression of them as they bemoaned the glory and bravery of their people's attire; and Mistress Hutchinson's colonel, in "his scarlet cloak, richly laced," was not solitary in his splendour.

Music graced all the Protector's festivals. It was, I think, to him, as to Martin Luther, the festive thing in the world. And the music of lofty and significant words was not wanting in the Speaker's address, or in the solemn prayer which followed.

Nevertheless there were not a few who, with our friend Dr. Rich, could not forget what the last great scene in Westminster Hall had been, when a king discrowned sat at the bar of his subjects, alone, yet defying their authority. And among such it was murmured ominously that there was one thing even the "murderers of his sacred majesty" did not dare to take; the crown which had fallen from the "anointed" head.

So the grand ceremonial ended, and all men went again to their work; the Protector to protect England and the Protestant Church against the world; the Parliament (as he hoped) to reform laws, "manners," and especially the Court of Chancery,—"the delays in suits," the excessiveness in fees, the costliness of suits,—to see that "men were not hanged for six and eight-pence, and acquitted for murder."

And we to our humble work, each in his place. My husband went to his patients and his prisons. Roger, strong in trust in the Protector, and in hope for England, joined the troops which were fighting the Spaniards with those of Marshal Turenne in Flanders. My father, on the verge of seventy, had withdrawn altogether from politics. Having as firm a faith in the triumph of truth as Roger, he yet deemed the cycles wider in which she moved. Love with him was the reverse of blind. It was natural to him to see with painful clearness the faults of the cause dearest to him. Much as in many ways he honoured the Protector, he nevertheless deemed his government a beneficent despotism undermining the foundations of law. "Had the Protector been immortal," he said, "a better government than his could scarce be. But Laws and Constitutions are remedies against the mortality of all men, as well as against the fallibility of the best men. Therefore I cannot rejoice in a rule which interposes but the heart and brain of one man between the nation and anarchy."

So he turned therefore from the whirlwind of political affairs to the calm rule of law in stars and seas; and the wonderful circulation of life through all the animated world, as, according to Mr. Harvey's discovery, through the veins of those fearfully made bodies of ours. Through him we heard much of the proceedings of the Society of Art, and of such patriotic efforts as the rescue of Raphael's cartoons, by the Protector's desire. In promoting such works he hoped to serve England (he said) as an old man best might.

For if there were an idolatry among us in those Commonwealth days, it was that of England.

Patriotism with the nobler Commonwealth men was a passion and a religion; what love is to a lover, and loyalty to such a Royalist as rose.

It was England for whose sake Cromwell was content to be called a hypocrite and a despot, and to be a "constable," and a man worn to old age at fifty with care and toil.

It was the love of England which kindled the calm heart of the glorious blind poet, who then dwelt among men, to a fanaticism of passionate invective against all who assailed her.

To him she was "a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks; as an eagle renewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam, purging and unsealing her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means."

"Thou, therefore," he wrote, "that sittest in light and glory inapproachable, Parent of angels and men. Next, Thee I implore, omnipotent King, Redeemer of that lost remnant whose nature Thou didst assume; ineffable, and everlasting Love! And Thou the third subsistence of Divine Infinitude, illumining Spirit, the joy and solace of created things! one tri-personal Godhead!

"O Thou that, after the impetuous rage of five blustering inundations, and the succeeding sword of intestine war, soaking the land in her own gore, didst pity the sad and ceaseless revolution of our swift and thick-coming sorrows; when we were quite breathless, of Thy free grace didst motion peace and terms of covenant with us, and having first well-nigh freed us from antichristian thraldom, didst build up this Thy Britannic Empire to a glorious and enviable height, with all her daughter-islands about her; stay us in this felicity; let not the obstinacy of our half-obedience and will-worship bring forth the viper of sedition, .... that we may still remember in our solemn thanksgivings how for us the Northern Ocean, even to the frozen Thule, was scattered with the proud shipwrecks of the Spanish Armada, and the very maw of hell ransacked, and made to give up her concealed destruction, ere she could vent it in that terrible and damned blast. Hitherto Thou hast but freed us, and that not fully, from the unjust and tyrannous claim of Thy foes; now unite us entirely, and appropriate us to Thyself; tie us everlastingly in willing homage to the prerogatives of Thy eternal throne.

"Then, amidst the hymns and hallelujahs of saints, some one may, perhaps, be heard offering in high strains, in new and lofty measure, to sing and celebrate Thy divine mercies and marvellous judgments in this land throughout all ages; whereby this great and warlike nation, instructed and inured to the fervent and continual practice of truth and righteousness, and casting far from her the rags of her whole vices, may press on hard to that high and happy emulation, to be found the soberest, wisest, and most Christian people at that day, when Thou, the eternal and shortly-expected King, shall open the clouds to judge the several kingdoms of the world, and, distributing national honours to religious and just commonwealths, shalt put an end to all earthly tyrannies, proclaiming Thy universal and mild monarchy through heaven and earth, where they, undoubtedly, that, by their labours, counsels, and prayers, have been earnest for the common good of religion and their country, shall receive, above the inferior orders of the blessed, the regal addition of principalities, legions, and thrones, unto their glorious titles, and, in super-eminence of beatific vision, shall clasp inseparable hands with joy and bliss, in over-measure for ever!"

This was what ambition meant, and titles and crowns, to the nobler Puritan men in the days of. the great Commonwealth. This was what England meant, and patriotism. This was what made it so bitter to them to see sedition undermining all this glorious possibility; to see feeble meddling hands untwisting the cordage with which the good old ship had to be worked through battle and storm; so unutterably bitter to see good men blindly (as they believed) helping bad men to undo that glorious past, and render that glorious future, if not impossible for the world for ever, impossible for ages longer; and for England perhaps impossible for evermore.

"For if it should fall out otherwise—if you should basely relinquish the path of virtue, if you do anything unworthy of yourselves—posterity will sit in judgment on your conduct. They will see that the foundations were well laid; that the beginning—nay, it was more than a beginning—was glorious; but with deep emotions of concern will they regret that they were wanting who might have completed the structure. They will see that there was a rich harvest of glory, and an opportunity for the greatest achievements; but that men only were wanting for the execution, while they were not wanting who could rightly counsel, exhort, enforce, and bind an unfading wreath of praise around the brows of the illustrious actors in so glorious a scene."

So he wrote whose hand could best have bound the unfading wreath of praise, whose vision, as he dwelt under the hallowing "shadow of God's wing," became prophetic.

But, meantime, Roger and the brave "labouring men" around him, who reached not to those clear prophetic heights, toiled cheerily on, not seeing the chasm which yawned between them and the glorious goal they deemed so near.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

"January, 1658.—For a twelvemonth now my father and I have been alone. The usurper demanded the banishment of our king from France, and Mazarin and the French Court submitted to the indignity; an indignity, it seems to us, to all courts and all kings.

"Walter accompanied the king to Bruges, and has scarce written to us since. My father and I seldom mention him to each other, but I know he is seldom absent from the thoughts of either of us. The only things which seem to interest my father now are the movements of our exiled Court, which he watches with a feverish solicitude, and the triumphs of the English arms by land and sea, of which he eagerly learns every detail with a mixture cf patriotic pride and loyal indignation which it moves me much to see.

"Last May, for instance, he told me how the French King Louis had come back from reviewing the united French and English troops at Boulogne, and how the French soldiers and courtiers could not say enough of the soldierly bearing of those English horsemen and pikemen.

"Roger saw Walter before he left France, and my father. But I did not see him again.

"It was from Walter I learned of their interview.

"'An act of sisterly loving-kindness, Lettice,' said he, 'to turn a Puritan battery on your brother!'

"His tone was light, but not bitter, and he went on in a softened voice.

"'He has a princely temper, Lettice, and bore from me what I would not bear from the king. But all the time he made me feel I lowered myself and not him by my words. 'Tis a thousand pities, Lettice, those gentlemen keep us out of house and home. I might have been worth something at old Netherby with Roger Drayton for a neighbor. But what is a fellow to do who has no choice but to amuse himself or kill himself? And to throw oneself against Oliver and his England is nothing less than suicide. Oliver is responsible, at all events, for the mischiefs idleness has wrought among loyal men. Do you know, Lettice,' he continued, affectionately, after a pause, 'who manages the old estates for us, and sends us their rents so regularly?'

"'I guessed,' I said.

"'I had been told,' he replied, 'and I asked Roger, and he could not deny it. He and Mr. Drayton manage the estate as if they were our hired bailiffs. Roger himself paid the fine to the Parliament. But he made me promise never to let my father know.'

"I did not answer him. My heart was too full.

"'Lettice,' he exclaimed, 'you are a brave maiden, and a good sister to me. Forgive me if ever I said anything ungenerous to you. I would not care to own for a sister the woman whom Roger Drayton loved, if she could forget him for another. He is the kind of good man it would be worth while to be like. If it were not too late—altogether too late for me,' he added, despondingly.

"'You know it is never too late,' I said. 'Oh, Walter, that is just what you might have been! So my mother thought.'

"'You cannot say might be, Lettice,' he replied; 'not even with Roger Drayton always by my side.'

"'No one can be like Roger,' I said, 'who can only be like him with some one always by his side.'

"'No,' he replied, bitterly; 'Roger is a man to be leant on, not to lean.'

"'He is a man to be leant on,' I said, 'because he does lean. On One always by his side, Walter; the only One who can be always with any of us, the only One we can depend on always, and not grow weak, but strong in depending.'

"He said no more, but sat in silence some time, which seemed to me more like what I longed for in him than anything I had seen. And in the evening he took leave of me with the old kind way he had after our mother died. And for some weeks he was much with us.

"But soon after, the king was desired to quit France, and Walter would accompany him. It would be base, he said, to desert his master when these perfidious Courts and all the world abandoned him. My father could but faintly remonstrate. I ventured to ask if he was strong enough to go into that temptation. But he answered, gaily,—

"'We shall have work to do, Lettice. There is promise of fighting. The Spaniard is to help us, and we him; and together we will bear you back to Netherby in triumph, proclaim amnesties and tolerations without bounds, and bring back the golden age.'

"But there has been no fighting; and since he left we have scarce once heard from him. And we know too well what that means, in a company where nothing good or great is really believed in; neither in God, nor man, nor woman.

"February.—M. la Mothe is dead. And Madame, when she has arranged his affairs, has determined to retire to a convent, there to pray for his soul and to accomplish her own salvation.

"She is somewhat distracted what Order to join. The ladies of Port Royal seem to her the holiest people in the world. But, at the same time, the condemnation pronounced by the Pope on this book of Jansenius, which they regard as so excellent, perplexes her.

"Two years ago the world of Paris was set in a blaze by the 'Lettres Provinciales' of M. Blaise Pascal, in reply to the Jesuits; and by the attack on Jansenius and Port Royal. These letters were said to combine the eloquence and wit of the most finished man of the world with the devotion of a saint.

"Since then the war has waxed fiercer and fiercer between the Jansenists and the Jesuits. To a Protestant the controversy seems strange. Both parties seem to agree that the Pope can pronounce authoritively as to doctrine. But the offence of the Jansenists appears to be that they deny his power to create facts.

"But whatever the hinge of the controversy is (and in most controversies how insignificant the hinge is on which all nominally turns), the combatants seem to me to be divided by very real distinctions. I judge chiefly from their weapons. The weapons of the Jesuits seem to be assertions, anathemas, and prisons; those of Port Royal eloquent words, and a most devout and blameless life.

"Truth seems as sacred to them in its minutest expression as the noblest of the Puritans. They cannot lie. They can be banished, imprisoned; they can die, if such is the will of God, who loves them, and of those who hate them. But they cannot solemnly declare before Him, they believe a thing true which they believe to be false. 'Where is the Christian,' Jacqueline Pascal wrote, 'who would not abhor himself, if it were possible for him to have been present in Pilate's council; and if, when the question of condemning our Saviour to death arose, he had been content with an ambiguous way of pronouncing his opinion so that he might appear to agree with those who condemned his Master, though his words, in their literal meaning, and according to his own conscience, tended to an acquittal? M. de St. Cyran says the least truth of religion ought to be as faithfully defended as Christ Himself. The feebleness of our influence does not lessen our guilt if we use that influence against the truth. Truth is the only real liberator, and she makes none free but those that strike off her own fetters, who bear witness to her with a fidelity that entitles them to be acknowledged as the true children of God the true. Poverty, dispersion, imprisonment, death, these seem to me nothing compared with the anguish of my whole future life, if I should be wretched enough to make a league with death.'

"Noble Catholic Puritan woman!

"Nevertheless Jacqueline Pascal's regulations for the little orphan girls whom they charitably train at Port Royal freeze my heart even to read. The poor little ones are to abstain from all kissing of caressing each other. Even in their jealously limited hour of recreation, they are to play, each alone, without noise!

"And Thou has been on earth, O Christ, tender and gracious, folding the little ones in Thine arms, and these holy sisters of Port Royal love Thee, and read the gospel of Thy birth and death, and think this is what pleases Thee!

"The world was made by Thee, and the world knew Thee not. Alas, the Church which was made and redeemed by Thee, does she also know Thee so little!

"What a surprise, what a rapture of surprise, when these Thy servants who, seeing Thee so dimly, love Thee so much, wake up and see Thee as Thou art, as (if they could but see it) Thou art now!

"June 1658.—Dunkirk has been taken from the Spaniards (chiefly they say by English troops), and has been given over to an English garrison. At last (my father writes), the blot of the loss of Calais is wiped out of the escutcheon of our country. All through those last months he had been watching the movements of the French and English forces with jealous interest. 'That crafty Italian,' he said, '(Mazarin) would overreach the usurper yet. The French Court would use the help of England as long as they needed it, and as long as they could pay with fair and flattering words. And when the time came to pay in fortunes and solid territory, they would politely bow Cromwell and his pikemen out of the country.'

"But when we heard that the 'Protector' had insisted on some of the fruits of the war being made over to England, and that the united armies were on the Flemish coast preparing for an attack on Dunkirk, my father's faith in the courage of our countrymen entirely got the better of his indignation against their politics; and he found several unanswerable reasons for being present at the seat of war.

"June.—Barbe came to me to-day in tears. Sad news had come again from her kindred in the Piedmont Valleys. Protestant surgeons forbidden to live there; trade prohibited; public worship suppressed; a new fortress, from which insolent troops sally to plunder and maltreat the people; commands to sell lands; dim rumours of a second massacre.

"'And Monseigneur Cromwell,' she said, 'so busy with his wars and sieges, that there can be little hope he will have leisure to remember those poor forsaken ones! What hope is there? For beside the English, these sufferers have no friend or protector in the world.'

"July 3rd.—My father has returned.

"'It was worth while to travel round the world,' he said, 'truly, to hear the shout of the English pikemen before the fight. Marshal Turenne could not say enough of their soldierly bearing. He asked what that shout meant, and he was told, "They ever rejoice thus when they behold the enemy." And to see the Spanish veterans driven back before them from post after post, on the sandy dunes by the sea, was a sight to make an old man young. For the old country is young, Lettice, as young as when she stood up alone against old Spain and her Armada! I would the Duke of York had not been on the Spaniard's side. He seemed as out of place as Condé. I scarce know the cause,' he added gloomily, 'which saves a man from being a traitor in fighting against his country.'

"'Then Walter was not there?' I asked.

"His brow darkened.

"'Would to heaven he had been there, on any side!' he answered fiercely. 'Better fight for any cause than fight or work for none, but lead a sluggard's life, a Court-jester's, a Fool's, with the recreant idlers around the king.'

"He was silent for some minutes, going to the window and watching the melancholy dropping of the water from the urn of his old enemy, the moss-green nymph.

"Then he turned and said hastily,—

"'Drayton has found his service better rewarded than mine. Not a gentleman in England or France but might be proud of such a son as his. Firm as a rock, and as calm, who could guess the dash and fire that are in him, unless they saw him head a charge, as I did? 'Tis a labyrinth of a world, Lettice,' he added, 'and sometimes a man is tempted to throw down the clue in despair, and let the Fates take him and his where they will. Old Will Shakspeare saw to the bottom of it all a hundred years ago, "an unsubstantial pageant, the baseless fabric of a vision." Shakspeare and the Bible! There is nothing else worth reading or thinking of.'

"Then Roger was there; and has come out of the battle unscathed! Otherwise my father would have told me.

"But I know not whether they met or no.

"July 4.—I told my father of Barbe's sad tidings of the Vaudois.

"'That will all be set right, you may feel sure,' he replied, grimly. 'There was talk enough about it in the midst of all the fighting. There is nothing that this base and cringing court will not do to court the alliance of that Traitor. I laugh when I hear these French courtiers talk of their ancient nobility, and the glory of their Royal House. Our kings and princes, cousins by blood of their own, may creep about as beggars and outcasts in any poor trading town that is not afraid to take them. But when "my lord Fauconbridge" comes as "ambassador" from this brewer of Huntingdon, Louis, the glorious monarch, descendant of a line of glorious monarchs (up to Nimrod, for what I know), talks to him bareheaded; and Mazarin, the Cardinal, conducts the rebel and heretic to his door with more than royal honours. I am sick of the whole hollow pageant, kings, statesmen, churchmen, all.'

"My father's indignation had led him far from Barbe and the Vaudois.

"'But I may tell Barbe the poor mountaineers will be saved?' I asked.

"'Yes, yes!' he said impatiently. 'There was a Latin letter about the oppression of these people, written, they say, by this Mr. John Milton, whom foreigners seem to think another Cicero or Virgil, the "wisest of Englishmen," and what not; why I know not, except that he writes good Latin, and they cannot read English, so that of course they cannot know anything about the wisdom of Englishmen. And the king, was all attention, and the fox of a Cardinal all sympathy with those poor plucked geese, of whose fate he was (of course) in entire ignorance. And the Duke of Savoy is to have an exhortation; and the massacre is to be forbidden.'

"But Barbe when I told her was altogether overcome. She burst into tears, and clasping her hands, exclaimed,—

"'To our dying day we will pray for the great heart that in the midst of wars by sea or land could remember those few poor persecuted brothers in the far-off mountains, and would not rest until they were rescued. To our dying day we will pray for him and for the great English nation. Mademoiselle will pardon, if I wound her loyal feelings,' she added, remembering what the name of Cromwell was to the Cavaliers, and kneeling for a moment and kissing my hand in apology; 'English politics are so difficult for us to understand. To you this Monseigneur may be such as you cannot approve, but to us poor Protestants, he is a Protector, Deliverer, Brother. Can we err in praying for him?'

"'You can scarcely err in praying for him, or for any one, Barbe,' I said. 'God will not give wrong because we ask wrong. If one of your little brothers, being thirsty, asked you for a drink from a cup of poison, you would smile and put it aside, and give him the cup of water he wants instead.'

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

The taking of Dunkirk in June, 1658, and the relief ensured to the threatened Christians in the Valleys, was a brilliant moment in that stormy time.

All England triumphed. The dishonour of the loss of Calais was undone. The Protestant Commonwealth had avenged the disgrace which sank so deep into the heart of the poor dying Popish Queen.

Once more the Lord Protector had shown that the Protestant Church was not a heap of disjointed fragments, but a living body, which felt with a pang of actual pain an injury inflicted on its feeblest member. A living body to feel, and a living power to avenge.

England was no more an island (except in as far as her seas and ships were her impassable trench and impregnable walls against the world), but as in the old days before the Reformation, one of the great commonwealth of nations, nay, rather the queenly protector of the great commonwealth of Protestant nations.

Nevertheless this sense of unity and strength seemed but the passing consciousness of a waking moment. The rest of the months seemed too much like a restless feverish dream. At least so they appear to me as I look back. How far the great calamity of that autumn has to do with darkening the whole year in my memory into a valley of the shadow of death, it is hard to say.

The clouds gathered and gathered again, thick and dark throughout the year, over the Commonwealth and over the Protector's household.

The prophets of doom saw sorrows enough break on Oliver's head to satisfy them that their predictions were just.

On February the 4th, his last Parliament was dissolved, with words which seem to me noble and mournful as any with which a great man ever uttered his grief that his people would not understand him, and that he had to tread his way alone.

A fortnight before he had opened it with words of stern warning, yet of hope:—"I look upon this to be the great duty of my place," he had said, "as being set on a watch-tower to see what may be for the good of these nations, and what may be for the preventing of evil." Then warning them of the dangers which environed England and the Protestant nations, he said,—"You have accounted yourselves happy in being environed with a great ditch from all the world beside. Truly you will not be able to keep your ditch, nor your shipping, unless you fight to defend yourselves. If you shall think this is a time of sleep and ease and rest,—we may discourse of all things at pleasure, there is no danger,—I have this comfort to Godward; I have told you of it."

And now the warnings were fulfilled, the hope had vanished, and with stern voice he said;—

"I had very comfortable expectations that God would make the meeting of this Parliament a blessing. That which brought me into the capacity I now stand in was the petition and advice given me by you. There is not a man living can say I sought it; not a man nor woman treading upon English ground.

"I can say in the presence of God—in comparison with whom we are but like poor creeping ants upon the earth—I would have been glad to have lived under my woodside, to have kept a flock of sheep." "I thought I had been doing that which was my duty, and thought it would have satisfied you. But if everything must be too high or too low, you are not to be satisfied." (Theologies puffed up too high on airy heights, above plain "virtue and honesty, justice, piety," and all the sober work of men; disorders plunging too low.) "Yet you have not only disjointed yourselves, but the whole nation; which is in likelihood of running into more confusion in these fifteen or sixteen days that you have sate, than it hath been from the rising of the session to this day; that some men may rule all! And they are endeavouring to engage the army to carry that thing!

"These things tend to nothing but the playing of the King of Scots' game (if I may so call him), and I think myself bound before God to do what I can to prevent it.

"The King of Scots hath an army ready to be shipped for England; and while this is doing, there are endeavours from some who are not far from this place, to stir up the people of this town into a tumulting. Some of you have been listing persons by commission of Charles Stuart. And if this be the end of your sitting, and this be your carriage, I think it high time an end should be put to your sitting. And I do dissolve this Parliament. And let God be Judge between you and me."

The Protector, at least, was not afraid to appeal to the highest tribunal. Royalists, Quakers, Fifth-Monarchy men, good men of various kinds, threatened him with the judgment of that bar as a terror. He invoked it as a refuge.

So his last Parliament went its way, leaving him to bear the whole burden alone for the rest of the journey. It was not long. Six months, and he should stand at the tribunal to which he had appealed. He had appealed to the Highest; to the Highest he was to go.

The blows of death fell thick on those he loved;—on the few who steadfastly trusted and honoured him. In the August before, Blake had died, the sea hero, coming home from his victories. He had died off Plymouth, in sight of shore.

Could we have seen it, the Protector also was in sight of shore; the shore he longed for, and did not fail to reach.

In February one of his young daughters was widowed, the Lady Frances, bereaved in the first year of their marriage of her husband, young Mr. Rich, a widow at seventeen.

In April died the good Earl of Warwick, one of the noblemen who had honoured Oliver from the first; Mr. Rich's grandfather.

In July and early August the shadow drew closer. The Lady Claypole—his dearest daughter Betty—lay sorely smitten at Hampton Court.

The tumults around the palace and the kingdom, for the time, must have seemed faint, far-off echoes to the father's heart, compared with the sufferings and fears of the sick-chamber, where his daughter lay dying.

Yet these were not few.

General Lambert, his old friend and comrade, plotting to throw him out of one of the windows of Whitehall, under pretence of presenting a petition; "knowing," Roger said, "how open the brave heart which no treachery could make suspicious, was to cries for redress of wrong."

Colonel Hutchinson, Independent and Republican, also his old friend and comrade, while warning him of this plot, piercing his heart, belike, deeper than the assassin's knife by deeming the "affection" and trusting words and tears with which the Protector thanked him (almost beseeching the return of the old friendship) mere "arts" and "fair courtship."

The Presbyterians coldly holding off from him, or persistently conspiring with the Cavaliers.

Lord Ormond in London in disguise, organizing a Royalist insurrection.

The tract, "Killing no Murder," warning him that "the muster-roll" of those who thought it doing God service to kill him, was "longer than he could count," and some of them "among his own friends."

Fifth-Monarchy men raising the standard of the "Lion of the tribe of Judah," against what they called his tyranny.

George Fox and the Quakers, in awful letters of denunciation, "laying on him the weight" of all the persecution of the Friends throughout England, inflicted under the authority of his name, although, as far as I know, never by his order.

Aunt Dorothy wrote that deliverance must be at hand, for she understood that a "synagogue of Portuguese Jews had been suffered to pollute the land by celebrating publicly their anti-Christian rites in London."

Annis Nye said little. "But Thomas Oldham, Margaret Fell, George Fox, and Edward Burrough have warned Oliver," she observed, "that if he listen to lies against the innocent, and fail to release the Friends from prison, God will suddenly smite him, and that without remedy."

"Not so easy, Mistress Annis," replied Job, "for a mortal man, protector or king, to know what are lies, and who are the innocent, nor to set all the wrongs right in a day. Not so easy it seems, even for the Almighty, who has been ruling all these ages. I thought once it could be done all in a day. But I had to learn otherwise, and so wilt thou. Seems to me one half of the godly grumble at the Protector because they think he wants to be almighty, and the other because they want him to be all-seeing and all-present."

Meanwhile, the ambassadors of all rations thronged to pay homage to the man who made all men honour England, whether she honoured him or not. Through those summer months after the victory and capture of Dunkirk, the streets were brave with coaches of ambassadors and princes, from France, Denmark, Austria, and the ends of the earth.

The strong hand was still on the helm, the clear strong eyes were still on the waves and stars, keeping watch for England, whether she acknowledged it or not.

No man saw the hand relax its grasp, or the eyes waver from their purpose, for all the noise and clamour, or the aiming at his life. He saw all, and calmly put aside the danger when too near; but never turned from his steadfast watch, steadfastly piloting the good ship on.

Until at last, for a brief season, the brave heart gave way. His dearest child was dying; and for fourteen days the Lord Protector could attend to nothing save the dying moans and tears of that bed of anguish. For her death was slow, and approached through terrible pain, so that her anguish was more than her father could bear to see.

George Fox wrote to her some words of warm and tender sympathy:

"Be still and cool in thy own mind and spirit from thy own thoughts, and be stayed in the principle of God in thee, that it may raise thy mind up to God, and stay it upon God, and find Him to be a God at hand. The humble, God will teach His way. The same light which lets you see sin and transgression will let you see the covenant of God which blots out your sin and transgression, which gives victory and dominion over it. For looking down at sin and corruption and desolation, ye are swallowed up in it; but looking at the light which discovers them, you will see over them: that ye may feel the power of an endless life, the power of God which is immortal; which brings the immortal soul up to the immortal God, in whom it doth rejoice. So, in the name and power of the Lord Jesus Christ, God Almighty strengthen thee."

Good words, though no new truth to the daughter of him who had written, years before, to General Fleetwood, his daughter Bridget's husband: "Faith, as an act, yields not grace; but only as it leads to Him who is our perfect rest and peace." But when they were read to the poor suffering lady, she said they "stayed her mind." She had need of all the stay that could be given. And her father was not one to keep one word of comfort from her fainting heart because he could have spoken it better, or because it dropped from lips which had denounced him.

On the 5th of August the long watch by the bed of anguish in the mournful palace-chamber was over. The weary body and spirit were at rest. The Lady Elizabeth lay dead.

The Protector roused himself once more to take up the burden of the State, which while she suffered, he had been, for the first time, unable to bear. Attempts at assassination, insurrections, had not interrupted his work a day. But for fourteen days even England was forgotten, as he watched the slow death agonies of his child.

Now that she was dead, he arose and girded himself once more for his warfare.

Another fourteen days, and he could put his armour off and lie down for the long rest!

The sources of his strength were not altogether hidden from us. We heard that a few days after his daughter's death he called on one to read him from the Bible the words: "Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me."

"This Scripture did once save my life," he said, "when my eldest son died, which went as a dagger to my heart, indeed it did."

"It's true, Paul," he went on, after a pause, "you have learned this, and attained to this measure of grace, but what shall I do? Ah, poor creature, it's a hard lesson for me to take out. I find it so." Then, looking on, he read aloud: "I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me;" and his heart seemed comforted, for he said: "He that was Paul's Christ is my Christ too."

He was standing near the end of the arduous journey, though neither he nor any knew it; and from the height he looked back over the many battle-fields of his life; from this last sorrow to that first, to the grave of his first-born, and all the promise buried with him in the quiet old church at Felsted.

A day or two after George Fox met him, riding at the head of his life-guard. Oliver stopped and listened, and spoke to him about the sufferings of Friends. Always so ready to listen to men he believed good and true, denounce him as they might! And he bade George Fox come to his house. But on the morrow when George went to Hampton Court to wait on him, the physicians deemed the Protector too ill to see him, and the Quaker went away and never saw him more. He thought that he had felt a "waft of death" go forth against the Protector when he met him at the head of his guard. It would be long before George Fox found again one in king's palaces, lord of England, and dread of Europe, who would "catch him by the hand," as Oliver did, regardless of discourtesies and denunciations, and say with tears in those searching and commanding eyes, "Come again to my house. If thou and I were but an hour of the day together, we should be nearer one to the other. I wish no more harm to thee than I do to my own soul."

Perhaps as George went away from the door so freely opened to him, the memory of these welcomes and farewells came back to him. And he may have thought that in prophesying death to the Protector, he and his Friends had uttered rather a promise than a threat. But I know not.

On Friday, the 20th of August, uneasy rumours began to spread of his Highness's sickness. On the following Tuesday, the 24th, the symptoms were worse. It was tertian ague, and the doctors had him removed to Whitehall for drier air.

The anxiety in the city grew speechless; brief questions to any who knew of his state; brief unsatisfying answers. And then prayers, fervent, frequent, constant, in churches, in cathedrals, in palaces, in homes; from Owen and Goodwin in a a room at Whitehall adjoining that in which the Protector lay. Prayers so fervent, that those who poured them forth from hearts made eloquent by hope and fear, mistook this inward glow for a responsive divine fire, and assured others that their offerings were accepted, that their petitions would be granted, and the precious life be spared to England yet.

But through all those days Roger, who had returned from France, spoke scarce a word, save in answer to our questions about his Highness's health, when he came from the palace. He looked pale as death himself, and well-nigh as rigid. The longings in his heart for Oliver's life were so fervent that to himself his own prayers and those of other men seemed in comparison as if struck with a death chill. "I cannot pray, Olive," he said to me once. "When I look up to heaven I seem to see nothing but a great silent, stately Company, making a path between them for him, straight to the Throne, and waiting to see him pass."

Once when coming from a place where many had met in prayer, broken by tears and sobs, I said to Roger: "Surely God only suffers this to show England what he is. The people begin to understand him now! They will never forget!"

"They begin to understand now," he said. "Wayward children do begin to understand many things by a father's death-bed."

The word fell from his lips like a tolling bell. I knew well he could not have uttered it if he had felt any hope.

Annis Nye was quieter than even her wont, and very gentle, during those days. Once having heard how his Highness' "spirit was stayed," she said a thing which drew my heart to her very closely.

"May be the words of the Friends are being fulfilled otherwise than we looked. May be the angel is smiting, not Oliver, but only the fetters, and the prison doors to set him free."

Roger brought us word from time to time of sacred words from the sick-chamber.

"The Covenants were two—Two put into One before the foundation of the world."

"It is holy and true—it is holy and true—it is holy and true! Who made it holy and true? The Mediator of the Covenant."

"The Covenant is but one. Faith in the Covenant is my support. And if I believe not, He abides faithful."

Solemn, slow, broken utterances, not to man, but to God.

And then to his wife and children weeping by his bedside—

"Love not the world. I say unto you it is not good that you should love this world."

It was becoming "this" world, no longer "the" world to him; but one of two worlds. For a little while longer this world to him, soon to be "that world" still surging in tumult below, where he had fought the good fight which is now over for ever.

"Children, live like Christians; I leave you the Covenant to feed upon."

Then (belike passing through a chaos of darkness and doubt, such as seems to edge round and usher in every fresh creation of light), "three times with great weight and vehemency of spirit"—

"It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

And afterwards (the light beyond the darkness being reached)—

"All the promises of God are in Him, yea and in Him, Amen, to the glory of God by us—by us—in Jesus Christ."

"The Lord hath filled me with as much assurance of His favour and His love as my soul can hold."

"I think I am the poorest wretch that lives; but I love God, or rather, am beloved of God."

"I am a conqueror, and more than a conqueror through Christ that strengtheneth me."

So through the weary days and nights he passed, nearer and nearer to the end, the tumult in men's hearts growing deeper, when on the Monday the 30th of August, the fearful storm of wind which none who heard can ever forget raged over the land, as if it were over the sea; beating back carriages on the roads, as if they had been boats on the rivers; raging, wailing, rending, destroying, as if the angels who held the "four winds of the earth" had relaxed their hold, and set the wild creatures all free together.

But to us who loved Oliver and the Commonwealth, that tempest seemed but the simple and natural accompaniment to the tumult in our souls, a response to the storms in men's hearts; simply a fitting dirge to the life that went out with it.

And meantime, through the storm, his Highness was praying thus:—

"Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched sinner, I am in covenant with Thee through grace. And I may, I will, come to Thee for Thy people. Thou has made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and Thee some service; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of my death. Lord, however Thou do dispose of me, continue to go on and do good for them. Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation; and make the name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much on Thy instruments to depend more upon Thyself. Pardon such as desire to trample on the dust of a poor worm, for they are Thy people too. And pardon the folly of this short prayer. Even for Jesus Christ's sake. And give us a good night if it be Thy pleasure. Amen."

He knew it, then, and he had felt it; it had pierced his heart, that those he deemed good men should mistrust him, and be glad that he should die. That arrow had gone home, yet with the barb in his heart it could not make him think evil of those that launched it, nor leave them out of his prayers.

The last night came. It was the 2nd of September, the eve of his day of victory, the day of his "crowning mercy," a Thanksgiving Day in England since the battle of Worcester. The voice was low now, and the words not always to be understood.

"Surely God is good. He is—He will not—"

And often again and again, "with cheerfulness and fervour in the midst of his pains,"—

"God is good."

This was the key-note to which "all along" his other tones kept recurring—

"Truly God is good—indeed He is."

"I could be willing to live to be further serviceable to God and His people. But my work is done. Yet God will be with His people."

Through the night much restlessness, yet much inward rest. Broken words of holy consolation and peace, "self annihilating" words, words of kingly care for England, and God's cause there; these among the very last.

Some drink being offered to him, with an entreaty to try to sleep, he answered—

"It is not my design to drink or sleep; but my design is to make what haste I can to be gone."

And on the morrow he had fallen asleep, and was gone.

Amongst us who were left behind, the Thanksgiving Day was turned into weeping. But his long day of thanksgiving had begun. The long night of his faithful watching of the wars and storms for England was over; the clear eye, the steady hand, were gone from the helm. The day of victory, and rest, and coronation, had dawned for him at last.

For, as his chaplain Mr. John Howe, said:

"The greatest enemy we have in the world cannot do us the despite to keep us from dying."

CHAPTER IX.

NOTES BY MAGDALENE ANTONY.

The first public event of which I have any recollection, or rather the first time I can clearly recollect having a glimpse beyond our own little world in London and Netherby, was one warm evening in August, 1658.

My mother was coming home with me and Dolly from the house of Mr. John Milton in Bird-Cage Walk, past Whitehall, when we noticed many people clustering like bees around the doors of the palace; and I remember my mother lifting up her finger, and saying to Dolly and me, who were discussing some of our small affairs eagerly:—

"Hush, children, the Protector is there, in sore sickness."

And then I remember noticing that the groups of people through which we were passing were all speaking low and walking softly, as people do in sick-chambers, and every now and then looking up anxiously to the palace-windows.

I recollect a hush and awe creeping over me, and a guilty feeling, as if Dolly and I had been chidden for talking in church.

And all spoke in murmurs, and no one said anything I could hear distinctly, until, as we were leaving the space in front of the palace, from the last point at which we could see the windows, my mother turned back to look. It happened that at that moment two men were standing close to us, and one pointed to the palace, and said: "It was there! the murderers set up the black scaffold there, just under those windows. I see it now; and so, I trow, does the murderer on his sick-bed inside. And so will more than one when the black pall comes out at those doors. The day of vengeance always comes at last."

The words went through me like a shudder. They were spoken in a deep hissing whisper, more like the gnashing of teeth than speaking.

I did not venture to tell my mother of them. I did not know if she had heard them. I never told anyone of them. They lay seething and working in my brain, as so many perplexities do in children's minds—half-shaped, half-shapeless, altogether voiceless, like ghosts waiting to be born—and tormented me greatly.

For in a few days the terrible black train did leave those palace-doors. My mother took us to see it. And my mother wept, and Aunt Gretel, which was not so wonderful, because Aunt Gretel would weep as easily at anything that moved her as we, children. But my father wept, and even Uncle Roger; and Annis, the nurse, was stiller than ever. And there was great silence and quiet weeping among the people as the black train passed from the Palace to the Abbey. It was a great day of mourning; and my father told us we must never forget it. For all the people of England, said he, that day had lost their best friend. But all the time I could not get it out of my head that somebody had called him a murderer, and had called this day of mourning a day of vengeance.

It puzzled me exceedingly, more especially as Dr. Rich, the quiet clergyman who lived in the little house at the end of our garden, and Austin his son, our playfellow, would not, I knew, have anything to do with the procession; and, indeed, would never call the Protector anything but Mr. Cromwell. And Annis, our nurse, never called him anything but Oliver Cromwell (although in her that was not remarkable, since she called even our father and mother Leonard and Olive); and I had heard her say often, no man was to be called a "Protector" who let hundreds of poor Friends languish in prison. Also Aunt Dorothy, I knew, would not come to stay with us on account of something that had to do with the Protector. All which things made a great tumult and chaos in my brain.

But I must confess that the result was, that we grew up with a great tenderness for the Royalist side.

There was little in the shows and titles of the Commonwealth to enkindle the imaginations of children.

In all the fairy tales and romaunts and poems we knew, there was no such prosaical title as Lord Protector. Indeed, we agreed that the Bible history itself became much more interesting after the judges were changed into kings, however wrong it might have been of the Jews to wish for the change. We felt that the threat of his taking our "sons" to be his horsemen and charioteers, and our "daughters" to be his cooks and confectionaries, would certainly not have deterred us from demanding a king. We thought it would be undoubtedly more glorious to be my Lady Confectionary to a queen, or my Lord Charioteer to a king, than to be anything in the sober untitled train of a protector. Queen Esther was to us a far more romantic personage than Deborah, who was only a mother in Israel. And on Sundays, when the sermons were very long and we were allowed to read the Bible to keep us from going to sleep, we found great solace in expatiating upon Shushan the palace, among the courts of the gardens with mysterious splendours of fine linen and purple—beds of gold and silver—pavement of red, blue, white, and black marble—silver rings and pillars of marble, between which were to be caught glimpses of fair ladies in robes fragrant with perfumes—of a crown royal and a golden sceptre.

But besides these enchantments for our earthly imaginations, the Royalist cause, as expounded to us by Austin Rich and his brothers, laid hold on our hearts by the irresistible charm of suffering majesty. Over the story of the young orphan Princess Elizabeth, dying in the castle where her father had been imprisoned, with her head pillowed on the Bible she loved, we wept many tears. The young Duke of Gloucester, who had declared to the king just before his execution that he would let them tear him in pieces rather than accept his brother's throne, was one of our earliest heroes.

And, above all, the name of King Charles was sacred to us. Our mother always spoke of him with a tender respect. We knew how he had worn the portrait of the queen his wife next his heart, and only parted with it with his life. We thought it quite natural that Archbishop Usher, seeing from the roof of Lady Peterborough's house the king's coat laid aside and his hair bound up for the fatal stroke, should have been able to see no more, but been led fainting away. Moreover, Austin Rich had sundry pathetic stories of Episcopal clergymen plundered, and their parsonages pillaged by Parliament troopers, because they would not deny the king or refuse to pray for him.

So that we were quite prepared to welcome the next great public event which made an impression on us after the funeral of the Protector. This was the entry of King Charles II. into London. A king was actually coming through our streets! Our king; who had passed his youth in exile! He was coming to be crowned in the Abbey, and to reign over us. And if a king, then of course the queen would come, and princes, and princesses, with all the splendours belonging to them.

We were sorry our kindred did not seem quite happy about it. But we had been told to speak respectfully of the king, and we had heard the minister in one of the churches pray for him. So that, on the whole, Dolly and I came to the conclusion that it would not be very wrong for us to enjoy the magnificence as much as we certainly did. Especially as Aunt Dorothy (who, our mother told us, was as good as Aunt Gretel, and Aunt Gretel we well knew was better than any one else) was coming to town for nothing else but to see the face of His Majesty and do him honour.

The previous festivities had excited our expectations to a high pitch. There had been heralds, in coats of many colours, proclaiming the king at different places in the streets; and crowds shouting, "The king, God bless him!" and bells breaking out into peals of joy; and bonfires—we could count thirty one evening from our upper windows—along the high road from Westminster to the City, in the streets, on the bridges, by the water-side.

So at last the great festival came. Banners hidden for years waving from the windows all down the streets; fountains flowing with wine; bells clashing all together in sudden peals, as if they had gone wild for joy; and all the people as mad for joy as the bells—some shouting, some weeping; strangers greeting each other like old friends. And such dresses! Old Cavalier wardrobes brought to light again; and some ladies and gentlemen in the new French fashions, with dresses gilded, slashed, tasseled, plumed, laced; every one trying to show their loyalty by going as far from the old Puritan plainness as possible, in materials as rich as could be purchased, and of every colour of the rainbow. We thought it almost as splendid as Shushan the palace in the days of Esther the queen. Trumpets, bells, drums, songs, wild shouts; colour and music everywhere, May-day everywhere,—in dresses, in banners, in the budding trees, in the blue skies; all the city, all the world seemed to us gone wild with joy.

And Aunt Dorothy, the soberest and gravest of all our kindred, as wild as any one; crying out, "The king, God bless him!" kissing Dolly and me again and again in a way which surprised us exceedingly, as we were not aware of having done any thing remarkably good; and even at bed-time the caresses exchanged between us usually went no further than our courtesying and kissing her hand, and being told to be good children.

And then the king!

On horseback, as a king should be; in gorgeous apparel, smiling and bowing right and left, as if he felt we were all friends; acknowledging every courtesy with the easy grace natural to him.

And as he passed by, Aunt Dorothy actually sank down on one knee and clasped her hands as if in prayer, while the tears streamed over her face; and we thought we heard her murmur, "Lord, now let thy servant depart in peace." For she told us the salvation of England had come.

So the king went on to his palace; and the loyal lords and ladies followed him in their coaches, brilliant with jewels and smiles. And Aunt Dorothy, Dolly, and I looked on, when suddenly, while the procession was pausing for a minute, one of the loveliest of the ladies turned towards us; and when she saw Aunt Dorothy, her face, which was graver and paler than most of those in that gay company broke into smiles and into a sudden glow; and she seemed looking on beyond us, and then her eyes came back and rested on us again, a little sadly.

Aunt Dorothy exclaimed,—

"Lettice Davenant!"

And I looked, and loved her face at once, and yet wondered. For our mother had talked to us of her as the brightest creature in the world; and we had always pictured our loveliest fairy princesses as like what our mother had told us of Lettice Davenant, with eyes like diamonds, and teeth like pearls, and a colour like fresh roses, and a brilliant changing face, with a flash and play like precious stones about it.

And now she sat there quietly dressed, unlike the ladies round her; bedecked with few jewels; with a sweet, calm face, rather like the good women in New Testament pictures, than a princess in a fairy tale.

So she also passed on, following the king to the palace. And the people rejoiced, and sang and feasted far into the night.

We were wakened from our first sleep by sounds of revelry and wild songs echoing through the streets. Strange sounds to us.

We crept close to each other, Dolly and I; and I said, "Dolly, do you think it was as good as the Book of Esther?"

But Dolly confessed to being a little disappointed. The king in the fairy tales was so different from other people, she said; you always knew him from any one else, even when he was dressed like a beggar. How, she could not quite tell; perhaps his face actually shone, and his clothes, instead of being only shone upon, like other people's.

But our king was dressed like a king in a fairy tale, there was nothing to complain of in that; and yet, if Aunt Dorothy had not told us, we might not have known him from the gentlemen with him. We agreed that it would be convenient, since the faces of real kings did not shine, that they should always wear crowns. Otherwise one might make mistakes, which would be such a pity.

Perhaps, when our king was crowned, however, it would be all right.

But we concluded that it certainly was a very delightful thing to have a king of our own, whether his face shone, or whether he was a head and shoulders taller than other men, or not. It made every one dress so beautifully, and seem so glad, and set all the bells and trumpets going so gloriously. And we hoped very soon there would come also the queen, and the princes and princesses.

And then the world would be something like fairy-land indeed. Our father and mother, and Uncle Roger, and all the good people, would of course be rewarded, and made happy all the rest of their days, when our king found them out, as he would be sure to do in time. Of course, they were not expecting to be rewarded. On the contrary, they would be exceedingly surprised when the king found them out, and embraced them, and made them sit on his right hand. The good people in the fairy tales always were. But there was sure to be no mistake in the end. The good people always had their due when the true prince came. And it was not to be thought of that England was to be worse governed than a kingdom in fairy-land.

The next week we were still more satisfied that we had entered on this fairy world. For as Isaac, Dolly, and I were passing Westminster Abbey, we heard an unwonted sound issuing from it, and crept in to listen. Then, for the first time, we heard the organ, with the chant of the choristers. But we no more thought of its being an earthly instrument, made of wood and metal, than of the golden streets of the New Jerusalem being made of gold like one of our coins.

The wonderful sounds rolled up and down the aisles, and wound in and out among the arches, and wreathed the old stone pillars, and seemed to lose themselves in far-off shrines and mysterious endless recesses like those in a forest, and then to come back again changed and intertwined with earlier echoes to mingle with the new tides of music that kept streaming forth; until we found that all the while the wondrous tones had seemed wandering at their own sweet will, they had been building a temple within the temple—a temple of melody within the temple of stone. And the Abbey was no more a sculptured edifice, but a living body with a living soul. And when this temple was built, angels came and sang in it—voices such as we had never heard on earth—clear as bells, and free as winds, without a touch of the struggle and sadness in them which common human voices have.

Thus Isaac, Dolly, and I walked home, with the gates of paradise all open around us.

The next morning we crept out again to listen if these heavenly gates were open still.

But on our way we met a noisy, riotous crowd dragging along a bear which was to be baited in the Spring Gardens. Isaac said "baiting" meant that it was to be torn in pieces by dogs for the amusement of the people, after killing and gashing as many dogs as it could, meantime, in its own defence. This was an amusement which the Protector had not permitted. The thought of it closed the gates of paradise to me, at least for that day.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

They laid him in the Abbey among the kings.

For two years the dust of Tudors and Plantagenets was honoured (so Roger thought) by the neighbourhood of the mortal part of the man who had served England as any of her kings might have been proud to have served her—had loved her, as we believe, more than home or life, or even the esteem of good men—had made her greater than any king or prince had ever made her, from Alfred to the Elizabeth whom he called "that great queen."

And then, in the September after the Restoration, (by order of the king who sold Dunkirk to the French, and spent the money like the prodigal in the parable), the noble dust was taken out of its resting-place, with the remains of the aged mother, and that daughter, Elizabeth Claypole, whom the Protector had loved so dearly; and of Blake, the great admiral, who had made the name of England a renown from the shores of Italy and Algiers to Teneriffe and the western islands of the Spanish main, to be cast contemptuously into a pit in the neighbouring churchyard of St. Margaret's.

I think, when he was gone, most good men in England—at least most Puritan good men—felt something was lost our generation was scarce likely to recover. The Scottish ministers said that God's goodness had marvellously caused true piety to flourish more under this usurper than under her rightful kings; "turning bitter waters into sweet by a miracle." And so thought Mr. Richard Baxter; acknowledging, moreover, that he believed the Protector, misled as he had been, "meant well in the main."

Good Mr. Philip Henry (who kept the day of the late king's death as a fast day) wrote, that though during the years between forty and sixty, "the foundations were out of course, yet in the matter of God's worship thing went well; there was freedom and reformation."

Mistress Lucy Hutchinson acknowledged that he had much natural greatness, and well became the place he had usurped, and that "his personal courage and magnanimity upheld him against all enemies and malcontents." And Mr. John Maidstone, his faithful "gentleman and cofferer," wrote (when nothing but dishonour could come to any for honouring him): "In the direst perils of the war, and the high places of the field, hope shone in him like a pillar of fire when it had gone out in others." And he described him thus: "A body well compact and strong; his stature under six feet (I believe two inches); his head so shaped as you might see it both a storehouse and a shop" (full for every need, ready for all occasions); "a vast treasury of natural parts; his temper exceeding fiery (as I have known), but the flame of it kept down, for the most part, or soon allayed, with those moral endowments he had; naturally compassionate towards objects in distress, even to an effeminate measure, though God had made in him a heart wherein was left little room for fear. A larger soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was."

But he was gone. And all the people in England who thought they could govern England better than he had governed her, were at liberty to try.

They did try, for a little more than a year. And at the end of that time the whole nation, distracted to madness from end to end by the disorders they brought about, threw itself at the feet of Charles the Second, in a frenzy of loyalty, without conditions, simply entreating, like a child wearied with its own wilfulness, to be forgiven and governed and kept quiet, yielding every precious right—the fruit of our forefathers' blood and toil—into his hands, content, if he had been strong, to be made as servile as he pleased; ready, alas, he being not strong, but weak and profligate, to be made as base as (for the time) he could and did make it.

"Such," said Roger, "was the Aceldama from which that strong faithful arm had saved us."

"Such," sighed my father, "was the end of the most beneficent of despotisms that could not be immortal."

Roger never ceased, during the few months of the Commonwealth, to do all he could to carry out what he believed would have been the Lord Protector's wish, doing his utmost to serve my Lord Richard, the new Protector, and, after his resignation, to keep order and discipline in the army. But he worked with little hope. During all the times of trial before or since, I never saw him so downcast and desponding as then.

When once the Restoration came his spirits seemed, strangely, to rise again.

He had done his best; and the worst had come. The hopeless struggle without a chief was over, and henceforth he, and those who thought with him, must gird on a new courage, not to contend but to endure. I well remember how, on the evening of the day of the king's entry into London, he came into our parlour, and unlaced his helmet, and quietly ungirding his sword, laid it on a shelf behind the great Family Bible.

He said nothing, but the action spoke; and we understood, and also said nothing.

Then he left the room, and after a time came down, with every vestige of the old armour of the Ironsides gone, in the plain dress of a Puritan gentleman, and sitting down, he took Maidie on his knee, and began to talk to her cheerily.

It overcame me altogether to see him so, for I knew it meant that he had given up all hope for himself, and well-nigh for England, and the tears fell fast on my sewing. He saw them, and gently setting Maidie down, he came and sat down close by me, and said,—

"Let us thank God, Olive. The old army has been true to itself, and to him who made it what it was, to the last.

"We were gathered on Black Heath to-day, thirty thousand of us; enough to have swept the king and his courtiers, and London and its citizens, into the Thames. We had done more than that before, I think, with fewer of us. And we know, most of us, that this day is as our last; the last of the old army he made. Many of us see nothing left to fight for, and will go back quietly to farm and home, to honest toil and trade, that is, if they will let us; for there are not a few of us that look for a halter rather than a home when the king enjoys his own again in security. They will hardly trust us together in force again. The discipline which won Naseby and gained Dunbar never wavered. But we let the royal party pass quietly, as if the Lord General had given the word of command. And that, I think, is something to give thanks for. It would not have been well to tarnish his memory by disorders he would have reproved."

After that, the great army of the Commonwealth died away, as Roger had expected, and was heard of no more, except when aged yeomen and tradesmen, on village greens and in city homes, now and then enkindled, as they spoke to each other of Naseby, Dunbar, Worcester, and Dunkirk, into an enthusiasm strange to the next generation, who had only known them peacefully labouring in the field, the workshop, or at the forge.

But the bones of the Protector had not yet reached their last resting-place. On the 3rd of January 1661; the anniversary of the "martyrdom of His Sacred Majesty" eleven years before, the body of the "great prince" was once more disinterred, with that of Bradshaw, hanged throughout the day on a gibbet at Tyburn, and at night thrown like that of a dog into a pit at the foot of the gallows.

It was a marvellous proof of the just judgments of God, some of the Royalists thought, slow but sure.

Roger only said, when he could speak of it all, which was not for long, "'After that, have no more that they can do.' They have done the worst. And how little it is, that even the basest vengeance could add to the dishonour of the dust, and the worm, which awaits what is mortal of us all! The distance between Tyburn and the royal tombs in the Abbey is little indeed, measured from heaven. Nor will it take longer time from the one than from the other to hear the trumpet when it sounds, and to obey its summons."

"But England is dishonoured by the deed."

"I think not," he replied; "or not chiefly by that deed. The men of England may be dishonoured that they did not acknowledge him living. But no grave in England can dishonour him dead, or can take his dust from the faithful keeping of his native earth; nor, I think, can all men may do keep the day from coming when England shall feel that not one spot only, but every inch of English earth is made more sacred by his feet having trodden it, and by his dust being mingled with it."

Little indeed can human vengeance add to the dishonour of death, when once death is past.

But alas, on this side, how much is possible to human cruelty!

As victim after victim proved, led forth to the ignominy and the protracted anguish of the traitor's death, patiently giving up their souls to God amidst such agonies as the torturer's knife could inflict.

Some were in the prime of life and strong to feel; others aged and weak to bear. But I never heard that any of the ten who so suffered dishonoured either themselves, what they deemed "the good old cause," England, or the God who sustained them, by one unworthy word or moan.

The savage punishment of treason had never been inflicted once during the Commonwealth. It was suffered eleven times in the first year after the Restoration. It came back with the May-poles, and the beautiful coats of many colours, and courtly manners.

The king was present at some of these executions. He went from them to hear the beautiful heavenly music in the Royal Chapel; or to listen to other music, not heavenly, in the palace.

But the people grew weary of this soon. It was feared that if these executions were too often repeated, the minds of the Commonwealth might once more become confused about the enormity of the crime, illogically forgetting it in the enormity of the punishment. And it was recommended they should not be continued; at all events, not so near the royal residence.

But amidst all the restorations—which to us seemed not going forward and upward, but backward and downward—there was one which brought me some peaceful and hallowed hours.

It was the restoration of the old Liturgy.

There was comfort in creeping into some quiet corner of the Abbey, or of the great churches of the city, to join in the old familiar sacred words.

It was rest to kneel in silent adoration, and be certain one's heart would not be turned aside from lifting itself up to God, by any allusions to the triumphs or the reverses, the wrongs or the revenges, of to-day.

It was joy, in the Te Deum, to lose sight of divisions and factions, and with the glorious company of apostles, the goodly fellowship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs, the holy Church throughout all the world, to praise Him of the majesty of whose glory all the earth is full.

It was strength to stand up, and say with the Church of all ages and lands: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord; in the forgiveness of sins, in the holy Catholic Church, and in the resurrection from the dead."

To stand up above the graves, and under the heavens, and say this to God; in the words I used in my childhood, and Lady Lucy, and so many of our holy dead all their lives, and the Church for so many ages; words which had outlived so many wars, and which flowed from calm depths so far beneath them all.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

Davenant Hall, June 1660.—The country seems in a delirium of delight to see us back again, and to have a king once more.

"The Usurper, or the people who followed him, must, one would think, have made England very wretched, that the restoration of her old state should drive her well-nigh wild with joy.

"At Dover, where His Majesty landed, and all along the road to London, sober men and women knelt and sobbed out blessings on him! Old men thanked God they saw this day before they died; Mothers held up their children to look at him, that they might be able to carry on to children and grandchildren the tradition of this glorious day!

"Arches of triumph across the sober old streets; banners from the windows, mad huzzas from the sober crowds, in whose costume tarnished relics of old Cavalier gaieties struggled to kindle the Puritan sobriety into colour. Oh, the thrill all through the heart of the old English shout of welcome and triumph, the old English cheer! No wonder Marshal Turenne asked what it meant at Dunkirk.

"Dear, sober, solid, silent old England, when she goes wild, she does it with a will. Bells, bonfires; dumb, patient crowds waiting, well content, for hours, just for the moment's sight and the moment's shout of welcome. The attempts to utter this joy in speeches and processions, so hopelessly stiff and clumsy and inadequate, that laughter and tears are kept in close neighbourhood all the time, so delightfully inadequate to utter the welcome and delights in the deep, dumb ocean of the nation's heart.

"So glad, so crazy with joy, to see us back again! Patient, blind, hopeful, wilful, loyal old mother of us all; and why?

"Eleven years ago she suffered her king to die on the scaffold; and this king, I think, is scarce like to be better.

"It is strange to be made so much of as we are by all the neighbours here. No one has been very glad to have us for so many years. And now we are all heroes and heroines, we who have been with the king in his exile. They cannot hear enough of what we did and suffered in foreign parts, and of the bearing of the royal family in their adverse fortunes.

"And, in truth, we have come rather soon to the end of what we like to say about His Majesty.

"Yet His Majesty also cannot fail but be swept on with the joy and hope of the nation.

"Surely, surely the very welcome must be ennobling to him so welcomed. The very love and trust of a whole people, such as this, must inspire His Majesty to be worthy of the feeling he inspires; must consume in its pure fires all that we had fain see consumed of the past; must enkindle in his heart a returning glow of kingly patriotism, which shall hallow it into an altar on which all falser and baser fires shall be extinguished.

"I had scarce thought we should have had so much to regret in leaving France. We had always felt it so completely a land of exile, and had always so hoped our sojourn in it must be drawing to a close, that it was not until we had to sever them we learned how many ties had slowly been weaving themselves around us, and binding our hearts to the strange country.

"Even the lofty rooms in the old palace, which had seemed such mere prison-chambers when we entered them; even my father's old enemy 'the stone woman, who could never empty her pitcher,' seemed to have acquired a kind of right in us.

"Madame la Mothe made a vain attempt at softening the parting with congratulatory little pleasantries. They broke down into tears and tender reproaches, her heart being much moved at the time, moreover, by the death of her nephew, for the sake of whose young widow she consented to remain in 'the world' to manage the family estates.

"'Thou shouldst, indeed, have a heavy weight on thy conscience,' she said to me, 'with all thine innocent looks. My poor nephew would have been so happy with thee, if thou wouldst have wedded him; he would never have gone to the wars and left this poor little helpless widow to my guardianship. Then my nephew, still happily surviving, and thou making his life good and pleasant, I should at last, perhaps, have had leisure and grace to make a thorough conversion. I should have gone to Port Royal, and thou, being brought in this way more intimately acquainted with the exemplary piety of those saintly ladies, wouldst once more have considered thy heresies, and at last taken that little step—that one little step which divides thee from the True Fold. Thus I should have made my own salvation and thine; thou the salvation of my nephew. So all might have ended like a romance composed for the edification of youth. And now see the contrast! I remain in the world, bound to it by this poor young widow (with whom otherwise I have no fault to find); thou returnest to thine unbelieving England. My heart feels desolate for thee, as if I lost thy mother and a second youth in losing thee. And, alas, these gentlemen the Jesuits threaten to overwhelm Port Royal. Thus every thing goes on to the wrong end. Or, if the romance is ever to end right, there must be another volume, another volume not yet even begun, quite out of my sight; which Heaven grant there may be! Heaven grant there be, my child, here or hereafter. For me, certainly, not here; but, if Heaven wills, I pray for thee, here and hereafter also.'

"Barbe was sorely distracted between me and her seven sisters and brothers. At length she decided, with many tears, that duty bound her to her family.

"'My father is an excellent man, mademoiselle, also a great politician, and religious as a pastor; but in the affairs of the earth, mademoiselle, he is a child, blameless—but a child.

"'And there are these seven other children. I call them still children, because I am five years older than any of them, and because they were children when I left them to attend mademoiselle, and gain a living for the rest. The youngest is not yet eleven. The oldest is scarcely twenty. He is a student, learned and "eloquent (my father says) as Demosthenes." But, unhappily, not endowed with those talents which earn bread. As yet I alone have developed these inferior capacities; transitory, but, alas, so necessary in a world where our corn has to be baked before it can be eaten, and one's flax to be spun before it can be worn. What then can I do? If my father should at last obtain that appointment he is always expecting from some appreciating statesmen, or one of the children should develop these inferior gifts for earning bread; and if then mademoiselle should not, in the splendour of the establishment she was born to and so well deserves, have forgotten her poor little French Huguenot maid—'

"But here Barbe's eloquence broke down, and she wept.

"'I shall never forget thee, Barbe,' I said, 'nor the ten thousand lessons of self-denial and sweet temper and cheerful diligence I have learned from thee.'

"'But mademoiselle will then have ladies for her attendants,' sighed Barbe, who, in spite of all I could say, had formed very exalted ideas of our destinies.

"'Never one with such fingers as thine, or with a better heart,' I said.

"'Then,' sighed Barbe, as she delicately arranged my hair in long tresses, 'it might yet be. History, my father says, is more romantic than the romances. I might even yet arrange again this luxuriant hair.'

"'Scarcely luxuriant then, Barbe; or, if luxuriant gray, and only fit to be soberly bound beneath some simple coif in some homely fashion, quite unworthy of thy skilful fingers. You found three white hairs yesterday.'

"'Sorrow, not years!' she said, quietly. 'Mademoiselle has allowed me sometimes to know how it was she understood our sorrows so well.'

"'Sorrows partly, and partly years, Barbe,' I said. 'This Book tells us the years are leading us on to the end of the sorrows, and the sorrows training us to enjoy the harvest of the years.'

"And we shed tears together as she read the inscription I had written on the large French Bible I had bought her as a souvenir.

"'Ah, mademoiselle,' she said, 'I shall always hear your voice reading it; your voice and my mother's, the kindest I have ever known or shall ever know till I meet you both again.'

"I saw Mistress Dorothy in the crowd at the entry into London. She seemed half-kneeling—an unspeakable mark of honour from her dear inflexible Puritan knees. She seemed a little aged; but her face was all aglow with enthusiasm. And with her were two fair rosy children, not like city children, who gazed at me with wide-open wondering eyes—those of the eldest dark and flashing, like Dr. Antony's; the other has Olive's eyes. I think she has told them something of Lettice, little wild Lettice Davenant. They looked pleased, and yet so puzzled.

"My eyes went past them, but in vain. None else of the old Netherby friends was there. Alas, I fear, they are not all swept into this tide of welcome.

"Roger's 'king,' I fear, lies silent underground. Like mine. His, buried in state (they say), among the kings he supplanted, at Westminster. Mine, laid in silence among the kings, his fathers, at Windsor.

"The great gulf between us is hardly bridged over yet.

"Netherby is empty. Mr. Drayton and Mistress Gretel are in London with Olive.

"This old place is in such order as if we had left it yesterday, which is more, I think, than any other of the exiled Cavaliers can say of their restored homes.

"I know how. I see the hands that did it all, at every turn, in every nook, in every flower in my mother's terrace-garden so neat and trim, in every grove and arbour of the Pleasaunce, where we used to ramble in the old days.

"Ungrateful that I am! I could almost wish they had left it neglected. I could almost wish the roses had run wild, that the flower-beds had returned to the possession of forest weeds, the smooth turf run up into long wild grasses, that the terrace walls were green and moss-grown, that nature had been suffered to run into the elfish kind of revels she likes to play when she finds her way once more into gardens stolen from her domain, that time had been suffered to weave the tangled garlands wherewith, as with a lavish funereal pomp, he is wont to strew deserted places which have been dear to human creatures.

"So much has run wild, has run to seed, has blossomed and shed its bloom since then! So much is gone for ever and for ever, it is almost more than I can bear to find these familiar things so much the same. Ungrateful, diseased thoughts, I will not give them a minute's voluntary entertainment.

"Gone? Nothing worth keeping has really gone, not one blossom worth living has really faded. They have not faded, they have fruited. They have fruited, or they are ripening into fruit, sunbeam by sunbeam, shower by shower, day by day. Rich summer-time, golden harvest-time of life! God forbid that I never speak 'pulingly' (as he said), as if spring faded and not ripened into summer, or dawn died instead of glowed into day.

"And most of all this is so with thee, mother, mother! with thee, whose lost presence makes garden, terrace, chamber, so sacred and so sad. I know it—I know it! Thy dawn was full of tears, and has glowed indeed into the day. I know it; and when I think of thee, of thee and Harry, I rejoice in it.

"As to myself, I cannot rejoice at it. Nor need I try. Thank God, I need not freeze my heart by vainly trying to make sorrow not sorrow. The sorrow is my share of it now, and the joy is to come through that, through opening our hearts patiently to that, not by closing them and trying to make some wretched artificial sunshine out of the shadow of the cloud. The cloud is sent to bring us not light, but shadow and rain. Behind and after it the sunshine, when the time comes for that!

"I thought I saw Job Forster among the thirty thousand on Blackheath; the terrible thousands which kept France and Spain and Europe in awe all these years, and kept us out of England. Why they let us come back at all is the wonder. For they were not broken nor disordered, but compact and strong as ever. And I scarce think they share in the welcome the nation gives us. I think most of us breathed more freely when that dread host was passed.

"I thought I saw Job Forster among them. Yet when I went into Netherby, there he was at the old forge, working away as steadily and soberly as if he had never left it, instead of roaming all over the world at the beck of Oliver, beating army after army—English, Royalist, Irish, Scottish, Spanish, on field after field.

"I could scarce trust my eyes. I was half afraid to speak to him, fearing lest he should give me but a grim greeting as a fragment of the "malignant interest" wherewith they have dealt somewhat sternly. Beside him stood a lad in a blacksmith's apron, helping him at the forge, with a curious perplexing half-resemblance in his face, which perplexed me like a strain of some familiar tune interwoven into strange music.

"But before I passed, Job looked up at my footsteps, and seeing me, I suppose he forgot Naseby Worcester, malignancy, and everything, for he threw down his tools, and striding forward, took my hands in both of his, black as they were, and shook them till the tears ran down my face, mostly for gladness, and a little for the pain in my fingers.

"'Mistress Lettice, my dear,' he said, 'I am right glad to see thee back again. Come how ye may,' he added, to guard himself against any political concession—'come how ye may.'

"Then Rachel came out at the door of the old cottage, her dear quiet face little aged since I saw her at Oxford, when she made her way through the royal lines to find her wounded husband in the prison. Little aged, yet somewhat changed; ripened, not aged; less of outward suffering, more of protecting motherliness in her ways and looks and tones. And she, too, came forward and courtseyed, a little more mindful of good manners, and bade me welcome, in words like the Book of Ruth, to my country, and my people, and my father's house.

"How sweet it was! The old English country tongue; the old English welcome, shyly suppressing twice as much pleasure as it uttered, so sweet that I could say nothing, but could only take her hands in mine, and seek refuge in the cottage, and sit quiet, with my head on her kind old heart, until the crowding memories and joys and sorrows and love and loss which stifled each other into silence found their outlet in a burst of tears.

"It was soon over. And then a pale woman with a meek still face came forward at Rachel's bidding from a dark corner of the room, where she had been sitting sewing, and filled me a cup of fresh water from a little basin outside the window.

"When she came close to me she smiled, and made a little reverence. And the smile brought back for a moment the youth into her face. And I knew at once she was Cicely, Gammer Grindle's grandchild. Then it all flashed on me in an instant. I had found where the strain of the familiar tune came from; the lad outside was her son, and by Divine right, if not by human law, Sir Launcelot's heir.

"I shook her hand, and she lifted it to her lips and kissed it, with a grace which brought back the day when that pale woman had danced round the May-pole, laughing and rosy, and light-footed and light-hearted, with so many looking on whose faces we should not see again.

"I shall get used to it all in time. But now scarce a familiar old sight or sound but would move me to tears, if I did not repress them; as I do, of course. For I would not have the people think I came back among them with a sorrowful heart, or one left in foreign parts.

"And how can they understand how the paths they have been going up and down upon, and the doors they have been going in and out of every day these eleven years, to me are doors into a buried past, and paths trodden by feet that tread our earthly ways never more?

"Yet I think Rachel understands it, for as I was coming away she said,—

"'There has been One walking all the way with us all, Mistress Lettice, all the time. And He knows all.'

"It was just the strengthening word I wanted to turn me, from the past to the Ever-Present, from the dead to the Living, for all live unto Him. A glimpse into the heart of the Son of man, I think, such as Rachel Forster has, gives those who have it a vision into the hearts of all men.

"To my father, our home-coming is well-nigh unmixed delight. He is as frolicsome as a boy, full of schemes for re-uniting and reconciling the whole world, by means primarily of ale and roast beef. How pleasant it is to hear his great hearty voice ringing through the hall and court, among the stables, giving orders about the stud, the farm, the hounds; waxing warm over Roundhead insolence with the old servants; cracking jokes with the young ones; mistaking people for their grandfathers and grandmothers; and making his way out of all his entanglements by chivalrous old courtly compliments and hearty old English jokes; and through all never ceasing to be the courtier and the master, and scarcely ever losing his temper, except now and then with the cool mockeries of Roland, and the reckless carriage of Walter and the courtiers of the New Court whom he brings to see us. Indeed, it needs an occasional refreshing of my father's recollection of the days of the Roundheads to keep his loyalty to the Old Court very warm towards the new."

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

Aunt Dorothy was much with us during the months after the Restoration.

She was marvellously gracious and gentle all that time. She believed that we had suffered for our political sins, and must be convinced by the irresistible demonstration of failure of the vanity and folly of our conduct; and she was too magnanimous and too confident to demand confession. It must now be but too plain to us, she thought, that we had erred grievously, and she only hoped our retribution might not be too grievous. For herself, she forgave us our follies on the ground of their failure. The King himself, who had so much to forgive, had written a letter from Breda offering indemnity for the past and liberty of conscience for the future, and should she be more rigid than His Majesty? Far from it. She would take the whole family under her wing, and protect us as far as lay in her power from the consequences of our transgressions.

She had even some thoughts of extending toleration further than she had once deemed possible. Mr. Baxter deemed a church government possible which might include "Diocesans," Presbyterians, and Independents; and a Liturgy which might be joined in by moderate—very moderate—Arminians, and moderate (she feared lukewarm) Calvinists.

She scarcely saw her way to it. If any one could accomplish such a thing, Mr. Baxter might. Some indulgence ought, perhaps (if possible), to be extended to the Prelatists, on account of their loyalty. Some concessions might perhaps be made to the Independents (among whom she did not deny were some godly men) to prevent their straying further into the wilderness of the Fifth Monarchy party, the Quakers, and the Anabaptists. Much was doubtless due to charity. And when once the true Presbyterian order was established, the gates of Zion rebuilt, and her walls—though in troublous times—it was to be hoped that the sober beauty of her fair towers and palaces would root out the prelatical passion for Babylonish splendours, and the Independent predilection for new ways, and "holes and corners," from the hearts of all that beheld.

For that the day of Presbyterial triumph had at last dawned on this distracted England, she would not be so faint-hearted as to doubt.

Had not His Majesty three times signed the Scottish Covenant? Had not the divines who went to see him at Breda been suffered to listen (unsuspected of course by His Majesty) to his private devotions, until their souls were moved within them? Had not the excellent Countess of Balcarres told Mr. Baxter how satisfied the French Presbyterian ministers were with his religious dispositions? Had not Monsieur Gaches, pastor of Charenton, himself written to Mr. Baxter how His Majesty attended and appreciated the French Protestant services? Had not Mr. Baxter himself been appointed one of His Majesty's chaplains? And if this were insufficient grounds for confidence, what honest English heart, what loyal soul, could dare to doubt that a young king with such bitter lessons behind him, with such glorious hopes before him, trusted and welcomed as never king had been by the nation, brought back (as she believed) mainly by the agency of covenanted soldiers, and the prayers and loyal endeavours of Presbyterian pastors and their flocks, would be faithful to his oaths, more especially when to be faithful to his promises was to be faithful to his interests? Was there not, moreover, the solemn Conference actually going on among the divines of the various parties at the Savoy?

Had not Mr. Baxter been encouraged to state all the Puritan objections to the Prayer-book to the full—to propound any number of "queries," and elaborate any number of alterations; and had he not embraced the privilege to the full, sparing not a vestige of the Babylonish vesture? Had he not, moreover, in a fortnight, drawn up an amended Liturgy, correcting all the mistakes of the ancient Prayer-book, and supplying all its omissions?—a form which, if there must be forms, might satisfy the most scrupulous. Had not even the learned Dr. Gauden, who had issued that most affecting Portraiture of His Sacred Majesty, called the Icon Basilike, shown himself most unfeignedly courteous and conciliating, and hopeful of an accommodation?

All these considerations set Aunt Dorothy on such a lofty pinnacle of hope, that she suffered even Annis Nye to call her Friend Dorothy without open rebuke, and was suspected of meditating a scheme which might even embrace Anabaptists ("if they would only rebaptise each other, and not blaspheme other people's baptism") and Quakers, if they would hold silent meetings.

The moment of triumph was not the moment for reproaches. Aunt Dorothy, triumphing over us all, in fact, tolerated us all in prospect.

I confess it was sometimes a little difficult to be thus loftily forgiven; and, indeed, I remember once when in a moment of unparalleled magnanimity Aunt Dorothy loftily extended her toleration to Dr. Martin Luther, saying that, although she could never think him justified about some things, yet that she believed after all "he was right in the main, poor man, and great allowance must be made for one so recently set free from Popery;" that Aunt Gretel herself was roused to say privately to me, "Olive, dear heart, I believe if St. Paul were to appear she would tell him that, after all, she believed he was right in the main, although she never could think he was justified in shaving his head at Cenchrea, but great allowances were to be made for any one only just set free from being a Pharisee.'"

There were, indeed, a few symptoms which ruffled even Aunt Dorothy's calm loyal confidence. It was unfortunate, she could not deny, that (in consequence of certain legal technicalities) Mr. Baxter was deprived of his living, the former vicar displaced by the Commonwealth having at once entered on it as his right. But these little perplexities were sure to be soon set right. All transferences of authority were sure at first to press unjustly on some.

In the meantime Mr. Baxter had been offered a bishopric. He had declined the bishopric, until the Comprehension for which the Conference was labouring was fully accomplished. But the bishopric had been offered, the chaplaincy accepted; and who could doubt that in time, if he wished, his living would be restored? the old vicar being, moreover, scarce able to preach at all, and sixteen hundred communicants having sent up a request from Kidderminster for the restoration of Mr. Baxter.

It was also unfortunate, she admitted, that many hundred "painful preachers" had been suddenly removed from their churches on the same grounds as Mr. Baxter; but the Protector and his triers (said Aunt Dorothy) had set an ill example, and ill fruit must be expected to grow of it.

Then there were some severe dealings with books. Mr. John Milton's "Defence of the English People" was burned at Charing Cross by the public hangman. But at that, said Aunt Dorothy, no loyal person could wonder, seeing that therein he had dared to speak of the late king's execution as a great and magnanimous act. Properly regarded, it was indeed a singular proof of His Majesty's clemency that Mr. Milton's book only was burned, and not Mr. Milton himself.

The public burning of the Covenant was a more doubtful act. This she saw with her own eyes at Kidderminster, in the market-place, before Mr. Baxter's windows. The king had signed it and sworn to it, and there were excellent things in it. But there was no denying it had been used to seditious ends. Some (concluded Aunt Dorothy, pressed hard for a Scriptural example) had ground the brazen serpent to powder because it had been made an idol. And she had little doubt, with reverence she said it, Moses would have done the same with the very Tables of the Law, if they had been similarly desecrated. The Ark itself was not spared, but suffered to fall into the hands of the Philistines when Israel would have used it like a heathen charm.

Nevertheless, with these arguments I believe Aunt Dorothy herself was not easy; she was driven to them by Job Forster, who had asked her one day, with a grim irony, how she liked the new doings in Scotland, the execution of Argyle, the forcing of Prelacy and the Prayer-book on the unwilling Presbyterian people, and the burning of the Covenant in Edinburgh.

But as the months of 1661 passed on, and the Conference stood still, whilst Mr. Baxter and the other deprived ministers were not restored, Aunt Dorothy's lofty confidence gradually changed into an irritable apprehension, which took the form of vehement indignation against all who refused to believe in the favorable issue of events, or who, as she believed, stood in the way of it. And it often moved me much to see how, with ingenious fondness, like a mother with a wild son, she laid the blame on the servants of the house, on the riotous company or grudging hospitality of the far country, on the very management of the home itself rather than on the royal prodigal.

A large portion of this diverted current of wrath was poured on the Queen-mother, Henrietta Maria, who held open celebration of Roman Catholic rites in her palace.

To any information concerning the appropriation of apartments in the king's palace to the king's "lady" or "ladies," she refused absolutely to listen. "It is written," said she, "thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people. But," she added, "if any one were to blame, it was the party that had exposed him to the seductions of his mother Jezebel, and the idolatrous foreign court. Indeed, who can doubt the pureness of the king's Protestant principle, which (even if his morals had been a little contaminated) had resisted Papistical enticements so long?"

The scene in Whitehall, where the king, under a canopy of state, laid his hands on those who were brought to him to heal them of "the king's evil," while the chaplain repeated the words, "He laid His hands on the sick and healed them," was indeed a sore scandal to her. It made her very indignant with the chaplain, who had misguided His Majesty.

"Mr. Baxter must be careful," she said, "how he conceded too much to the Prelatical party."

But the chief force of her wrath was directed against the Queen-mother, who, she said, had ruined one king and one generation of Englishmen, and was doing her best to ruin a second; against the Queen-mother and the Fifth Monarchy men.

To the insurrection of Venner, the winecooper, in January 1661, she attributed the delay and disappointment in the Conference. How was a young king, kept in exile so long, to learn in a moment to distinguish between the various sects, or not to be induced by such fanatical outbursts to believe the evil advisers who persuaded him that outside the ancient Episcopal Church lay nothing but a slippery descent from depth to depth?

Still she hoped on from month to month, or protested that she did, although her hopes made her less and less glad, and more and more irritable, until she tried all our tempers in turn. All except Roger's. His patience and gentleness with her was unwearied.

"I know what she is feeling, Olive," he said. "I went through it all between the Protector's death and the Restoration; hoping against hope. It strains temper and heart as nothing else does. She will have to give it up, and then she will be all right again."

"Give up hoping, Roger?" I said.

"Give up hoping against reason, give up trying to persuade oneself down hill is up hill, and evening morning," he said, "and going into the cloud coming out of it; giving up trying to see things as they are not, Olive. Seeing things as they are, and still hoping, that makes the spirit calm again. Hoping, knowing, that the end of the road is up the heights, not into the abysses; that the evening is only a foreshadowing of the morning that shall not tarry; that the sun and not the cloud abides. That the Lord Christ," he added, lowering his voice to tones which, soft as a whisper, vibrated through my heart like thunder, "and not the devil, has all power in heaven and in earth, and that His kingdom shall have no end."

"Your hope is for the Church, Roger, but not for England."

His face kindled as he answered,—

"Not for England? Always for England!—for England everywhere! Now; in the ages to come; on this side of the sea, on the other side of the sea; in the Old World and in the New; under the bondage of this profligate tyranny, which must wear itself out as surely as a putrifying carcass must decay; in the wilderness, where our people are beginning a story more glorious, I believe, than all the heroic tales of old Greece."

For at that time, whilst doing all in his power by promoting concord amongst Christians to aid Mr. Baxter and the ministers who were seeking for "healing and settlement," and whilst sharing my husband's labours among those in prison, Roger began to look with a new interest on the tidings which came to us from the Plantations, especially those concerning Mr. John Eliot, who was labouring to convert the poor Indian natives to Christianity. In this he and Aunt Dorothy had much sympathy. Mr. Baxter had always taken a lively interest in this missionary work. Collections had been made during the Commonwealth to aid in supporting evangelists, and aid in translating the Bible and good books into the languages of the natives; and now, in the midst of all his conferences and contentions, Mr. Baxter was labouring at obtaining a charter for a Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts. And in this he succeeded.

At that time a manuscript was much in Roger's hands, containing a copy of Journals of the early Puritan settlers of forty years before. He found it the best lesson of true hope he had ever read. And during the winter evenings of 1661 he would often recite passages aloud to us. Amidst the misunderstandings of good men and the conflicts of parties, it was like a breath of bracing wind to listen to those conflicts of our countrymen with rains and snows and storms, and all the hardships of the wild country peopled by wild beasts and wilder men. As in the Bible stories, there was little making of sermons or drawing of morals in this narrative. The whole story was a sermon, and engraved its own moral on the heart as it went on. In three months half the first noble pilgrim band died, of cold and wet, insufficient shelter and insufficient food. The original hundred were reduced to fifty. Fifty living, and fifty graves to consecrate the new country. Then the grave had to be levelled indistinguishably into the sweep of the earth around, lest the hostile Indians, seeing them, should violate them. Yet never a moan nor a murmur. Their trust in God revealing itself in their patience and courage, their cheerfulness and unquenchable hope. And now for the fifty were more than twenty thousand; and the wilderness had become a place of English homesteads and villages, fondly called by the old English names.

As Roger read and told us of these things the world grew round to me for the first time. I began to see there was another side to it. And the vision of this new world—this new English world—rose before me as a new Land of Promise, which if persecution ever made this England for the time "the wilderness," might be a refuge for our suffering brethren again.

Not indeed for us. I did not think so much of ourselves: our convictions were moderate and our lives peaceable; and the Star Chamber was not likely to be re-established within the memory of the generation that had destroyed it. But the Anabaptists, and the more decided Independents, who objected to all forms of prayer, and the Quakers, might find such an asylum yet very welcome. Already there were four thousand Quakers in prison. Some had been shut up, sixty in a cell, and had died of bad air and scanty food. For sober Presbyterians, like Aunt Dorothy and Mr. Baxter, or moderate people attached with few scruples to the Liturgy, like my father, my husband, and myself, there might not indeed be the triumph in store of which Aunt Dorothy dreamed. But of persecution or imprisonment we did not dream. The tide could never rise again in our lifetime as high as that.

It perplexed us much that during all these months we saw nothing of the Davenants. We did not chance to be at Netherby during the year 1661, or the beginning of 1662. My father had rheumatism, and was ordered not to winter on the Fens; my husband was much occupied; so that we did not have our usual summer holiday. Lettice and Sir Walter, we heard, were for a time in London, about the Court; but we saw nothing of them.

The children who were at Netherby brought back wonderful stories of the sweet lady at the hall; and Maidie especially was inspired with a love for her which reminded me of the fascination of Lady Lucy over me in my own childhood.

I felt sure Lettice's heart could not change. Had her will, then, grown so weak that she dared not make one effort to break through the barriers which separated us?

Or was it, rather, stronger and more immovable than I had thought? Did she indeed still refuse indemnity to the political offences of the Commonwealth? Could, indeed, no lapse of time efface, no shedding of traitors' blood expiate, the shedding of that royal blood which separated her from Roger?

Nothing but repentance?—the repentance he could never feel without desecrating the memory of that good prince who, as he believed, had been trained by God, through conflict within and without, anointed by wars, and crowned by victory after victory, to be such a ruler as England had never known, over such an England as the world had never seen.

What Roger thought, I knew not. He never mentioned the name of any of the Davenants, except that of Walter, the youngest, who seemed to come to him from time to time, and whom I saw once at his lodgings, and did not recognize till after he had left, when Roger told me who he was.

For I remember Walter Davenant a light-hearted boy, with frank face and bearing, and eyes like his mother's. And this Walter Davenant had a manner half reckless and half sullen; a dress which, with all its laces and plumes and tassels, looked neglected; and restless, uneasy eyes, which never steadily met yours.

"Is that Lettice Davenant's brother Walter?" I said.

"It is Walter Davenant, one of the courtiers of King Charles the Second."

"He is a friend of yours, Roger."

"He is Lettice's brother," he replied; "and she asked me to see him sometimes; and now and then he likes to come."

CHAPTER X.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

August 19.—My father's wide-embracing schemes of correspondence and reconciliation have been somewhat narrowed. My brother Roland has been with us, and one or two of his friends about the Court; and he has possessed my father with dark and chilling thoughts of the Puritans.

"Indeed, there is an icy touch of cynical doubt in Roland which seems to take the glow out of everything. He does not assail any person, or any party, or any belief. All parties, he protests, are good, to a certain extent, in their measure, and for their time. But he makes you feel he scorns you as a fond and incredulous fool for believing in any person, any party, or any truth, with the kind of faith which leads to sacrificing oneself.

"The king, he says, declares that 'nothing shall ever part him again from his three kingdoms;' and the king never says a foolish thing.

"According to Roland, all enthusiasm is either in foolish men, fanaticism, or, in able men, the hypocrisy of fanaticism, put on to deceive the fanatics.

"When my father declaims against Oliver Cromwell as a wild fanatic, and records instances of the destruction of painted windows and the desecration of churches, Roland shrugs his shoulders, slightly raises his eyebrows, smiles, and says:—

"'No doubt, that is what he would have had Job Forster and his fellows believe. For himself, his fanaticism had the fortunate peculiarity of always constraining him to climb as high as he could. But he should not be too severely blamed. What can a shrewd man do, when he sees every one taking the same road, but travel a little faster than the rest, if he wishes to keep first?'

"'Surely,' said I 'you cannot deny that the Puritans were sincere?'

"'At first, probably, many of them,' he said, 'When they had only two mites to give, doubtless they gave them. It is the destiny of mites to be spent in that manner. Happily for the widow in the New Testament, her subsequent history is not told.'

"'For shame, sir!' said my father. 'Say what you like of the Puritans of to-day; I will suffer no profane allusions to the good people who lived at the Christian era.'

"'Pardon me, sir!' retorted Roland. 'Anno Domini has no doubt made those who lived near it sacred; except, of course, the Pharisees and a few other reprobates, who are fair mark. But I assure you, nothing could be further from my intuition than to cast the slightest imputation on that excellent widow. I only suggest that if her circumstances improved, no doubt her views enlarged with them. She would naturally feel that while two mites might be bestowed without regard to results, larger possessions involved wider responsibilities, and must, therefore, be dispensed with more prudence; as the Rabbis (who, no doubt, we should charitably suppose, started with intentions as pure) had found out before.'

"'Speak plainly,' said my father; 'none of your Court riddles for me. Do you mean to say the Puritans were like that good widow or like the Pharisees?'

"'Sir,' replied Roland, 'you must excuse me if my charity reaches to a later century than yours. You forbid any imputations on the early Christians; I decline to make any against those of a later date. I would leave the sentence to events. Before long there is reason to hope that many of the Puritans will once more have an opportunity of proving their principles, and, if they like, of returning to the exemplary condition of the widow with the one farthing.'

"'What do you mean? There are to be no confiscations.'

"'I mean that the Savoy Conference will, I think, issue otherwise than Mr. Baxter and his friends desire. Presbyterian shepherds, Independent lions, and Episcopal lambs will, I think, scarcely at present be made to lie down in the ample fold of the Church; and the sheep to whom the fold naturally belongs, cannot, of course, be expected to withdraw, especially after having tried the tender mercies of the outside world as long as they have.

"'It is all the clergy!' said my father, provoked into indiscriminating irritation with some one, as he always is in discussions with Roland. 'It is always the parsons and the preachers who won't let the people be quiet. Banish them all to the plantations, and we should have peace to-morrow.'

"'And twice as many parsons and preachers to break it the day after to-morrow,' said Roland. 'They have been trying it in England for these eleven years; and I think you will find that has been the result.'

"'Roland,' said my father, changing the conversation, 'we must find some way of showing our gratitude to the Draytons. Every corner of the demesne is in better order than I left it.'

"'Mr. Drayton is a clear-sighted man,' was the reply, 'and no doubt foresaw that the rightful owners would return. However, we cannot be too grateful; and no doubt circumstances will give us opportunities of returning his kindness. He will scarcely escape some little fines, which we can get lightened. Besides, they are sure, sooner or later, to get entangled with some of the laws against conventicles; Mistress Dorothy, or some of them. It is the way of the family. And then we can be the mouse to nibble the lion's net.'

"'At least,' I said, 'you cannot accuse the Daytons of hypocrisy.'

"'Scarcely,' he replied, coolly, 'they are on the other side of the balance, where conscience weighs heavier than brains. But at all events,' he added, turning to my father, 'we are sure to be able to assist Mr. Drayton's son; for, from all I hear, he is scarcely out of the circle of those who are liable to the punishment of treason, so that you may set your mind quite at rest, sir, as to having opportunities of showing our gratitude.'

"I know he said this to silence me. And it did silence me. I dared not defend the Draytons, for fear of further rousing my father against them.

"But Walter, who had been listening to the debate hitherto with some amusement, here broke in.

"'Roger Drayton is no traitor,' said he. 'He took the wrong side, unfortunately for him, and you the right side; but a more loyal gentleman does not breathe.'

"'That depends on the construction the crown lawyers set on loyalty,' retorted Roland.

And the conversation ceased.

"August 20th.—After that discussion, Roland had a walk with my father round the estate, and the next morning he said to me:—

"'I will not have the family disgraced, Lettice, by Walter's reckless ways. If he must beg or borrow, let him beg or borrow of some of those gay courtiers who help him to spend. Not of a man like Roger Drayton, to whom we already owe too much—a Puritan, too, a soldier of the usurper; and, for aught I know, a regicide.'

"'Did Walter borrow of Roger Drayton?' I said, and this time I could not help flushing crimson.

"'Yes, yes!' he replied, angrily; 'and Roland says, moreover, child, it was thou who introduced them to each other. I will have no clandestine intercourse, Lettice. Thou shalt see I will not!'

"'Father,' I said, rising, 'has Roland's poisonous tongue gone as far as that? Does he dare to accuse me or Roger Drayton of that? If you wish to know what the understanding between Roger Drayton and me is, it is this—I thought you knew it; my mother did. We have promised to be true to each other till death, and beyond it, for ever. And the promise was scarce needed. For the love that makes it sacred was there before.'

"For they had called Roger a traitor. And it was no time to measure words.

"I write these down, because I like to see them, as well as to remember that I said them.

"My father drew a long breath.

"'Pretty words,' he said, 'for a lady who recognizes the divine right of kings, parents, and all in authority.'

"He paced up and down the room for some time, speaking to himself.

"'Very strange, very strange,' he said; 'up to a certain point as gentle as her mother; and once past that, like a lioness. Very strange.'

"And then still to himself,—

"''Tis a pity; 'tis a thousand pities. If he had been anything but what Roland says every one says he is; if he had been only a little misled! But now impossible; of course, impossible!

"''Tis a pity, Lettice,' he then said to me in a vexed tone, but very courteously. 'Roland told me of a neighbour of ours, a good and loyal gentleman, who would be but too proud of the honour of my daughter's hand. As fine an estate as any in the country, and marching with our own. 'Tis a pity, child, for I should not have lost thee. And I should do ill without thee.'

"'You will not lose me, father,' I said.

"'Nay, nay,' he said, 'thou art one to be trusted, I know that well. Never believe I doubt that, Lettice, for any hasty word I speak. Never believe I doubt that.'

"And he kissed me and went his way.

"No, he does not doubt me. But there is something in Roland which tempts one to doubt everything and every one.

"Did I say his touch was icy? Would it were only that. Frost rouses nature to a vigorous resistance, or checks it with strengthening repression. There is a healthy frost of doubt which kills the insects which infest piety, and checking the too luxuriant growths of faith with a wholesome cold, braces them from mere leafage to solid stem and fruit.

"But Roland's influence is not the wholesome winter of doubting and inquiring, which seems to interpose between the successive summers of advancing faith, testing its roots. It is a languid atmosphere of doubt, in which everything is alike uncertain; every thing alike mean, worthless, earthly. The disbelief in goodness itself, and truth itself, which, like a pestilential malaria, rises from the sloughs of a wicked life, such as our Court encourages. In the depths of its degradation I believe he himself scorns to soil the sole of his foot. But he stands on the edge and breathes the poison into his brain, and breathes it out again in bitter and cynical talk.

"While poor reckless Walter, capable not merely of creeping safely along the dull wayworn ways of life, but of soaring to its noblest heights, plunges into the midst of the pollution; until the very wings with which he was meant to soar upward are clogged with the evil thing; and instead of buoying him upwards, drag him downwards, helpless, blinded, so that he can not only no longer soar, but scarcely even creep.

"What will the end be?

"Often this weighs on me more than even Roger's peril. For that is not for the soul, which is the man; and that is but for the moment.

"Sometimes my spirit sinks, sinks as if its wings, too, were all clipped and broken. And I have dreadful visions of one precious life ending in dishonour before man here, in this England, in this age; and the other in dishonour before God and good men for ever. And Roland standing by and observing both, and saying, with a lifting of his eyebrows, between pity and scorn,—

"Yes, that is the issue of passion, for syrens—or for clouds. That is the result of giving the reins to enthusiasms; religious or otherwise. Poor Walter; and poor Roger! With a few grains more of self-interest and common sense, they might both have stood where I stand, and learned the vanity of everything in the world or out of it, except, as the preacher says, getting well through it."

August 27th.—The minister who succeeded Placidia Nicholls' husband during the Commonwealth has been superseded by Dr. Rich, a scholar who seems to have lived through those stormy times scarce hearing their tumult; so near and so much more important seem to him the tumults and controversies of former times. He will scarce assert that Monday is the day after Sunday, without proving it by citations from a catena of fathers and schoolmen; which sets one piously questioning, whether what needs so many authorities to sustain it is itself substantial. Otherwise, the matter of his statements seem so free from everything every one does not believe, that one would have thought no proof needed.

"A most friendly, blameless, and harmless gentleman, however, he is; although weighed down a little as to thinking by the authority of so many ancients, and as to living by the necessities of eleven motherless children, who have to be fed and instructed; since, unfortunately, the children of such a learned man came into the world as destitute of patristical lore as if they had been born in the first century, or their father were a Leveller.

"It does seem hard that so much learning cannot become hereditary, like pointing, or retrieving. It is such a great hindrance in the way of the moderns being so much wiser than the ancients as they ought to be.

"On one page of modern ecclesiastical history, however, it is easy to make Dr. Rich, or any of his eleven, eloquent. And that is the record of the good deeds of Olive and Dr. Antony, who seem to have maintained and lodged the whole family throughout the times of the Commonwealth. They are worthy, he says, to have lived in the days of the Apostolic Fathers; and tears come into his eyes when he speaks of Olive's little devices for delicately helping him. 'She thought I was too buried in my books to see,' he said. 'But, in truth, I was too much overwhelmed with their kindness to speak.'

"The elder girls, too, have endless stories of Olive's motherly counsels and succour. From their account, Maidie and Dolly must be the blithest little un-Puritanical darlings in the world; and the boys bold little Cavaliers.

"August 30th.—At our first return I felt almost more an exile in some ways than while we were in France. People had fitted into each other so closely as to leave no room for us but a kind of show-place out of every one's way. The myriads of fine inter-lacing fibres which bind communities together, and root each in its place, can only grow slowly, one by one, as storms straining the boughs, or summers overlading them with fruit, made them needed.

"Even eleven years of mere Time almost place you in another generation. Those we left babes are shy lads and lasses; the children are young mothers at their cottage doors, with their own babes in their arms, courtesying and wondering we do not know them; the youths and maids are sober men and matrons, giving counsel on the perils of life to the youths and maidens we left babes. And the changes of these eleven years have not been those of mere Time.

"Not the people only have changed, but the country:—the whole way in which every one looks at every thing. In our youth King and Parliament were the powers which ruled and divided the world. Men of forty now scarcely remember a king really reigning. Men of twenty scarcely remember a Parliament, save the poor mockery of a 'Rump' which Oliver 'purged,' and which the London butchers roasted in effigy—that is, in beef—at the Restoration.

"The names honoured and dreaded in our youth, names scarce uttered without the eye flashing, and the cheek flushing with admiration or indignation, have passed from the regions of popular enthusiasm to the sober and silent tribunals of history. Many which seemed to us indelibly engraven on the hearts of men for renown or for abhorrence, Sir John Hotham, 'the first traitor,' Sir Bevil Granvill, Sir Jacob Astley, are—except among those who personally recollect them—unknown; whilst around the loftier heights still in sight strange mists of legend already begin to gather, especially among the peasantry. Prince Rupert is the 'black man' with whose name men of twenty have been spellbound into submission in the nursery. Archbishop Laud and Strafford, in our Puritan village, have well-nigh taken the place of the Spaniard and the Pope of our childhood, and rise before the imagination of the people as fiery-eyed giants, rattling chains, and thirsting for the blood of Englishmen.

"Hampden, Pym, Falkland, Eliot, are mere grand, silent shades, walking the Elysian fields of the past, far-off, among the heroes, Leonidas, Brutus, or the Gracchi, but in no way disturbing the pursuits or influencing the thoughts of the present.

"Instead, people speak frequently and familiarly of Lambert, Fleetwood, and others, whose names to me sound as strange as those of the combatants of the Fronde. And, besides these, there are the names which have shifted from side to side, until they seem to have lost all meaning.

"The names of religious influence among the Puritans—John Howe, Dr. Owen, Vice-chancellor of Oxford, and Richard Baxter—are, through Mistress Dorothy, less unfamiliar to me. Our good Bishop Hall is dead. But Dr. Jeremy Taylor, whose discourse my mother loved so well, still lives, and fills the church with the music of his thoughts.

"The one English name which, on the continent of Europe, overshadowed (or outshone) all the rest—he whom the young King Louis (the Fourteenth) called 'the greatest and happiest prince in Europe'—is one men scarce utter willingly now. The emotions which his name calls out have indeed still a perilous fire in them.

"The other name, of which we used to hear most in foreign parts, until it seemed at times as if, to the outer world, the Doing of England were alone manifest in Oliver Cromwell, and her Thought in John Milton—is also proscribed. The poet's treasonable 'Defences,' which scholars abroad admired (on account of the Latin I suppose), have been burned in public. But he himself will, it is thought, be spared; although for the present he is in concealment. A poet of our name and kindred, to whom they say he showed kindness, is doing his utmost to save him. His blindness, and the great genius and renown he hath, also give him a kind of sacredness. Some say Heaven hath punished him enough already; others that Heaven shields him, and makes his head sacred from violent touch by a crown of sorrow.

"It is from Isaac Nicholls, Mistress Placidia's son, I hear most of Mr. John Milton. Isaac is a strange sprout from such a stock. He careth scarce at all for the world as a place to get on in; and almost infinitely as a theatre to contemplate, with its scenes painted by divine hands. He seems as familiar with the past as Dr. Rich; but in a different way. To Dr. Rich the past seems a book, and the present another book—a commentary on it. To Isaac the past seems not a book, but a life, and the present a life flowing from it.

"The names of the heroes seem as the names of friends to him, from Leonidas to Falkland. The voices of the poets seem all living, from Homer to Milton. And while Mistress Nicholls wears out heart and brain in anxious cares to make him an inheritance, he finds a king's treasury in a book, or in a carpet of mosses and wild-flowers, such as clothes the sweet old glade by the Lady Well.

"Of all the people I remember, no one seems to me to have grown so old as Mistress Nicholls; and of all the new people, none seems to me so delightfully new as Isaac Nicholls.

"The prohibition laid by my father (through Roland's influence) against all intercourse with the Draytons, does not extend to Mistress Nicholls' home. She is the nearest link I have with the old Netherby home. Isaac comes often to the Hall, and spends long days. The library is a new world to him. And he is a new world to me; or, rather, his mind is to me a mirror in which all the black, blank England of these eleven years lives and moves, and has voice and color.

"It was a warm evening early in July when I first saw Isaac. Mistress Nicholls was sitting spinning in the porch of her neat house, on the outskirts of the village.

"'As diligent as ever, Mistress Nicholls,' I said.

"'Yes, Mistress Lettice,' said she, in a voice which had fallen into an habitual whine (such as is thought by some characteristic of the Puritans in general). 'Ah, yes, these are no times for a lone woman to slacken her hands. It is not by folding of the hands that body and soul are kept together in these days.'

"As she spoke she led me to a chair in the parlor. In the window was sitting a lad with round shoulders and long hair falling ever his forehead, as he pored over a large folio on the window seat.

"He turned round suddenly at her words, and said, in an abrupt, shy way, yet with a gentle, cheerful voice:

"'Oh, mother, don't speak of body and soul, we have much more than food and raiment.'

'"I do not deny,' she replied to me in a voice half querulous, half apologetic, 'that the Lord has been merciful, far above my deserts, no doubt. We have never yet been suffered to want, I freely acknowledge, and we ought to be very thankful, Mistress Lettice; very thankful, no doubt.'

"Hearing my name the boy rose, and in a quiet, nervous way, came forward, held out his hand, and then drew back, blushing, and made an awkward bow.

"'My Isaac has heard of you,' said his mother, 'from his cousins. Isaac thinks no one fit to be compared with his cousins, Maidie and Dolly Antony.'

"'Olive's children!' I said. And I took his hand and held it in both mine. It seemed to bring me nearer them.

"'Maidie and Dolly think no one fit to be compared with Mistress Lettice,' he said.

"It touched me much. And with so much in common, friendship between Isaac and me waxed apace.

"Yes, it was I, Lettice Davenant, whom Olive's fond recollections had made her children's queen of beauty and love; the fairy princess of their fairy tales; the Una of their 'milk white lamb.' They knew all about me; the adventures of our childhood were their nursery stories; the love of our youth was the ideal friendship of their childhood.

"And now I come back to them no longer their cotemporary in the perpetual youth of fairyland, but their mother's; and here were these boys, Isaac and Austin Rich, thinking no one in the world so sweet and fair as Maidie and Dolly Antony.

"Over again, the old story! Yet it does not make me feel old, but young again. For our old friendships,—our old faithful love,—are not dead, nor like to die; 'incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away.' That is a heavenly inheritance which the heart enters on here, or never there.

"Not years nor sorrows make us old, but selfish cares. As Rachel Forster said, when I asked her whether Mistress Nicholls had suffered from any uncommon griefs or necessities, that she looked so old, and seemed to feel so poor.

"Nay, Mistress Lettice, nay! To my recollection Mistress Placidia was never young; and all the riches of the Spanish main could not make her rich. She has such a terrible empty space inside to fill. Not even the Almighty, the possessor of heaven and earth, can make her rich, at least not with riches. And, sure enough, He has tried, to my belief, near all the ways He has. But it is of no use. But I do think He has begun to make her poor. And that is something.'

"'What do you mean, Rachel?' I said.

"'Time was, though, poor soul, when she was never able to think that she had anything, she thought great store of what she was,' said Rachel. 'But now that is broken down. I do believe the Lord took her down that step when her boy was born. And that step, the emptying and going down into the depths, in my belief, begins to make us Christians. Then comes the step up again into the light. And, poor soul, it seems to me, ever since, the good Lord has been trying, by all manner of ways, to lead her up that stair. But she has never had the heart to come. And so, down there, out of the light, her poor wisht soul has grown old, and white, and withered like; and her voice has got a moan in it, like a voice tuned in a sick-chamber, and never lifted up in the fresh air, in a good hearty psalm. 'Tisn't years or griefs that make us old, nor poverty that makes us poor, to my seeing, but looking down instead of up, and being shut up alone with self, instead of with God.'

"And Job looked up, and said, with a smile and a nod:—

"'She knows well enough, wife; she knows it isn't anything the Lord sends that makes us old or poor; but what the devil sends. The loss of all the world can't make us poor, and the rolling by of all the ages can't make us old, any more than the angels. But there's no need to tell. She knows. Mistress Lettice knows.'

"Job did not look up from the tool he was repairing as he spoke. But I felt that his heart had seen into mine.

"And it is a wonderful comfort to me to think that that good old Puritan blacksmith knows.

"For he has camped many a night on the field with Roger, as Rachel has often told me. And, no doubt, he must have seen into Roger's heart as well as into mine. And, no doubt, those two, who have loved each ether so well, have a warm corner in their prayers for us.

"September 1st.—Isaac Nicholls has wonderful stories of the settlers in the American Plantations. The wilderness across the Atlantic seems to have been to him and Olive's children a kind of Atlantis, and Fairy or Giant land;—what the Faery Queen or the stories of Hercules or the Golden Fleece were to us.

"He has tales of daring and endurance concerning those Pilgrims to the West which seem to me worthy of the old heroic days. Of weeping congregations parting on the sea-shores of the old world, reluctantly left. Of congregations, free and delivered, praising God in the midst of danger and distress on the shores of the new. Of a hundred English men and women forsaking land and friends for religion, and going in a little ship across the ocean, landing among the wooded creeks, half of them perishing in the cold of the first winter; but the fifty who survived never murmuring and never despairing. Of toils to till the new fields by day, and watchings at night against the Indians. Of exploring parties going through trackless forests till they found a habitable nook by the borders of some lake or stream. Of green meadows and golden corn-fields slowly won from the wilderness; and pleasant gardens springing up around the new homes, with strange fruits and flowers, and birds with song as strange as the speech of the Indians. Of old Puritan psalms sung by the sea-shore, till the homely villages arose, with their homely churches, as in Old England on the village greens.

"It sounds, as he tells it, like a story of some old Grecian colony, with church bells through it;—a curious mosaic of a Greek legend (such as Roger used to tell me), and the Acts of the Apostles. But the colonists were not Athenians nor Spartans, but Englishmen. And it all happened only forty years ago. Or, as Isaac believes, it is all happening still. For although the great tide of Puritan emigration has ceased during the Commonwealth, there are always a few joining the numbers.

"'And,' saith Isaac, 'Maidie says Uncle Roger thinks the tide will set in again for the wilderness, if things go on as they are going now at Court.'

"But here Isaac halts abruptly, as treading on forbidden ground, and the conversation is turned; he little knowing how gladly I would have it flow in the same current, and I scarce deeming it keeping faith with my father to make an effort that it should.

"The two living men who seem to fill the largest space in Isaac's admiring gaze, are Mr. John Milton, whom all the world knows, and a John Bunyan (not even a Mr.), a poor tinker and an Anabaptist, whom no one knows, I should think, out of his own neighbourhood or sect, but whom Isaac declares to have a way of making past things present, and far-off things near, and unseen things visible, as only the poets have.

"Mr. John Milton one can understand being the hero of a boy like Isaac; losing his sight, as believes, in the 'Defence of the People of England'; filling all Europe with his song, shaking the thrones of persecuting princes by his eloquent pleadings for the oppressed Christians of the Alps, seeming to find in his blindness (as a saint in the darkness of death) the unveiling of higher worlds; a gentleman with a countenance which my mother thought noble and beautiful as Dr. Jeremy Taylor, or any about the late king's Court; a scholar whose taste and learning the scholars of Italy send to consult, and whose birth-house they come to see in London as of their own Petrarch or Dante Alighieri; a poet whom men who can judge seem to lift altogether out of the choirs of living singers, into a place by himself among the poets who are dead.

"But this Anabaptist tinker! It is a strange delusion. I cannot wonder at Mrs. Nicholls' aversion from such guidance for her son, especially as it leads into the most perilous religious path he can tread.

"October.—I have seen the Anabaptist tinker and heard him preach, and I wonder no more at Isaac's enthusiasm.

"It was in a barn a mile or two out of Netherby. Isaac persuaded me to go, and I went; and wrapping myself in a plain old mantle, crept into a corner and listened.

"And there I heard the kind of sermon I have been wanting to hear so long.

"Heaven brought so near, and yet shown to be so infinite; the human heart shown so dark and void, and yet so large and deep, and capable of being made so fair and full of good. Grace, the 'grace which over-mastereth the heart;' not something destroying or excluding nature, but embracing, renewing, glorifying it. Christ our Lord shown so glorious, and yet so human; more human than any man, because without the sin which stunts and separates. Yes, that was it. This tinker made me see Him, brought me down to His feet; not to the Baptist, or Luther, or Calvin, or any one, but to Christ, who is all in one. Brought me down to His feet, rebuked, humbled, emptied; and then made me feel His feet the loftiest station any creature could be lifted to.

"He began, as I think all highest preaching does, by appealing not to what is meanest, but what is noblest in us; not by showing how easy religion is, but how great.

"He began thus:—'When He had called the people, Jesus said, "Whosoever will come after Me let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me." Let him count the charge he is like to be at; for following Me is not like following some other masters. The wind sets always on my face, and the foaming rage of the sea of this world, and the proud and lofty waves thereof, do continually beat upon the bark Myself and My followers are in; he therefore that will not run hazards, let him not set foot in this vessel."

"Then he spoke of the greatness of the soul that could be lost and should be saved. God breathed it. 'And the breath of the Lord lost nothing in being made a living soul. O man! dost thou know what thou art? Made in God's image! I do not read of anything in heaven or earth so made, or so called, but the Son of God. The King Himself, the great God, desires communion with it. He deems no suit of apparel good enough for it but one made for itself.'

"Then he spoke of the wonderful beauty of the body. This 'costly cabinet of that curious thing the soul.' The more it is thought of and its works looked into, the more wonderfully it is seen to be made. Yet is the body but the house, the raiment, of that noble creature the soul. It is a tabernacle; the soul, the worshipper within. Yet we are not to forget the body is a tabernacle, no common dwelling, but a holy place, a temple.

"Then he spoke of the powers of this 'noble creature:' of Memory, its 'register;' of Conscience, its seat of judgment; of the Affections, the hands and arms with which it embraces what it loves. God's anger is never, he said, against these powers—'the natives of the soul'—but against their misuse.

"But the soul being so noble, it is the soul that sins. Not the body; that is passive. And it is the sinful impenitent soul which suffers, 'when the clods of the valley are sweet to the wearied body.'

"A whole world of wisdom, the wisdom I had been longing to hear, seemed to me to lie in the words of this tinker. How many dark hearts would be cheered, and downcast hearts lifted up and closed narrowed souls opened and expanded to embrace the light around, if this could be understood! The body is not vile, it is God's curious costly cabinet; His tabernacle to be kept holy. The body sins not. Sin is not in matter but in spirit. Conversion is a liberation of all the 'natives' from the intrusive tyranny of sin and Satan, a making the whole man every whit whole. God's anger is not against the natural affections or understanding. They are not to be destroyed, crushed, or fettered. They are to be liberated, expanded, quickened with the new life.

"How many of the dark pages of Church history already written, and now being written, might never have been, if the theology of this tinker could be understood!

"Luther, they say, also knew these things (and Roger used to declare Oliver Cromwell did, but of this I know nothing). Strange it is to see how from height to height these souls respond to each other, like bonfires carrying the good news from range to range, throughout the ages. These are the wise; wise like angels; wise like little children. Half way down it seems to me, walk the smaller ingenious men of each generation, laboriously building elaborate erections which all the ingenious men on their own hill-side and on their own level admire, but which those on the other side cannot see. And below, in the valleys, the reapers reap, and the little children glean, and the women work and weep and wait, and wonder at the skill of the builders on the hill-side, so far above them to imitate. But when they want to know if the good news from the far country is still there for them, as for those of old, they look not to the hillsides but to the hill-tops, where the bonfires flash the gospels—plainer even in the night than in the day—and where the earliest and latest sunbeams rest. And so the eyes of the watchers on the mountain tops, of the children and the lowly labourers in the valleys, and of the angels in the heavens, meet. And when the night comes—which comes to all on earth—the ingenious builders on the hill-sides, no doubt, have also to look to the mountain-tops, where the watch-fires burn, and the sunset lingers and the sunrise breaks.

"This tinker seems to have a soul ordered like a great kingdom, all its powers in finest use and in most perfect subordination. But Isaac says this kingdom sprang from a chaos of war, and conflict, and anguish, such as scarce any human souls know.

"In this also like Luther, who had his terrible civil wars to pass through ere the Kingdom came within. (And Roger said Oliver Cromwell had.) To John Bunyan (Isaac told me), the finding of an old thumbed copy of Luther on the Galatians was like the discovery of the spring in the wilderness to Hagar. 'I do prefer that book,' he said, 'before all others, except the Holy Bible, for a wounded conscience.'

"So they meet—these simplest, wisest, widest, humblest, highest souls, and understand each other's language, and take up each other's song in antiphons from age to age.

"Yet, I fear, this can scarce be so with John Bunyan. His voice can scarce reach beyond his own time, deep as it is. For how could an unlearned tinker write a book which ages to come would read?

"And, withal, he is a true Englishman. That also pleased me well in him. I think the greatest men who are most human, most for all men, are also most characteristically national; it is the smaller great men who are cosmopolitan. Even as St. Paul was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, Martin Luther was German to the core, they say (and Roger said Oliver Cromwell was English to the core). And so is John Bunyan.

"A square, solid brow; a ruddy, healthy, sensible countenance; a body muscular, strong-boned, tall, compact; eyes keen, calm, quick, sparkling, observant, kindly, with twinklings of humour in them, and tears, and anger, but not restless or dreamy; a mouth firm, capable of rebuke or of quiet smiles. In company, Isaac says, not 'given to loquacity or much discourse, unless some urgent occasion required it;' and then 'accomplished with a quick discerning of persons, being of a good judgment and an excellent wit.' The dumbness (natural to all Englishmen worth anything) not absent in him; speech being with him not for ornament but for use.

"November, 1660.—Isaac is in great trouble. John Bunyan has been cast into prison. Mistress Nicholls also is in great trouble, fearing Isaac may be involved in John Bunyan's disgrace, seeing he loves so much to hear him.

"'It is a very peculiar trial,' saith she, 'that her boy should embrace the most perilous form of all the perilous religions of the day.'

"'Not the most, mother,' said Isaac. 'The Quakers are worse.'

"Indeed everyone seems to agree that of all the sects which have sprung up during the Commonwealth, the Quakers are the worst. I should like to see one.

"February, 1661.—I am grieved to the heart at these ungenerous revenges. It was an ill way to celebrate the martyrdom of His Sacred Majesty, to drag the bodies of brave men from the graves in the Abbey, and hang them on gibbets.

"Senseless, mean, and barbarous revenges! They should have heard John Bunyan the tinker preach. It was not the body that sinned. They should have let it rest.

"My father thinks Oliver Cromwell deserved anything; but he is not pleased at their having disturbed the bones of his mother and daughter, and of Robert Blake, and cast them into a pit in St. Margaret's churchyard.

"'A peaceable old gentlewoman, who never did any harm that I heard,' said he, 'except bringing the usurper into the world; and a young gentle lady too good for such a stock. Their dust would not have hurt that of the kings'. Doubtless it was insolence to lay them there; but it was scarce an English gentleman's work to molest them.'

"But about the violation of Blake's tomb his anger waxed hot. 'A good old Somersetshire family,' he said. 'They might have let him rest; if only for the fright he gave the Pope, the Turk, and the Spaniard.'

"I was afraid to go near Job Forster's for some days after I heard of these desecrations. When at last I went, Rachel could not altogether restrain her indignation. Job only said, "Never heed, never heed. He they sought to dishonour doesn't heed. What is all the world but a churchyard? In "the twinkling of an eye" will anyone have time to see where the bodies rise from? Or dost think the gold and jewels on kings' tombs will have much of a shine when the Gates of Pearl are open, and the poor body they have thrown like a dog's beneath the gibbet shall enter them shining like a star?'

"But then something broke down his fortitude, and he added, in a husky voice,—

"'Yet England might have found him another grave. He did his best for her; he did his best.'

"January, 1662.—A long break in these pages. There has not been much very cheerful to write. And I would never write moans. These it is better to make into prayers.

"Our house is not altogether at unity with itself.

"Roland has brought home his wife.

"From the first, my father did not affect her.

"She took her new honours more loftily and easily than he liked.

"'A pretty Frenchified poppet,' he called her.

"I have done my best to smooth matters, although it is a little vexatious to the temper, sometimes, to be counselled with matronly airs, and consoled for my single state by this young creature.

"It has been often difficult to keep the peace.

"Naturally, the old associations of the old place are nothing to her, and she offends my father continually, by laughing at the old servants, the old furniture, and what she calls our old-fashioned ways in general.

"But to-day she kindled him into a flame which, for the time, will probably keep her at a distance.

"She ventured to propose that she should change my mother's oratory into a cabinet for herself, 'to be draped,' said she, 'with silk, and adorned with statues, and be like the apartments of the "Lady" at Whitehall.'

"Which brought out some very plain English from my father concerning the 'Lady,' and all who favored her.

"'The king,' he vowed, 'might degrade his palaces, if he pleased, and if he dared. But he would see the Hall and everything in it burned to the ground, rather than have the place where my mother had lived the life and prayed the prayers of an angel, polluted by being likened to the dwelling of a creature it was a dishonour for a man to tolerate or for a woman to name.'

"So, for the time, the controversy ended. And, in a few days, Roland and his wife went back to the Court.

"But my father is more and more uneasy and irritable. 'In his youth,' he said, 'in the days of the good of sacred memory, all were noble, rebels, royalists, all. Eliot, Pym, Hampden, Essex, were gentlemen and true Englishmen, as well as Falkland, Bevil Granvill, or Sir Jacob Astley. And all, however deluded, feared God, and honoured all true men and women. But now,' says he, 'all are base together—Court, Royalists, Roundheads—all. Why could not Roger Drayton have kept to such politics as Hampden's or his own father's, and not disgraced himself by joining these furious traitors and sectaries?"

"By which I know that my father has relentings towards the Draytons, though he will by no means confess it.

"June, 1662.—I have seen a Quaker. And a very soft and mild kind of creature it seems to be.

"Olive's children are at Netherby. To-day I met her little girls at Mistress Nicholls's. Maidie is a darling little elfin queen. And Dolly is a sweet, little Puritan angel. And with them was Annis Nye, their nurse, a Quaker maiden, with a heroical serene face, and a voice even and soft, like a river flowing through meadows. She attracted me much; a harmless dove of a maiden she seemed.

"But when I said so to Job Forster, on my way home, he shook his head and muttered,—

"'Soft enough, and deep enough! You would find what kind of gentleness she has if you saw her take the bit between her teeth and make straight for the pillory, and you had to hold her in and keep her safe, if you could. Why, I'm always expecting, morn and night, that poor maid'll get a 'concern' to go and testify against the king's mistresses, or the Popish bishops' surplices. To say nothing of the chance of her setting off to preach in New England, or to the Turks, or to the Pope cf Rome, as some of them do when they are well persuaded it is more dangerous than anything else. And say what George Fox may of the Protector, she'd find the tender mercies of the Court scarce so tender as he was. If you want to make your life a burden to you, Mistress Lettice,' he concluded dolefully, shaking his head, 'you've nought to do but to get your heart tender to a Quaker (as no man or woman with a heart in them can help getting it to that wilful maid), and try to keep her out of harm's way. You'll find you've no rest left, day nor night. I've had hard things to do in my time, but never one that beat me over and over like trying to keep a Quaker safe.'

"July, 1662.—My father, a few days since, met Maidie and Dolly in the village, and asked whose children they were.

"In the evening he said to me,—

"'Those children of Olive Drayton's, at least, are guilty of no crimes, political or other. Have them to the house, Lettice, if thou wilt.'

"And, since, the old house and the gardens have grown musical with the frolics of these young creatures, Isaac and Maidie, Austin Rich and Dolly. It makes me young again to see their story of life beginning.

"And it is pleasant to feel there is so much of youth left in my heart to respond to the youth in theirs, so that they see and feel my being with a sunshine, not a shadow.

"Sometimes I feel as if I could be content to take this on-looker's place in life, and be a kind of grandmother to every one's children. If I could only be sure that Roger and the old friends were also content and secure.

"But the times press hard on them, and are like, they say, to press harder yet.

"August 30.—The harder times for the Puritans have come, or have begun. A week since, on St. Bartholomew's Day, two thousand of their ministers resigned their benefices, rather than do what was commanded by the Act of Uniformity.

"My father is angry with the 'parsons' all round; with the bishops for driving the Puritans out, with the Puritans for going.

"Mistress Dorothy writes from Kidderminster:—

"'Mr. Baxter and sixteen hundred of His Majesty's most loyal subjects, and the Church's most faithful ministers, banished from their pulpits. We had looked for another return when, like Judah of old, we hastened to be the first to bring back our king. But return, or no return, let not any think we repent our loyalty. We will pray for His Majesty by twos or threes, if, by his command, we are forbidden to assemble in larger numbers. Pray that his throne may be established, and his counsellors converted.'

"Job Forster smiles grimly under the gray soldierly hair on his upper lip, and says, sententiously, between the strokes on his anvil,—

"'They are finding it out. One after another. The four thousand Quakers in the jails. The Scottish Covenanted men, with the choice between the bishops and the gallows. Jenny Geddes will scarce rise from the dead to help them now. They are learning how the king remembers their sermons, to which they made him hearken so many hours. And how he keeps their Covenant, to which they had him swear so many oaths. The French, and the Dutch, and the Spaniards found it out long ago. And now the two thousand parsons are finding it out. And by-and-by, nigh the whole country will find it out. But Rachel and I will scarce be here to see.'

"'Find out what?' I said.

"'That the Lord Protector's death was no such great blessing to any but himself,' said Job. And he became at once too absorbed in his work to pursue the conversation.

"October 29th.—To-day, the Post brought tidings which, when my father read, he dashed the letter from him, and started to his feet with an anathema, brief but deep.

"Then he paced up and down the room once or twice in silence, and then he said suddenly to me,—

"'Lettice, where is Roger Drayton?'

"The abrupt question startled me for an instant, so that I could not reply. I did not know what new calamity had come, or was coming. And I suppose the color left my face. For at once my father added very gently,—

"'I should not have asked thee. I know well thou hast kept my prohibition but too loyally. I will send a messenger to Netherby with the letter.'

"He wrote a few rapid lines, and despatched a servant, with the letter without delay.

"Then deliberately and quietly he took his sword from his side and hung it up beside my grandfather's in the hall.

"'For the last time!' he said. 'The honor of England is gone for ever. The king has sold Dunkirk to the French.'

"And with a restless impatience he went on,—

"'Come, come, child! We will make no babyish moans. Get on thy mantle and come round the old place. A man may still serve the country by making two blades of grass where one grew before. But by bearing arms under traitors who sell the honor of England to pay for the paint and gewgaws of wicked women, never again. Henceforth call thyself a husbandman's daughter; but never again a soldier's. In name and in arms England is disgraced, child, dishonored, made a bye-word and a laughing-stock to the whole world. But we may still make the corn grow thicker and the sheep fatter. So who shall say there is not something worth living for yet?

"'Something worth doing yet,' he added, 'for the country of Eliot and Falkland, and Robert Blake, who made the Pope and the Turk quake in their castles, and now lies tossed like a dog into a pit in St. Margaret's churchyard!'

"But he did not tell me what was in the letter he sent to Netherby.

"October 31st.—The autumn wind was softly drifting the brown leaves into heaps round the roots of the trees, by the Lady Well, and softly adding to them by loosening one by one from the branches. I was thinking he was God's gardener, tenderly, though with rough hands, folding warm coverlids over the roots of the flowers. I was thinking how wilder winds would come, and with icy breath heap the snows above the dead leaves; and yet still only be God's gardeners to keep His flowers housed against the spring, and not to shelter only, but to feed and enrich them whilst sheltering. For sleep is not only a rest, but a cordial of new life. I was listening to the dropping of the water into the Holy Well the monks had made so long ago, and thinking how Olive and I had listened to it long ago, and thought it like church music from a kind of sacred Fairy land. The old well, and the fresh spring; always fresh, always living, always young; when there came a rustling among the leaves which was not the wind, nearer, nearer, and before I could look, his hand on my hand, and his voice, low as the dropping of the water, on my heart, and deep as the spring from which it flowed.

"'Lettice, your father told me I might come back. Do you say so?'

"I could scarcely speak, still less could I meet his eyes, which I felt through the heavy lids I could not raise.

"'My heart has never changed, Roger,' I said at last, 'nor misdoubted you one instant.'

"'Has your determination changed, Lettice?' he said, gently withdrawing his hand.

"'Has yours?' I said. 'If you can but say you grieve for one irrevocable deed, and would recall it if you could?'

"'I repent of much, and would undo much,' he replied. 'But I can never say I repent of following him who saved England; and to whom England cannot even return the poor gratitude of a grave.'

"We went silently home side by side, the dead leaves crumbling under his feet in the still woodland paths, till we came to my mother's garden, one side of which bordered on the wood.

"There he unlatched the little garden gate, and held it for me to pass. The click sounded startling in the silence. I passed through, but did not look up, until my hands were suddenly seized in my father's, and his face shone down on me beaming with smiles I had not seen there for many a day.

"'How now, child,' said he, 'whither away, pale and downcast as a white violet?'

"'Dost fear I distrust thee Lettice?' he added softly; 'I never did, I never could.'

"Then I looked up and met his eyes for a moment, but the softness in them overcame me, and I could not speak.

"'What does all this mean, Roger Drayton?' he resumed, impatiently. 'Does not she know I sent for thee? Surely she has not changed?'

"'Mistress Lettice says she has not changed,' said Roger despondingly, 'and never can.'

"'Then what is all this coil about? She told me months since, in the teeth of prohibitions and entreaties to bestow her hand elsewhere, that you had exchanged troth, and would be true to each other till death.'

"'And after,' said I. 'Death cannot separate us for ever. Only that terrible death, and that only in life.'

"'It was because I guarded the scaffold at the king's beheading,' said Roger.

"'Tush, tush, child,' my father replied, hastily. 'We have been through a wilderness, and which of us has not lost his way? We have been through the fire and smoke of a hundred battles, who expects us to come out with face and hands washed like a Pharisee's?'

"Then suddenly turning to Roger and taking his hand, he said solemnly,—

"'If thou hadst known, Roger Drayton, for what a king that scaffold was in clearing the way, I trow thou hadst rather laid thy head on the block thyself.'

"This Roger did not deny. Was not his silence a confession? And so, when my father laid our hands together in his, could I refuse? The sacred irresistible touch of another hand which had once before so joined them, seemed on us all, and a tender voice from heaven seemed to float above like church music. And still as I listened to-night, in the oratory alone, it seemed to say,—

"'My children, the way is rough, tread it together. The burdens are heavy; share them all. Sorrows, fears, fruitless regrets, fruitful repentances, share them all. Bear each other's burdens, and in so bearing, make them sometimes light and always helpful. To you it is given to love; not with the poor timid transitory love which dares not see, but with the love which dares to see because it helps to purify. My children, the way will not be smooth. Tread it together. The burdens will be heavy. Share them all.'"

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

They were married as quietly as might be on a quiet autumn day in the old parish-church of Netherby.

We waited for them in the porch of the old church—the west porch, which our forefathers had built—looking across the green graves of the village churchyard, across the quiet village street to the arched gate which opened opposite from one of the avenues of the hall; my father, Aunt Dorothy (once more at Netherby), Aunt Gretel, my husband, the children and I.

No stately procession issued thence, only Lettice; leaning on her father's arm, wrapped closely in a mantle, with a few faithful old servants following.

We saw them in the distance wending towards us among the grey stems of the beech-trees. Their footsteps fell softly on the fallen leaves as they crossed the church path. We met them at the churchyard gate.

So we entered the church, which we had not done before.

And there a sight met us which went deep to our hearts.

There had been no triumphal wedding arches, no banners, no flowers strewn on the bride's path.

Netherby was a Puritan village, and we Puritans were at no time great in pomps and ceremonials, Moreover, there was a weight of joy in the crowning of this hope so long deferred, and a depth of content, which moved rather to tears than to shouts of welcome. Nor were the times very joyous to us. With two thousand deprived ministers to be kept from starving, and thousands of those who believed as we did, not to be kept from prisons, our festivities naturally took a sober colouring.

We had not therefore been prepared to find the church full from door to altar; full of people from the village and from all the country round—old men and women, and the youngest children that could be trusted to be quiet. (For, as one mother said afterwards, "I would like them to be able to say to their children, 'I was there when Mr. Roger and Mistress Lettice were married.'") They rose as we passed up the aisle, and a soft murmur of benediction seemed to fill the silent church.

For Roger and Lettice were dearly loved in the dear old place, with an affection which had grown with their growth from infancy, and which was strong through the intertwining roots of centuries. (It will be long before the new roots in the New World strike so deep.)

And through all the generations of Davenants and Draytons this was the first time the lines had met in marriage.

It was a solemn as well as a joyful thing to see those two stand with joined hands at the altar, with the tombs of our fathers beside them in the oldest transept, and the stately monuments of the Davenants opposite, whilst the whole village of our tenants and servants (children of generations of our tenants and servants) were gathered behind.

As they knelt down side by side on the altar steps, a ray from the autumn sun fell softly on her bowed head, slightly turned, on the rich brown hair flowing beneath her veil, on the broad fair brow, the drooping eyelids, with their long dark lashes, and the pale cheek. In its repose her face shone on me as if it had been her mother's looking down on her from heaven; so close seemed the likeness, so angelic the calm. It brought my childhood, and all heaven before me, and blinded my eyes with tears.

Good old Dr. Rich was so completely shaken out of his natural dwelling-place in the past by his sympathy with them that he seemed like another man. His voice was deep and tender, and the benedictions fell from his lips with a power which resounded from stone effigies of knight and dame, and thrilled back from every living heart, in a deep echo, "Yea, and they shall be blessed."

The most rigid Puritan in the place conformed for the occasion. Responses went up, not, as Mr. Baxter complains, "in a confused and unmeaning manner," but hearty and clear as an anthem; and the Amens rang through the church like a salute of artillery.

As the service closed and we followed Lettice and Roger down the aisle, I noticed a cavalier wrapped in a large mantle, leaning against one of the pillars near the door. Lettice saw him and pointed him out to Roger, and both then went towards him. It was Walter Davenant. He came forward and grasped their hands.

His voice was low, and had a tremor in it. But I heard him say,—

"If my being publicly here could have been any sign of honour to you, Roger Drayton, I would have come with a cavalcade. But my coming is an honour to none. I pray you think it not a disgrace."

Sir Walter coloured as he saw him (he had forbidden Walter to enter his house), but Lettice placed their hands together, and there was no resisting the entreaty in her sweet pleading face. So the old cavalier went back to the hall leaning on his son's arm.

It seemed as happy an augury as could be given of the blessing to flow from the marriage.

He was the only one of Lettice's kindred except her father who vouchsafed his presence. And I believe it was to counterbalance this cold reception, and testify how he honoured, as much as to show how he loved, his child, that Sir Walter insisted on all the village partaking of such a feast as Netherby had never seen, and on the ringers of all the churches round ringing such peals as the country-side had never heard.

So it came about that at last, after flowing so parallel, so close, and so divided for so many centuries, the two streams of life at Netherby blended in one.

Job Forster said,—

"I always knew it must be—I always knew. Do you think, Mistress Olive, I've watched nightly with Master Roger by the camp-fires on Scotch and Irish moors, on the hills and by the sea, and gone with him into battle after battle, when neither of us knew who would ever come back alive—without finding out where his heart was? and when Mistress Lettice came back from beyond seas as a lily among thorns, I knew she was all right, which made it plain. But I never breathed it to a soul. She (i.e. Rachel) of course always knew everything, whether she was told or not. But she was unbelieving about it—fearful and unbelieving. I never knew her so bad about anything. I believe it was because she wished it so much. Scores of times she has vexed me sore about it. 'There was no promise folks should be happy,' said she, 'and have all they wished for.' I had to mind her of the morning long ago, when we went hunting in the dark for a promise for Master Roger when he was in that sore trouble, and no promise came, till at last she found we wanted none, for we'd got beyond the promises to Him who was the Promise of all promises. And here she was standing up again for a promise! 'It was spiritual inward blessing we were looking for then, Job,' said she (nigh as perverse as that poor Quaker maid), 'and of course that's all plain. This is outward, and that's another thing altogether. No doubt the good Lord would have us all forgiven and made good. But it's by no means clear to my mind He'd have us all married and made happy just in the way we wish.' 'Well, said I, 'thou'rt a wise woman, a world wiser than me. But thou'st never fought under Oliver. He said he knew not well to distinguish between outward blessings and inward. To a worldly man they are outward; to a saint, Christian. The difference is in the subject, if not in the object.' Nor," continued Job, "do I know to distinguish, or care. Leastways thou'st been the best means of grace the Lord ever sent to me. And why shouldn't Master Roger and Lettice be like thee and me? Seems to me scarce thankful, anyway, to put marriage among the outward blessings, like meat!' Which, if it did not convince her (for the best of women can't be always amenable to reason), anyways turned the conversation. And now it's all come about as I said, wife, and thou must give in at last," he concluded. "Sure, thou'lt never be as stiff-necked as those poor wilful Scottish ministers, who were so wise they couldn't even see what the Almighty meant after He had spoken in thunder at Dunbar. Poor souls," he added, "poor stiff-necked souls; they're learning it now on the other side of the book, by the gallows and the boot, and the congregations scattered by the King's soldiers on the hills."

Rachel did not plunge into the vexed question his words raised; as to whether the event proved the equity of the cause. She only said,—

"Promise or no promise, Job; inward or outward, I've no manner of doubt the good Lord minds whether we're happy or no, and makes us as happy as may be, while being made as good as we can be. Which, of course, He minds ten thousand times more; because the goodness is the happiness, come which way it may, by the drought or the flood. But if the happiness will make us good, no fear of His stinting that. Good measure pressed down and running over, that's His measure, and that's the measure He's given Mistress Lettice and Master Roger at last, and thee and me, this many a year. Good measure, with His sign and mark on it to show it is good, and no counterfeit."

Aunt Dorothy was the only one among us who thought it necessary to temper Roger and Lettice's content with dark forebodings.

"It is no smooth sea, dear heart," said she to Lettice, "thy bark is launched upon, nor can ye remain long in any haven."

"I know that I have married a soldier," replied Lettice, "and a soldier in a warfare which has no discharges. But I know his lot, and I have chosen it for mine, Aunt Dorothy."

"Aunt Dorothy" fell from her lips for the first time like a caress. There was always a kind of sweet easy majesty about Lettice, which made her caresses seem a dignity as well as a delight, and Aunt Dorothy for the time ceased her forebodings. Her love for Lettice was stronger than she confessed or knew, and she was always more easily led by Lettice than by any amongst us to take a brighter view of things and men. Not that Aunt Dorothy was one given to moan or whine. She did not dread suffering, but she believed it her duty to dread joy and was therefore ever wont to shadow sunny days with the severe foresight of evil days to come. Dark days indeed were her bright days, since on these she permitted herself to enjoy such stray sunbeams as rarely fail to break through the darkest.

During three years after Roger and Lettice's marriage we kept much at Netherby. Sir Walter's failing health made him choose the quiet of his country home. Moreover, the doings of that degraded court, which the loyal Mr. Evelyn called "rather a luxurious and abandoned rout than a court," displeased the old cavalier of the court of Charles the First as much as it did any Puritan amongst us. Except for the contrast which made it yet bitterer for us who had hoped much from the Commonwealth, and remembered Milton dwelling at Whitehall, and the blameless family of the Protector making a pure English home, with dignified courtly festivities and family prayer, where now the eager contests of the gaming-table and wretched French songs resounded, on Sundays as well as on other days, through the apartments where the King's mistresses reigned.

An alliance grew up between Aunt Dorothy, Sir Walter, and good Dr. Rich. Aunt Dorothy could never so far forgive my father, Roger, my husband, or Job Forster, for turning (as she believed) liberty into license, and lawful resistance into rebellion, as to consort with them again as of the same party. With Sir Walter she had a broad common ground in their loyalty to the late king, their lamentations over the present court, their general admiration of the nobleness of the past, and their general hopelessness as to the future. But with Dr. Rich her sympathies were deeper. He would bring her passages from St. Austin, which she thought only second to St. Paul; and, in return, she would acknowledge that there was one passage which she had not once understood as she ought, and that was, "Resist not the power, for they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." She agreed with Mr. Baxter and Mr. Henry as to the duty of attending, at least occasionally, the services in the church established by law. And he agreed that from primitive times private assemblies for edification in twos and threes were not forbidden.

Sometimes, indeed, they had debates.

"England also has now her St. Bartholomew," she said once, "and no doubt she will have her retribution. Charles the Ninth of France died in agonies of remorse soon after that fatal day of the execution of the Huguenots."

"Anniversaries are not always wise to observe, madam," he replied. "On the eve of St. Bartholomew's day seventeen years ago, the Commonwealth prohibited the use of the Common Prayer even in private. That also is an anniversary. And some might say this St. Bartholomew is the retribution. God forbid I should accuse Him of punishing one injustice by another. But by all means let us avoid predictions. Even agonies of remorse are not the most hopeless end of guilty souls."

"Yet," said my father, "nothing is more safe than predictions of retribution. Most men being likely to suffer, and all men being sure to die, what can be safer than to threaten either affliction or death, or both, to those we deem guilty? It seems to me," he continued, "an endless and fruitless toil to make up the balance of accounts between the churches as to persecution. Perhaps all that can be said is, that those who have had the least power have had the privilege of inflicting the least wrong. He who ruled England once said 'he never yet knew the sect who, when in power, would allow liberty to the rest.'"

"He was for license," interposed Aunt Dorothy. "Heaven forbid we should call that liberty."

"Ay, sister Dorothy, no doubt," said my father, smiling, "with many sects liberty to any other is license. That was what the Protector thought. Be thankful that you have no chance just now of making a St. Bartholomew of your own."

"The Protector has had his retribution, brother," said Aunt Dorothy, solemnly, "let us leave him and his politics in peace."

"But, sir," rejoined my father, turning to Dr. Rich, "after all, the worst retributions are in our sins. The loss of the soul in sinning must be greater than any subsequent loss in suffering; and I confess, to me no severer retribution seems possible to the Church which inflicts this present wrong than the wrong itself, the loss of two thousand of her most fervent and holy pastors, and the rending from her of the tens of thousands who revere and follow them. The losses of churches, after all, are not in livings but in lives; not in money but in men."

Bitter and biting, indeed, were the times around us, yet the prisons of those days were more honourable than the palaces. Better beyond comparison any disgrace and suffering that reckless Court could inflict than the disgrace of belonging to it.

With two thousand good ministers and their families thrown destitute on the world, it was impossible that any of those who honoured them could feel their own possessions anything but a trust to be scrupulously husbanded for their succour. Many hundreds also were in prison, though none, I rejoice to think, of those two thousand, were ever in prison for debt. Then there were the Quakers, who bore the brunt of the battle, carrying passive resistance as close to action as possible, and persisting in meeting in public assemblies, though certain to be dispersed by constables or soldiers with wounds or loss of life.

Indeed it was for this reason, amongst others, we kept away from London during the years following the passing the Act of Uniformity, in the hope of keeping Annis Nye out of the peril we knew she would confront if near enough to attend a meeting of Friends.

It was not any one party in the state whose hearts began to fail, but the good men of all parties.

It was no longer Royalists or Roundheads only that were sinking, but England. It was not Puritanism or Presbyterianism only that the Court affronted, but righteousness, purity, and truth.

Already the weapons of ecclesiastical or theological controversy, the subtle and "unanswerable" arguments wherewith Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Independents, Erastians, Calvinists, Arminians, Semi-Arminians, and all the sixty sects Mr. Baxter had enumerated, had been assailing each other during the past years, seemed to hang rusting over our heads, as mere curious antiquities, such as the bills and crossbows our ancestors had used in the wars of the Roses.

The contest was being carried to other ground; to the oldest battle-field of all, and the most plainly marked.

As Job Forster said,—

"There's a good deal of the fighting that's been done these last years, Mistress Olive, that's been a sore puzzle to a plain man like me. I mean the wars with words as well as with swords. Friend and foe used so much the same battle-cries, and fought under banners so much alike, that when a man had gained a victory, it wasn't always easy to see whether to make it a day of humiliation or of thanksgiving. The safest way was to make it both. And after he who could see for us all was taken from our head, things got clean hopeless, and it was all shooting in the dark. But now there's a kind of doleful comfort in putting by all the long hard words with which Christians fight each other, and taking up for weapons the Ten Commandments. A man feels more sure anyway they can't hit wrong. There's been a deal of fighting and a deal of talking these last years, and seems to me now as if the Almighty were calling us all to a Quaker's silent meeting, to keep still a bit, and mind our own business. Perhaps when the talking and the fighting begin again, they'll both be the better for the silence."

CHAPTER XI.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

"Davenant Hall, October, 1664.—The blow has fallen on us at last. Aunt Dorothy and Annis Nye are together in prison at Newgate.

"Annis was the first taken. Olive being for a time in London, nothing could keep the maiden from attending the forbidden meeting of Quakers, held at the Bull and Mouth, Bishopsgate. And so it happened that, one night, they looked for her return in vain, and Dr. Antony going to search for her, found that the assembly had been broken up by the soldiers with violence, and that among those seized and thrown into prison was Annis Nye. They would have paid anything, or taken any pains to rescue her, but the peculiar difficulty in the case of the imprisonment of the Quakers is, that they will do nothing and suffer nothing to be done, which would in any way recognize the justice of their sentence. The magistrate in this case (as in another which occurred at the same time) was willing to have set Annis free, if she would have given any pledge to abstain from attending such meetings in future. But she said,—

"'Ask me not to do aught against my conscience? If I were set free to-day I must go to-morrow, if the Lord so willed me, to meet the Friends at the Bull and Mouth.'

"Nor would she suffer bail to be given. And so she was sentenced to be carried beyond seas to the plantations in Jamaica—she and divers other Quakers, men and women; the men being sentenced to Barbadoes, and the women to Jamaica.

"Aunt Dorothy's heart was moved for the maid; but, nevertheless, she shook her head, and said she had always prophesied such willfulness could have no other end.

"'It was a pity,' said she, 'the rashness of such disorderly people should throw discredit on the sufferings of sober Christians.'

"For she still clung to the belief that there was a legal submission, a conformity to the furthest limit possibly compatible with fidelity to conscience, which must be a safeguard for the personal liberty of those who, like Mr. Baxter and herself, rigidly kept within it.

"But she was soon to be driven from this last point of hope. In July the Conventicle Act came into action, ordering that any religious meetings in private houses, or elsewhere, of more than five people besides the household, rendered those who attended them liable to imprisonment or fines.

"And from that time no Puritan gentleman, who had an enemy base enough to inform against him or happened to come in the way of a common mercenary informer, could be safe. Some even deemed it unsafe to say a grace when five strangers were present.

"At Netherby, a few of the villagers had always been wont to join our family-prayer from time to time.

"At the time of the coming of the Conventicle Act into operation, Aunt Dorothy chanced to be alone in the house, the rest of the family being in London, and she scorned to make any change.

"On Sunday morning, an ill-looking suspicious stranger dropped in on their morning exercise. And on the next the constables made their appearance at the same hour, and arrested Aunt Dorothy in the king's name.

"The servants talked of resistance, and the constables suggested bail, but Aunt Dorothy refused either: the first, from loyalty to the king; the second, from loyalty to truth. She was guilty of no offence against God or the king, said she, and was ready to stand her trial.

"Accordingly she is in Newgate, and Roger is in London, doing all he can, in conjunction with Mr. Drayton and Dr. Antony, to effect her liberation.

"Twelfth Night, 1665.—I little thought that ever again, while we are both on earth, anything should separate Roger and me.

"I had gone over, as I thought, all possible dangers, and resolved that, in all, duty must keep me by his side. Exile, war, imprisonment, all I would share. What duty could ever arise so strong as my duty to cleave to him?

"And yet now Roger lies in prison in London, and I am imprisoned here, kept from him by soft ties of duty stronger than bolts of iron.

"For in the cradle by my side, breathing the sweet even breath of an infant's sleep, lies our little Harry Davenant Drayton.

"And in the next chamber, with the door open between, lies my father, sleeping the feverish broken sleep of sickness, from time to time calling me to his side by an uneasy moan or a restless movement; scarcely able to bear me out of his sight.

"Roger was arrested for speaking some words of good cheer to a little company who had gathered at early dawn in a solitary place to hear their ancient pastor. The pastor had been thrown into prison, and the poor flock waited in vain. Roger came to tell them of their pastor's imprisonment, said a short prayer and a few words of good counsel, and would thus have heartened and then dismissed them, when the officers came and seized him. Strange that he, so little given to overmuch discourse, should be in prison for speaking.

"There were no bonfires or festivities to-day, as on that Twelfth-night, all but a quarter of a century since, when all Netherby, and my own brothers, and I made merry around the winter bonfires; that night which was nigh costing Roger so dear; all life and all the Civil War before us, then as unknown as to-morrow now!

"How scattered the company who met then! On battle-field, and lonely heath, and in the silent church; in this old house (which feels almost as lonely and silent now), and in prison.

"Yet better now than then, in many ways, and for most of us. Some of the dearest who could never have rested here, at rest for ever above. Roger with a rest in his heart no prison can rob him of. And my father nearer my mother, I think, than ever before in heart and soul.

"I read the Prayer-book to him often, and the Bible. He makes little comment, but loves to listen, and asks for the chapters and hymns my mother loved best. And sometimes he asks me what comforted her most when she thought of dying. And I tell him,—

"'Christ our Lord. The thought of Him; all He said, did, and suffered on earth; Himself living now in heaven. All else, she said, was Hades, the Invisible. But Christ had become Visible; had been manifested, seen, touched, and handled. "God refuses us all such poor pictures," (said she,) "as Pagans and Mussulmans have of their paradises and elysiums; all pictures, except such as it is plain are not pictures, but symbols; either because they contradict themselves—as 'gold like transparent glass,' and seas 'mingled with fire'—or, because we are told they are symbols, like the living water and the Tree of Life. The other world remains to us Hades. But Christ the Lord has been seen by mortal eyes, held in the mortal arms of a mortal mother. His feet bathed with tears and kissed by the lips of an adoring, penitent woman. His hand laid with healing touch on the leper none else would touch. His hands nailed to a cross, and His feet; the prints of the nails seen by Thomas; His voice heard on the slopes of Olivet, by the sea-side, by the well. Christ the Lord was heard and seen,' she said. 'And that makes all the Hades a place not of darkness, but of light to me, where the human heart can long to be, to adore Him, and yet remain human.'"

"'Did she say that?' my father says. 'Did she say that? Then that is what I can understand too. Even she could have seen nothing but a blank of darkness in it but for Him; but for Him. Then, sweetheart, no wonder I seem like groping in the dark sometimes. I who have so much more sin to be forgiven, and so much less faith to see.'

"Then once I told him how that horror of thick darkness came on me when she died, and how it was shone away by the Apostles' Creed. And he listened, gazing at me as if his soul were living on the words. Then I read him the gospels; the stories of the resurrection.

"And then often, again and again, he asks me to repeat what my mother said. And each time, instead of growing dull by repetition, it seems to grow living to us both.

"So I can have no doubt that my place is here, and not in the prison with Roger, where otherwise it would be liberation to me to go.

"January 30th, 1665.—No word from the prison for some days. The snow is white on all the breadths of the Fens, bounded only like the sea by the gray sky, broken only by the Mere, black with ice, and by the dark limbs of the trees which have stripped themselves 'like athletes' to fight the winter storms.

"Sixteen years since they laid the king amidst the falling snow, among his fathers, in the Chapel at Windsor.

"How little our sentences avail!

"Executed this day sixteen years as a murderer and traitor! Celebrated to-day in every church throughout the land as a martyr of blessed memory; while the bones of those who put him to death lie mouldering under the gallows.

"Yet who shall say that the final sentence is given yet? Higher and higher the cause is carried from tribunal to tribunal, from the angry present to the calm-judging generations to come, from these again to the Tribunal above, from which there is no appeal.

"Of what avail for us to judge?

"The sentence is given there already; given, and known to those whom it most concerns.

"What matters it what we are prattling about it here below?

"My husband has left among his papers some letters and journals from the other side of the sea, which are well worn by much reading, and noted in the margin in many places, so that in reading them I converse with him, and find much comfort every way, both in the text and the comment.

"The simple story goes straight to my heart, nerves and braces it at once. Never, I think, were sufferings borne with more of courage and less of repining.

"Frost, famine, salt water freezing on their scanty clothing till it was hard as the Ironsides' armour. Then 'vehement' coughs came on, 'hectic,' and consumption; still they bore cheerfully on. Out of the hundred, seventeen died in the first February after their landing, sixteen in March, sometimes three die in a day. At last, at the end of the winter, of one hundred persons, scarce fifty remained; the living scarce able to bury the dead; the well not sufficient to tend the sick. And in a notice which touches me to the quick, the journal says:—

"'While we were busy about our seed, our governor, Mr. Carver, comes out of the field very sick, complains greatly of his head; within a few hours his senses fail, so as he speaks no more, and in a few days after, dies, to our great lamentation and heaviness. His care and pains were so great for the common good, as therewith 'twas thought he oppressed himself, and shortened his days; of whose loss we cannot sufficiently complain; and his wife deceases about five or six weeks after.'

"She, belike, did not complain of his loss. She endured; and died.

"And shall I complain while Roger lives? and of bodily hardship I know nothing; though that, indeed, is scarce the hardest.

"Half the exiles dead, yet the rest never lost heart or distrusted God; but went on, and toiled and conquered;—and made a home and a refuge for their brethren;—began a New World.

"The sorrows were borne in unrepining silence, as knowing God the Father would not try them on many that could be spared. The mercies are recorded with grateful minuteness.

"After their first harvest from seed saved from half-starving mouths, they appointed an annual Thanksgiving Day; afterwards, after a time, an annual fast. But the thanksgiving came first. And they made it a right merry day: preparing for it by a holiday of hunting game for the feast. A wholesome and not gloomy piety theirs seems to me, like John Bunyan's. Moreover, they have eyes to see. The journal tells of forests 'compassing about to the very sea, with oaks, pines, ash, walnut, birch, holly, juniper, sassafras, and other sweet wood;' of forest paths and sweet brooks; of quiet pools and deep grassy valleys; of vines, too, and strawberries; and sorrel and yarrow, and cherry trees and plum trees.

"Deer range the forests, and wilder animals. One poor man whose feet were 'pitifully ill' with the cold, crept abroad into the woods with a spaniel. A little way from the plantation, two wolves ran after the dog, who fled between his legs for succour; he had nothing in his hand, but took up a stick and threw at one of them and hit him. They ran away, but came again; he got a pale-board in his hand, and 'they sat on their tails grinning at him a good while, and then went their way, and left him.'

"Cranes and mallards waded about the marshy places and plashed in the pools; and now and then they started partridges and 'milky-white fowl;' and birds sang pleasantly among the trees.

"The world seems so wholesome there, so adventurous, so full of life. Sometimes I think if Roger were out of prison, one day I should like to go there with him and our babe, and all the rest; away from the conflicts of this distracted land; out of the way of courts and prisons and Conventicle Acts, to conquer some more homes from the wilderness.

"But, perhaps, this is only restlessness and repining; in which case I should be no worthy member of such a company.

"I wonder if Roger ever thought of this, and never liked to mention it to me, knowing how I love the old country and the old church? The pages are so well-worn and so carefully noted. When we meet again, at all events, I will show him I am ready for anything he deems good. 'Thy country shall be my country; whither thou goest I will go; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried.'

"Yes, none can rob me ever more of that sacred right.

"February 2nd.—A letter from Roger from the prison.

"Brief enough, as his letters and speeches for the most part are, yet marvellously lengthy for him.

"'Our case is but little to be commiserated,' he writes, 'being so much lighter than that of others, and we trust soon to be ended.

"'I might, indeed, have as fair a room as at Netherby, and as good eggs, cheese, butter, and bacon as a soldier could wish for sold here in the prison.

"'But no man, hale and strong (as I am, sweet heart, so never be downcast), could know that hundreds of men and women, imprisoned for much the same cause as we, are under the same roof, ill-clad, ill-fed, and worse lodged, and enjoy his feast alone.

"'The Quakers, as usual, provoke the charge, and bear the brunt of it. The men's sleeping-room, till lately, was a great bare chamber with hammocks hung between a pillar in the midst and the wall, in three tiers, one above another; the air, by the morning, enough to breed a pestilence. God grant it do not. For although this is somewhat mended, these crowded prisons are little better than pest-houses at the best. And pestilences do not stay where they begin. Whitehall is not so far from Newgate but that the poison might spread. The Friends outside do what they can to succour, clothe, and feed those within, arranging their help with a singular order and care. But much is left for us to aid in. Wherefore, sweet heart, send what warm woolseys and wholesome country food thou canst. Leonard Antony will bring it and see it well bestowed.

"'We have good hope of deliverance, by payment of sundry fines and other moneys. Annis Nye, we fear, is sentenced to the plantations in Jamaica. But Aunt Dorothy will, no doubt, speedily be free, and bring thee tidings. So God keep thee and the babe. And be of good cheer. I was never of better heart. Farewell.

"'P.S.—Thy brother Walter hath been to see me. He was much moved. And he is doing what he can for our release. But he looks sorely aged and changed.'

"February 10th.—Aunt Dorothy is at Netherby again.

"She looks thin and pale after such prison-fare and lodging. She brings certain tidings that Roger will soon be free.

"Her wrath seems chiefly directed against the exactions of the prison-officers.

"'Harpies!' said she, 'unconscionable harpies. I would not have given a groat of good money to fill their unhallowed coffers, and to buy the rancid lard and fetid oil they dare to call butter and bacon, or demeaned myself to ask them the favour of a lodging separate from the vagabonds and purse-pickers, had it not been for that poor wilful maid, Annis Nye. She looked like a ghost or a corpse; a corpse with the eyes of an angel, and the courage of a lion. Yea, the courage of a lion more than the meekness of a martyr. Brave I say she is as any woman ever was. And brave the Quakers are. But meek I never will call them. One of them was imprisoned for "finishing a job," mending shoes, on the Sabbath morning! On religious principles, quoth he; breaking the Sabbath "on religious grounds!" And when in prison he let them nearly whip him to death, rather than confess himself guilty by doing the malefactors prison work. Indeed, he would have died but for the tender nursing of Mr. Thomas Ellwood and the other Friends, dressing his wounds with balsams. For that they are friendly to each other, these fanatics, no one can deny, brave and friendly; but meek'—surely they are not. I had almost to belie myself by pretending to want a waiting-woman (a bondage I hate), before I could prevail on that poor maid to let me have her in a room apart, and nurse and cherish her as she needed. For she had been sorely bruised and wounded in the scattering of the meeting, where the soldiers took her; and had been busier since with her "concerns" and her "callings," to all seeming, than with mollifying her wounds and bruises. I am a woman of no weak nerve, niece Lettice, but my heart sickened when I came to see how she must have suffered. And she as patient as a lamb, dumb and patient those Quakers can be. I will never deny that; dumb and patient, brave and friendly. And now there she is again alone, without a creature in their sober senses near her to keep her from her "concerns" and her "calls." There she is with ever so many others, sentenced to "service" in Jamaica.'

"When Job Forster heard this sentence, he brushed his hand across his eyes.

"'Poor maid! poor, pleasant, wilful maid!' said he.

"But before long he seemed to take a more cheerful view.

"'Perhaps it's for the best, after all, Mistress Lettice. Who knows but she might have been seized with a concern to go to preach to the Grand Turk, or the Pope, or the Dey of Algiers? Several of the women Friends have done such things. Not that the Turks are the worst foes for a Quaker. They listen to them as meek as lambs for they think they are mad; and they think the Almighty speaks through mad people. And then they escort them out of the country, as gracious as may be. And I don't see what any saint could do better with a Quaker, poor blind infidels though those Turks be. Nay, the Turks are not the worst danger for a Quaker. She might have had a concern to go to New England, to testify, as others of her sect have done, against the severity of their treatment there. And New England, they do say, is about the hottest place a Quaker can go to just now. They don't listen to them, like the poor Turks. And they do escort them out of the country; but not graciously. They beat them from town to town, and threaten them with the gallows if they come back again, which makes it a stronger temptation than any Quaker can resist to go back as soon as they can.'

"This is a great perplexity to me. I thought the people in New England had gone there on account of religious liberty. I must ask Roger.

"February 17.—Roger is with us again; scarce the worse for his imprisonment, except a little hollow in the cheeks, and a good deal of want of repair in his clothes. I see he did not use the clothes I had made.

"'A little more in good campaigning order,' he says, if I attempt to condole; 'a little relieved of over-abundance of flesh. That is all.'

"It is the way of the Draytons generally, and of Roger in particular, that their spirits rise beyond the ordinary level in a storm. I suppose the family has been used to stormy weather so long that they feel it their element. They are at home in it, and like it.

"I have asked him about New England. His face quite beamed, and his tongue seemed unloosed, when he found the thought of going to the plantations was not so terrible to me.

"He confessed that he had often thought it might be the best resource, if things do not mend here, but had shrunk from mentioning it to me.

"'We are all cowards, in some direction,' he said, with a smile. 'How was I to know, sweet heart, I had married a Deborah, whose heart would never fail?'

"'Thou dost not despair for England?' I said.

"'God forbid!' said he. 'But the lives of nations count by centuries, and ours by years, and that but precariously. And, meantime, while there is so little to be done here, I have sometimes thought we might serve the old country best by extending her dominion and anticipating her freedom in the new.'

"'But,' said I, 'I cannot make out about this freedom. Job Forster says they are by no means gentle to Quakers.'

"He paused a little.

"'The Quakers are not quite content with quietly pursuing their own way,' he said. 'With all their objections to war and teaching of passive resistance, their warfare is certainly not on the defensive but a continual assault on other sects. And at present the New England plantations are struggling, not "for wellbeing, but for being;" which is a struggle in which men are apt to make rough terms. By-and-by, they will feel stronger, and be gentler; and the Quakers, seeing that every man's hand is no longer against them, will cease to set their tongues against every man.'

"'I scarce think,' he added, after a pause, in that low tone to which his voice always naturally falls when he speaks of his old general, 'that the place is yet to be found on earth where such liberty exists as the Protector would have had in England.

"'But it has scarce come to the alternative of exile yet. I cannot think that England will be steeped much longer in this Lethe of false loyalty, forgetting not Eliot and Hampden, and the Commonwealth alone, but Magna Charta, and all her history: all that makes her England.'

LETTICE'S DIARY.—(Continued.)

"London, April, 1665.—The last weeks of watching by my father's sick-bed are over. No bitterness mingles with the sorrow. At first it seemed as if we could do nothing but give thanks for the peace and patience of those last days; and the rest for the spirit, so weary and hopeless as to this world and its future—so full of lowly, trembling hope as to the other.

"Then came the ebbing back of the tide of affection in a tide of grief, the sense of blank and loss that must come and Roger thought it best I should leave the old scenes altogether for a while, and come to Olive's home.

"For the old home at the hall can never be a home for us again.

"Roland and his wife took possession at once, with workmen from town, and a train of new servants. Happily, my father had pensioned many of the old household.

"My sister-in-law has remodelled my mother's oratory, and the old places so sacred to me, as she wished, after the newest fashions at Whitehall.

"But these changes in things, however sacred, are little indeed, compared with the changes in people; the evil influences brought into the household and the village by the dissolute train of serving men and women, trained in the wicked manners of the Court.

"London, May, 1665.—The spring seems to unfold her robes slowly this year, and feebly, like a butterfly I saw yesterday, in which life was so low that it died whilst struggling out of its chrysalis. There has been much drought. The scant foliage in the parks and by the road-sides grows old and gray with dust and drought almost as soon as it is out.

"There have been comets and strange sights in the sky this winter. Aunt Dorothy thinks they are for the nation's sins; but Mr. Drayton, who attends the lectures of the Royal Society at Gresham College, says they have to do with the revolutions of the heavens, not with the revolutions in England. 'The signs of the times,' says he, 'are not in the sky, but in the Whitehall gaming-tables.' But Aunt Dorothy shakes her head, and says the Royal Society, the Quakers, and the Court together, are fast undermining the faith of the people.

"There are rumours that one or two poor folk in the villages of St. Giles' and St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, between Westminster and the City, lie sick with a malady men like not well to name.

"But all just goes on as usual. The king feeds the wild-fowl and plays pall-mall in the park, with the throng of idlers about him.

"There is little, indeed, at Whitehall to recall that it ever was what Roger and the foreign ambassadors say it was in the days of the Commonwealth; a virtuous princely home; still less to make it possible to think the king recalls it as the scene of his father's martyrdom. A gaming-house, where wicked women are lodged, and fill the galleries night and day with licentious revelry; where the wife sits apart, neglected and despised, while her husband spends her fortune on the mistress with whom he compels her to associate!

"Is there no English gentleman left, no relic of old knighthood, that these things can be?

"Queen was a sacred name to the cavaliers of my youth. Were there no cavaliers left when the young queen, after patiently sitting apart some time in her neglected corner of the room while the base throng, with a king at their head, gathered around the mistress—at length rose and withdrew to hide her bitter tears in her chamber;—were there none of the old cavaliers left to rally indignantly round her and shame the king back to her? Were there no English gentlewomen left to uphold her in the courageous and womanly resistance she dared at first to make to the degradation of such company as the king forced on her?—To say to her, 'For his sake and your own, never yield to such dishonour! Better weep alone, neglected for life, a widowed wife, than stoop to be but the first of such a company!'

"Alas! now, poor lady, she has learned to hide her indignation, and to converse freely with those any man with a spark of true manhood in him, profligate though he might be, would have kept from her sight.

"And some still speak of the king as a model of grace and courtesy, and extol his infinite jest and wit; comparing the polish of those refined days with the rough, soldierly jokes of the Usurper!

"These days refined, and those coarse! Roger says there is more coarseness in the most polished compliment of this hollow Court than in the roughest joke a man like Cromwell could ever make. Just as there is more coarseness in the theatre now established than in the rudest jests in Shakspeare, whose plays the king's courtiers and mistresses are too 'polite' to act, and the courtiers too 'polite' to enjoy.

"For the royal favourites now are to be seen on the stage. The 'lady' now, they say, does not reign alone. The poor young queen has this wretched revenge, at least, that the king can be constant to no love, lawful or not.

"Bear and bull baiting, too, are restored among the 'refinements' of the Court. But, perchance, I am the bitterer on this, in that this degradation presses me so close. The gleam of better hope that broke on us for Walter, when he appeared at our marriage and was reconciled to my father, has long since vanished; and he is swept away again in the whirlpool of the Court.

"It is this which obliges me to think of evils from which otherwise I might turn my eyes.

"This Dance of Satyrs is to my brother, indeed, a Dance of Death. These fires of sin are burning away his very life and soul, and none can quench them.

"June 3.—The numbers of poor sick folk in St. Giles' and St. Martin's have increased fearfully. The nobles and rich men take alarm; many houses are deserted; the roads crowded with coaches full of fugitives.

"The Plague is amongst us! The Plague!

"To none of us not yet beyond middle life are the terrors of that word fully known. Mr. Drayton, Aunt Dorothy, and the aged, know the meaning of the word too well. In 1636, nearly thirty years ago, was the last great desolation of the City. Before that it recurred, with more or less force, every few years. Then it swept away a fifth of the inhabitants. But for the last sixteen years it has been scarcely seen in London; merely four or five people in the year, in the lowest districts, dying of it, and so preventing its being altogether forgotten.

"Said Aunt Dorothy: 'The Commonwealth was not all a godly people could wish. But during the Commonwealth the Plague did not visit the City. That scourge, at all events, was not deemed needful. Now the Court has come back—or I should not say come back—such a Court as was never known has come to us from those wicked, foreign, Popish parts: and with the Court comes the Plague.'

"'The real Plague has been among us some years,' said Mr. Drayton. 'Heaven grant this Plague may be the purification. But take heed, sister Dorothy, take heed how we interpret Providence before the time. The scourge has fallen on too many of late for us to say too hastily this is the Father's rod, and that is the Lictor's; or this is the King's accolade to smite his servant into knighthood, from the lower place of service to the higher. What sayest thou, sister Gretel?'

"'For me, brother,' she replied, 'there is little temptation of being too quick to interpret, because I am so slow to understand. So I find it the safest way, when the rod falls on others, to hope it is the King's accolade; when it falls on myself, I know well enough it is the Father's rod—the loving Father's loving chastening, yet sorely needed.'

"But Aunt Dorothy set her lips rigidly.

"'Some men's sins are open beforehand,' said she, 'going before to judgment. And all men say it does seem very notable just now that death seizes most on the profane, and seems to pass the sober and religious people by.'

"June 3.—Rumours of a great victory over the Dutch Fleet. The news scarce stirs up the smitten city to the faintest semblance of joy or triumph. Yet are victories not so frequent now as to be made common.

"June 25.—The Court has fled to Oxford. Whitehall is empty and silent. That mockery, at least, is gone out of sight of the people's misery.

"The Court has fled, and the good Nonconformist ministers have come back, and are allowed to preach in the churches from which they were driven.

"June 30.—We have held a family consultation to-day whether to stay or go. Roger and Leonard Antony had no doubt of their duty.

"Many of the physicians have left (to attend their fugitive patients, they say), which makes it all the more needful, Dr. Antony thinks, for him to remain.

"Many of the clergy, also (though by no means all), have fled (to tend their fugitive flocks, they say). And Roger deems it the plain duty of a Christian man, who is here already by Providence placed in the midst of the peril, to stay, and give what help he can to the stricken and the bereaved, by counsel, alms, and words of Christian hope. This is the kind of season that unlocks Roger's lips. He grows eloquent, when dying men and women look to him to lift their hearts to God. At least, the few words he speaks are eloquent, and refresh the heart like cold water after a burning drought—cold and fresh, because of the deep places from which it comes.

"They tried a little to persuade Olive and me and the children to seek refuge elsewhere.

"But not much, seeing that all persuasion could be of no avail to move us to this.

"Thank God, it is not my duty to be parted from him now. God spares us this agony.

"Indeed there is one mitigation to the anguish of this time of terrors. Death comes to many households now almost as the Glorious Epiphany for which my mother looked; as it were with a great trumpet, in the twinkling of an eye, smiting whole families together, without parting, from earth to heaven.

"For what richer mercy could we ask?

"July.—The sunny sky, unshaded by a cloud, still smiles its terrible steady stony smile on the drooping city; like a countenance which despair has smitten into idiotic vacancy; like an eye from which madness has dried the tears.

"It is strange to have such leisure as we have now to listen and think. For in one thing Roger and Dr. Antony are firm. They will not suffer us to go into the infected streets, nor indeed to leave the garden, save by the water-gate, to give the children fresh air in the meadows by the river.

"We keep everything as much as possible in its wonted, even course. Our family prayer and psalm have not been omitted once; Roger's father leading it, for Roger and Leonard are seldom present.

"Maidie and Dolly sew and help us in the house, where there is much to do; since we hold it duty by no means to suffer our servants to remain in the infected city, unwilling as they were to depart. Mistress Gretel, Mistress Dorothy, and Olive, therefore, do the kitchen and the household work, and I and the young maidens help all we can; although (being brought up too helplessly) I am not of half the use I would be.

"This regular even living Dr. Antony deems the best precaution. He believes a feverish convulsive kind of religion is as dangerous as any other excitement, and that we have great need at such (as at all) times of the exhortation, Study to be quiet, and to do your own business.

"Much as he honours those who preach in the churches, he could desire that their exhortations were sometimes less alarming. The people are roused and alarmed enough, he says, by the pestilence. Death itself is preaching the Alarm and the Call to the unconverted. What sermon can preach 'Prepare' like Ten thousand Deaths in a week? The preachers should preach Christ and His peace, he thinks. And so no doubt many do.

"The magistrates do what they can to produce the same regularity in the city. London is not wholly abandoned by all her rulers in her sore need. Bread is as abundant and cheap as ever, though it must be brought to us at some peril.

"There is a great quiet in the streets. No holiday processions now. The merry-makers are all gone from the city or from the world. No funeral processions. There are no burials, except by night. The city is dying. But there are no tolling bells, no reverent slow steps of the mourning train. The magistrates dare not let the mourners go about the streets by day.

"Death is stripped of all the pomps with which we seek to hide its terrors, and stands bare. The only funeral procession is the dead-cart with its ghastly drivers; the dead-cart met at the head of each alley with shrieks of despair which break the silence of the night. Twice the drivers of that cart were lost, and the horses rushed wildly on. But no one knows if the drivers died or fled. The general tomb is that dread Pit in the fields where the dead are thrown at midnight, of which we scarce dare even think.

"The pestilence makes no distinction that any of us can understand now. Aunt Dorothy has well-nigh given up seeking to read God's judgments, which at first she and many thought so distinct and distinguishing.

"Yet amid all these horrors there are alleviations such as sometimes do make the meaning shine through them, as if they were illuminated from within.

"Divisions have ceased. Instead of disputing questions of precedence as on a mock battle-field, Christians draw inward to the citadel, which is the sole and common refuge of us all.

"Mere religious talk has ceased.

"People whose talk is deeper than their life, do not dare to talk for fear of having to prove their words the same hour in dying.

"People whose life lies deeper than their speech, do not need to talk of what they feel. The peace which sets them free to serve and comfort all around, speaks enough, with very few words.

"Persecution has ceased.

"The pestilence, with its cruel Act of Uniformity has altogether annulled that of the king. Divers of the ejected ministers, now that ten thousand are dying in a week, have resolved that no obedience to the laws of mortal men whatever can justify them in neglecting men's souls and bodies in such extremities. They therefore stay or return. They go into the forsaken pulpits, unforbidden, to preach to the poor people before they die; also to visit the sick, and get such relief as they can for the poor, especially those who are shut up in the smitten houses.

"The fear, and hope, which at first made people avoid each other, have passed together. And the churches are crowded whenever any preach who speak as if they testified what they knew.

"'Religion,' Roger says, 'is gaining such a hold of numbers of these weeping, silent listeners, as, living or dying, will not be loosed again.'

"And (unless the Puritan preaching is different from any I ever heard, or thought to hear) the sermons are such as the evident possibility of the preachers never preaching another, and the certainty of many of the congregation never hearing another, alone can make them.

"They are messages, not statements or arguments; scarcely so much appeals as messages. The calmest allusion to danger penetrates the heart like the archangel's trumpet, when ten thousand dying lips are echoing it.

"'You are lost—wandering and lost in sin.'

"That has a strange power, when we know it to be true, and see before us the edge of the abyss.

"'The son of God has come to seek and to save the lost.'

"He, Himself, not the plague, but the Saviour, is here, seeking the lost now; not to judge but to save.

"God has so loved the world; not hated, let these horrors say what they may—not forgotten—but loved; not willed this open world to perish, let these grass-grown streets, and these shutters rattling against the empty houses, these midnight burials of thousands, these death-wails, this death-silence, say what they will, not to perish; the true perishing, the perishing in sin, of sin, is not His will, never His will, but the being saved, out of sin and from sin. This salvation is as near you as the plague. Nay, the plague is only the merciful thunder calling to it.

"Few words are needed to move men now; no new words. The older the better. If the old forgotten words once lisped at a mother's knee, better than all.

"O Walter! Walter! my brother! Art thou here still in this plague-smitten city, or hast thou fled with that Court smitten with a plague so infinitely more terrible? Would God thou wert here to hear those sacred words of heavenly forgiveness and strength, echoed back to thy heart once more, as from our mother's lips, from among these congregations of dying men!

"August 25.—It has come close to us at last.

"Our door is marked with the red cross now.

"The sweetest and ripest souls among us—Roger's father and Aunt Gretel—have been stricken, and are gone home.

"Yesterday morning, before daybreak, I was resting on my bed, having watched through the night, when I heard the latch of the garden-door, which was left open for Roger and Dr. Antony, softly lifted. I thought it might be Roger, and crept down-stairs.

"At the door I met Annis Nye.

"Her face was pale and worn, but serene as ever, and her voice as calm.

"'I heard that you were all here, without any to serve you,' she said, 'and I thought that was a call to me to come.'

"'Do you know into what peril you come?' I asked.

"'I saw the plague-sign on the street-door,' she said; 'so I came round through the garden.'

"I clasped her in my arms, and kissed her, and wept. Tears are not common with us now; but I could not help these. Generous deeds always touch the spring of tears, I think, more easily than sorrow.

"What was stranger than my being thus moved, when Aunt Dorothy came down and saw Annis, and heard why she had come, she did as I had done; she took the maiden to her heart and wept.

"But what sounded stranger yet in that house and city of death, when the children saw her, they made the hushed house ring for a moment with their joyous welcomes.

"'Annis is at home again!' they said; 'Annis is safe. She will nurse us all, and keep every one, quiet, and we shall all get well.'

"Meantime, Mistress Dorothy had busied herself preparing food, which she set before Annis, and with difficulty persuaded her to take a little bread and milk.

"She had a strange story to tell, and she told it in few words, as was her wont, at our questioning.

"'I and other women Friends were sentenced to the plantations in Jamaica,' she said. 'But the ship-masters refused to take us. They held our sentence unjust, and feared the judgment of the Lord if they meddled with us. At last one was found who took us, he being denied a pass down the river from the plague-smitten city unless he covenanted to carry us. They had trouble in getting some of us on board. For they would not acknowledge their sentence so far as to climb willingly into the ship. So they had to be hoisted on board like merchandise. To this I was not called. For which I was thankful. For it angered the sailors sorely. "They would hoist merchants' goods," said they, "but not men and women." But the officers took the ropes, saying, "They are the king's goods." So, as chattels, we were shipped for the plantations. But we had scarce reached the sea when the pestilence broke out among us. One and another sickened and died. So that the ship-masters would proceed no further, but cast us on shore, and me among the rest.'

"There was a kind of comfort in feeling that, coming thus from an infected ship, the generous maiden had not really increased her risk by devoting herself to our service, freely as she had dared to do so. And our risk could scarce be increased.

"Having told her tale, Annis quietly folded her out-of-door garments, laying them aside in the old places, and said to Aunt Dorothy, 'Which way can I serve thee best?'

"We took her to Mr. Drayton's sick-chamber, Olive's eyes brightened with the soft moisture of grateful tears as Annis entered, where she sate by her father's bed.

"But that was no place or season for spoken thanks or questionings. Annis at once fitted into her place among the nurses. And I know not how any of us could have survived those days and nights of watching, but for her help.

"Aunt Dorothy said,—

"'I will take heed how I speak lightly of Quakers and their calls again.'

"Yes; the two readiest among us have been called home. Roger's father and his mother's sister. Honoured and beloved beyond any.

"Yet we speak of them quietly, almost without tears.

"Death is so around us—without, within, everywhere—that it seems the most natural thing. We say, 'They are gone home,' with less sense of separation than in ordinary times we say, 'They are gone to Netherby,' with far less than we should have said, 'They have gone across the seas.'

"It is so likely we may be with them again to-morrow—to-day!

"I look back a page or two in this Diary, and the words they spoke and I wrote so lately have become sacred, dying, farewell words.

"'The Father's rod.' Yes, that was what they thought. 'The King's touch smiting them from the lower service to the higher,' That is what we think, and we say it to each other as their epitaph.

September.—No distinction, indeed, this pestilence makes as to whom it smites.

"What I wished, yet scarce dared to wish, for Walter has come true.

"Could I have dared to wish it, had I thought it could come?

"Two nights since, Roger came to my bedside and said,—

"'Lettice, I dare not spare thee, even thee, from a call such as this. Canst thou be ready to come with me quickly, to visit one smitten with plague?'

"From any voice but his, the sudden, midnight summons would have set my heart beating so as to rob me of the power to obey.

"But there is always a calm about him which nerves me to do anything. Besides, he said, 'Come with me.' And that was strength itself.

"I did not waste time in questioning. He left me to tell Annis Nye not to wake Olive.

"I was dressed in a few minutes. Then I went and kissed the babe. It might be perilous for me to touch his soft cheek, rosy with sleep, when I came back. If ever I came back to him! For that was a probability which must be met in such a leave-taking.

"As I stood by the child's little bed, Roger came back.

"'We will kneel beside him,' he said.

"And in a few brief words he prayed, for strength to comfort, for wisdom to guide, for balm to heal.

"Before we rose, I knew what he meant

"'It is Walter,' I said.

"He took my hand in his, and we spoke no more.

"Silently we went out, our steps echoing through the streets, the great bonfires, kept up now in each street to purify the air, lighting us on our way, now illuminating with tongues of fitful flame the red cross and the closed door, now more drearily lighting up the empty chambers of the houses of the dead, which needed no longer to be closed, whose half-opened shutters creaked restlessly in the night winds.

"We stopped at the steps of what had been a stately mansion.

"The door was ajar, as Roger must have left it. There were none to usher us into the lofty hall or up the wide staircase, on whose stone stairs our steps echoed so noisily through the deserted chambers, step as softly as we might.

"Through one luxurious chamber after another we passed, our steps hushed on soft Persian rugs, and softened by tapestried walls.

"In one lay virginals and lutes and song-books, as if from a recent concert. In another, a table spread for a feast—the wine still sparkling in the glasses, and summer-fruits mouldering on the porcelain.

"And in the last chamber, upon a stately gilded bed with silk curtains, he lay, my brother, with scarce open, half-vacant eyes, which seemed as if their sight and meaning were gone, his hands clenched in agony.

"Yet he saw and knew me, for he cried with an energy which pierced the silence like a death-wail—

"'Take her away, Roger! take her away! I will not have that at my door! Take her away!'

"But I went close to him, and gently unclasped his clenched hand, and kissed his forehead, and said—

"'Two of us have been smitten already, Walter. We are past peril.'

"'Who have been smitten?' he asked suddenly. 'Not your child?'

"'No,' I said—and I felt my voice falter—'not our Harry.'

"Then his mind seemed to wander, for the far-off past came back so vividly as to blot out the days that had intervened.

"'Harry, my brother Harry—don't speak to me of Harry,' he said. 'He loved me, and sent a dying message that he looked to meet me. And he never will—he never will.' And then,—

"'I am dying, Lettice, don't you see? dying—body and soul. For mercy's sake don't come near me. If you can bear it, I can't. There will be torments enough soon. Don't burn my soul thus with your purity and your love.'

"I took his hand, and pressed it to my lips, for I could not speak. But he drew it away with a convulsive energy.

"Take her away, Roger!—don't let her! She doesn't know what I am, or who it was these hands touched last.'

"And then at intervals he told us how, when the Court left, a small company of the more reckless young courtiers had persuaded him it would be cowardly to go; and they had established themselves in this house, belonging to a kinsman of one of them, and held wild revelries there. How he had half intended, when he had heard we remained in the City, to break with these dissolute associates, and find us out; and had once or twice crept into churches by himself and heard sermons, but had delayed and hesitated from week to week; until at last, towards the end of August, a singing-girl, one of their company, had been smitten with the plague. Then the door had been closed and marked, and all the revellers had escaped through windows, over the leads of other houses, or over the palings of gardens to the river, and so into the country. But he could not shut his heart to the dying shrieks of that poor lost girl, and abandon her to die alone.

"'I meant to wait till she was dead,' he said. 'and leave the men of the dead-cart to find her in the empty house and bury her, and then to follow the rest. I had enough on my conscience without being followed through life with those dying cries. But before she died I began to feel ill myself. I tried to keep up my spirits with wine; but that was of no use. And then I found half a dozen leaves of an old Prayer-book—the sentences and the Confession, and the Absolution, and one or two of the Gospels. I entreated her to let me read to her, but she would not listen, but kept deliriously singing, mixing up light songs, bad enough at any time from a woman's lips, with strains of music from the Royal Chapel, and melodies of innocent old Christmas village carols, in a way horrible to hear. And then she died, and I was too ill to leave. And I crept into this bed. That was yesterday. And at night-fall there was a rattling at the door, and heavy steps up-stairs, and heavier down again. So I knew they would bury her. But I lay still under the coverlet; for a horrid dread came over me that they might find me, carry me down, and bury me with her, to save time. There had been horrible jests among us of such things happening. But the door shut, echoing through the empty house like thunder.

"'And I knew I was left alone to die. And then another horrible feeling came over me; that it would be better if they had found me, and taken me out to die quietly among the dead, without thinking any more about it, than leave me here lingering alone to think of it; to look at death steadily, alone, no one knows how long; with nothing but dying between me and it.

"'And to pass the time and break the silence I took up the old Prayer-book and read aloud,—

"'When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness. But I thought, I can never turn away from my wickedness. I can only turn round and round in it for ever and ever. So I stopped, until the silence was worse to bear than the words; and then I read on again. But my own voice sounded to me like a parody. Dreadful jesting voices seemed reading the sacred words after me, until I came to the Confession.

"'Then the jesting voices vanished. And, instead, came my mother's voice, and my own, as a boy, saying it after her, "We have gone astray like lost sheep." I might have said it once, I knew, and have come back; now I should have to go on saying it for ever, with her voice echoing it as if from heaven, and never come back. If I could hear the voice of some one good reading this Confession and the Gospels, I thought they might seem true, even for me, yet, but never in my own.

"'So I flung the book from me, and lay still until I heard a man's feet coming softly up the staircase; and I thought it was a thief come to pillage, and then perhaps to murder me. And the insane desire of life mastered me again; and I covered my face again and hushed my breath, until I heard Roger's voice beside me saying, "There is no one living here." And then I looked up. And all night he has been speaking to me, Lettice—nursing me as my mother might, and now and then reading out of the Gospels and the Confession. And if the merciful words would seem true to me in any voice sister, they would in his. If I had only gone to you all before! But it is too late, Is it not too late? Is not my life wasted, lost—lost for ever?'

"He gazed into my eyes with that wistful, thirsting look of the souls who are departing. I knew nothing but truth would avail. So I said as quietly as I could,—

"'Your life—this life, Walter—I am afraid it is lost—lost for ever. Your life; but not you, Walter; not you.'

He kept his eyes fixed on mine, and said,—

"And there is no second, Lettice. God Himself cannot give us back the lost life again.'

"Then all that he might have been, all my mother hoped he might be, rushed over my heart, and I could not say any more. I could only kneel down by his bedside and take his hand and sob out,—

"'O Father, Thou knowest all he might have been, all Thou wouldest have had him be. And Thou seest the ruin they have made of him. Have pity, have pity, and forgive.'

"He laid his hand on mine.

"'Hush, Lettice, hush!' he said; 'not they—I. I have ruined myself. No one could have ruined me but myself. The sin is mine.'

"Then I rose. For I felt as if my prayer was answered. I felt as if, weak, trembling woman that I was, a priestly voice was in my ears pronouncing absolution, ready to breathe the gospel of forgiveness through my lips. For it seemed to me these were the first words of real repenting I had ever heard Walter utter. I had heard him again and again speak of himself or his life with a passionate loathing. But that was not repenting. Too often if any one admitted the justice of such self-accusations, he would turn them into self-excusing and accusings of others. But now, it seemed to me, he was indeed coming to himself, coming home; and I said,—

"'Walter, you could not turn from the cries of that poor dying creature. Will you set your pity above God's?'

"'I had none but myself to think of,' he said. 'It mattered nothing to any one whether I did right or wrong about it. He is King and Judge, and has the whole world to think of in forgiving any one.'

"'Our Lord did not say so,' I said. 'When the lost son arose to come home to be forgiven, it seemed as if the father had nothing to do with any one in the world but with him. He did not think of what the servants would say, or the elder brother, or how any one else might be tempted by the forgiveness to wander. He was watching the wanderer! Oh, Walter, He was the first to see him turn—the first! He was the first to see you. I know it by the parable; I know it because, after all—after all, Walter—He has let you die at your post. Think of the mercy of that! You might have died helping to ruin some one. You die trying to help. Think of the mercy of being suffered to do that!'

"A softer light came into his eyes, and after a minute he said,—

"'I cannot doubt His pity; no, I dare not. What I doubt is myself. How can you know, Lettice, how can I know, that if life were given back to me I might not waste it all again?'

"Then turning that intense searching gaze from me to Roger, he went on,—

"'How can I know whether I am clinging to Him, as a dying man clings to anything, or indeed as the repenting son to the Father? How can you know or I?'

"Roger bent low over him and said,—

"'Neither you nor I can know. One only knows. He only can forgive. He knew, on the cross, when He was dying for the world, and the thief beside Him was dying for his own crimes, and dying He forgave the dying. He knows now. He is as near as then, and not dying; living for evermore; almighty to save. But even if you are clinging to Him, as a drowning man to a rock, or to an outstretched hand, in mere terror of the waves, is He one likely to wrench His hand even from such a poor, desperate, selfish grasp as that? Did He on the Sea of Galilee?'

"Walter drank in all Roger said, but made no reply.

"Roger's next words fell solemn as a summons from another world.

"'What do you want Him to save you from?'

"Walter's answer was a cry of agony.

"'From myself!—from myself!'

"Roger's voice was firm no longer, but low and broken as Walter's own, as he replied,—

"That He died to do; that He lives to do. That He can never refuse to do for any that ask Him, for ever and for ever.'

"Then, after a few moments, Roger said,—

"'If He sees no other way to save you but that you should lose your life, that you should not be trusted with it again, could you be content?'

"'How can I be content?' Walter answered, 'Think what my life might have been, It might have been like yours! And I have no second. I would not complain. It is no wonder I cannot be trusted. I cannot trust myself. But you can never know how bitter it is to begin to see what life might have been when it is all over, and when you begin to see how well He you have grieved was worth serving.'

"He lingered some days. And then the lost life was over.

"The life those we had served not disloyally had done their utmost to ruin.

"The spirit had departed, which He we have served so unworthily even to the uttermost can save.

"It was beyond comparison the bitterest sacrifice we had ever made.

"Yet this sacrifice England is now making by hecatombs on the same foul altar.

"A sacrifice not of life ennobled, and made infinitely worthier in laying it down, but of honour, of virtue, of all that makes men men. Of souls degraded in the sacrifice to the level of that to which they are sacrificed. A sacrifice to devils, and not to God."

CHAPTER XII.

LETTICE'S DIARY.

"Broad Oak, February, 1666.—For a brief season we are in this haven, driven into rest by many storms.

"The Plague has left London. The Court has returned to it unchanged, to pursue its revelries. The ejected ministers who preached to the dying city are once more silenced and driven from their pulpits, and not only driven from their pulpits but from the city, by the Five Mile Act, which prohibits any ejected minister, on severe penalties, from approaching within five miles of the church where he was wont to preach.

"Roger deemed his work in London for the present done.

"When we left, the streets were fragrant with the smoke of sweet woods, burned in the houses, and curling through the open windows day and night. The air was laden with strange Oriental odours of incense, of aromatic gums and perfumes, floating the spirit on their dream-like fragrance (as perfumes only can), within the spells of Enchanted ground.

"Yet the change is pleasant, to this wholesome country air, fresh with the smell of the new-ploughed earth, of the young mosses and grasses shooting out everywhere bright tiny spikes or stars of jewel-like green, of the breath of cows, of gummy swelling leaf-buds, and fir-stems warmed into pungent fragrance by the sun, of early peeping snow-drops and rare violets, of sedges moistened by the prattling brooks, of free winds coming and going we know not whence or whither—from the mountains, from the sea, or from the forests of the American wilderness. It is invigorating to body and soul to change those costly foreign manufactured perfumes for all these countless, changing, blending, breathing fragrances, which make what I suppose is meant by 'the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed.'

"It is a wonderful relief to be here, after what we have gone through; free to go where we will, living with open doors, neighbours freely coming and going, guests, unsuspected, dropping in at the hospitable door from the highway.

"It is not so much like coming in a ship out of the storm into the haven, as like being quietly laid on a friendly sunny shore, after buffeting with panting chest and weary arms through the waves which have made the ship a wreck.

"Something of this calm, indeed, began to come even before we left London.

"It is a thing never to forget, the change that came over people's countenances on the first morning late in September, when the number of the dead was in the week declared to have diminished instead of increasing; the tears that those first gleams of hope brought to eyes long dry in despair; the re-awaking of neighbourly sympathy, as each house ceased to be either a refuge against infection, or a pest-house from which it issued; windows opened fearlessly, once more, to hear good news. The reserve which, like a fortress, rampart with rampart, guards the deepest feelings of our people, broken down by the common deliverance; strangers grasping each others' hands in the streets, merely for the joy of telling the good news, weeping aloud for gladness, or uttering the brief fervent thanksgiving—''Tis all wonderful; 'tis all a dream? Blessed be God, 'tis all His own doing. Human help and skill were at an end. Let us give thanks to Him.'

"This melting together of men's hearts in the rapture of a common deliverance, struck me more than all. It made me think how the best balsam to heal the wounds of Christendom would be for Christianity to be once more understood as the Gospel of Great Joy which it assuredly is. There would be little room for controversy, I thought, and none for isolation and exclusion, if every heart could only be penetrated with the joy of the forgiven Prodigal, and of the Angels' Christmas hymn.

"Some people in their eagerness to purify their houses burned them down. Wild despair was succeeded on every side by hopes as wild. Those who had suspected every one, and crept along the streets, fearing to touch each other's garments, grew so bold that they no longer feared even the poor ghastly scarce-recovered victims of the Plague, who began to limp about the streets with the bandages of the dreaded sores and swellings still around their heads and limbs.

"If even the reckless Court itself had lived through that peril and that rescue, I think it would never have affronted Heaven and this city of mourners again with its profligate revelries. The City, indeed, was well fumigated from infection with perfumes, and with brimstone, to make it a safe dwelling for the Court. But what incense, what fires, can purify England from the infection of the Court itself?

"We should have gone to Netherby, but that is scarce a safe home just now for Roger. A vexatious suit has been instituted against him, on the ground of his aiding or abetting in some 'disloyal' attempt of which he knew nothing. But we know it is his work during the Commonwealth that is the true ground of prosecution. Sir Launcelot Trevor will never pardon Roger's detecting him in one of the plots for assassinating Cromwell. It is not the hard laws themselves, severe as their restrictions and penalties are, that cause the most suffering. It is the power they give to bad men to annoy the good.

"Already much of the Drayton property has been sacrificed through vexatious exactions. But now it is more than property that is threatened. And so this pleasant home of Broad Oak, which is a house of mercy to so many, has now become a refuge for us. We are, in fact, here as in a hiding-place, until this tyranny be overpast, or we can find some other refuge.

"Our host, Mr. Philip Henry's courtly deference of manners, his listening to every one as if he had something to learn from each, has more charm for me than I like to confess to myself. It recalls the stately courtesy of my brother Harry and of the Cavaliers who were his contemporaries.

"The Puritan manners are severer and less chivalrous than those of our old Cavaliers, though with more of true knightly honour to women in them than the courtiers of this New Court are capable of comprehending.

"We read together often, Roger and I, these old records of the early settlers in the American wildernesses. We are beginning now to glean more particular tidings concerning the various village communities into which the settlers have now organized themselves. For more and more we begin to speak of a 'New Netherby' rising beside some inland mere or pleasant creek of the forest in New England.

"'Not that I despair for a moment of England,' Roger says. 'But we have but one life, and its years are few and precious; and if the good fight is going on victoriously elsewhere, it seems scarce a man's place to stay where the best he can do is to keep quiet and hide for his life.'

"February, 1666, Broad Oak.—There is a serenity and sunshine about this house which makes it like an island of fair weather in the midst of the turbulent world. Continually it recalls to me Port Royal. And even more by resemblance than by Contrast.

"It seems to me as fully as Port Royal a temple or house of God. (In one sense I, as a Protestant, should believe more, since the church, not the convent, is God's sacred Order.) Every morning and evening all the inmates and family assemble for prayer and reading of the Bible. 'As the priests in the tabernacle,' Mr. Henry says, 'used daily to burn the incense, and to light the lamps.' All pray kneeling; for Mr. Henry 'has high thoughts of the body as God's workmanship, and desires that it should share in the homage offered to Him.'

"Mr. Henry never makes this service long, so as to be a weariness; he calls it the 'hem to keep the rest of the day from ravelling.' In the evening he gathers his household, servants, workmen, day labourers, and sojourners, early, that the youngest, or those who have done a good day's work, may not be sleepy. 'Better one absent than all sleepy,' he says.

"He explains the Bible as he reads it, not merely 'mincing it small, but by easy unforced distribution.' Above all, he seeks to lift up before the heart 'Christ, the Treasure in the field of the Bible.' 'Every word of God is good,' he says, 'but especially God the Word.' He closes with a psalm; sometimes many verses, but sung quickly, every one having a book, so that there is no interruption to the singing.

"Afterwards his two little boys kneel with folded hands before their father and mother, and ask their blessing, while he pronounces the benediction over them, saying, 'The Lord bless thee.' On Thursday he catechizes the servants on some simple subject.

"On Sunday, 'the pearl of the week, the queen of days,' the perpetual Easter-day on which we sing, 'The Lord is risen indeed,' the whole house seems so full of tranquil light, all sounds and signs of needless labour banished, all the sweet sounds of nature, birds and bees and running brooks, heard with a new music in the hush of human rest, the men and maids in their sober holiday attire, that it is difficult to believe there is not an audible, visible increase of light and music in the external world, that the fields, and woods, and skies, have not also donned a festive attire, that the sun is not shining with a new radiance, like the ancient Lamp of the sanctuary, fresh filled and trimmed for the Sabbath. It shines on the heart with a quiet radiance, like the last chapters of the Gospels; the resurrection chapters. The household, since Mr. Henry has been silenced, attend the Church service in the little neighbouring parish-church of Whitechurch, always going early, before the service begins. The walks through the field to and from the church are a sacred service in themselves, by virtue of Mr. Henry's discourse. In truth, there is no silencing the music of such a piety as his, unless you could make it cease to flow.

"This temple also has its shrines and inner sanctuary. Mrs. Henry pointed out to me the little chamber where her husband prays alone; when he changed it he consecrated the new one with a special prayer. I remember Roger's father used to call the direction, 'When thou enterest into thy closet shut thy door,' 'the one unquestionably divine rubric of the New Testament.' And it seems to me beautiful that the inmost sanctuary of our houses, as of our hearts, should be that which it consecrated by solitude with God.

"Then, like Port Royal, this is a house of mercy. Standing near the way-side, it is seldom that the hospitable board has none but inmates round it. And Mr. Henry's simple, fervent thanksgiving at the table must, I think, go along with the traveller on his further journey, like the echo of a hymn.

"The order of the convent, moreover, can scarcely be more thorough than that of this home, save that it is broken, like the order of nature, by the sweet irregularities and varieties which always come to stir all Divine order out of monotony. The Hand which can make Life the mainspring of its machinery may dare irregularities.

"Port Royal was especially recalled to my mind by a letter I received last November from Madame la Mothe, in which she speaks of the return of the nuns to Port Royal des Champs. Four years ago they were dispersed into imprisonment in various convents, in the hope that the courage of each alone might fail, so that in isolation, moved by the most plausible persuasions and the severest threats, the community might separately sign the condemnation of Jansenism, which they had refused to sign together. It was a simple question of fact. They were required to declare that the five condemned propositions were in Jansenius' books; thus asserting what they believed false to be true. But out of the ninety-six nuns thus dispersed eighty-four returned unshaken. Madame la Mothe writes:

"'Such a welcome and restoration home as the holy sisters had was worth sore suffering to win, as the various carriages met, bringing the Mother Angélique and her scattered daughters once more together. The church bells pealed joyous greetings, and the peasants shouted or wept their welcomes, flocking by the roadside, along the steep descent into the valley, in holiday dresses; gray-haired tottering men, little toddling children, mothers and babes in arms—not a creature that could stir left behind to miss the joy of welcoming their benefactresses back. And so the long procession of nuns, in their white robes, with scarlet crosses, disappeared under the great Gothic gates, into the sacred enclosure. It was a sight indescribably beautiful to the eye, but who can say what it was to the heart?'

"Martyrs not so much to truth as to truthfulness, they would not recognize the distinction between consenting to what they deemed a lie and telling it.

"Should not their enemies concede at least this merit to the two thousand ejected ministers? They may be over nice, as I think they are, in some of their scruples. But why cannot people, who see a noble heroism in eighty nuns suffering ejection and dispersion rather than declare that false which they believe to be true—rather than bring on their souls the degradation of a lie—see something of the same heroism in two thousand English clergymen with their families suffering ejection, calumny, and peril of starvation rather than solemnly declare they believe things true which they believe false? The families who have to share the misery whether they will or no, do not make the sacrifice easier.

"Yet many a tender-hearted lady of our acquaintance, of the old Cavalier stock, whose face has glowed with interest when I have told her of the sufferings and constancy of the Mère Angélique and her nuns, and who has rejoiced with me when I read the story of their restoration, can see nothing but vulgar perversity and obstinacy in the conduct of these ejected ministers.

"Why cannot these also be honoured as martyrs, if not to truth, at least to truthfulness?

"Can it be that the white dresses and red crosses, and the grand arched entrance gates make the difference?

"Or is it merely that the one took place in France and the other at home?

"Building the sepulchres of the prophets is such easy and graceful feminine work! As easy as tapestry work, especially when the sepulchres are reared in the imagination, and the prophets prophesied to other people's forefathers.

"But it seems as if, in heaven, not the slightest value was attached to those elegant little erections.

"The one thing regarded there seems to be whether we help and honour those who are contending or suffering for truth and right now. And this is not always so easy.

"For, on the other hand, Aunt Dorothy was not a little incensed when I once told her (intending to be conciliatory) that I thought the Nonconformist ministers quite as much to be honoured as the Mère Angélique and her nuns.

"'To compare Mr. Baxter and two thousand of the most enlightened ministers in England to a set of poor benighted papists!' said she.

"And she was only to be mollified by the consideration of the deficiency in my own religious training.

"Perhaps for us women the safest course is to render as wide a succour as we can to all who suffer. Because then if we make any mistakes as to truth, in the great account they may be counterbalanced by the entries on the side of love; which, on the whole, seems to overrule the final judgment.

"March, 1666.—We are to leave this friendly holy roof for another shelter.

"Many a sharp-cut diamond of Mr. Henry's good sayings I shall carry away with me.

"'Repentance is not a sudden land-flood, but the flowing of a perennial spring; an abiding habit.'

"'Peace is joy in the bloom; joy is peace in the fruit.'

"But more than all such sayings, I bear away with me the memory of a sanctity as fresh and fragrant as any I ever hope to see, fragrant not as with the odours of manufactured perfumes, but with the countless fragrances of a field which the Lord has blessed.

"An Endurance of affliction made all the lovelier by the capacity for the happiness it foregoes,—by the belief that every creature of God is good and to be enjoyed with thanksgiving which prevents its being stiffened into austerity; a submissive Loyalty ennobled by the higher loyalty which prevents its becoming servile; an open-handed charity sustained by busy-handed industry, by the thrift which deems waste a sin, and the justice which deems debt a degradation; a Devotion whose chief delight is to soar and sing, and which sings never the less when it stoops to serve; a Religion as free from fanaticism, worldliness, or austerity as any the world can see.

"A piety which would have been my mother's element; worthy it seems to me of the sober joyful liturgy she loved so dearly, yet to which Mr. Henry cannot entirely conform. Yes; it seems to me a piety more unlike that of the Puritans of our early days than unlike that of George Herbert or of Port Royal. A lovely, patient, quiet, meek-eyed piety! It recalls to me the group of St. Paul's gentle graces, 'love, joy, peace,' and the rest, which I used to think pictured my mother's religion, far more than St. Peter's belligerent virtues, godliness, faith, courage, which seemed to me to stand forth in sword and breastplate like the religion of Roger and the Ironsides.

"'If the old Cavaliers, alas, are gone,' I said to Roger to-day, 'it seems to me the old Puritans are gone as well. Mr. Philip Henry is far less like you Ironsides than like my mother. This is a piety, as I deem, which would have suffered in prisons and pillories to any extent, but would scarcely have lifted its voice in the Parliament with Mr. Hampden and Mr. Pym, and would certainly not have raised the standard at Edgehill or Worcester. Where are the old Puritans gone?'

"'Where we may follow them, sweet heart,' said he; 'to fight the wolves and conquer the wildernesses of the West.'

"'Then,' said I, 'are the wrestling manlike Christian virtues to migrate to New England to subdue the New World; whilst the feminine Christian graces are to stay at home to endure the pillory and the prison? That were a strange division. Meseems, what with prohibitions to speak, and imprisonment, and the banishment of the fighting men, this patient, passive nonconformity can never spread. Rather, perhaps, in a generation or two it will die out.'

"'Scarcely, I think,' he said. 'The old country is patient and dumb, and sometimes takes a long sleep but I believe she will wake one day, and break the nets they have entangled her in, and scatter those who twisted them, simply by rising and shaking herself. Only her sleep may be too long for us to wait to the end of it.'

"'But who is to wake her?' I said. 'A piety this of Mr. Henry's, like that of Mr. Herbert, beautiful and pure enough to convert the world, if some louder voice could only rouse the world to look at it. But whence is this voice to come? For it seems to me our liturgy, though the purest music of devotion that can rise to heaven if once people are awake to hear it and to sing it, has scarcely the kind of fiery force in it to arouse the slumbering world. And if the Puritan religion becomes alike meek and soft-spoken, whence is this enkindling fire to come?

"You might as well have asked our ancestor Cassibelawn where the fire was to come from when the forests were cut down,' he said. 'While the forests give fuel enough, who can foresee the coal-pits?

"'Perhaps,' he added after a pause, as in a muse, 'when the spring comes and the ice melts and the music of the living waters breaks on England again, as it must and will, the new streams will find new channels.'

"Our discourse was broken at this point by the arrival of two horsemen who dismounted at the door. The hospitable board was spread for the midday meal, and as we went down to take our places at it, Mr. Henry introduced us to these new guests as friends of his.

"They were Dr. Annesly and Dr. Wesley,* two of the nonconformist ministers."

* Maternal and paternal grandfather of the Wesleys.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

Troubles came, as troubles are wont to come, in troops, sweeping down on us thick and fast in the year which followed the plague, 1666.

Through the whole year Roger was in concealment with Lettice and their boy. Lands and houses are no safeguards in a persecution where so much lies at the mercy of informers. And Roger—and Lettice also—had an implacable enemy in Sir Launcelot Trevor, the profligacy of whose early years had, at its second fermentation, soured into malignity against those who had reproved or thwarted him. It was Sir Launcelot, indeed, who hunted us hither. In his youth he had made some careless studies in the law, and now he was appointed one of the judges. Vexations which render life impossible for all the best ends of living are terribly easy to inflict when bad laws are executed by worse men. And it was this which made the misery of those times. The laws were indeed (as we believe) harsh and unjust; but it was the authorities who made them and the judges who administered them, it was the spirit in which the letter was carried out that made them (at last) unsupportable.

About the spring of this year the pressure of the times fell hard on cousin Placidia.

Her son Isaac was arrested for attending a forbidden meeting near Bedford, and was thrown into the old jail on Bedford Bridge, where John Bunyan (though loyal as Mr. Baxter), had already been incarcerated for six years.

Thence, Isaac wrote as if imprisonment in such company were not to be imprisoned but emparadised. "Such heavenly discourse as John Bunyan makes here," said he, "would make a dungeon a palace." He gave hints also of a wonderful story, or allegory, which the tinker was penning in the jail, and which (said Isaac) would make as much music in the world, when it came forth, as Mr. Milton's poems. We smiled at the lad's enthusiasm, for it was not to be thought that a poor tinker, however godly, could write anything beyond edifying sheets suited to paste on the walls of poor folks like himself. Indeed, we had seen some verses of his, which, though full of piety and patience, were scarce to be called poetry.

And that very year Mr. Thomas Ellwood, a Quaker (and a friend of Annis Nye's), who had once been reader to Mr. Milton in his blindness, brought us marvellous accounts of a manuscript Mr. Milton had given him to read at a "pretty box" Mr. Ellwood had taken for him, during the Plague, at Giles Chalfont. It contained the Epic Poem called "Paradise Lost." Thomas Ellwood said to him, "Thou hast said much here of Paradise lost, but what hast thou to say of Paradise found?" Some time afterwards, Mr. Milton showed him another poem called Paradise Regained, saying, in a pleasant tone, "This is owing to you; for you put it into my head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which before I had not thought of."

So that, seeing, besides all he had already done to the marvel of Europe, Mr. Milton had these wonderful epics in store, it naturally amused us not a little that Isaac should compare this good tinker with him. Nevertheless, we honoured the lad's heartiness, and rejoiced that in his doleful condition he had such pious company to comfort him withal.

Not so, however, his mother. Her distress knew no bounds. This affliction tore her heart in twain; setting what was highest in her in fierce civil war with what was lowest. For, in spite of all her protestations of poverty, rumour had rather magnified than diminished the amount of cousin Placidia's hoards. The more she sought to keep them unknown, the more magnificent they grew in the busy imaginations of her neighbours. And coffer after coffer of her painfully hoarded stores had to be confessed and emptied as she sought to bribe one exacting officer after another to release her son; until, the more she gave, the more they believed she could be tortured into giving, the more the ingenuity of informers and the greed of jailers increased, and the more distant grew the prospects of poor Isaac's liberation.

My heart ached for the torture she went through as, bit by bit, she had to offer up the money which was dear to her as life, for the child who was dearer.

"It was worse than the boot or the thumb-screw with which they are torturing the poor Covenanters in Scotland," I said one day to Job Foster, when we were staying at Netherby; "screwed tighter and tighter till it crushes the bone."

"Never heed, Mistress Olive," said Job. "Thank the Lord it isn't in your hands but in His, who loves Mistress Nicholls a sight better than you. It isn't her heart that screw is crushing, it's the worm in her heart which is eating it out."

"Thou art somewhat hard on Mistress Nicholls," said Rachel, "to my mind; after all, she had saved it all for the lad."

"Women's hearts are tender," said Job, giving an emphatic hammer to the spade he was repairing, "and thine tenderer than any. But there's a love tenderer than thine. Glory to His holy name, He did not put away the sorrowing cup for all His own pains. And He will not put aside the healing cup for all our crying. In His warfare it isn't once setting us on Burford church roofs, nor twice, that keeps us steady to the Captain's lead."

This trouble of Isaac's meantime wrought much on Maidie, who had always repaid Isaac's devoted homage loftily, and not always graciously, since the early days when he overwhelmed her with the unwelcome offering of his best hen. Sharp-sighted as these children are (flatter ourselves as we may) to spy out our failings, and intolerant of them as youth with its high standards will be, Maidie had been wont to hear cousin Placidia's moans of poverty with ill-disguised incredulity, and to call her economies by very unsparing scriptural names. But now Isaac's imprisonment seemed at once to exalt him in the perverse maiden's imagination from a boy to a hero. She wrote to him; and what was more, Dolly treacherously reported that she wept nights long about him; and (which was the greatest triumph of all), she began to love his mother for his sake. "It was plain," she said, "how unjust she had been to cousin Placidia; it was plain that it was only for Isaac's sake she had pinched herself, and sometimes also other folk. Otherwise, would she be ready to part with everything for his sake now? It was noble for a mother to deny herself for her son," pronounced Maidie; "and if this denying extended to others sometimes, it must be excused. It was but the exuberance of a virtue; and she, for her part, was ashamed of having ever spoken hardly of cousin Placidia, and would never do so again."

So a close bond grew up between these two; and it became clear to me I should have to spare a portion of my daughter's love to soften with its free sunshine, and quicken with its own generous youth, this heart that had grown so old and shrivelled with self-imposed cares.

And it was also plain what would come of this when Isaac, always so faithful to her, came out of prison, at once exalted into manhood and smitten into knighthood in Maidie's eyes—by persecution, and found Maidie already ministering to his mother as a daughter. Indeed, the betrothal was already accomplished in all its essentials. And it seemed to me that, so beggared and so enriched, cousin Placidia would have at last no alternative but to throw aside the self-deceiving and self-tormenting which had made her youth old age and her wealth poverty, and in her old age and destitution for the first time to grow rich and young.

As the year went on, more and more our thoughts turned to the New World on the other side of the sea. Roger's mind had been turned thither ever since the Lord Protector's death, as the only place where in his lifetime it was probable he would be able to render England those "public services for which a man is born."

Loyalty he believed England had refused to the prince God sent her, and was suffering for it. Liberty was a word which would scarcely come forth again as a watchword of noble warfare with the men of this bewildered and subdued generation.

On the other hand, my husband, while the prisons were fuller than ever of sufferers for conscience, found it more difficult than ever to obtain access to them or to give them succour.

Cousin Placidia, on her part, was ready for any refuge which would keep Isaac out of the way of John Bunyan and the informers. Job and Rachel Forster still hesitated. They could not "get light upon it." They doubted whether it would not be deserting the post they had been set to keep; and more especially whether it would be safe to take Annis Nye, who had gone to live with them, to New England. I think also they were more moved by sympathy with Annis Nye's beliefs than they quite knew themselves. Rachel thought the Quakers had been set to give a wonderful testimony for peace and patience in an age when there was too much fighting; and for silence in an age when there was too much talking. And Job said, "We have done fighting and talking enough in our day, in my belief, to last some time; and now the Lord seems to be saying to us, 'Study to be quiet and to do your own business,' and, 'Where two or three are gathered together, there am I in the midst of them.' That's about where the lessons for the day seem to me to be just now. And I've a mind we'd better be in no hurry, but sit still and learn them."

Aunt Dorothy was prepared at any moment to shake off the dust from her feet against the profligate Court which encouraged Sabbath-breaking, theatres, and bear-baitings, and banished five miles from its suburbs the loyal and godly ministers who had laboured so faithfully to bring it back; and against the infatuated country which could pay servile adulation to such a Court.

She was also a little troubled at Mr. Baxter's marrying so young a wife, and winced a little when Lettice defended him and declared that at heart Aunt Dorothy's place, after all, was beside the holy maids and recluses of Port Royal.

Still we lingered. It was not so easy to despair of the re-awaking of an England in which John Milton was still living and thinking, and John Bunyan, and John Howe, and Dr. Owen, and Richard Baxter, and through which thirty thousand of Cromwell's soldiers were still scattered, working at their farms and forges throughout the land. Nor was it easy to leave such an England, so few years before a Queen of Nations, as long as she would but give us a little space to work for her, and a little reason to hope.

But slowly the necessities which pressed us from her shores gathered closer and closer around us, until we could linger no more.

The great Fire of London brought my husband to a decision.

Our own house escaped; but many houses in the city, in which much of his property consisted, were burnt. And the misery of so many thousands, whom our losses deprived us of the power to relieve, made us at last resolve to make the voyage, while we had the means yet left to pay the ship-master and purchase such goods as we should need in beginning life again in the wilderness.

At ten o'clock on the 2nd of September, 1660, the flames of that terrible Fire burst forth. By midnight they raged. In three days the whole city was a heap of smoking smouldering ruins.

To us who lived at Westminster, it seemed as if the fierce eastern wind was driving the flames towards that guilty roof at Whitehall, which scarce a righteous man in the nation but deemed to be itself the plague spot and the Gehenna which was bringing desolation by plague and fire on the whole land.

All the night the sky was fiery, "like the top of a burning oven." In the day the air was so thick with the coiling columns of smoke, that "the sun shone through it with a colour like blood." Those who ventured near said that the pavements glowed a fiery red, so that no horse or man could tread them, and the melting lead from the burning churches ran down the streets in a stream. Now and then the dense masses of smoke were broken by the stones of St. Paul's flying like grenadoes, or by a sudden burst of vivid flame making the smoke visible even in the daylight, as some of the coal and wood wharves and stores of oil and resin along the river side were seized by the fire. And the steady roar of the flames was only broken now and then by explosions, as vast powder-stores split asunder, or by the wailings and cries of the ruined people running to and fro in helpless consternation, not even attempting to save their goods.

Still, day and night, the east wind, so steady in its fierceness, drove on the flames and smoke towards us—toward the Court; till, on the third day, they crossed towards Whitehall itself. Fearful, it was said, was the confusion in the houses of revelry. Good men could think of nothing that ever could be like it but the universal conflagration of the world. But again, as in the Plague, the Court escaped. The neighbouring houses were blown up, so as to kill the flames by starvation; and at last their impetuous onset was stayed, and Whitehall was left without one of its gaming-tables or chambers of revelry being touched.

Streets in the west, which were nests of unblushing wickedness, escaped; whilst the city, of which Mr. Baxter said "there was not such another in the world for piety, sobriety, and temperance," was burnt to ashes.

Aunt Dorothy took this much to heart; and from that time I scarcely remember her attempting any more to interpret the Divine judgments, which had once seemed to her so easy to translate.

After the horror came the misery and the desolation. It is when the ashes of the fires which desolate our lives are cold that we first understand our loss. And it was many days before the ashes of the great Fire of London were cold enough for men to tread them safely and learn the extent of the ruin; to see the fountains dried up, the stones calcined white as snow.

Two hundred thousand homeless men, and women, and little children were scattered in the fields and on the hill-sides, chiefly on the north, as far as Highgate, by the wretched remnants of their household stuff. They were ready to perish of hunger;—yet my husband said they did not beg a penny as he passed from group to group. Some of them had been rich and delicately lodged and clothed three days before, and had not learned the art of craving alms. Others were, it seemed, too stupified. His Majesty did his utmost to make provision for their relief (said the admiring courtiers) by "proclamation for the country to come in and refresh them with provisions;" which, moved by the proclamation of the king (or by another proclamation issued sixteen hundred years before by One who spake with authority), the country people did, to the glory of the king and the admiration of the courtiers.

It was not the easiest thing in the world as we looked from one side of our house over the blackened heaps of cinders, where three days before had stood the City of London, and on the other towards Whitehall, standing unscathed; when we thought of two thousand faithful servants of God forbidden to speak for Him; of ten thousand houses, from not a few of which had gone up day and night true prayer and praise, made desolate; of a hundred thousand, not a few of them good men and true, swept away by the Plague the year before; and then of all the riotous voices in the palace not silenced, but permitted to speak their worst for the devil; it was not always easy to keep firm hold of the truth that "all power is given in heaven and earth" not to the accuser and the enemy, but to "Jesus Christ the righteous." It was not easy. We had to endure in those days "as seeing Him who is invisible."

My husband said, indeed, that the fire might prove to be God's fumigation against the pestilence; and that the pestilence itself was but (as it were) "the ships to take us to the other side, being sent in a fleet instead of one by one."

But in the pestilence which is inwardly and eternally pestilential, the pestilence of vice and selfishness, which was corrupting the inner life of England, the raging fire of sin which consumes not the disease but the soul,—who could see any good?

Roger's and my old puzzle of the apple tree yawned beneath and around us, a great gulf, dark and unfathomable as of old.

If our hearts were less tossed about on the surging waves of this abyss than of old, it was not that the waves were quieter or less unfathomed. We knew them to be deeper than we had dreamed. For we had tried line after line and touched no bottom. We felt them to be more unquiet, for the times were stormier, and we were no longer on the edge but launched on the sea. It was simply that, falling at the feet of Him who stood at the helm, we could worship Him with a deeper adoration, and trust Him with more confiding simplicity. "Thou knowest the other side," we could say. "Thou art there. Thou art taking us thither. Thou knowest the depths. Thou alone. Thou hast risen thence, Thou knowest God. We see Him manifested in Thee. And Thou hast said, good and not evil is the heart and the crown of all. And we are satisfied."

So, after a heavy winter on the edge of that desolation which we could do so little to restore, we left our old house in London in March, and went in the spring for a few weeks to the old home at Netherby, before it was broken up and passed out of our hands for ever.

Many of the old fields—we had roamed over every one of them—had already been sold to meet the expenses thrown on Roger by the lawsuit. And now the old house itself was to be sold. Oliver's Parliament had not altogether reformed the Law. And I suppose no reformation of laws avails very much when the men who administer them are corrupt. Besides, unsuccessful revolution must be dealt with as rebellious; those who fail must expect to suffer. Roger and most of us had made our account for that, and it was not of that we complained.

It was not safe for Roger and Lettice to be with us at Netherby.

Of this I was almost glad. The more the old home was like itself, the harder it would be to leave. There were enough voices silent for ever, making every chamber, and every nook of garden and pleasance sacred by their echoes, to make the parting such a wrench as scarcely leaves us the same ever after.

All Aunt Dorothy's Puritan training had not swept the heathen idolatry out of my heart. For what else was it to feel as if all the dumb and lifeless things had voices calling me and pleading "for sake us not, forsake us not, have we served you so ill?" and arms stretched out to cling to us and draw us back.

The store-room over the porch, where Roger and I had held our Sunday conversations; the chamber where my father's books and mathematical instruments still were, where he had taken me on his knee and said, "Before the great mysteries, I can only wonder and wait and say like thee, 'Father, how can I understand, a little child like me?'"—the wainscoted parlour where "Mr. Cromwell of Ely" had talked to us of "his little wenches," and looked at Roger with softened eyes, thinking, perchance, of that death of his first-born which "went as a sword to his heart, indeed it did;" where John Milton (not blind then) had played on the organ, and discoursed with Dr. Jeremy Taylor;—how dared I have tears to spare for leaving such as these, or even the graves of our fathers in the old church they had helped to build, and the pews where we and ours had knelt for generations, when England had lost Liberty and the strenuous heart to strive for it, and it seemed almost the heart to weep for it now it was gone, and could not afford her noblest even a grave?

But there were other partings which went far deeper into the heart, on which even now it is best not to dwell much, partings from those whom it was no idolatry to feel it very sore to leave, old faithful friends—our father's friends; (and every familiar face in the village, as it came to see us go, was as the face of a friend to us, going we knew not whither, among we knew not whom.)

We could never have left them had it been possible to us to befriend and succour them longer at home. As many as could leave went with us.

And hardest of all it was to pass the old forge, and see no friendly faces there, and know that Job and Rachel were praying for us in the old cottage within not daring to see us go.

Cousin Placidia was away making the last effort to release her son.

So we went at the beginning of April to Southampton, where the ship was. We had to wait some days there for her sailing. Dreary, blank days, we thought they must be, suspended between the old life and the new. But two surprises made them bright to us as a beginning, rather an end.

Two days before we started, Isaac appeared, with his mother. He looked very much as if the prison had indeed been a Paradise to him; and her face sharp and worn as it was, seemed to me stamped with the cares which enrich, instead of impoverishing, the cares of love instead of the cares of covetousness. There was a glow and a rest in her eyes, as she looked on Isaac and Maidie, which I had never seen there before. And as to Isaac and Maidie, I believe distinctions of time and place were just then so dim to them, that if you had asked them where those days were spent, they would have been clear but on one point, and that was that it was most surely not in the Old World, but in a world altogether and for ever New.

Thus, as so often in the music of this changing life, the "dying falls" were interlinked with the swell of the opening chords. And so, with nothing to mark it as the last, the last evening came.

So the last evening came. Roger and Lettice, with their little Harry Davenant, were already safe on board. We were to join them at the dawn. And when we climbed up into the ship, very strange it was to find my hand in the welcoming grasp of a strong hand, certainly not that of a strange sailor's, and looking up, to see Job Forster, with Rachel and Annis Nye behind him.

"There was no help for it. That wilful maid would come," he said, apologizing to himself for doing what he liked. "She had the 'concern' at last I have been afraid of all along. She was set on going into the lion's den; so, of course, there was nothing for it but for Rachel and me to come and take care of her."

So we sailed down Southampton water, by the shores the Mayflower had left nearly a half a century before. There were clouds over the wooded slopes of the dear old country as we looked our last at her, which broke ere we had been long on board, blending earth and sky in a wild storm of rain. But before we lost sight of the shore, the clouds were spanned by the rare glory of a perfect rainbow, bridging the storm with hope.

Then, as we sailed on, the clouds rose slowly and majestically, detaching themselves from earth in grand sculptured masses, like couchant lions guarding the land; until at sunset they had soared far up the quiet heavens, and hovered like angels with folded wings over a land at rest.

And as we looked, Lettice said to Roger,—

"See, is it not a promise of the better sunshine hereafter to come?"

"It is a witness of the sunshine now behind," he said; "of the unquenchable sun which shines on both the Old England and the New." And he added in a low voice, in the words of Oliver Cromwell, "'Jesus Christ, of whose diocese we are,' on Both Sides of the Sea."

CONCLUSION.

OLIVE'S MEDITATIONS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA.

New Netherby, 1691.—New always to us, but already to many grown into "the old house at home."

Again I am alone in the house, as on the day when the quiet rustling of the summer air among the long grasses, and the shining of the smooth water, and the smell of the hay from the hay-stack, carried me back to the old house on the borders of the Fen country, in the days of my childhood.

The crimson and gold of a richer-coloured autumn than that at home glows in the forests and in the still creek below, over which the great trees bend, And autumn is also on our lives; its fading leaves, and also, I trust, its harvests and its calms.

At many intervals, these recollections of my life have been gathered together out of the old yellow leaves in the oaken chest.

The past has lived again to me through them. But not through these pages alone. The past lives not only in the dried herbs and grasses, in memories and monuments, but in every blade of grass and ear of corn of the present; in our new houses and our old home customs, our new laws, our new conflicts, our victories and our hopes.

Old England lives and breathes in every breath of this our New England. Sometimes from what we have heard during the dreary years of oppression, we have thought she lived more truly here than in the England we have left.

The household is away, and the pleasant cheery house is silent. It is not the harvesting that has emptied the house and the village to-day. It is the thanksgiving for the harvest: the one festival which the first settlers in the wilderness appointed, in the first year of their exile, when the land was indeed a wilderness and an exile, and the next harvest a precarious blessing. More than half a century this festival has been kept. A venerable antiquity for New England.

And now our hearts are rich with tenfold offerings of praise.

For at last we believe the harvest of the seed sown in the wars and suffering of early days has been brought in!

The great Englishman who, as we believe, served England so well, has still no monument in our country nor even a grave.

But a true Prince of a race of princely deliverers, a race whose deeds fulfil more than their words promise, the grandson of William the Silent, the Liberator of Holland—is on the throne of England.

Once more, on the last days of January, forty years after the death of Charles the First, the throne was vacant. For King James had fled.

The link with the past, so sacred in England, which failed Oliver, places William of Orange on the throne.

"Yet," saith Roger, "but for Oliver, King James had never fled, nor William of Orange never reigned. The throne of the one hero is the best monument of the other."

Heavier and heavier the tidings came to us from across the seas year after year; until the climax seemed to us to be reached, when in one year one gentlewoman was beheaded at Winchester for giving refuge to two fugitives of Monmouth's Rebellion, and another was burnt at Tyburn for a similar act of mercy.

The free Puritan spirit seemed to us often extinct during those years of corruption and wrong. Hope of deliverance for the nation seemed to have expired in men's hearts. The best men seemed to gather up all their courage to suffer cheerfully. Christianity appeared no more with the sword of the warrior, keen to redress wrong, or the sword of justice, heavy to suppress it, but with meek folded hands as the martyr to endure it.

Yet we know all through the darkness the old fires were burning still, though they burned now in the still fires of devotion, patience, and meditation, rather than in the flames which consume fetters or which evangelize the world.

Beautiful words came to us from across the sea; high words of highest hope when lower hopes were quenched; of largest tolerance of difference of thought, blended with a truthfulness ready for any sacrifice rather than darken the soul with the least shadow of falsehood.

The very names of the books written then, with the circumstances under which they were written, sounded to us like a psalm.

From imprisoned Bunyan, a "Pilgrim's Progress from this world to a better," written in Bedford gaol.

From blind Milton, barely suffered to live, "The Paradise Lost and Regained" sung in the darkness which he felt to be "the shadow of celestial wings," in that lost England he never lived to see restored.

From silenced Owen, "The Glory of the Person of Christ," "The Mortification of Sin in Believers."

From silenced Howe, "The Living Temple,'" "The Blessedness of the Righteous," "On Delighting in God," "The Redeemer's Dominion over Hades."

It was of little avail to the kingdom of darkness the silencing of such as these. It was silencing their thoughts from "a life," to "an immortality." It was giving them a planet to preach from instead of a pulpit.

It was of little avail to crush with a weight of oppression hearts such as these. All the oppressions pressed out of them—no moans, but only immortal songs.

And dear to us as any were the wise and mellowed words of Richard Baxter, especially his declaration of the "things in which he himself had changed," as he learned, by the slow teaching of life.

In our hearts they were written in letters of gold, the autumnal gold of harvests.

"Among all parties," he wrote, "I found some that were naturally of mild, and calm, and gentle dispositions; some of sour, froward, peevish natures. Some were raw, inexperienced, and harsh, like a young fruit. And some I found to be like ripe fruit, mellow and sweet, first pure, then peaceable, easy to be entreated.

"But the difference between the godly and ungodly was here the most considerable of all.

"In my youth I was quickly past my fundamentals, and was running up into a multitude of controversies; but the older I grew the smaller stress I laid on these controversies and curiosities (though still my intellect abhorreth confusion), as finding greater uncertainties in them than I at first discerned; and finding less usefulness even where there is the greatest certainty. The Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments, are now to me as my daily bread and drink; and as I can speak and write over them again and again, so I had rather read and hear of them than of any of the school niceties. And this I observed with Bishop Hooker also, and with many other men.

"Heretofore I placed much of my religion in tenderness of heart and grieving for sin, and penitential tears, and less of it in the love of God, and studying His love and goodness, than now I do. Now my conscience looketh at love and delight in God, and praising Him, as the top of all my religious duties, for which it is that I value and use all the rest.

"I was once wont to meditate most on my own heart, and to dwell all at home, and look little higher; I was still poring either on my sins or wants; but now, though I am greatly convinced of the need of heart-acquaintance and employment, yet I see more need of a higher work. At home I find distempers to trouble me, and some evidences of grace; but it is above that I must find matters of delight and joy, and love and praise itself. Therefore I would have one thought at home upon myself and my sins, and many thoughts upon Christ, and God, and heaven.

"Heretofore, I knew much less than now; and yet was not half so much acquainted with my ignorance; but now I find far greater darkness upon all things, and perceive, how very little it is that we know in comparison with that we are ignorant of.

"I see more good and more evil in all men than heretofore I did; I see that good men are not so good as I once thought they were, but have more imperfections. And I find few are so bad as either their malicious enemies, or censorious separating professors do imagine. Even in the wicked generally, there is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to testify for God and holiness than I once believed there had been.

"I less admire gifts of utterance, and bare profession of religion than I once did, and have much more charity for those who by the want of gifts do make an obscurer profession; for I have met with divers obscure persons, not noted for any extraordinary profession or forwardness in religion, but only to live a quiet blameless life, whom I have after found to have long lived, as far as I could discern, a truly godly and sanctified life. Yet he that on this pretence would confound the godly and the ungodly, may as well go about to bring heaven and hell together.

"I am not so narrow in my special love, nor in my principles of church communion as heretofore.

"My soul is much more affected with the thoughts of the miserable world, and more drawn out in desire of their conversion than heretofore. Could we but go among Tartarians, Turks, and heathens, and speak their language, I should be little troubled for the silencing of eighteen hundred ministers at once in England, nor for all the rest that were cast out here, and in Scotland and Ireland; there being no employment in the world so desirable in my eyes as to labour for the winning of such miserable souls, which maketh me greatly honour Mr. John Eliot, the Apostle of the Indians in New England, and whoever else have laboured in this work.

"Yet am I not so much inclined to pass a peremptory sentence of denunciation upon all that have never heard of Christ, having some more reason than I had before to think that God's dealing with such is much unknown to us.

"I am farther than ever from hopes of a golden age here, and more apprehensive that suffering must be the Church's ordinary lot, and that Christians must indeed be cross-bearers. And though God would have vicissitudes of summer and winter, day and night, that the Church may grow extensively in the summer of prosperity, and intensively and radicately in the winter of adversity, yet usually their night is longer than their day, and that day itself hath its storms and tempests. The Church will be still imperfect and sinful, and will have those diseases which need the bitter remedy.

"My censures of the Papists do much differ from what they were at first. I then thought that their errors in doctrine were their most dangerous mistakes, as to the points of merit, justification by works, assurance of salvation, the nature of faith. But now I am assured that their mis-expressions and misunderstanding, with our mistakings of them, and inconvenient expressing our own opinions, hath made the differences in these points to appear much greater than they are; and that in some of them it is next to none at all.

"But the great and irreconcilable differences lie in their Church tyranny and usurpations, and in their great corruptions and abasements of God's worship, with their befriending of ignorance and vice. I doubt not but that God hath many sanctified ones among them, who have received the doctrine of Christianity so practically, that their contradictory errors prevail not against them to hinder their love of God and their salvation, but that their errors are like a conquerable dose of poison which nature doth overcome. And I can never believe that a man may not be saved by that religion which doth but bring him to the true love of God, and a heavenly mind and life; nor that God will ever cast a soul into hell that truly loveth Him.

"I cannot be so narrow in my principles of Church communion as many are. Many are so much for a liturgy or so much against it, so much for ceremonies or so much against them, that they can hold communion with no Church that is not of their mind and way.

"I am much less regardful of the approbation of man, and set much lighter by contempt or applause than I did long ago; all worldly things appear most unsatisfactory where we have tried them most; yet, as far as I can perceive, the knowledge of man's nothingness and God's transcendent greatness, with whom it is that I have most to do, and the sense of the brevity of human things and the nearness of eternity, are the principal causes of this effect.

"I am much more apprehensive than long ago of the odiousness and danger of the sin of pride, especially in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical. I think so far as any man is proud he is given to the Devil, and entirely a stranger to God and himself. It's a wonder that it should be a possible sin, to men that still carry about with them, in soul and body, such humbling matter as we all do.

"I am much more sensible than heretofore of the breadth, length, and depth of the radical, universal, odious sin of selfishness; and of the excellency and necessity of self-denial, and of a public mind, and of loving our neighbour as ourselves.

"I am more and more sensible that most controversies have more need of right stating than of debating; and if my skill be increased in anything it is in that; narrowing controversies by explication and separating the real from the verbal, and proving to many contenders that they differ less than they think they do.

"I am more solicitous than I have been about my duty to God, and less about His dealings with me; as being assured that He will do all things well, and as knowing there is no rest but in the will and goodness of God.

"I must mention it by way of penitent confession that I am too much inclined to such words in controversial writings which are too keen, and apt to provoke the person I write against. I have a strong natural inclination to call a spade a spade. I confess it is faulty, because it is a hindrance to the usefulness of what I write; and especially because though I feel no anger, yet (which is worse) I know there is some want of honour and love and tenderness to others, and therefore I repent of it, and wish all over-sharp passages were expunged from my writings, and desire forgiveness of God and man. And yet I must say that I am often afraid of the contrary extreme, lest when I speak against great and dangerous errors and sins, I should encourage men to them by speaking too easily of them, as Eli did to his sons.

"I mention these distempers that my faults may be a warning to others to take heed, as they call on myself for repentance and watchfulness. O Lord, for the merits and sacrifice and intercession of Christ, be merciful to me a sinner, and forgive my known and unknown sins."

These words are as familiar to us as a liturgy, so often used Aunt Dorothy to ask them to be read over to her; although to the last the part she oftenest asked me to read was that about the danger of the "contrary extreme of speaking too easily of dangerous errors and sins," to which she always gave her most emphatic Amen.

She forgave Mr. Baxter, however, for his marriage, on consideration of his young wife's generous assistance of destitute ministers, of her own and her mother's "manly patience" in adversities, and of the faithful affection with which she shared and cheered her husband's imprisonment.

And dear to Aunt Dorothy beyond all other uninspired writings was Mr. Baxter's, prison-hymn

"THE RESOLUTION.

"Must I be driven from my books,
From house, and goods, and dearest friends?
One of Thy sweet and gracious looks
For more than this will make amends.
The world's Thy book: there I can read
Thy power, wisdom, and Thy love;
And thence ascend by faith, and feed
Upon the better things above.

"I'll read Thy works of providence:
Thy Spirit, conscience, and Thy rod
Can teach without these all the sense
To know the world, myself, and God,
Few books will serve when Thou wilt teach,
Many have stolen my precious time;
I'll leave my books to hear Thee preach,
Church-work is best when Thou dost chime,

"As for my home it was my tent,
While there I waited on Thy flock;
That work is done, that time is spent,
There neither was my home nor stock.
Would I in all my journey have
Still the same sun and furniture?
Or ease and pleasant dwellings crave,
Forgetting what Thy saints endure?

"My Lord hath taught me how to want
A place wherein to put my head;
While He is mine, I'll be content
To beg or lack my daily bread.
Heaven is my roof, earth is my floor;
Thy love can keep me dry and warm;
Christ and Thy bounty are my store;
Thy angels guard me from all harm.

"As for my friends, they are not lost;
The several vessels of Thy fleet,
Though parted now, by tempest tost,
Shall safely in the haven meet.
Still we are centred all in Thee;
Members, thought distant, of one Head;
In the same family we be,
By the same faith and Spirit led.

"Before Thy throne we daily meet,
As joint petitioners to Thee;
In spirit we each other greet,
And shall again each other see.
The heavenly hosts, world without end,
Shall be my company above;
And Thou my best and surest Friend—
Who shall divide me from Thy love?

"Must I forsake the soil and air
Where first I drew my vital breath?
That way may be as near and fair,
Thence I may come to Thee by death.
All countries are my Father's lands;
Thy sun, Thy love doth shine on all;
We may in all lift up pure hands,
And with acceptance on Thee call.

"What if in prison I must dwell,
May I not there converse with Thee!
Save me from sin, Thy wrath, and hell,
Call me Thy child, and I am free.
No walls or bars can keep Thee out;
None can confine a holy soul,
The streets of heaven it walks about;
None can its liberty control.

"Must I feel sicknesses and smart
And spend my days and nights in pale
Yet if Thy love refresh my heart,
I need not overmuch complain.
This flesh has drawn my soul to sin,
If it must smart, Thy will be done.
Oh, fill me with Thy joys within,
And then I'll let it grieve alone!

"I know my flesh must turn to dust,
My parted soul must come to Thee,
And undergo Thy judgments just,
And in the endless world must be.
In this there's most of fear and joy,
Because there's most of sin and grace;
Sin will this mortal frame destroy,
But Christ will bring me to Thy face.

"Shall I draw back, and fear the end
Of all my sorrows, fears, and pain,
To which my life and labours tend,
Without which all had been in vain?
Can I for ever be content
Without true happiness and rest?
Is earth become so excellent
That I should take it for my best?

"Or can I think of finding here
That which my soul so long has sought?
Should I refuse those joys, through fear,
Which bounteous love so dear has bought?
All that does taste of heaven is good;
When heavenly light does me inform,
When heavenly life stirrs in my blood,
When heavenly love my heart doth warm.

"Though all the reasons I can see,
Why should I willingly submit,
And comfortably come to Thee—
My God, Thou must accomplish it.
The love which filled up all my days
Will not forsake me to the end;
This broken body Thou wilt raise,
My spirit I to Thee commend."

Such was the kind of whine or moan which persecution drew from the true Puritans! Such was the music oppression drew by its strain from strings not otherwise deemed musical. It is the solitary spontaneous songs of those whose natural speech is a quiet prose, which, more than anything, make me comprehend what is meant by the New Song.

We sang that hymn by Aunt Dorothy's grave, on the hill-side, under the old oak-tree where she loved to sit on summer evenings. She used to say the sound of the wind in the leaves took her back to old Netherby; and from its shade she could catch a gleam of the sea, on the other side of which is England.

We had not expected, and we did not find New England to be an Eden, where the conflict would be over. It has been possible, however, to wage "the good fight" here, not only for our own souls, but "in those public services for which a man is born." For that end we took refuge here; and we are content. Yet of some wars we have, I trust, seen the victorious end. Since the "being" of the plantations seems secure, men have more leisure to seek their "well-being." Since law has grown to have firmer roots, the lawgivers have grown more merciful. Magistrates and ministers have ceased to persecute, and Quakers have ceased to provoke. Which was the cause and which the effect, will perhaps long remain a subject of debate.

Just now, however, there are terrible rumours of witches, which recall the old witch-drowning and rescue of Gammer Grindle on Netherby Mere in my early days. Wretched old women are said to be accusing themselves of riding through the air on sticks, and of having evil spirits in the form of cats to wait on them, knowing that if convicted they will be hung. My husband thinks that, by-and-by, when the magistrates cease to excite diseased fancies by threats of the gallows, and thus the stimulus of danger is withdrawn, the witches will cease to believe they deserved a terrible punishment by having committed impossible crimes.*

* "When the persecution of the witches ceased, the Lord chained up Satan, that the afflicted grew presently well."—P. COTTON MATHER.

Meantime John Eliot has been fighting the devil in more undeniable forms by preaching the gospel to the Indians. He reduced the language to writing, and translated the Bible into it. At first the Pauwaws, their magicians or "clergymen," were furious, and threatened his life. But he went fearlessly, alone, among them. "I am about the work of the great God," he said. "God is with me. Touch me if you dare." Now there are six churches of baptized praying Indians, and eighteen assemblies of catechumens.

Yet when he was passing away, he said there was a dark cloud on the work among the Indians. The nation itself seems to fade before us. The praying Indians perish like caged deer in their Christian villages.

Now the life of love which has been shining among them and us so many years, has at last faded from our vision.

The firm, gentle hand which "rang the curfew for contentions" is still; the voice and the life which preached among us so constantly "bear, forbear, forgive," are silenced. The eyes which flashed so indignantly against wrongs to the weak and helpless, and which glanced so tenderly on the little children, are closed. The "lambs which Christ is not willing to lose" will watch for John Eliot's smile and kindly word henceforth in vain.

Whenever bad news came from England (and it came so often!), he would say, "These are some of the clouds in which the Son of man will come."

And now the better tidings have come, he has passed to better still. The Son of man has come for him, not in a cloud of darkness but of light.

When he was too feeble to labour longer among his Indians, he said, "I wonder for what my Lord keeps me longer here." And then he turned to such sufferers as his labours could yet reach. His last efforts were to gather the negro servants of the settlers and teach them. His last scholar was a blind boy whom he took to be with him in his house.

His last words to us still in the battle-field were "Pray, pray, pray."

His first words to the victors he has joined were, "Welcome, joy."

And soon after this our "Apostle of the Indians" died. Mr. Baxter wrote:—

"There was no man on earth whom I honoured above him. It is his evangelical work that is the Apostolical Succession I plead for. I am now dying, I hope, as he did. It pleased me to read from him my case ('my understanding faileth, my memory faileth, my tongue faileth, but my charity faileth not'). That word much comforted me. God preserve you and New England."

Thus New England has already her apostolic fathers and her sacred graves.

A few months passed, and then we heard how Richard Baxter had followed Eliot home.

"I have pain," he said; "there is no arguing against sense. But I have peace—I have peace." And when asked during his mortal sickness how he did, his reply was "almost well."

So the day he looked for as his Sabbath and "high day" came to him, and he is gone to the great company of those he justly honoured, and some whom he never learned to honour here, in the "many mansions" of that "all-reconciling world."

But alas, when shall we say "almost well" for, what he called, "this distracted world?"

In England the better days seem dawning, and here in New England.

But from France Lettice's old servant Barbe, who has taken refuge here with her family, brings tidings too sad to think of.

Port Royal is extinguished as a source of light; the schools suppressed; the nuns prisoners in their own convent or elsewhere; the recluses silenced and scattered. Hundreds of the best men and women in France, as Madame la Mothe deemed them, thus rendered powerless for good.

But the sufferers of whom Barbe speaks count by hundreds of thousands. "One soweth and another reapeth." Who will reap the harvest of this sowing?

Of these hundred thousand good Protestant men and women scattered, killed, tortured, at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and through all the persecutions before and after it, of whom Barbe tells us stories of horror such as England never knew, those other good men and women, Fort Royal, on earth, knew nothing!

Oh, joyful revelations of that "all reconciling world!" Next to the joy of seeing Him in whom God reconciles us all to Himself and to each other will be the joy of seeing the wonder on the countenances of saint after saint as they unlearn their wrong judgments of one another.

The joy of the unlearning.

Yes! this joy of unlearning is one we shall certainly none of us miss! As John Robinson said, on the other side of the sea at Delft Haven, to the fathers of our New England when they were departing, "If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument, be very willing to receive it as from me. Lutherans go not beyond Luther; Calvinists beyond Calvin; yet though burning and shining lights in their time, they penetrated not into the whole course of God. But were they now living, they would be as willing to receive further light as that which they first received from the Word of God."

They are living, living and learning, and ever "receiving further light" from the Eternal Light (oh, how willingly!), on the other side of that Great Sea which we must all so soon pass over, to learn together, with ever deepening love and joy, how wide His dominion is "of whose Diocese we are" "On Both Sides of the Sea."

THE END.

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Table of Contents

- On Both Sides of the Sea:

- CHAPTER I. OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

- CHAPTER II. OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

- CHAPTER III. LETTICE'S DIARY.

- CHAPTER IV. LETTICE'S DIARY.

- CHAPTER V. OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

- CHAPTER VI. OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

- CHAPTER VII. OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS

- CHAPTER VIII. OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

- CHAPTER IX. NOTES BY MAGDALENE ANTONY.

- CHAPTER X. LETTICE'S DIARY.

- CHAPTER XI. LETTICE'S DIARY.

- CHAPTER XII. LETTICE'S DIARY.

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE