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Old Portraits and Modern Sketches

by John Greenleaf Whittier · English · Gutenberg #9591 · 429,845 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Old Portraits and Modern Sketches

Author: John Greenleaf Whittier


        
Release date: December 1, 2005 [eBook #9591]
                Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9591

Credits: This eBook was produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES ***




This eBook was produced by David Widger





                     OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES

                       PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES

                             HISTORICAL PAPERS

                                   BY

                          JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER




CONTENTS

OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES.
     JOHN BUNYAN
     THOMAS ELLWOOD
     JAMES NAYLER
     ANDREW MARVELL
     JOHN ROBERTS
     SAMUEL HOPKINS
     RICHARD BAXTER
     WILLIAM LEGGETT
     NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS
     ROBERT DINSMORE
     PLACIDO, THE SLAVE POET

PERSONAL SKETCHES AND TRIBUTES.
     THE FUNERAL OF TORREY
     EDWARD EVERETT
     LEWIS TAPPAN
     BAYARD TAYLOR
     WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING
     DEATH OF PRESIDENT GARFIELD
     LYDIA MARIA CHILD
     OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
     LONGFELLOW
     OLD NEWBURY
     SCHOOLDAY REMEMBRANCES
     EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE

HISTORICAL PAPERS.
     DANIEL O'CONNELL
     ENGLAND UNDER JAMES II.
     THE BORDER WAR OF 1708
     THE GREAT IPSWICH FRIGHT
     THE BOY CAPTIVES
     THE BLACK MEN IN THE REVOLUTION AND WAR OF 1812
     THE SCOTTISH REFORMERS
     THE PILGRIMS OF PLYMOUTH
     GOVERNOR ENDICOTT
     JOHN WINTHROP





                    OLD PORTRAITS AND MODERN SKETCHES

     Inscribed as follows, when first collected in book-form:--
     To Dr. G.  BAILEY, of the National Era, Washington, D. C., these
     sketches, many of which originally appeared in the columns of the
     paper under his editorial supervision, are, in their present form,
     offered as a token of the esteem and confidence which years of
     political and literary communion have justified and confirmed, on
     the part of his friend and associate,
                               THE AUTHOR.



                               JOHN BUNYAN.

     "Wouldst see
     A man I' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee?"

Who has not read Pilgrim's Progress?  Who has not, in childhood,
followed the wandering Christian on his way to the Celestial City?  Who
has not laid at night his young head on the pillow, to paint on the
walls of darkness pictures of the Wicket Gate and the Archers, the Hill
of Difficulty, the Lions and Giants, Doubting Castle and Vanity Fair,
the sunny Delectable Mountains and the Shepherds, the Black River and
the wonderful glory beyond it; and at last fallen asleep, to dream over
the strange story, to hear the sweet welcomings of the sisters at the
House Beautiful, and the song of birds from the window of that "upper
chamber which opened towards the sunrising?" And who, looking back to
the green spots in his childish experiences, does not bless the good
Tinker of Elstow?

And who, that has reperused the story of the Pilgrim at a maturer age,
and felt the plummet of its truth sounding in the deep places of the
soul, has not reason to bless the author for some timely warning or
grateful encouragement?  Where is the scholar, the poet, the man of taste
and feeling, who does not, with Cowper,

         "Even in transitory life's late day,
          Revere the man whose Pilgrim marks the road,
          And guides the Progress of the soul to God!"

We have just been reading, with no slight degree of interest, that simple
but wonderful piece of autobiography, entitled Grace abounding to the
Chief of Sinners, from the pen of the author of Pilgrim's Progress.  It
is the record of a journey more terrible than that of the ideal Pilgrim;
"truth stranger than fiction;" the painful upward struggling of a spirit
from the blackness of despair and blasphemy, into the high, pure air of
Hope and Faith.  More earnest words were never written.  It is the entire
unveiling of a human heart; the tearing off of the fig-leaf covering of
its sin.  The voice which speaks to us from these old pages seems not so
much that of a denizen of the world in which we live, as of a soul at the
last solemn confessional.  Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as
the contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the first time the
Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the style is that of a man dead to
self-gratification, careless of the world's opinion, and only desirous to
convey to others, in all truthfulness and sincerity, the lesson of his
inward trials, temptations, sins, weaknesses, and dangers; and to give
glory to Him who had mercifully led him through all, and enabled him,
like his own Pilgrim, to leave behind the Valley of the Shadow of Death,
the snares of the Enchanted Ground, and the terrors of Doubting Castle,
and to reach the land of Beulah, where the air was sweet and pleasant,
and the birds sang and the flowers sprang up around him, and the Shining
Ones walked in the brightness of the not distant Heaven.  In the
introductory pages he says "he could have dipped into a style higher than
this in which I have discoursed, and could have adorned all things more
than here I have seemed to do; but I dared not.  God did not play in
tempting me; neither did I play when I sunk, as it were, into a
bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell took hold on me; wherefore, I may
not play in relating of them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the
thing as it was."

This book, as well as Pilgrim's Progress, was written in Bedford prison,
and was designed especially for the comfort and edification of his
"children, whom God had counted him worthy to beget in faith by his
ministry."  In his introduction he tells them, that, although taken from
them, and tied up, "sticking, as it were, between the teeth of the lions
of the wilderness," he once again, as before, from the top of Shemer and
Hermon, so now, from the lion's den and the mountain of leopards, would
look after then with fatherly care and desires for their everlasting
welfare.  "If," said he, "you have sinned against light; if you are
tempted to blaspheme; if you are drowned in despair; if you think God
fights against you; or if Heaven is hidden from your eyes, remember it
was so with your father.  But out of all the Lord delivered me."

He gives no dates; be affords scarcely a clue to his localities; of the
man, as he worked, and ate, and drank, and lodged, of his neighbors and
contemporaries, of all he saw and heard of the world about him, we have
only an occasional glimpse, here and there, in his narrative.  It is the
story of his inward life only that he relates.  What had time and place
to do with one who trembled always with the awful consciousness of an
immortal nature, and about whom fell alternately the shadows of hell and
the splendors of heaven?  We gather, indeed, from his record, that he was
not an idle on-looker in the time of England's great struggle for
freedom, but a soldier of the Parliament, in his young years, among the
praying sworders and psalm-singing pikemen, the Greathearts and Holdfasts
whom he has immortalized in his allegory; but the only allusion which he
makes to this portion of his experience is by way of illustration of the
goodness of God in preserving him on occasions of peril.

He was born at Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in 1628; and, to use his own
words, his "father's house was of that rank which is the meanest and most
despised of all the families of the land."  His father was a tinker, and
the son followed the same calling, which necessarily brought him into
association with the lowest and most depraved classes of English society.
The estimation in which the tinker and his occupation were held, in the
seventeenth century, may be learned from the quaint and humorous
description of Sir Thomas Overbury.  "The tinker," saith he, "is a
movable, for he hath no abiding in one place; he seems to be devout, for
his life is a continual pilgrimage, and sometimes, in humility, goes
barefoot, therein making necessity a virtue; he is a gallant, for he
carries all his wealth upon his back; or a philosopher, for he bears all
his substance with him.  He is always furnished with a song, to which his
hammer, keeping tune, proves that he was the first founder of the kettle-
drum; where the best ale is, there stands his music most upon crotchets.
The companion of his travel is some foul, sun-burnt quean, that, since
the terrible statute, has recanted gypsyism, and is turned pedlaress.  So
marches he all over England, with his bag and baggage; his conversation
is irreprovable, for he is always mending.  He observes truly the
statutes, and therefore had rather steal than beg.  He is so strong an
enemy of idleness, that in mending one hole he would rather make three
than want work; and when he hath done, he throws the wallet of his faults
behind him.  His tongue is very voluble, which, with canting, proves him
a linguist.  He is entertained in every place, yet enters no farther than
the door, to avoid suspicion.  To conclude, if he escape Tyburn and
Banbury, he dies a beggar."

Truly, but a poor beginning for a pious life was the youth of John
Bunyan.  As might have been expected, he was a wild, reckless, swearing
boy, as his father doubtless was before him.  "It was my delight," says
he, "to be taken captive by the Devil.  I had few equals, both for
cursing and swearing, lying and blaspheming."  Yet, in his ignorance and
darkness, his powerful imagination early lent terror to the reproaches of
conscience.  He was scared, even in childhood, with dreams of hell and
apparitions of devils.  Troubled with fears of eternal fire, and the
malignant demons who fed it in the regions of despair, he says that he
often wished either that there was no hell, or that he had been born a
devil himself, that he might be a tormentor rather than one of the
tormented.

At an early age he appears to have married.  His wife was as poor as
himself, for he tells us that they had not so much as a dish or spoon
between them; but she brought with her two books on religious subjects,
the reading of which seems to have had no slight degree of influence on
his mind.  He went to church regularly, adored the priest and all things
pertaining to his office, being, as he says, "overrun with superstition."
On one occasion, a sermon was preached against the breach of the Sabbath
by sports or labor, which struck him at the moment as especially designed
for himself; but by the time he had finished his dinner he was prepared
to "shake it out of his mind, and return to his sports and gaming."

"But the same day," he continues, "as I was in the midst of a game of
cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to
strike it a second time, a voice did suddenly dart from Heaven into my
soul, which said, 'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy
sins and go to hell?'  At this, I was put to an exceeding maze;
wherefore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to Heaven, and it
was as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus
look down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if He
did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for those and
other ungodly practices.

"I had no sooner thus conceived in my mind, but suddenly this conclusion
fastened on my spirit, (for the former hint did set my sins again before
my face,) that I had been a great and grievous sinner, and that it was
now too late for me to look after Heaven; for Christ would not forgive me
nor pardon my transgressions.  Then, while I was thinking of it, and
fearing lest it should be so, I felt my heart sink in despair, concluding
it was too late; and therefore I resolved in my mind to go on in sin;
for, thought I, if the case be thus, my state is surely miserable;
miserable if I leave my sins, and but miserable if I follow them; I can
but be damned; and if I must be so, I had as good be damned for many sins
as be damned for few."

The reader of Pilgrim's Progress cannot fail here to call to mind the
wicked suggestions of the Giant to Christian, in the dungeon of Doubting
Castle.

"I returned," he says, "desperately to my sport again; and I well
remember, that presently this kind of despair did so possess my soul,
that I was persuaded I could never attain to other comfort than what I
should get in sin; for Heaven was gone already, so that on that I must
not think; wherefore, I found within me great desire to take my fill of
sin, that I might taste the sweetness of it; and I made as much haste as
I could to fill my belly with its delicates, lest I should die before I
had my desires; for that I feared greatly.  In these things, I protest
before God, I lie not, neither do I frame this sort of speech; these were
really, strongly, and with all my heart, my desires; the good Lord, whose
mercy is unsearchable, forgive my transgressions."

One day, while standing in the street, cursing and blaspheming, he met
with a reproof which startled him.  The woman of the house in front of
which the wicked young tinker was standing, herself, as he remarks, "a
very loose, ungodly wretch," protested that his horrible profanity made
her tremble; that he was the ungodliest fellow for swearing she had ever
heard, and able to spoil all the youth of the town who came in his
company.  Struck by this wholly unexpected rebuke, he at once abandoned
the practice of swearing; although previously he tells us that "he had
never known how to speak, unless he put an oath before and another
behind."

The good name which he gained by this change was now a temptation to him.
"My neighbors," he says, "were amazed at my great conversion from
prodigious profaneness to something like a moral life and sober man.
Now, therefore, they began to praise, to commend, and to speak well of
me, both to my face and behind my back.  Now I was, as they said, become
godly; now I was become a right honest man.  But oh! when I understood
those were their words and opinions of me, it pleased me mighty well; for
though as yet I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I loved to
be talked of as one that was truly godly.  I was proud of my godliness,
and, indeed, I did all I did either to be seen of or well spoken of by
men; and thus I continued for about a twelvemonth or more."

The tyranny of his imagination at this period is seen in the following
relation of his abandonment of one of his favorite sports.

"Now, you must know, that before this I had taken much delight in
ringing, but my conscience beginning to be tender, I thought such
practice was but vain, and therefore forced myself to leave it; yet my
mind hankered; wherefore, I would go to the steeple-house and look on,
though I durst not ring; but I thought this did not become religion
neither; yet I forced myself, and would look on still.  But quickly
after, I began to think, 'How if one of the bells should fall?'  Then I
chose to stand under a main beam, that lay overthwart the steeple, from
side to side, thinking here I might stand sure; but then I thought again,
should the bell fall with a swing, it might first hit the wall, and then,
rebounding upon me, might kill me for all this beam.  This made me stand
in the steeple door; and now, thought I, I am safe enough; for if a bell
should then fall, I can slip out behind these thick walls, and so be
preserved notwithstanding.

"So after this I would yet go to see them ring, but would not go any
farther than the steeple-door.  But then it came in my head, 'How if the
steeple itself should fall?' And this thought (it may, for aught I know,
when I stood and looked on) did continually so shake my mind, that I
durst not stand at the steeple-door any longer, but was forced to flee,
for fear the steeple should fall upon my head."

About this time, while wandering through Bedford in pursuit of
employment, he chanced to see three or four poor old women sitting at a
door, in the evening sun, and, drawing near them, heard them converse
upon the things of God; of His work in their hearts; of their natural
depravity; of the temptations of the Adversary; and of the joy of
believing, and of the peace of reconciliation.  The words of the aged
women found a response in the soul of the listener.  "He felt his heart
shake," to use his own words; he saw that he lacked the true tokens of a
Christian.  He now forsook the company of the profane and licentious, and
sought that of a poor man who had the reputation of piety, but, to his
grief, he found him "a devilish ranter, given up to all manner of
uncleanness; he would laugh at all exhortations to sobriety, and deny
that there was a God, an angel, or a spirit."

"Neither," he continues, "was this man only a temptation to me, but, my
calling lying in the country, I happened to come into several people's
company, who, though strict in religion formerly, yet were also drawn
away by these ranters.  These would also talk with me of their ways, and
condemn me as illegal and dark; pretending that they only had attained to
perfection, that they could do what they would, and not sin.  Oh! these
temptations were suitable to my flesh, I being but a young man, and my
nature in its prime; but God, who had, as I hope, designed me for better
things, kept me in the fear of His name, and did not suffer me to accept
such cursed principles."

At this time he was sadly troubled to ascertain whether or not he had
that faith which the Scriptures spake of.  Travelling one day from Elstow
to Bedford, after a recent rain, which had left pools of water in the
path, he felt a strong desire to settle the question, by commanding the
pools to become dry, and the dry places to become pools.  Going under the
hedge, to pray for ability to work the miracle, he was struck with the
thought that if he failed he should know, indeed, that he was a castaway,
and give himself up to despair.  He dared not attempt the experiment, and
went on his way, to use his own forcible language, "tossed up and down
between the Devil and his own ignorance."

Soon after, he had one of those visions which foreshadowed the wonderful
dream of his Pilgrim's Progress.  He saw some holy people of Bedford on
the sunny side of an high mountain, refreshing themselves in the pleasant
air and sunlight, while he was shivering in cold and darkness, amidst
snows and never-melting ices, like the victims of the Scandinavian hell.
A wall compassed the mountain, separating him from the blessed, with one
small gap or doorway, through which, with great pain and effort, he was
at last enabled to work his way into the sunshine, and sit down with the
saints, in the light and warmth thereof.

But now a new trouble assailed him.  Like Milton's metaphysical spirits,
who sat apart,

"And reasoned of foreknowledge, will, and fate," he grappled with one of
those great questions which have always perplexed and baffled human
inquiry, and upon which much has been written to little purpose.  He was
tortured with anxiety to know whether, according to the Westminster
formula, he was elected to salvation or damnation.  His old adversary
vexed his soul with evil suggestions, and even quoted Scripture to
enforce them.  "It may be you are not elected," said the Tempter; and the
poor tinker thought the supposition altogether too probable.  "Why,
then," said Satan, "you had as good leave off, and strive no farther; for
if, indeed, you should not be elected and chosen of God, there is no hope
of your being saved; for it is neither in him that willeth nor in him
that runneth, but in God who showeth mercy."  At length, when, as he
says, he was about giving up the ghost of all his hopes, this passage
fell with weight upon his spirit: "Look at the generations of old, and
see; did ever any trust in God, and were confounded?"  Comforted by these
words, he opened his Bible took note them, but the most diligent search
and inquiry of his neighbors failed to discover them.  At length his eye
fell upon them in the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus.  This, he says,
somewhat doubted him at first, as the book was not canonical; but in the
end he took courage and comfort from the passage.  "I bless God," he
says, "for that word; it was good for me.  That word doth still
oftentimes shine before my face."

A long and weary struggle was now before him.  "I cannot," he says,
"express with what longings and breathings of my soul I cried unto Christ
to call me.  Gold! could it have been gotten by gold, what would I have
given for it.  Had I a whole world, it had all gone ten thousand times
over for this, that my soul might have been in a converted state.  How
lovely now was every one in my eyes, that I thought to be converted men
and women.  They shone, they walked like a people who carried the broad
seal of Heaven with them."

With what force and intensity of language does he portray in the
following passage the reality and earnestness of his agonizing
experience:--

"While I was thus afflicted with the fears of my own damnation, there
were two things would make me wonder: the one was, when I saw old people
hunting after the things of this life, as if they should live here
always; the other was, when I found professors much distressed and cast
down, when they met with outward losses; as of husband, wife, or child.
Lord, thought I, what seeking after carnal things by some, and what grief
in others for the loss of them!  If they so much labor after and shed so
many tears for the things of this present life, how am I to be bemoaned,
pitied, and prayed for!  My soul is dying, my soul is damning.  Were my
soul but in a good condition, and were I but sure of it, ah I how rich
should I esteem myself, though blessed but with bread and water!  I
should count these but small afflictions, and should bear them as little
burdens.  'A wounded spirit who can bear!'"

He looked with envy, as he wandered through the country, upon the birds
in the trees, the hares in the preserves, and the fishes in the streams.
They were happy in their brief existence, and their death was but a
sleep.  He felt himself alienated from God, a discord in the harmonies of
the universe.  The very rooks which fluttered around the old church spire
seemed more worthy of the Creator's love and care than himself.  A vision
of the infernal fire, like that glimpse of hell which was afforded to
Christian by the Shepherds, was continually before him, with its
"rumbling noise, and the cry of some tormented, and the scent of
brimstone."  Whithersoever he went, the glare of it scorched him, and its
dreadful sound was in his ears.  His vivid but disturbed imagination lent
new terrors to the awful figures by which the sacred writers conveyed the
idea of future retribution to the Oriental mind.  Bunyan's World of Woe,
if it lacked the colossal architecture and solemn vastness of Milton's
Pandemonium, was more clearly defined; its agonies were within the pale
of human comprehension; its victims were men and women, with the same
keen sense of corporeal suffering which they possessed in life; and who,
to use his own terrible description, had "all the loathed variety of hell
to grapple with; fire unquenchable, a lake of choking brimstone, eternal
chains, darkness more black than night, the everlasting gnawing of the
worm, the sight of devils, and the yells and outcries of the damned."

His mind at this period was evidently shaken in some degree from its
balance.  He was troubled with strange, wicked thoughts, confused by
doubts and blasphemous suggestions, for which he could only account by
supposing himself possessed of the Devil.  He wanted to curse and swear,
and had to clap his hands on his mouth to prevent it.  In prayer, he
felt, as he supposed, Satan behind him, pulling his clothes, and telling
him to have done, and break off; suggesting that he had better pray to
him, and calling up before his mind's eye the figures of a bull, a tree,
or some other object, instead of the awful idea of God.

He notes here, as cause of thankfulness, that, even in this dark and
clouded state, he was enabled to see the "vile and abominable things
fomented by the Quakers," to be errors.  Gradually, the shadow wherein he
had so long

         "Walked beneath the day's broad glare,
          A darkened man,"

passed from him, and for a season he was afforded an "evidence of his
salvation from Heaven, with many golden seals thereon hanging in his
sight."  But, ere long, other temptations assailed him.  A strange
suggestion haunted him, to sell or part with his Saviour.  His own
account of this hallucination is too painfully vivid to awaken any other
feeling than that of sympathy and sadness.

"I could neither eat my food, stoop for a pin, chop a stick, or cast mine
eye to look on this or that, but still the temptation would come, Sell
Christ for this, or sell Christ for that; sell him, sell him.

"Sometimes it would run in my thoughts, not so little as a hundred times
together, Sell him, sell him; against which, I may say, for whole hours
together, I have been forced to stand as continually leaning and forcing
my spirit against it, lest haply, before I were aware, some wicked
thought might arise in my heart, that might consent thereto; and
sometimes the tempter would make me believe I had consented to it; but
then I should be as tortured upon a rack, for whole days together.

"This temptation did put me to such scares, lest I should at sometimes, I
say, consent thereto, and be overcome therewith, that, by the very force
of my mind, my very body would be put into action or motion, by way of
pushing or thrusting with my hands or elbows; still answering, as fast as
the destroyer said, Sell him, I will not, I will not, I will not; no, not
for thousands, thousands, thousands of worlds; thus reckoning, lest I
should set too low a value on him, even until I scarce well knew where I
was, or how to be composed again.

"But to be brief: one morning, as I did lie in my bed, I was, as at other
times, most fiercely assaulted with this temptation, to sell and part
with Christ; the wicked suggestion still running in my mind, Sell him,
sell him, sell him, sell him, sell him, as fast as a man could speak;
against which, also, in my mind, as at other times, I answered, No, no,
not for thousands, thousands, thousands, at least twenty times together;
but at last, after much striving, I felt this thought pass through my
heart, Let him go if he will; and I thought also, that I felt my heart
freely consent thereto.  Oh, the diligence of Satan!  Oh, the
desperateness of man's heart!

"Now was the battle won, and down fell I, as a bird that is shot from the
top of a tree, into great guilt, and fearful despair.  Thus getting out
of my bed, I went moping into the field; but God knows with as heavy a
heart as mortal man, I think, could bear; where, for the space of two
hours, I was like a man bereft of life; and, as now, past all recovery,
and bound over to eternal punishment.

"And withal, that Scripture did seize upon my soul: 'Or profane person,
as Esau, who, for one morsel of meat, sold his birthright; for ye know,
how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was
rejected; for he found no place for repentance, though he sought it
carefully with tears."

For two years and a half, as he informs us, that awful scripture sounded
in his ears like the knell of a lost soul.  He believed that he had
committed they unpardonable sin.  His mental anguish 'was united with
bodily illness and suffering.  His nervous system became fearfully
deranged; his limbs trembled; and he supposed this visible tremulousness
and agitation to be the mark of Cain.  'Troubled with pain and
distressing sensations in his chest, he began to fear that his breast-
bone would split open, and that he should perish like Judas Iscariot.  He
feared that the tiles of the houses would fall upon him as he walked in
the streets.  He was like his own Man in the Cage at the House of the
Interpreter, shut out from the promises, and looking forward to certain
judgment.  "Methought," he says, "the very sun that shineth in heaven did
grudge to give me light."  And still the dreadful words, "He found no
place for repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears," sounded
in the depths of his soul.  They were, he says, like fetters of brass to
his legs, and their continual clanking followed him for months.
Regarding himself elected and predestined for damnation, he thought that
all things worked for his damage and eternal overthrow, while all things
wrought for the best and to do good to the elect and called of God unto
salvation.  God and all His universe had, he thought, conspired against
him; the green earth, the bright waters, the sky itself, were written
over with His irrevocable curse.

Well was it said by Bunyan's contemporary, the excellent Cudworth, in his
eloquent sermon before the Long Parliament, that "We are nowhere
commanded to pry into the secrets of God, but the wholesome advice given
us is this: 'To make our calling and election sure.'  We have no warrant
from Scripture to peep into the hidden rolls of eternity, to spell out
our names among the stars."  "Must we say that God sometimes, to exercise
His uncontrollable dominion, delights rather in plunging wretched souls
down into infernal night and everlasting darkness?  What, then, shall we
make the God of the whole world?  Nothing but a cruel and dreadful
_Erinnys_, with curled fiery snakes about His head, and firebrands in His
hand; thus governing the world!  Surely, this will make us either
secretly think there is no God in the world, if He must needs be such, or
else to wish heartily there were none."  It was thus at times with
Bunyan.  He was tempted, in this season of despair, to believe that there
was no resurrection and no judgment.

One day, he tells us, a sudden rushing sound, as of wind or the wings of
angels, came to him through the window, wonderfully sweet and pleasant;
and it was as if a voice spoke to him from heaven words of encouragement
and hope, which, to use his language, commanded, for the time, "a silence
in his heart to all those tumultuous thoughts that did use, like
masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a hideous noise
within him."  About this time, also, some comforting passages of
Scripture were called to mind; but he remarks, that whenever he strove to
apply them to his case, Satan would thrust the curse of Esau in his face,
and wrest the good word from him.  The blessed promise "Him that cometh
to me, I will in no wise cast out" was the chief instrumentality in
restoring his lost peace.  He says of it: "If ever Satan and I did strive
for any word of God in all my life, it was for this good word of Christ;
he at one end, and I at the other.  Oh, what work we made!  It was for
this in John, I say, that we did so tug and strive; he pulled, and I
pulled, but, God be praised!  I overcame him; I got sweetness from it.
Oh, many a pull hath my heart had with Satan for this blessed sixth
chapter of John!"  Who does not here call to mind the struggle between
Christian and Apollyon in the valley!

That was no fancy sketch; it was the narrative of the author's own
grapple with the Spirit of Evil.  Like his ideal Christian, he "conquered
through Him that loved him."  Love wrought the victory the Scripture of
Forgiveness overcame that of Hatred.

He never afterwards relapsed into that state of religious melancholy from
which he so hardly escaped.  He speaks of his deliverance as the waking
out of a troublesome dream.  His painful experience was not lost upon
him; for it gave him, ever after, a tender sympathy for the weak, the
sinful, the ignorant, and desponding.  In some measure, he had been
"touched with the feeling of their infirmities."  He could feel for those
in the bonds of sin and despair, as bound with them.  Hence his power as
a preacher; hence the wonderful adaptation of his great allegory to all
the variety of spiritual conditions.  Like Fearing, he had lain a month
in the Slough of Despond, and had played, like him, the long melancholy
bass of spiritual heaviness.  With Feeble-mind, he had fallen into the
hands of Slay-good, of the nature of Man-eaters: and had limped along his
difficult way upon the crutches of Ready-to-halt.  Who better than
himself could describe the condition of Despondency, and his daughter
Much-afraid, in the dungeon of Doubting Castle?  Had he not also fallen
among thieves, like Little-faith?

His account of his entering upon the solemn duties of a preacher of the
Gospel is at once curious and instructive.  He deals honestly with
himself, exposing all his various moods, weaknesses, doubts, and
temptations.  "I preached," he says, "what I felt; for the terrors of the
law and the guilt of transgression lay heavy on my conscience.  I have
been as one sent to them from the dead.  I went, myself in chains, to
preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my conscience which I
persuaded them to beware of."  At times, when he stood up to preach,
blasphemies and evil doubts rushed into his mind, and he felt a strong
desire to utter them aloud to his congregation; and at other seasons,
when he was about to apply to the sinner some searching and fearful text
of Scripture, he was tempted to withhold it, on the ground that it
condemned himself also; but, withstanding the suggestion of the Tempter,
to use his own simile, he bowed himself like Samson to condemn sin
wherever he found it, though he brought guilt and condemnation upon
himself thereby, choosing rather to die with the Philistines than to deny
the truth.

Foreseeing the consequences of exposing himself to the operation of the
penal laws by holding conventicles and preaching, he was deeply afflicted
at the thought of the suffering and destitution to which his wife and
children might be exposed by his death or imprisonment.  Nothing can be
more touching than his simple and earnest words on this point.  They show
how warm and deep were him human affections, and what a tender and loving
heart he laid as a sacrifice on the altar of duty.

"I found myself a man compassed with infirmities; the parting with my
wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling
the flesh from the bones; and also it brought to my mind the many
hardships, miseries, and wants, that my poor family was like to meet
with, should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who
lay nearer my heart than all beside.  Oh, the thoughts of the hardships I
thought my poor blind one might go under would break my heart to pieces.

"Poor child! thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion
in this world! thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold,
nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind
should blow upon thee.  But yet, thought I, I must venture you all with
God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you: oh! I saw I was as a man
who was pulling down his house upon the heads of his wife and children;
yet I thought on those 'two milch kine that were to carry the ark of God
into another country, and to leave their calves behind them.'

"But that which helped me in this temptation was divers considerations:
the first was, the consideration of those two Scriptures, 'Leave thy
fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust
in me;' and again, 'The Lord said, verily it shall go well with thy
remnant; verily I will cause the enemy to entreat them well in the time
of evil.'"

He was arrested in 1660, charged with "devilishly and perniciously
abstaining from church," and of being "a common upholder of
conventicles."  At the Quarter Sessions, where his trial seems to have
been conducted somewhat like that of Faithful at Vanity Fair, he was
sentenced to perpetual banishment.  This sentence, however, was never
executed, but he was remanded to Bedford jail, where he lay a prisoner
for twelve years.

Here, shut out from the world, with no other books than the Bible and
Fox's Martyrs, he penned that great work which has attained a wider and
more stable popularity than any other book in the English tongue.  It is
alike the favorite of the nursery and the study.  Many experienced
Christians hold it only second to the Bible; the infidel himself would
not willingly let it die.  Men of all sects read it with delight, as in
the main a truthful representation of the 'Christian pilgrimage, without
indeed assenting to all the doctrines which the author puts in the month
of his fighting sermonizer, Great-heart, or which may be deduced from
some other portions of his allegory.  A recollection of his fearful
sufferings, from misapprehension of a single text in the Scriptures,
relative to the question of election, we may suppose gave a milder tone
to the theology of his Pilgrim than was altogether consistent with the
Calvinism of the seventeenth century.  "Religion," says Macaulay, "has
scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing as in Bunyan's allegory."
In composing it, he seems never to have altogether lost sight of the
fact, that, in his life-and-death struggle with Satan for the blessed
promise recorded by the Apostle of Love, the adversary was generally
found on the Genevan side of the argument. Little did the short-sighted
persecutors of Bunyan dream, when they closed upon him the door of
Bedford jail, that God would overrule their poor spite and envy to His
own glory and the worldwide renown of their victim.  In the solitude of
his prison, the ideal forms of beauty and sublimity, which had long
flitted before him vaguely, like the vision of the Temanite, took shape
and coloring; and he was endowed with power to reduce them to order, and
arrange them in harmonious groupings.  His powerful imagination, no
longer self-tormenting, but under the direction of reason and grace,
expanded his narrow cell into a vast theatre, lighted up for the display
of its wonders.  To this creative faculty of his mind might have been
aptly applied the language which George Wither, a contemporary prisoner,
addressed to his Muse:--

              "The dull loneness, the black shade
               Which these hanging vaults have made,
               The rude portals that give light
               More to terror than delight;
               This my chamber of neglect,
               Walled about with disrespect,--
               From all these, and this dull air,
               A fit object for despair,
               She hath taught me by her might,
               To draw comfort and delight."

That stony cell of his was to him like the rock of Padan-aram to the
wandering Patriarch.  He saw angels ascending and descending.  The House
Beautiful rose up before him, and its holy sisterhood welcomed him.  He
looked, with his Pilgrim, from the Chamber of Peace.  The Valley of
Humiliation lay stretched out beneath his eye, and he heard "the curious,
melodious note of the country birds, who sing all the day long in the
spring time, when the flowers appear, and the sun shines warm, and make
the woods and groves and solitary places glad."  Side by side with the
good Christiana and the loving Mercy, he walked through the green and
lowly valley, "fruitful as any the crow flies over," through "meadows
beautiful with lilies;" the song of the poor but fresh-faced shepherd-
boy, who lived a merry life, and wore the herb heartsease in his bosom,
sounded through his cell:--

              "He that is down need fear no fall;
               He that is low no pride."

The broad and pleasant "river of the Water of Life" glided peacefully
before him, fringed "on either side with green trees, with all manner of
fruit," and leaves of healing, with "meadows beautified with lilies, and
green all the year long;" he saw the Delectable Mountains, glorious with
sunshine, overhung with gardens and orchards and vineyards; and beyond
all, the Land of Beulah, with its eternal sunshine, its song of birds,
its music of fountains, its purple clustered vines, and groves through
which walked the Shining Ones, silver-winged and beautiful.

What were bars and bolts and prison-walls to him, whose eyes were
anointed to see, and whose ears opened to hear, the glory and the
rejoicing of the City of God, when the pilgrims were conducted to its
golden gates, from the black and bitter river, with the sounding
trumpeters, the transfigured harpers with their crowns of gold, the sweet
voices of angels, the welcoming peal of bells in the holy city, and the
songs of the redeemed ones?  In reading the concluding pages of the first
part of Pilgrim's Progress, we feel as if the mysterious glory of the
Beatific Vision was unveiled before us.  We are dazzled with the excess
of light.  We are entranced with the mighty melody; overwhelmed by the
great anthem of rejoicing spirits.  It can only be adequately described
in the language of Milton in respect to the Apocalypse, as "a seven-fold
chorus of hallelujahs and harping symphonies."

Few who read Bunyan nowadays think of him as one of the brave old English
confessors, whose steady and firm endurance of persecution baffled and in
the end overcame the tyranny of the Established Church in the reign of
Charles II.  What Milton and Penn and Locke wrote in defence of Liberty,
Bunyan lived out and acted.  He made no concessions to worldly rank.
Dissolute lords and proud bishops he counted less than the humblest and
poorest of his disciples at Bedford.  When first arrested and thrown into
prison, he supposed he should be called to suffer death for his faithful
testimony to the truth; and his great fear was, that he should not meet
his fate with the requisite firmness, and so dishonor the cause of his
Master.  And when dark clouds came over him, and he sought in vain for a
sufficient evidence that in the event of his death it would be well with
him, he girded up his soul with the reflection, that, as he suffered for
the word and way of God, he was engaged not to shrink one hair's breadth
from it.  "I will leap," he says, "off the ladder blindfold into
eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell.  Lord Jesus, if thou wilt
catch me, do; if not, I will venture in thy name!"

The English revolution of the seventeenth century, while it humbled the
false and oppressive aristocracy of rank and title, was prodigal in the
development of the real nobility of the mind and heart.  Its history is
bright with the footprints of men whose very names still stir the hearts
of freemen, the world over, like a trumpet peal.  Say what we may of its
fanaticism, laugh as we may at its extravagant enjoyment of newly
acquired religious and civil liberty, who shall now venture to deny that
it was the golden age of England?  Who that regards freedom above
slavery, will now sympathize with the outcry and lamentation of those
interested in the continuance of the old order of things, against the
prevalence of sects and schism, but who, at the same time, as Milton
shrewdly intimates, dreaded more the rending of their pontifical sleeves
than the rending of the Church?  Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, with
the Defence of Unlicensed Printing before him?  Who scoff at Quakerism
over the Journal of George Fox?  Who shall join with debauched lordlings
and fat-witted prelates in ridicule of Anabaptist levellers and dippers,
after rising from the perusal of Pilgrim's Progress?  "There were giants
in those days."  And foremost amidst that band of liberty-loving and God-
fearing men,

         "The slandered Calvinists of Charles's time,
          Who fought, and won it, Freedom's holy fight,"

stands the subject of our sketch, the Tinker of Elstow.  Of his high
merit as an author there is no longer any question.  The Edinburgh Review
expressed the common sentiment of the literary world, when it declared
that the two great creative minds of the seventeenth century were those
which produced Paradise Lost and the Pilgrim's Progress.






                             THOMAS ELLWOOD.

Commend us to autobiographies!  Give us the veritable notchings of
Robinson Crusoe on his stick, the indubitable records of a life long
since swallowed up in the blackness of darkness, traced by a hand the
very dust of which has become undistinguishable.  The foolishest egotist
who ever chronicled his daily experiences, his hopes and fears, poor
plans and vain reachings after happiness, speaking to us out of the Past,
and thereby giving us to understand that it was quite as real as our
Present, is in no mean sort our benefactor, and commands our attention,
in spite of his folly.  We are thankful for the very vanity which
prompted him to bottle up his poor records, and cast them into the great
sea of Time, for future voyagers to pick up.  We note, with the deepest
interest, that in him too was enacted that miracle of a conscious
existence, the reproduction of which in ourselves awes and perplexes us.
He, too, had a mother; he hated and loved; the light from old-quenched
hearths shone over him; he walked in the sunshine over the dust of those
who had gone before him, just as we are now walking over his.  These
records of him remain, the footmarks of a long-extinct life, not of mere
animal organism, but of a being like ourselves, enabling us, by studying
their hieroglyphic significance, to decipher and see clearly into the
mystery of existence centuries ago.  The dead generations live again in
these old self-biographies.  Incidentally, unintentionally, yet in the
simplest and most natural manner, they make us familiar with all the
phenomena of life in the bygone ages.  We are brought in contact with
actual flesh-and-blood men and women, not the ghostly outline figures
which pass for such, in what is called History.  The horn lantern of the
biographer, by the aid of which, with painful minuteness, he chronicled,
from day to day, his own outgoings and incomings, making visible to us
his pitiful wants, labors, trials, and tribulations of the stomach and of
the conscience, sheds, at times, a strong clear light upon
contemporaneous activities; what seemed before half fabulous, rises up in
distinct and full proportions; we look at statesmen, philosophers, and
poets, with the eyes of those who lived perchance their next-door
neighbors, and sold them beer, and mutton, and household stuffs, had
access to their kitchens, and took note of the fashion of their wigs and
the color of their breeches.  Without some such light, all history would
be just about as unintelligible and unreal as a dimly remembered dream.

The journals of the early Friends or Quakers are in this respect
invaluable.  Little, it is true, can be said, as a general thing, of
their literary merits.  Their authors were plain, earnest men and women,
chiefly intent upon the substance of things, and having withal a strong
testimony to bear against carnal wit and outside show and ornament.  Yet,
even the scholar may well admire the power of certain portions of George
Fox's Journal, where a strong spirit clothes its utterance in simple,
downright Saxon words; the quiet and beautiful enthusiasm of Pennington;
the torrent energy of Edward Burrough; the serene wisdom of Penn; the
logical acuteness of Barclay; the honest truthfulness of Sewell; the wit
and humor of John Roberts, (for even Quakerism had its apostolic jokers
and drab-coated Robert Halls;) and last, not least, the simple beauty of
Woolman's Journal, the modest record of a life of good works and love.

Let us look at the Life of Thomas Ellwood.  The book before us is a
hardly used Philadelphia reprint, bearing date of 1775.  The original was
published some sixty years before.  It is not a book to be found in
fashionable libraries, or noticed in fashionable reviews, but is none the
less deserving of attention.

Ellwood was born in 1639, in the little town of Crowell, in Oxfordshire.
Old Walter, his father, was of "gentlemanly lineage," and held a
commission of the peace under Charles I.  One of his most intimate
friends was Isaac Pennington, a gentleman of estate and good reputation,
whose wife, the widow of Sir John Springette, was a lady of superior
endowments.  Her only daughter, Gulielma, was the playmate and companion
of Thomas.  On making this family a visit, in 1658, in company with his
father, he was surprised to find that they had united with the Quakers, a
sect then little known, and everywhere spoken against.  Passing through
the vista of nearly two centuries, let us cross the threshold, and look
with the eyes of young Ellwood upon this Quaker family.  It will
doubtless give us a good idea of the earnest and solemn spirit of that
age of religious awakening.

"So great a change from a free, debonair, and courtly sort of behavior,
which we had formerly found there, into so strict a gravity as they now
received us with, did not a little amuse us, and disappointed our
expectations of such a pleasant visit as we had promised ourselves.

"For my part, I sought, and at length found, means to cast myself into
the company of the daughter, whom I found gathering flowers in the
garden, attended by her maid, also a Quaker.  But when I addressed her
after my accustomed manner, with intention to engage her in discourse on
the foot of our former acquaintance, though she treated me with a
courteous mien, yet, as young as she was, the gravity of her looks and
behavior struck such an awe upon me, that I found myself not so much
master of myself as to pursue any further converse with her.

"We staid dinner, which was very handsome, and lacked nothing to
recommend it to me but the want of mirth and pleasant discourse, which we
could neither have with them, nor, by reason of them, with one another;
the weightiness which was upon their spirits and countenances keeping
down the lightness that would have been up in ours."

Not long after, they made a second visit to their sober friends, spending
several days, during which they attended a meeting, in a neighboring
farmhouse, where we are introduced by Ellwood to two remarkable
personages, Edward Burrough, the friend and fearless reprover of
Cromwell, and by far the most eloquent preacher of his sect and James
Nayler, whose melancholy after-history of fanaticism, cruel sufferings,
and beautiful repentance, is so well known to the readers of English
history under the Protectorate.  Under the preaching of these men, and
the influence of the Pennington family, young Ellwood was brought into
fellowship with the Quakers.  Of the old Justice's sorrow and indignation
at this sudden blasting of his hopes and wishes in respect to his son,
and of the trials and difficulties of the latter in his new vocation, it
is now scarcely worth while to speak.  Let us step forward a few years,
to 1662, considering meantime how matters, political and spiritual, are
changed in that brief period.  Cromwell, the Maccabeus of Puritanism, is
no longer among men; Charles the Second sits in his place; profane and
licentious cavaliers have thrust aside the sleek-haired, painful-faced
Independents, who used to groan approval to the Scriptural illustrations
of Harrison and Fleetwood; men easy of virtue, without sincerity, either
in religion or politics, occupying the places made honorable by the
Miltons, Whitlocks, and Vanes of the Commonwealth.  Having this change in
view, the light which the farthing candle of Ellwood sheds upon one of
these illustrious names will not be unwelcome.  In his intercourse with
Penn, and other learned Quakers, he had reason to lament his own
deficiencies in scholarship, and his friend Pennington undertook to put
him in a way of remedying the defect.

"He had," says Ellwood, "an intimate acquaintance with Dr. Paget, a
physician of note in London, and he with John Milton, a gentleman of
great note for learning throughout the learned world, for the accurate
pieces he had written on various subjects and occasions.

"This person, having filled a public station in the former times, lived a
private and retired life in London, and, having lost his sight, kept
always a man to read for him, which usually was the son of some gentleman
of his acquaintance, whom, in kindness, he took to improve in his
learning.

"Thus, by the mediation of my friend Isaac Pennington with Dr. Paget, and
through him with John Milton, was I admitted to come to him, not as a
servant to him, nor to be in the house with him, but only to have the
liberty of coming to his house at certain hours when I would, and read to
him what books he should appoint, which was all the favor I desired.

"He received me courteously, as well for the sake of Dr. Paget, who
introduced me, as of Isaac Pennington, who recommended me, to both of
whom he bore a good respect.  And, having inquired divers things of me,
with respect to my former progression in learning, he dismissed me, to
provide myself with such accommodations as might be most suitable to my
studies.

"I went, therefore, and took lodgings as near to his house (which was
then in Jewen Street) as I conveniently could, and from thenceforward
went every day in the afternoon, except on the first day of the week,
and, sitting by him in his dining-room, read to him such books in the
Latin tongue as be pleased to have me read.

"He perceiving with what earnest desire I had pursued learning, gave me
not only all the encouragement, but all the help he could.  For, having a
curious ear, he understood by my tone when I understood what I read and
when I did not, and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the
most difficult passages to me."

Thanks, worthy Thomas, for this glimpse into John Milton's dining-room!

He had been with "Master Milton," as he calls him, only a few weeks,
when, being one "first day morning," at the Bull and Mouth meeting,
Aldersgate, the train-bands of the city, "with great noise and clamor,"
headed by Major Rosewell, fell upon him and his friends.  The immediate
cause of this onslaught upon quiet worshippers was the famous plot of the
Fifth Monarchy men, grim old fanatics, who (like the Millerites of the
present day) had been waiting long for the personal reign of Christ and
the saints upon earth, and in their zeal to hasten such a consummation
had sallied into London streets with drawn swords and loaded matchlocks.
The government took strong measures for suppressing dissenters' meetings
or "conventicles;" and the poor Quakers, although not at all implicated
in the disturbance, suffered more severely than any others.  Let us look
at the "freedom of conscience and worship" in England under that
irreverent Defender of the Faith, Charles II.  Ellwood says: "He that
commanded the party gave us first a general charge to come out of the
room.  But we, who came thither at God's requiring to worship Him, (like
that good man of old, who said, we ought to obey God rather than man,)
stirred not, but kept our places.  Whereupon, he sent some of his
soldiers among us, with command to drag or drive us out, which they did
roughly enough."  Think of it: grave men and women, and modest maidens,
sitting there with calm, impassive countenances, motionless as death, the
pikes of the soldiery closing about them in a circle of bristling steel!
Brave and true ones!  Not in vain did ye thus oppose God's silence to the
Devil's uproar; Christian endurance and calm persistence in the exercise
of your rights as Englishmen and men to the hot fury of impatient
tyranny!  From your day down to this, the world has been the better for
your faithfulness.

Ellwood and some thirty of his friends were marched off to prison in Old
Bridewell, which, as well as nearly all the other prisons, was already
crowded with Quaker prisoners.  One of the rooms of the prison was used
as a torture chamber.  "I was almost affrighted," says Ellwood, "by the
dismalness of the place; for, besides that the walls were all laid over
with black, from top to bottom, there stood in the middle a great
whipping-post.

"The manner of whipping there is, to strip the party to the skin, from
the waist upward, and, having fastened him to the whipping-post, (so that
he can neither resist nor shun the strokes,) to lash his naked body with
long, slender twigs of holly, which will bend almost like thongs around
the body; and these, having little knots upon them, tear the skin and
flesh, and give extreme pain."

To this terrible punishment aged men and delicately nurtured young
females were often subjected, during this season of hot persecution.

From the Bridewell, Ellwood was at length removed to Newgate, and thrust
in, with other "Friends," amidst the common felons.  He speaks of this
prison, with its thieves, murderers, and prostitutes, its over-crowded
apartments and loathsome cells, as "a hell upon earth."  In a closet,
adjoining the room where he was lodged, lay for several days the
quartered bodies of Phillips, Tongue, and Gibbs, the leaders of the Fifth
Monarchy rising, frightful and loathsome, as they came from the bloody
hands of the executioners!  These ghastly remains were at length obtained
by the friends of the dead, and buried.  The heads were ordered to be
prepared for setting up in different parts of the city.  Read this grim
passage of description:--

"I saw the heads when they were brought to be boiled.  The hangman
fetched them in a dirty basket, out of some by-place, and, setting them
down among the felons, he and they made sport of them.  They took them by
the hair, flouting, jeering, and laughing at them; and then giving them
some ill names, boxed them on their ears and cheeks; which done, the
hangman put them into his kettle, and parboiled them with bay-salt and
cummin-seed: that to keep them from putrefaction, and this to keep off
the fowls from seizing upon them.  The whole sight, as well that of the
bloody quarters first as this of the heads afterwards, was both frightful
and loathsome, and begat an abhorrence in my nature."

At the next session of the municipal court at the Old Bailey, Ellwood
obtained his discharge.  After paying a visit to "my Master Milton," he
made his way to Chalfont, the home of his friends the Penningtons, where
he was soon after engaged as a Latin teacher.  Here he seems to have had
his trials and temptations.  Gulielma Springette, the daughter of
Pennington's wife, his old playmate, had now grown to be "a fair woman of
marriageable age," and, as he informs us, "very desirable, whether regard
was had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to make her
completely comely, or to the endowments of her mind, which were every way
extraordinary, or to her outward fortune, which was fair."  From all
which, we are not surprised to learn that "she was secretly and openly
sought for by many of almost every rank and condition."  "To whom,"
continues Thomas, "in their respective turns, (till he at length came for
whom she was reserved,) she carried herself with so much evenness of
temper, such courteous freedom, guarded by the strictest modesty, that as
it gave encouragement or ground of hope to none, so neither did it
administer any matter of offence or just cause of complaint to any."

Beautiful and noble maiden!  How the imagination fills up this outline
limning by her friend, and, if truth must be told, admirer!  Serene,
courteous, healthful; a ray of tenderest and blandest light, shining
steadily in the sober gloom of that old household!  Confirmed Quaker as
she is, shrinking from none of the responsibilities and dangers of her
profession, and therefore liable at any time to the penalties of prison
and whipping-post, under that plain garb and in spite of that "certain
gravity of look and behavior,"--which, as we have seen, on one occasion
awed young Ellwood into silence,--youth, beauty, and refinement assert
their prerogatives; love knows no creed; the gay, and titled, and wealthy
crowd around her, suing in vain for her favor.

              "Followed, like the tided moon,
               She moves as calmly on,"

"until he at length comes for whom she was reserved," and her name is
united with that of one worthy even of her, the world-renowned William
Penn.

Meantime, one cannot but feel a good degree of sympathy with young
Ellwood, her old schoolmate and playmate, placed, as he was, in the same
family with her, enjoying her familiar conversation and unreserved
confidence, and, as he says, the "advantageous opportunities of riding
and walking abroad with her, by night as well as by day, without any
other company than her maid; for so great, indeed, was the confidence
that her mother had in me, that she thought her daughter safe, if I was
with her, even from the plots and designs of others upon her."  So near,
and yet, alas! in truth, so distant!  The serene and gentle light which
shone upon him, in the sweet solitudes of Chalfont, was that of a star,
itself unapproachable.

As he himself meekly intimates, she was reserved for another.  He seems
to have fully understood his own position in respect to her; although, to
use his own words, "others, measuring him by the propensity of their own
inclinations, concluded he would steal her, run away with her, and marry
her."  Little did these jealous surmisers know of the true and really
heroic spirit of the young Latin master.  His own apology and defence of
his conduct, under circumstances of temptation which St. Anthony himself
could have scarcely better resisted, will not be amiss.

"I was not ignorant of the various fears which filled the jealous heads
of some concerning me, neither was I so stupid nor so divested of all
humanity as not to be sensible of the real and innate worth and virtue
which adorned that excellent dame, and attracted the eyes and hearts of
so many, with the greatest importunity, to seek and solicit her; nor was
I so devoid of natural heat as not to feel some sparklings of desire, as
well as others; but the force of truth and sense of honor suppressed
whatever would have risen beyond the bounds of fair and virtuous
friendship.  For I easily foresaw that, if I should have attempted any
thing in a dishonorable way, by fraud or force, upon her, I should have
thereby brought a wound upon mine own soul, a foul scandal upon my
religious profession, and an infamous stain upon mine honor, which was
far more dear unto me than my life.  Wherefore, having observed how some
others had befooled themselves, by misconstruing her common kindness
(expressed in an innocent, open, free, and familiar conversation,
springing from the abundant affability, courtesy, and sweetness of her
natural temper) to be the effect of a singular regard and peculiar
affection to them, I resolved to shun the rock whereon they split; and,
remembering the saying of the poet

          'Felix quem faciunt aliena Pericula cantum,'

I governed myself in a free yet respectful carriage towards her, thereby
preserving a fair reputation with my friends, and enjoying as much of her
favor and kindness, in a virtuous and firm friendship, as was fit for her
to show or for me to seek."

Well and worthily said, poor Thomas!  Whatever might be said of others,
thou, at least, wast no coxcomb.  Thy distant and involuntary admiration
of "the fair Guli" needs, however, no excuse.  Poor human nature, guard
it as one may, with strictest discipline and painfully cramping
environment, will sometimes act out itself; and, in thy case, not even
George Fox himself, knowing thy beautiful young friend, (and doubtless
admiring her too, for he was one of the first to appreciate and honor the
worth and dignity or woman,) could have found it in his heart to censure
thee!

At this period, as was indeed most natural, our young teacher solaced
himself with occasional appeals to what he calls "the Muses."  There is
reason to believe, however, that the Pagan sisterhood whom he ventured to
invoke seldom graced his study with their personal attendance.  In these
rhyming efforts, scattered up and down his Journal, there are occasional
sparkles of genuine wit, and passages of keen sarcasm, tersely and fitly
expressed.  Others breathe a warm, devotional feeling; in the following
brief prayer, for instance, the wants of the humble Christian are
condensed in a manner worthy of Quarles or Herbert:--

              "Oh! that mine eye might closed be
               To what concerns me not to see;
               That deafness might possess mine ear
               To what concerns me not to hear;
               That Truth my tongue might always tie
               From ever speaking foolishly;
               That no vain thought might ever rest
               Or be conceived in my breast;
               That by each word and deed and thought
               Glory may to my God be brought!
               But what are wishes?  Lord, mine eye
               On Thee is fixed, to Thee I cry
               Wash, Lord, and purify my heart,
               And make it clean in every part;
               And when 't is clean, Lord, keep it too,
               For that is more than I can do."

The thought in the following extracts from a poem written on the death of
his friend Pennington's son is trite, but not inaptly or inelegantly
expressed:--

              "What ground, alas, has any man
               To set his heart on things below,
               Which, when they seem most like to stand,
               Fly like the arrow from the bow!
               Who's now atop erelong shall feel
               The circling motion of the wheel!

              "The world cannot afford a thing
               Which to a well-composed mind
               Can any lasting pleasure bring,
               But in itself its grave will find.
               All things unto their centre tend
               What had beginning must have end!

              "No disappointment can befall
               Us, having Him who's all in all!
               What can of pleasure him prevent
               Who lath the Fountain of Content?"

In the year 1663 a severe law was enacted against the "sect called
Quakers," prohibiting their meetings, with the penalty of banishment for
the third offence!  The burden of the prosecution which followed fell
upon the Quakers of the metropolis, large numbers of whom were heavily
fined, imprisoned, and sentenced to be banished from their native land.
Yet, in time, our worthy friend Ellwood came in for his own share of
trouble, in consequence of attending the funeral of one of his friends.
An evil-disposed justice of the county obtained information of the Quaker
gathering; and, while the body of the dead was "borne on Friends'
shoulders through the street, in order to be carried to the burying-
ground, which was at the town's end," says Ellwood, "he rushed out upon
us with the constables and a rabble of rude fellows whom he had gathered
together, and, having his drawn sword in his hand, struck one of the
foremost of the bearers with it, commanding them to set down the coffin.
But the Friend who was so stricken, being more concerned for the safety
of the dead body than for his own, lest it should fall, and any indecency
thereupon follow, held the coffin fast; which the justice observing, and
being enraged that his word was not forthwith obeyed, set his hand to the
coffin, and with a forcible thrust threw it off from the bearers'
shoulders, so, that it fell to the ground in the middle of the street,
and there we were forced to leave it; for the constables and rabble fell
upon us, and drew some and drove others into the inn.  Of those thus
taken," continues Ellwood, "I was one.  They picked out ten of us, and
sent us to Aylesbury jail.

"They caused the body to lie in the open street and cartway, so that all
travellers that passed, whether horsemen, coaches, carts, or wagons, were
fain to break out of the way to go by it, until it was almost night.  And
then, having caused a grave to be made in the unconsecrated part of what
is called the Churchyard, they forcibly took the body from the widow, and
buried it there."

He remained a prisoner only about two months, during which period he
comforted himself by such verse-making as follows, reminding us of
similar enigmas in Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_:

               "Lo! a Riddle for the wise,
               In the which a Mystery lies.

                         RIDDLE.
          "Some men are free whilst they in prison lie;
          Others who ne'er saw prison captives die.

                        CAUTION.
               "He that can receive it may,
               He that cannot, let him stay,
               Not be hasty, but suspend
               Judgment till he sees the end.

                        SOLUTION.
          "He's only free, indeed, who's free from sin,
          And he is fastest bound that's bound therein."


In the mean time, where is our "Master Milton"?  We, left him deprived of
his young companion and reader, sitting lonely in his small dining-room,
in Jewen Street.  It is now the year 1665; is not the pestilence in
London?  A sinful and godless city, with its bloated bishops fawning
around the Nell Gwyns of a licentious and profane Defender of the Faith;
its swaggering and drunken cavaliers; its ribald jesters; its obscene
ballad-singers; its loathsome prisons, crowded with Godfearing men and
women: is not the measure of its iniquity already filled up?  Three years
only have passed since the terrible prayer of Vane went upward from the
scaffold on Tower Hill: "When my blood is shed upon the block, let it, O
God, have a voice afterward!"  Audible to thy ear, O bosom friend of the
martyr! has that blood cried from earth; and now, how fearfully is it
answered!  Like the ashes which the Seer of the Hebrews cast towards
Heaven, it has returned in boils and blains upon the proud and oppressive
city.  John Milton, sitting blind in Jewen Street, has heard the toll of
the death-bells, and the nightlong rumble of the burial-carts, and the
terrible summons, "Bring out your dead!" The Angel of the Plague, in
yellow mantle, purple-spotted, walks the streets.  Why should he tarry in
a doomed city, forsaken of God!  Is not the command, even to him, "Arise
and flee, for thy life"?  In some green nook of the quiet country, he may
finish the great work which his hands have found to do.  He bethinks him
of his old friends, the Penningtons, and his young Quaker companion, the
patient and gentle Ellwood.  "Wherefore," says the latter, "some little
time before I went to Aylesbury jail, I was desired by my quondam Master
Milton to take an house for him in the neighborhood where I dwelt, that
he might go out of the city for the safety of himself and his family, the
pestilence then growing hot in London.  I took a pretty box for him in
Giles Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice, and intended
to have waited on him and seen him well settled, but was prevented by
that imprisonment.  But now being released and returned home, I soon made
a visit to him, to welcome him into the country.  After some common
discourse had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his,
which, having brought, he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with
me and read it at my leisure, and when I had so done return it to him,
with my judgment thereupon."

Now, what does the reader think young Ellwood carried in his gray coat
pocket across the dikes and hedges and through the green lanes of Giles
Chalfont that autumn day?  Let us look farther "When I came home, and had
set myself to read it, I found it was that excellent poem which he
entitled _Paradise Lost_.  After I had, with the best attention, read it
through, I made him another visit; and, returning his book with due
acknowledgment of the favor he had done me in communicating it to me, he
asked me how I liked it and what I thought of it, which I modestly but
freely told him; and, after some farther discourse about it, I pleasantly
said to him, 'Thou hast said much here of Paradise Lost; what hast thou
to say of Paradise Found?'  He made me no answer, but sat some time in a
muse; then brake off that discourse, and fell upon another subject."

"I modestly but freely told him what I thought" of Paradise Lost!  What
he told him remains a mystery.  One would like to know more precisely
what the first critical reader of that song "of Man's first disobedience"
thought of it.  Fancy the young Quaker and blind Milton sitting, some
pleasant afternoon of the autumn of that old year, in "the pretty box" at
Chalfont, the soft wind through the open window lifting the thin hair of
the glorious old Poet!  Back-slidden England, plague-smitten, and
accursed with her faithless Church and libertine King, knows little of
poor "Master Milton," and takes small note of his Puritanic verse-making.
Alone, with his humble friend, he sits there, conning over that poem
which, he fondly hoped, the world, which had grown all dark and strange
to the author, "would not willingly let die."  The suggestion in respect
to Paradise Found, to which, as we have seen, "he made no answer, but sat
some time in a muse," seems not to have been lost; for, "after the
sickness was over," continues Ellwood, "and the city well cleansed, and
become safely habitable again, he returned thither; and when afterwards I
waited on him there, which I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions
drew me to London, he showed me his second poem, called Paradise Gained;
and, in a pleasant tone, said to me, '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.'"

Golden days were these for the young Latin reader, even if it be true, as
we suspect, that he was himself very far from appreciating the glorious
privilege which he enjoyed, of the familiar friendship and confidence of
Milton.  But they could not last.  His amiable host, Isaac Pennington,
a blameless and quiet country gentleman, was dragged from his house by a
military force, and lodged in Aylesbury jail; his wife and family
forcibly ejected from their pleasant home, which was seized upon by the
government as security for the fines imposed upon its owner.  The plague
was in the village of Aylesbury, and in the very prison itself; but the
noble-hearted Mary Pennington followed her husband, sharing with him the
dark peril.  Poor Ellwood, while attending a monthly meeting at Hedgerly,
with six others, (among them one Morgan Watkins, a poor old Welshman,
who, painfully endeavoring to utter his testimony in his own dialect, was
suspected by the Dogberry of a justice of being a Jesuit trolling over
his Latin,) was arrested, and committed to Wiccomb House of Correction.

This was a time of severe trial for the sect with which Ellwood had
connected himself.  In the very midst of the pestilence, when thousands
perished weekly in London, fifty-four Quakers were marched through the
almost deserted streets, and placed on board a ship, for the purpose of
being conveyed, according to their sentence of banishment, to the West
Indies.  The ship lay for a long time, with many others similarly
situated, a helpless prey to the pestilence.  Through that terrible
autumn, the prisoners sat waiting for the summons of the ghastly
Destroyer; and, from their floating dungeon.

                              "Heard the groan
               Of agonizing ships from shore to shore;
               Heard nightly plunged beneath the sullen wave
               The frequent corse."

When the vessel at length set sail, of the fifty-four who went on board,
twenty-seven only were living.  A Dutch privateer captured her, when two
days out, and carried the prisoners to North Holland, where they were set
at liberty.  The condition of the jails in the city, where were large
numbers of Quakers, was dreadful in the extreme.  Ill ventilated,
crowded, and loathsome with the accumulated filth of centuries, they
invited the disease which daily decimated their cells.  "Go on!" says
Pennington, writing to the King and bishops from his plague-infected cell
in the Aylesbury prison: "try it out with the Spirit of the Lord!  Come
forth with your laws, and prisons, and spoiling of goods, and banishment,
and death, if the Lord please, and see if ye can carry it!  Whom the Lord
loveth He can save at His pleasure.  Hath He begun to break our bonds and
deliver us, and shall we now distrust Him?  Are we in a worse condition
than Israel was when the sea was before them, the mountains on either
side, and the Egyptians behind, pursuing them?"

Brave men and faithful!  It is not necessary that the present generation,
how quietly reaping the fruit of your heroic endurance, should see eye to
eye with you in respect to all your testimonies and beliefs, in order to
recognize your claim to gratitude and admiration.  For, in an age of
hypocritical hollowness and mean self-seeking, when, with noble
exceptions, the very Puritans of Cromwell's Reign of the Saints were
taking profane lessons from their old enemies, and putting on an outside
show of conformity, for the sake of place or pardon, ye maintained the
austere dignity of virtue, and, with King and Church and Parliament
arrayed against you, vindicated the Rights of Conscience, at the cost of
home, fortune, and life.  English liberty owes more to your unyielding
firmness than to the blows stricken for her at Worcester and Naseby.

In 1667, we find the Latin teacher in attendance at a great meeting of
Friends, in London, convened at the suggestion of George Fox, for the
purpose of settling a little difficulty which had arisen among the
Friends, even under the pressure of the severest persecution, relative to
the very important matter of "wearing the hat."  George Fox, in his love
of truth and sincerity in word and action, had discountenanced the
fashionable doffing of the hat, and other flattering obeisances towards
men holding stations in Church or State, as savoring of man-worship,
giving to the creature the reverence only due to the Creator, as
undignified and wanting in due self-respect, and tending to support
unnatural and oppressive distinctions among those equal in the sight of
God.  But some of his disciples evidently made much more of this "hat
testimony" than their teacher.  One John Perrott, who had just returned
from an unsuccessful attempt to convert the Pope, at Rome, (where that
dignitary, after listening to his exhortations, and finding him in no
condition to be benefited by the spiritual physicians of the Inquisition,
had quietly turned him over to the temporal ones of the Insane Hospital,)
had broached the doctrine that, in public or private worship, the hat was
not to be taken off, without an immediate revelation or call to do so!
Ellwood himself seems to have been on the point of yielding to this
notion, which appears to have been the occasion of a good deal of
dissension and scandal.  Under these circumstances, to save truth from
reproach, and an important testimony to the essential equality of mankind
from running into sheer fanaticism, Fox summoned his tried and faithful
friends together, from all parts of the United Kingdom, and, as it
appears, with the happiest result.  Hat-revelations were discountenanced,
good order and harmony reestablished, and John Perrott's beaver and the
crazy head under it were from thenceforth powerless for evil.  Let those
who are disposed to laugh at this notable "Ecumenical Council of the Hat"
consider that ecclesiastical history has brought down to us the records
of many larger and more imposing convocations, wherein grave bishops and
learned fathers took each other by the beard upon matters of far less
practical importance.

In 1669, we find Ellwood engaged in escorting his fair friend, Gulielma,
to her uncle's residence in Sussex.  Passing through London, and taking
the Tunbridge road, they stopped at Seven Oak to dine.  The Duke of York
was on the road, with his guards and hangers-on, and the inn was filled
with a rude company.  "Hastening," says Ellwood, "from a place where we
found nothing but rudeness, the roysterers who swarmed there, besides the
damning oaths they belched out against each other, looked very sourly
upon us, as if they grudged us the horses which we rode and the clothes
we wore."  They had proceeded but a little distance, when they were
overtaken by some half dozen drunken rough-riding cavaliers, of the
Wildrake stamp, in full pursuit after the beautiful Quakeress.  One of
them impudently attempted to pull her upon his horse before him, but was
held at bay by Ellwood, who seems, on this occasion, to have relied
somewhat upon his "stick," in defending his fair charge.  Calling up
Gulielma's servant, he bade him ride on one side of his mistress, while
he guarded her on the other.  "But he," says Ellwood, "not thinking it
perhaps decent to ride so near his mistress, left room enough for another
to ride between."  In dashed the drunken retainer, and Gulielma was once
more in peril.  It was clearly no time for exhortations and
expostulations; "so," says Ellwood, "I chopped in upon him, by a nimble
turn, and kept him at bay.  I told him I had hitherto spared him, but
wished him not to provoke me further.  This I spoke in such a tone as
bespoke an high resentment of the abuse put upon us, and withal pressed
him so hard with my horse that I suffered him not to come up again to
Guli."  By this time, it became evident to the companions of the
ruffianly assailant that the young Quaker was in earnest, and they
hastened to interfere.  "For they," says Ellwood, "seeing the contest
rise so high, and probably fearing it would rise higher, not knowing
where it might stop, came in to part us; which they did by taking him
away."

Escaping from these sons of Belial, Ellwood and his fair companion rode
on through Tunbridge Wells, "the street thronged with men, who looked
very earnestly at them, but offered them no affront," and arrived, late
at night, in a driving rain, at the mansion-house of Herbert Springette.
The fiery old gentleman was so indignant at the insult offered to his
niece, that he was with difficulty dissuaded from demanding satisfaction
at the hands of the Duke of York.

This seems to have been his last ride with Gulielma.  She was soon after
married to William Penn, and took up her abode at Worminghurst, in
Sussex.  How blessed and beautiful was that union may be understood from
the following paragraph of a letter, written by her husband, on the eve
of his departure for America to lay the foundations of a Christian
colony:--

     "My dear wife! remember thou wast the love of my youth, and much the
     joy of my life, the most beloved as well as the most worthy of all
     my earthly comforts; and the reason of that love was more thy inward
     than thy outward excellences, which yet were many.  God knows, and
     thou knowest it, I can say it was a match of Providence's making;
     and God's image in us both was the first thing and the most amiable
     and engaging ornament in our eyes."

About this time our friend Thomas, seeing that his old playmate at
Chalfont was destined for another, turned his attention towards a "young
Friend, named Mary Ellis."  He had been for several years acquainted with
her, but now he "found his heart secretly drawn and inclining towards
her."  "At length," he tells us, "as I was sitting all alone, waiting
upon the Lord for counsel and guidance in this, in itself and to me,
important affair, I felt a word sweetly arise in me, as if I had heard a
Voice which said, Go, and prevail! and faith springing in my heart at the
word, I immediately rose and went, nothing doubting."  On arriving at her
residence, he states that he "solemnly opened his mind to her, which was
a great surprisal to her, for she had taken in an apprehension, as others
had also done," that his eye had been fixed elsewhere and nearer home.
"I used not many words to her," he continues, "but I felt a Divine Power
went along with the words, and fixed the matter expressed by them so fast
in her breast, that, as she afterwards acknowledged to me, she could not
shut it out."

"I continued," he says, "my visits to my best-beloved Friend until we
married, which was on the 28th day of the eighth month, 1669.  We took
each other in a select meeting of the ancient and grave Friends of that
country.  A very solemn meeting it was, and in a weighty frame of spirit
we were."  His wife seems to have had some estate; and Ellwood, with that
nice sense of justice which marked all his actions, immediately made his
will, securing to her, in case of his decease, all her own goods and
moneys, as well as all that he had himself acquired before marriage.
"Which," he tells, "was indeed but little, yet, by all that little, more
than I had ever given her ground to expect with me."  His father, who was
yet unreconciled to the son's religious views, found fault with his
marriage, on the ground that it was unlawful and unsanctioned by priest
or liturgy, and consequently refused to render him any pecuniary
assistance.  Yet, in spite of this and other trials, he seems to have
preserved his serenity of spirit.  After an unpleasant interview with his
father, on one occasion, he wrote, at his lodgings in an inn, in London,
what be calls _A Song of Praise_.  An extract from it will serve to show
the spirit of the good man in affliction:--

              "Unto the Glory of Thy Holy Name,
               Eternal God!  whom I both love and fear,
               I hereby do declare, I never came
               Before Thy throne, and found Thee loath to hear,
               But always ready with an open ear;
               And, though sometimes Thou seem'st Thy face to hide,
               As one that had withdrawn his love from me,
               'T is that my faith may to the full, be tried,
               And that I thereby may the better see
               How weak I am when not upheld by Thee!"

The next year, 1670, an act of Parliament, in relation to "Conventicles,"
provided that any person who should be present at any meeting, under
color or pretence of any exercise of religion, in other manner than
according to the liturgy and practice of the Church of England, "should
be liable to fines of from five to ten shillings; and any person
preaching at or giving his house for the meeting, to a fine of twenty
pounds: one third of the fines being received by the informer or
informers."  As a natural consequence of such a law, the vilest
scoundrels in the land set up the trade of informers and heresy-hunters.
Wherever a dissenting meeting or burial took place, there was sure to be
a mercenary spy, ready to bring a complaint against all in attendance.
The Independents and Baptists ceased, in a great measure, to hold public
meetings, yet even they did not escape prosecution.  Bunyan, for
instance, in these days, was dreaming, like another Jacob, of angels
ascending and descending, in Bedford prison.  But upon the poor Quakers
fell, as usual, the great force of the unjust enactment.  Some of these
spies or informers, men of sharp wit, close countenances, pliant tempers,
and skill in dissimulation, took the guise of Quakers, Independents, or
Baptists, as occasion required, thrusting themselves into the meetings of
the proscribed sects, ascertaining the number who attended, their rank
and condition, and then informing against them.  Ellwood, in his Journal
for 1670, describes several of these emissaries of evil.  One of them
came to a Friend's house, in Bucks, professing to be a brother in the
faith, but, overdoing his counterfeit Quakerism, was detected and
dismissed by his host.  Betaking himself to the inn, he appeared in his
true character, drank and swore roundly, and confessed over his cups that
he had been sent forth on his mission by the Rev. Dr. Mew, Vice-
Chancellor of Oxford.  Finding little success in counterfeiting
Quakerism, he turned to the Baptists, where, for a time, he met with
better success.  Ellwood, at this time, rendered good service to his
friends, by exposing the true character of these wretches, and bringing
them to justice for theft, perjury, and other misdemeanors.

While this storm of persecution lasted, (a period of two or three years,)
the different dissenting sects felt, in some measure, a common sympathy,
and, while guarding themselves against their common foe, had little
leisure for controversy with each other; but, as was natural, the
abatement of their mutual suffering and danger was the signal for
renewing their suspended quarrels.  The Baptists fell upon the Quakers,
with pamphlet and sermon; the latter replied in the same way.  One of the
most conspicuous of the Baptist disputants was the famous Jeremy Ives,
with whom our friend Ellwood seems to have had a good deal of trouble.
"His name," says Ellwood, "was up for a topping Disputant.  He was well,
read in the fallacies of logic, and was ready in framing syllogisms.  His
chief art lay in tickling the humor of rude, unlearned, and injudicious
hearers."

The following piece of Ellwood's, entitled "An Epitaph for Jeremy Ives,"
will serve to show that wit and drollery were sometimes found even among
the proverbially sober Quakers of the seventeenth century:--

              "Beneath this stone, depressed, doth lie
               The Mirror of Hypocrisy--
               Ives, whose mercenary tongue
               Like a Weathercock was hung,
               And did this or that way play,
               As Advantage led the way.
               If well hired, he would dispute,
               Otherwise he would be mute.
               But he'd bawl for half a day,
               If he knew and liked his pay.

              "For his person, let it pass;
               Only note his face was brass.
               His heart was like a pumice-stone,
               And for Conscience he had none.
               Of Earth and Air he was composed,
               With Water round about enclosed.
               Earth in him had greatest share,
               Questionless, his life lay there;
               Thence his cankered Envy sprung,
               Poisoning both his heart and tongue.

              "Air made him frothy, light, and vain,
               And puffed him with a proud disdain.
               Into the Water oft he went,
               And through the Water many sent
               That was, ye know, his element!
               The greatest odds that did appear
               Was this, for aught that I can hear,
               That he in cold did others dip,
               But did himself hot water sip.

              "And his cause he'd never doubt,
               If well soak'd o'er night in Stout;
               But, meanwhile, he must not lack
               Brandy and a draught of Sack.
               One dispute would shrink a bottle
               Of three pints, if not a pottle.
               One would think he fetched from thence
               All his dreamy eloquence.

              "Let us now bring back the Sot
               To his Aqua Vita pot,
               And observe, with some content,
               How he framed his argument.
               That his whistle he might wet,
               The bottle to his mouth he set,
               And, being Master of that Art,
               Thence he drew the Major part,
               But left the Minor still behind;
               Good reason why, he wanted wind;
               If his breath would have held out,
               He had Conclusion drawn, no doubt."

The residue of Ellwood's life seems to have glided on in serenity and
peace.  He wrote, at intervals, many pamphlets in defence of his Society,
and in favor of Liberty of Conscience.  At his hospitable residence, the
leading spirits of the sect were warmly welcomed.  George Fox and William
Penn seem to have been frequent guests.  We find that, in 1683, he was
arrested for seditious publications, when on the eve of hastening to his
early friend, Gulielma, who, in the absence of her husband, Governor
Penn, had fallen dangerously ill.  On coming before the judge, "I told
him," says Ellwood, "that I had that morning received an express out of
Sussex, that William Penn's wife (with whom I had an intimate
acquaintance and strict friendship, _ab ipsis fere incunabilis_, at
least, _a teneris unguiculis_) lay now ill, not without great danger, and
that she had expressed her desire that I would come to her as soon as I
could."  The judge said "he was very sorry for Madam Penn's illness," of
whose virtues he spoke very highly, but not more than was her due.  Then
he told me, "that, for her sake, he would do what he could to further my
visit to her."  Escaping from the hands of the law, he visited his
friend, who was by this time in a way of recovery, and, on his return,
learned that the prosecution had been abandoned.

At about this date his narrative ceases.  We learn, from other sources,
that he continued to write and print in defence of his religious views up
to the year of his death, which took place in 1713.  One of his
productions, a poetical version of the Life of David, may be still met
with, in the old Quaker libraries.  On the score of poetical merit, it is
about on a level with Michael Drayton's verses on the same subject.  As
the history of one of the firm confessors of the old struggle for
religious freedom, of a genial-hearted and pleasant scholar, the friend
of Penn and Milton, and the suggester of Paradise Regained, we trust our
hurried sketch has not been altogether without interest; and that,
whatever may be the religious views of our readers, they have not failed
to recognize a good and true man in Thomas Ellwood.






                              JAMES NAYLER.

     "You will here read the true story of that much injured, ridiculed
     man, James Nayler; what dreadful sufferings, with what patience he
     endured, even to the boring of the tongue with hot irons, without a
     murmur; and with what strength of mind, when the delusion he had
     fallen into, which they stigmatized as blasphemy, had given place to
     clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error in a strain of the
     beautifullest humility."--Essays of Elia.

"Would that Carlyle could now try his hand at the English Revolution!"
was our exclamation, on laying down the last volume of his remarkable
History of the French Revolution with its brilliant and startling word-
pictures still flashing before us.  To some extent this wish has been
realized in the Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell.  Yet we confess
that the perusal of these volumes has disappointed us.  Instead of giving
himself free scope, as in his French Revolution, and transferring to his
canvas all the wild and ludicrous, the terrible and beautiful phases of
that moral phenomenon, he has here concentrated all his artistic skill
upon a single figure, whom he seems to have regarded as the embodiment
and hero of the great event.  All else on his canvas is subordinated to
the grim image of the colossal Puritan.  Intent upon presenting him as
the fitting object of that "hero-worship," which, in its blind admiration
and adoration of mere abstract Power, seems to us at times nothing less
than devil-worship, he dwarfs, casts into the shadow, nay, in some
instances caricatures and distorts, the figures which surround him.  To
excuse Cromwell in his usurpation, Henry Vane, one of those exalted and
noble characters, upon whose features the lights held by historical
friends or foes detect no blemish, is dismissed with a sneer and an
utterly unfounded imputation of dishonesty.  To reconcile, in some
degree, the discrepancy between the declarations of Cromwell, in behalf
of freedom of conscience, and that mean and cruel persecution which the
Quakers suffered under the Protectorate, the generally harmless
fanaticism of a few individuals bearing that name is gravely urged.  Nay,
the fact that some weak-brained enthusiasts undertook to bring about the
millennium, by associating together, cultivating the earth, and "dibbling
beans" for the New Jerusalem market, is regarded by our author as the
"germ of Quakerism;" and furnishes an occasion for sneering at "my poor
friend Dryasdust, lamentably tearing his hair over the intolerance of
that old time to Quakerism and such like."

The readers of this (with all its faults) powerfully written Biography
cannot fail to have been impressed with the intensely graphic description
(Part I., vol.  ii., pp.  184, 185) of the entry of the poor fanatic,
James Nayler, and his forlorn and draggled companions into Bristol.
Sadly ludicrous is it; affecting us like the actual sight of tragic
insanity enacting its involuntary comedy, and making us smile through our
tears.

In another portion of the work, a brief account is given of the trial and
sentence of Nayler, also in the serio-comic view; and the poor man is
dismissed with the simple intimation, that after his punishment he
"repented, and confessed himself mad."  It was no part of the author's
business, we are well aware, to waste time and words upon the history of
such a man as Nayler; he was of no importance to him, otherwise than as
one of the disturbing influences in the government of the Lord Protector.
But in our mind the story of James Nayler has always been one of
interest; and in the belief that it will prove so to others, who, like
Charles Lamb, can appreciate the beautiful humility of a forgiven spirit,
we have taken some pains to collect and embody the facts of it.

James Nayler was born in the parish of Ardesley, in Yorkshire, 1616.  His
father was a substantial farmer, of good repute and competent estate and
be, in consequence, received a good education: At the age of twenty-two,
he married and removed to Wakefield parish, which has since been made
classic ground by the pen of Goldsmith.  Here, an honest, God-fearing
farmer, he tilled his soil, and alternated between cattle-markets and
Independent conventicles.  In 1641, he obeyed the summons of "my Lord
Fairfax" and the Parliament, and joined a troop of horse composed of
sturdy Independents, doing such signal service against "the man of
Belial, Charles Stuart," that he was promoted to the rank of
quartermaster, in which capacity he served under General Lambert, in his
Scottish campaign.  Disabled at length by sickness, he was honorably
dismissed from the service, and returned to his family in 1649.

For three or four years, he continued to attend the meetings of the
Independents, as a zealous and devout member.  But it so fell out, that
in the winter of 1651, George Fox, who had just been released from a
cruel imprisonment in Derby jail, felt a call to set his face towards
Yorkshire.  "So travelling," says Fox, in his Journal, "through the
countries, to several places, preaching Repentance and the Word of Life,
I came into the parts about Wakefield, where James Navler lived."  The
worn and weary soldier, covered with the scars of outward battle,
received, as he believed, in the cause of God and his people, against
Antichrist and oppression, welcomed with thankfulness the veteran of
another warfare; who, in conflict with a principalities and powers, and
spiritual wickedness in high places," had made his name a familiar one in
every English hamlet.  "He and Thomas Goodyear," says Fox, "came to me,
and were both convinced, and received the truth."  He soon after joined
the Society of Friends.  In the spring of the next year he was in his
field following his plough, and meditating, as he was wont, on the great
questions of life and duty, when he seemed to hear a voice bidding him go
out from his kindred and his father's house, with an assurance that the
Lord would be with him, while laboring in his service.  Deeply impressed,
he left his employment, and, returning to his house, made immediate
preparations for a journey.  But hesitation and doubt followed; he became
sick from anxiety of mind, and his recovery, for a time, was exceedingly
doubtful.  On his restoration to bodily health, he obeyed what he
regarded as a clear intimation of duty, and went forth a preacher of the
doctrines he had embraced.  The Independent minister of the society to
which be had formerly belonged sent after him the story that he was the
victim of sorcery; that George Fox carried with him a bottle, out of
which he made people drink; and that the draught had the power to change
a Presbyterian or Independent into a Quaker at once; that, in short, the
Arch-Quaker, Fox, was a wizard, and could be seen at the same moment of
time riding on the same black horse, in two places widely separated.  He
had scarcely commenced his exhortations, before the mob, excited by such
stories, assailed him.  In the early summer of the year we hear of him in
Appleby jail.  On his release, he fell in company with George Fox.  At
Walney Island, he was furiously assaulted, and beaten with clubs and
stones; the poor priest-led fishermen being fully persuaded that they
were dealing with a wizard.  The spirit of the man, under these
circumstances, may be seen in the following extract from a letter to his
friends, dated at "Killet, in Lancashire, the 30th of 8th Month, 1652:"--

"Dear friends!  Dwell in patience, and wait upon the Lord, who will do
his own work.  Look not at man who is in the work, nor at any man
opposing it; but rest in the will of the Lord, that so ye may be
furnished with patience, both to do and to suffer what ye shall be called
unto, that your end in all things may be His praise.  Meet often
together; take heed of what exalteth itself above its brother; but keep
low, and serve one another in love."

Laboring thus, interrupted only by persecution, stripes, and
imprisonment, he finally came to London, and spoke with great power and
eloquence in the meetings of Friends in that city.  Here he for the first
time found himself surrounded by admiring and sympathizing friends.  He
saw and rejoiced in the fruits of his ministry.  Profane and drunken
cavaliers, intolerant Presbyters, and blind Papists, owned the truths
which he uttered, and counted themselves his disciples.  Women, too, in
their deep trustfulness and admiring reverence, sat at the feet of the
eloquent stranger.  Devout believers in the doctrine of the inward light
and manifestation of God in the heart of man, these latter, at length,
thought they saw such unmistakable evidences of the true life in James
Nayler, that they felt constrained to declare that Christ was, in an
especial manner, within him, and to call upon all to recognize in
reverent adoration this new incarnation of the divine and heavenly.  The
wild enthusiasm of his disciples had its effect on the teacher.  Weak in
body, worn with sickness, fasting, stripes, and prison-penance, and
naturally credulous and imaginative, is it strange that in some measure
he yielded to this miserable delusion?  Let those who would harshly judge
him, or ascribe his fall to the peculiar doctrines of his sect, think of
Luther, engaged in personal combat with the Devil, or conversing with him
on points of theology in his bed-chamber; or of Bunyan at actual
fisticuffs with the adversary; or of Fleetwood and Vane and Harrison
millennium-mad, and making preparations for an earthly reign of King
Jesus.  It was an age of intense religious excitement.  Fanaticism had
become epidemic.  Cromwell swayed his Parliaments by "revelations" and
Scripture phrases in the painted chamber; stout generals and sea-captains
exterminated the Irish, and swept Dutch navies from the ocean, with old
Jewish war-cries, and hymns of Deborah and Miriam; country justices
charged juries in Hebraisms, and cited the laws of Palestine oftener than
those of England.  Poor Nayler found himself in the very midst of this
seething and confused moral maelstrom.  He struggled against it for a
time, but human nature was weak; he became, to use his own words,
"bewildered and darkened," and the floods went over him.

Leaving London with some of his more zealous followers, not without
solemn admonition and rebuke from Francis Howgill and Edward Burrough,
who at that period were regarded as the most eminent and gifted of the
Society's ministers, he bent his steps towards Exeter.  Here, in
consequence of the extravagance of his language and that of his
disciples, he was arrested and thrown into prison.  Several infatuated
women surrounded the jail, declaring that "Christ was in prison," and on
being admitted to see him, knelt down and kissed his feet, exclaiming,
"Thy name shall be no more called James Nayler, but Jesus!" Let us pity
him and them.  They, full of grateful and extravagant affection for the
man whose voice had called them away from worldly vanities to what they
regarded as eternal realities, whose hand they imagined had for them
swung back the pearl gates of the celestial city, and flooded their
atmosphere with light from heaven; he, receiving their homage (not as
offered to a poor, weak, sinful Yorkshire trooper, but rather to the
hidden man of the heart, the "Christ within" him) with that self-
deceiving humility which is but another name for spiritual pride.
Mournful, yet natural; such as is still in greater or less degree
manifested between the Catholic enthusiast and her confessor; such as the
careful observer may at times take note of in our Protestant revivals and
camp meetings.

How Nayler was released from Exeter jail does not appear, but the next we
hear of him is at Bristol, in the fall of the year.  His entrance into
that city shows the progress which he and his followers had made in the
interval.  Let us look at Carlyle's description of it: "A procession of
eight persons one, a man on horseback riding single, the others, men and
women partly riding double, partly on foot, in the muddiest highway in
the wettest weather; singing, all but the single rider, at whose bridle
walk and splash two women, 'Hosannah!  Holy, holy!  Lord God of Sabaoth,'
and other things, 'in a buzzing tone,' which the impartial hearer could
not make out.  The single rider is a raw-boned male figure, 'with lank
hair reaching below his cheeks,' hat drawn close over his brows, 'nose
rising slightly in the middle,' of abstruse 'down look,' and large
dangerous jaws strictly closed: he sings not, sits there covered, and is
sung to by the others bare.  Amid pouring deluges and mud knee-deep, 'so
that the rain ran in at their necks and vented it at their hose and
breeches: 'a spectacle to the West of England and posterity!  Singing as
above; answering no question except in song.  From Bedminster to
Ratcliffgate, along the streets to the High Cross of Bristol: at the High
Cross they are laid hold of by the authorities: turn out to be James
Nayler and Company."

Truly, a more pitiful example of "hero-worship" is not well to be
conceived of.  Instead of taking the rational view of it, however, and
mercifully shutting up the actors in a mad-house, the authorities of that
day, conceiving it to be a stupendous blasphemy, and themselves God's
avengers in the matter, sent Nayler under strong guard up to London, to
be examined before the Parliament.  After long and tedious examinations
and cross-questionings, and still more tedious debates, some portion of
which, not uninstructive to the reader, may still be found in Burton's
Diary, the following horrible resolution was agreed upon:--

"That James Nayler be set in the pillory, with his head in the pillory in
the Palace Yard, Westminster, during the space of two hours on Thursday
next; and be whipped by the hangman through the streets from Westminster
to the Old Exchange, and there, likewise, be set in the pillory, with his
head in the pillory for the space of two hours, between eleven and one,
on Saturday next, in each place wearing a paper containing a description
of his crimes; and that at the Old Exchange his tongue be bored through
with a hot iron, and that he be there stigmatized on the forehead with
the letter 'B;' and that he be afterwards sent to Bristol, to be conveyed
into and through the said city on horseback with his face backward, and
there, also, publicly whipped the next market-day after he comes thither;
that from thence he be committed to prison in Bridewell, London, and
there restrained from the society of people, and there to labor hard
until he shall be released by Parliament; and during that time be
debarred the use of pen, ink, and paper, and have no relief except what
he earns by his daily labor."

Such, neither more nor less, was, in the opinion of Parliament, required
on their part to appease the divine vengeance.  The sentence was
pronounced on the 17th of the twelfth month; the entire time of the
Parliament for the two months previous having been occupied with the
case.  The Presbyterians in that body were ready enough to make the most
of an offence committed by one who had been an Independent; the
Independents, to escape the stigma of extenuating the crimes of one of
their quondam brethren, vied with their antagonists in shrieking over the
atrocity of Nayler's blasphemy, and in urging its severe punishment.
Here and there among both classes were men disposed to leniency, and more
than one earnest plea was made for merciful dealing with a man whose
reason was evidently unsettled, and who was, therefore, a fitting object
of compassion; whose crime, if it could indeed be called one, was
evidently the result of a clouded intellect, and not of wilful intention
of evil.  On the other hand, many were in favor of putting him to death
as a sort of peace-offering to the clergy, who, as a matter of course,
were greatly scandalized by Nayler's blasphemy, and still more by the
refusal of his sect to pay tithes, or recognize their divine commission.

Nayler was called into the Parliament-house to receive his sentence.
"I do not know mine offence," he said mildly.  "You shall know it," said
Sir Thomas Widrington, "by your sentence."  When the sentence was read,
he attempted to speak, but was silenced.  "I pray God," said Nayler,
"that he may not lay this to your charge."

The next day, the 18th of the twelfth month, he stood in the pillory two
hours, in the chill winter air, and was then stripped and scourged by the
hangman at the tail of a cart through the streets.  Three hundred and ten
stripes were inflicted; his back and arms were horribly cut and mangled,
and his feet crushed and bruised by the feet of horses treading on him in
the crowd.  He bore all with uncomplaining patience; but was so far
exhausted by his sufferings, that it was found necessary to postpone the
execution of the residue of the sentence for one week.  The terrible
severity of his sentence, and his meek endurance of it, had in the mean
time powerfully affected many of the humane and generous of all classes
in the city; and a petition for the remission of the remaining part of
the penalty was numerously signed and presented to Parliament.  A debate
ensued upon it, but its prayer was rejected.  Application was then made
to Cromwell, who addressed a letter to the Speaker of the House,
inquiring into the affair, protesting an "abhorrence and detestation of
giving or occasioning the least countenance to such opinions and
practices" as were imputed to Nayler; "yet we, being intrusted in the
present government on behalf of the people of these nations, and not
knowing how far such proceeding entered into wholly without us may extend
in the consequence of it, do hereby desire the House may let us know the
grounds and reasons whereon they have proceeded."  From this, it is not
unlikely that the Protector might have been disposed to clemency, and to
look with a degree of charity upon the weakness and errors of one of his
old and tried soldiers who had striven like a brave man, as he was, for
the rights and liberties of Englishmen; but the clergy here interposed,
and vehemently, in the name of God and His Church, demanded that the
executioner should finish his work.  Five of the most eminent of them,
names well known in the Protectorate, Caryl, Manton, Nye, Griffith, and
Reynolds, were deputed by Parliament to visit the mangled prisoner.  A
reasonable request was made, that some impartial person might be present,
that justice might be done Nayler in the report of his answers.  This was
refused.  It was, however, agreed that the conversation should be written
down and a copy of it left with the jailer.  He was asked if he was sorry
for his blasphemies.  He said he did not know to what blasphemies they
alluded; that he did believe in Jesus Christ; that He had taken up His
dwelling in his own heart, and for the testimony of Him he now suffered.
"I believe," said one of the ministers, "in a Christ who was never in any
man's heart."  "I know no such Christ," rejoined the prisoner; "the
Christ I witness to fills Heaven and Earth, and dwells in the hearts of
all true believers."  On being asked why he allowed the women to adore
and worship him, he said he "denied bowing to the creature; but if they
beheld the power of Christ, wherever it was, and bowed to it, he could
not resist it, or say aught against it."

After some further parley, the reverend visitors grew angry, threw the
written record of the conversation in the fire, and left the prison, to
report the prisoner incorrigible.

On the 27th of the month, he was again led out of his cell and placed
upon the pillory.  Thousands of citizens were gathered around, many of
them earnestly protesting against the extreme cruelty of his punishment.
Robert Rich, an influential and honorable merchant, followed him up to
the pillory with expressions of great sympathy, and held him by the hand
while the red-hot iron was pressed through his tongue and the brand was
placed on his forehead.  He was next sent to Bristol, and publicly
whipped through the principal streets of that city; and again brought
back to the Bridewell prison, where he remained about two years, shut out
from all intercourse with his fellow-beings.  At the expiration of this
period, he was released by order of Parliament.  In the solitude of his
cell, the angel of patience had been with him.

Through the cloud which had so long rested over him, the clear light of
truth shone in upon his spirit; the weltering chaos of a disordered
intellect settled into the calm peace of a reconciliation with God and
man.  His first act on leaving prison was to visit Bristol, the scene of
his melancholy fall.  There he publicly confessed his errors, in the
eloquent earnestness of a contrite spirit, humbled in view of the past,
yet full of thanksgiving and praise for the great boon of forgiveness.  A
writer who was present says, the "assembly was tendered, and broken into
tears; there were few dry eyes, and many were bowed in their minds."

In a paper which he published soon after, he acknowledges his lamentable
delusion.  "Condemned forever," he says, "be all those false worships
with which any have idolized my person in that Night of my Temptation,
when the Power of Darkness was above rue; all that did in any way tend to
dishonor the Lord, or draw the minds of any from the measure of Christ
Jesus in themselves, to look at flesh, which is as grass, or to ascribe
that to the visible which belongs to Him.  Darkness came over me
through want of watchfulness and obedience to the pure Eye of God.  I was
taken captive from the true light; I was walking in the Night, as a
wandering bird fit for a prey.  And if the Lord of all my mercies had not
rescued me, I had perished; for I was as one appointed to death and
destruction, and there was none to deliver me."

"It is in my heart to confess to God, and before men, my folly and
offence in that day; yet there were many things formed against me in
that day, to take away my life and bring scandal upon the truth, of
which I was not guilty at all." "The provocation of that Time of
Temptation was exceeding great against the Lord, yet He left me not; for
when Darkness was above, and the Adversary so prevailed that all things
were turned and perverted against my right seeing, hearing, or
understanding, only a secret hope and faith I had in my God, whom I had
served, that He would bring me through it and to the end of it, and that
I should again see the day of my redemption from under it all,--this
quieted my soul in its greatest tribulation." He concludes his
confession with these words: "He who hath saved my soul from death, who
hath lifted my feet up out of the pit, even to Him be glory forever; and
let every troubled soul trust in Him, for his mercy endureth forever!"

Among his papers, written soon after his release, is a remarkable prayer,
or rather thanksgiving.  The limit I have prescribed to myself will only
allow me to copy an extract:--

"It is in my heart to praise Thee, O my God!  Let me never forget Thee,
what Thou hast been to me in the night, by Thy presence in my hour of
trial, when I was beset in darkness, when I was cast out as a wandering
bird; when I was assaulted with strong temptations, then Thy presence, in
secret, did preserve me, and in a low state I felt Thee near me; when my
way was through the sea, when I passed under the mountains, there wast
Thou present with me; when the weight of the hills was upon me, Thou
upheldest me.  Thou didst fight, on my part, when I wrestled with death;
when darkness would have shut me up, Thy light shone about me; when my
work was in the furnace, and I passed through the fire, by Thee I was not
consumed; when I beheld the dreadful visions, and was among the fiery
spirits, Thy faith staid me, else through fear I had fallen.  I saw Thee,
and believed, so that the enemy could not prevail."  After speaking of
his humiliation and sufferings, which Divine Mercy had overruled for his
spiritual good, he thus concludes: "Thou didst lift me out from the pit,
and set me forth in the sight of my enemies; Thou proclaimedst liberty to
the captive; Thou calledst my acquaintances near me; they to whom I had
been a wonder looked upon me; and in Thy love I obtained favor with those
who had deserted me.  Then did gladness swallow up sorrow, and I forsook
my troubles; and I said, How good is it that man be proved in the night,
that he may know his folly, that every mouth may become silent, until
Thou makest man known unto himself, and has slain the boaster, and shown
him the vanity which vexeth Thy spirit."

All honor to the Quakers of that day, that, at the risk of
misrepresentation and calumny, they received back to their communion
their greatly erring, but deeply repentant, brother.  His life, ever
after, was one of self-denial and jealous watchfulness over himself,--
blameless and beautiful in its humility and lowly charity.

Thomas Ellwood, in his autobiography for the year 1659, mentions Nayler,
whom he met in company with Edward Burrough at the house of Milton's
friend, Pennington.  Ellwood's father held a discourse with the two
Quakers on their doctrine of free and universal grace.  "James Nailer,"
says Ellwood, "handled the subject with so much perspicuity and clear
demonstration, that his reasoning seemed to be irresistible.  As for
Edward Burrough, he was a brisk young Man, of a ready Tongue, and might
have been for aught I then knew, a Scholar, which made me less admire his
Way of Reasoning.  But what dropt from James Nailer had the greater Force
upon me, because he lookt like a simple Countryman, having the appearance
of an Husbandman or Shepherd."

In the latter part of the eighth month, 1660, be left London on foot, to
visit his wife and children in Wakefield.  As he journeyed on, the sense
of a solemn change about to take place seemed with him; the shadow of the
eternal world fell over him.  As he passed through Huntingdon, a friend
who saw him describes him as "in an awful and weighty frame of mind, as
if he had been redeemed from earth, and a stranger on it, seeking a
better home and inheritance."  A few miles beyond the town, he was found,
in the dusk of the evening, very ill, and was taken to the house of a
friend, who lived not far distant.  He died shortly after, expressing his
gratitude for the kindness of his attendants, and invoking blessings upon
them.  About two hours before his death, he spoke to the friend at his
bedside these remarkable words, solemn as eternity, and beautiful as the
love which fills it:--

"There is a spirit which I feel which delights to do no evil, nor to
avenge any wrong; but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its
own in the end; its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to
weary out all exultation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary
to itself.  It sees to the end of all temptations; as it bears no evil in
itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other: if it be betrayed,
it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercy 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.  In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard
it, or can own its life.  It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth
with none to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression.  It
never rejoiceth but through sufferings, for with the world's joy it is
murdered.  I found it alone, being forsaken.  I have fellowship therein
with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through
death obtained resurrection and eternal Holy Life."

So died James Nayler.  He was buried in "Thomas Parnell's burying-ground,
at King's Rippon," in a green nook of rural England.  Wrong and violence,
and temptation and sorrow, and evil-speaking, could reach him no more.
And in taking leave of him, let us say, with old Joseph Wyeth, where he
touches upon this case in his _Anguis Flagellatus_: "Let none insult, but
take heed lest they also, in the hour of their temptation, do fall away."






                              ANDREW MARVELL

     "They who with a good conscience and an upright heart do their civil
     duties in the sight of God, and in their several places, to resist
     tyranny and the violence of superstition banded both against them,
     will never seek to be forgiven that which may justly be attributed
     to their immortal praise."--Answer to Eikon Basilike.

Among, the great names which adorned the Protectorate,--that period of
intense mental activity, when political and religious rights and duties
were thoroughly discussed by strong and earnest statesmen and
theologians,--that of Andrew Marvell, the friend of Milton, and Latin
Secretary of Cromwell, deserves honorable mention.  The magnificent prose
of Milton, long neglected, is now perhaps as frequently read as his great
epic; but the writings of his friend and fellow secretary, devoted like
his own to the cause of freedom and the rights of the people, are
scarcely known to the present generation.  It is true that Marvell's
political pamphlets were less elaborate and profound than those of the
author of the glorious _Defence of Unlicensed Printing_.  He was light,
playful, witty, and sarcastic; he lacked the stern dignity, the terrible
invective, the bitter scorn, the crushing, annihilating retort, the grand
and solemn eloquence, and the devout appeals, which render immortal the
controversial works of Milton.  But he, too, has left his foot-prints on
his age; he, too, has written for posterity that which they "will not
willingly let die."  As one of the inflexible defenders of English
liberty, sowers of the seed, the fruits of which we are now reaping, he
has a higher claim on the kind regards of this generation than his merits
as a poet, by no means inconsiderable, would warrant.

Andrew Marvell was born in Kingston-upon-Hull, in 1620.  At the age of
eighteen he entered Trinity College, whence he was enticed by the
Jesuits, then actively seeking proselytes.  After remaining with them a
short time, his father found him, and brought him back to his studies.
On leaving college, he travelled on the Continent.  At Rome he wrote his
first satire, a humorous critique upon Richard Flecknoe, an English
Jesuit and verse writer, whose lines on Silence Charles Lamb quotes in
one of his Essays.  It is supposed that he made his first acquaintance
with Milton in Italy.

At Paris he made the Abbot de Manihan the subject of another satire.  The
Abbot pretended to skill in the arts of magic, and used to prognosticate
the fortunes of people from the character of their handwriting.  At what
period he returned from his travels we are not aware.  It is stated, by
some of his biographers, that he was sent as secretary of a Turkish
mission.  In 1653, he was appointed the tutor of Cromwell's nephew; and,
four years after, doubtless through the instrumentality of his friend
Milton, he received the honorable appointment of Latin Secretary of the
Commonwealth.  In 1658, he was selected by his townsmen of Hull to
represent them in Parliament.  In this service he continued until 1663,
when, notwithstanding his sturdy republican principles, he was appointed
secretary to the Russian embassy.  On his return, in 1665, he was again
elected to Parliament, and continued in the public service until the
prorogation of the Parliament of 1675.

The boldness, the uncompromising integrity and irreproachable consistency
of Marvell, as a statesman, have secured for him the honorable
appellation of "the British Aristides."  Unlike too many of his old
associates under the Protectorate, he did not change with the times.  He
was a republican in Cromwell's day, and neither threats of assassination,
nor flatteries, nor proffered bribes, could make him anything else in
that of Charles II.  He advocated the rights of the people at a time when
patriotism was regarded as ridiculous folly; when a general corruption,
spreading downwards from a lewd and abominable Court, had made
legislation a mere scramble for place and emolument.  English history
presents no period so disgraceful as the Restoration.  To use the words
of Macaulay, it was "a day of servitude without loyalty and sensuality
without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the paradise of
cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden age of the coward, the bigot,
and the slave.  The principles of liberty were the scoff of every
grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning dean."  It
is the peculiar merit of Milton and Marvell, that in such an age they
held fast their integrity, standing up in glorious contrast with clerical
apostates and traitors to the cause of England's liberty.

In the discharge of his duties as a statesman Marvell was as punctual and
conscientious as our own venerable Apostle of Freedom, John Quincy Adams.
He corresponded every post with his constituents, keeping them fully
apprised of all that transpired at Court or in Parliament.  He spoke but
seldom, but his great personal influence was exerted privately upon the
members of the Commons as well as upon the Peers.  His wit, accomplished
manners, and literary eminence made him a favorite at the Court itself.
The voluptuous and careless monarch laughed over the biting satire of the
republican poet, and heartily enjoyed his lively conversation.  It is
said that numerous advances were made to him by the courtiers of Charles
II., but he was found to be incorruptible.  The personal compliments of
the King, the encomiums of Rochester, the smiles and flatteries of the
frail but fair and high-born ladies of the Court; nay, even the golden
offers of the King's treasurer, who, climbing with difficulty to his
obscure retreat on an upper floor of a court in the Strand, laid a
tempting bribe of L1,000 before him, on the very day when he had been
compelled to borrow a guinea, were all lost upon the inflexible patriot.
He stood up manfully, in an age of persecution, for religious liberty,
opposed the oppressive excise, and demanded frequent Parliaments and a
fair representation of the people.

In 1672, Marvell engaged in a controversy with the famous High-Churchman,
Dr. Parker, who had taken the lead in urging the persecution of Non-
conformists.  In one of the works of this arrogant divine, he says that
"it is absolutely necessary to the peace and government of the world that
the supreme magistrate should be vested with power to govern and conduct
the consciences of subjects in affairs of religion.  Princes may with
less hazard give liberty to men's vices and debaucheries than to their
consciences."  And, speaking of the various sects of Non-conformists, he
counsels princes and legislators that "tenderness and indulgence to such
men is to nourish vipers in their own bowels, and the most sottish
neglect of our quiet and security."  Marvell replied to him in a severely
satirical pamphlet, which provoked a reply from the Doctor.  Marvell
rejoined, with a rare combination of wit and argument.  The effect of his
sarcasm on the Doctor and his supporters may be inferred from an
anonymous note sent him, in which the writer threatens by the eternal God
to cut his throat, if he uttered any more libels upon Dr. Parker.  Bishop
Burnet remarks that "Marvell writ in a burlesque strain, but with so
peculiar and so entertaining a conduct 'that from the King down to the
tradesman his books were read with great pleasure, and not only humbled
Parker, but his whole party, for Marvell had all the wits on his side.'"
The Bishop further remarks that Marvell's satire "gave occasion to the
only piece of modesty with which Dr. Parker was ever charged, namely, of
withdrawing from town, and not importuning the press for some years,
since even a face of brass must grow red when it is burnt as his has
been."

Dean Swift, in commenting upon the usual fate of controversial pamphlets,
which seldom live beyond their generation, says: "There is indeed an
exception, when a great genius undertakes to expose a foolish piece; so
we still read Marvell's answer to Parker with pleasure, though the book
it answers be sunk long ago."

Perhaps, in the entire compass of our language, there is not to be found
a finer piece of satirical writing than Marvell's famous parody of the
speeches of Charles II., in which the private vices and public
inconsistencies of the King, and his gross violations of his pledges on
coming to the throne, are exposed with the keenest wit and the most
laugh-provoking irony.  Charles himself, although doubtless annoyed by
it, could not refrain from joining in the mirth which it excited at his
expense.

The friendship between Marvell and Milton remained firm and unbroken to
the last.  The former exerted himself to save his illustrious friend from
persecution, and omitted no opportunity to defend him as a politician and
to eulogize him as a poet.  In 1654 he presented to Cromwell Milton's
noble tract in _Defence of the People of England_, and, in writing to the
author, says of the work, "When I consider how equally it teems and rises
with so many figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, in whose winding
ascent we see embossed the several monuments of your learned victories."
He was one of the first to appreciate _Paradise Lost_, and to commend it
in some admirable lines.  One couplet is exceedingly beautiful, in its
reference to the author's blindness:--

              "Just Heaven, thee like Tiresias to requite,
               Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight."

His poems, written in the "snatched leisure" of an active political life,
bear marks of haste, and are very unequal.  In the midst of passages of
pastoral description worthy of Milton himself, feeble lines and hackneyed
phrases occur.  His _Nymph lamenting the Death of her Fawn_ is a finished
and elaborate piece, full of grace and tenderness.  _Thoughts in a
Garden_ will be remembered by the quotations of that exquisite critic,
Charles Lamb.  How pleasant is this picture!

                   "What wondrous life is this I lead!
                    Ripe apples drop about my head;
                    The luscious clusters of the vine
                    Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
                    The nectarine and curious peach
                    Into my hands themselves do reach;
                    Stumbling on melons as I pass,
                    Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

                   "Here at this fountain's sliding foot,
                    Or at the fruit-tree's mossy root,
                    Casting the body's vest aside,
                    My soul into the boughs does glide.
                    There like a bird it sits and sings,
                    And whets and claps its silver wings;
                    And, till prepared for longer flight,
                    Waves in its plumes the various light.

                   "How well the skilful gard'ner drew
                    Of flowers and herbs this dial true!
                    Where, from above, the milder sun
                    Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
                    And, as it works, the industrious bee
                    Computes his time as well as we.
                    How could such sweet and wholesome hours
                    Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers!"


One of his longer poems, _Appleton House_, contains passages of admirable
description, and many not unpleasing conceits.  Witness the following:--

                   "Thus I, an easy philosopher,
                    Among the birds and trees confer,
                    And little now to make me wants,
                    Or of the fowl or of the plants.
                    Give me but wings, as they, and I
                    Straight floating on the air shall fly;
                    Or turn me but, and you shall see
                    I am but an inverted tree.
                    Already I begin to call
                    In their most learned original;
                    And, where I language want, my signs
                    The bird upon the bough divines.
                    No leaf does tremble in the wind,
                    Which I returning cannot find.
                    Out of these scattered Sibyl's leaves,
                    Strange prophecies my fancy weaves:
                    What Rome, Greece, Palestine, e'er said,
                    I in this light Mosaic read.
                    Under this antic cope I move,
                    Like some great prelate of the grove;
                    Then, languishing at ease, I toss
                    On pallets thick with velvet moss;
                    While the wind, cooling through the boughs,
                    Flatters with air my panting brows.
                    Thanks for my rest, ye mossy banks!
                    And unto you, cool zephyrs, thanks!
                    Who, as my hair, my thoughts too shed,
                    And winnow from the chaff my head.
                    How safe, methinks, and strong behind
                    These trees have I encamped my mind!"

Here is a picture of a piscatorial idler and his trout stream, worthy of
the pencil of Izaak Walton:--

              "See in what wanton harmless folds
               It everywhere the meadow holds:
               Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt
               If they be in it or without;
               And for this shade, which therein shines
               Narcissus-like, the sun too pines.
               Oh! what a pleasure 't is to hedge
               My temples here in heavy sedge;
               Abandoning my lazy side,
               Stretched as a bank unto the tide;
               Or, to suspend my sliding foot
               On the osier's undermining root,
               And in its branches tough to hang,
               While at my lines the fishes twang."

A little poem of Marvell's, which he calls Eyes and Tears, has the
following passages:--

              "How wisely Nature did agree
               With the same eyes to weep and see!
               That having viewed the object vain,
               They might be ready to complain.
               And, since the self-deluding sight
               In a false angle takes each height,
               These tears, which better measure all,
               Like watery lines and plummets fall."

              "Happy are they whom grief doth bless,
               That weep the more, and see the less;
               And, to preserve their sight more true,
               Bathe still their eyes in their own dew;
               So Magdalen, in tears more wise,
               Dissolved those captivating eyes,
               Whose liquid chains could, flowing, meet
               To fetter her Redeemer's feet.
               The sparkling glance, that shoots desire,
               Drenched in those tears, does lose its fire;
               Yea, oft the Thunderer pity takes,
               And there his hissing lightning slakes.
               The incense is to Heaven dear,
               Not as a perfume, but a tear;
               And stars shine lovely in the night,
               But as they seem the tears of light.
               Ope, then, mine eyes, your double sluice,
               And practise so your noblest use;
               For others, too, can see or sleep,
               But only human eyes can weep."

The Bermuda Emigrants has some happy lines, as the following:--

              "He hangs in shade the orange bright,
               Like golden lamps in a green night."

Or this, which doubtless suggested a couplet in Moore's _Canadian Boat
Song_:--

              "And all the way, to guide the chime,
               With falling oars they kept the time."

His facetious and burlesque poetry was much admired in his day; but a
great portion of it referred to persons and events no longer of general
interest.  The satire on Holland is an exception.  There is nothing in
its way superior to it in our language.  Many of his best pieces were
originally written in Latin, and afterwards translated by himself.  There
is a splendid Ode to Cromwell--a worthy companion of Milton's glorious
sonnet--which is not generally known, and which we transfer entire to our
pages.  Its simple dignity and the melodious flow of its versification
commend themselves more to our feelings than its eulogy of war.  It is
energetic and impassioned, and probably affords a better idea of the
author, as an actor in the stirring drama of his time, than the "soft
Lydian airs" of the poems that we have quoted.


          AN HORATIAN ODE UPON CROMWELL'S RETURN FROM IRELAND.

               The forward youth that would appear
               Must now forsake his Muses dear;
               Nor in the shadows sing
               His numbers languishing.

               'T is time to leave the books in dust,
               And oil the unused armor's rust;
               Removing from the wall
               The corslet of the hall.

               So restless Cromwell could not cease
               In the inglorious arts of peace,
               But through adventurous war
               Urged his active star.

               And, like the three-forked lightning, first
               Breaking the clouds wherein it nurst,
               Did thorough his own side
               His fiery way divide.

               For 't is all one to courage high,
               The emulous, or enemy;
               And with such to enclose
               Is more than to oppose.

               Then burning through the air he went,
               And palaces and temples rent;
               And Caesar's head at last
               Did through his laurels blast.

               'T is madness to resist or blame
               The face of angry Heaven's flame;
               And, if we would speak true,
               Much to the man is due,

               Who, from his private gardens, where
               He lived reserved and austere,
               (As if his highest plot
               To plant the bergamot,)

               Could by industrious valor climb
               To ruin the great work of time,
               And cast the kingdoms old
               Into another mould!

               Though justice against fate complain,
               And plead the ancient rights in vain,--
               But those do hold or break,
               As men are strong or weak.

               Nature, that hateth emptiness,
               Allows of penetration less,
               And therefore must make room
               Where greater spirits come.

               What field of all the civil war,
               Where his were not the deepest scar?
               And Hampton shows what part
               He had of wiser art;

               Where, twining subtle fears with hope,
               He wove a net of such a scope,
               That Charles himself might chase
               To Carisbrook's narrow case;

               That hence the royal actor borne,
               The tragic scaffold might adorn,
               While round the armed bands
               Did clap their bloody hands.

               HE nothing common did or mean
               Upon that memorable scene,
               But with his keener eye
               The axe's edge did try

               Nor called the gods, with vulgar spite,
               To vindicate his helpless right!
               But bowed his comely head,
               Down, as upon a bed.

               This was that memorable hour,
               Which first assured the forced power;
               So when they did design
               The Capitol's first line,

               A bleeding head, where they begun,
               Did fright the architects to run;
               And yet in that the state
               Foresaw its happy fate.

               And now the Irish are ashamed
               To see themselves in one year tamed;
               So much one man can do,
               That does best act and know.

               They can affirm his praises best,
               And have, though overcome, confest
               How good he is, how just,
               And fit for highest trust.

               Nor yet grown stiffer by command,
               But still in the Republic's hand,
               How fit he is to sway
               That can so well obey.

               He to the Commons' feet presents
               A kingdom for his first year's rents,
               And, what he may, forbears
               His fame to make it theirs.

               And has his sword and spoils ungirt,
               To lay them at the public's skirt;
               So when the falcon high
               Falls heavy from the sky,

               She, having killed, no more does search,
               But on the next green bough to perch,
               Where, when he first does lure,
               The falconer has her sure.

               What may not, then, our isle presume,
               While Victory his crest does plume?
               What may not others fear,

               If thus he crowns each year?

               As Caesar, he, erelong, to Gaul;
               To Italy as Hannibal,
               And to all states not free
               Shall climacteric be.

               The Pict no shelter now shall find
               Within his parti-contoured mind;
               But from his valor sad
               Shrink underneath the plaid,

               Happy if in the tufted brake
               The English hunter him mistake,
               Nor lay his hands a near
               The Caledonian deer.

               But thou, the war's and fortune's son,
               March indefatigably on;
               And, for the last effect,
               Still keep the sword erect.

               Besides the force, it has to fright
               The spirits of the shady night
               The same arts that did gain
               A power, must it maintain.


Marvell was never married.  The modern critic, who affirms that bachelors
have done the most to exalt women into a divinity, might have quoted his
extravagant panegyric of Maria Fairfax as an apt illustration:--

               "'T is she that to these gardens gave
               The wondrous beauty which they have;
               She straitness on the woods bestows,
               To her the meadow sweetness owes;
               Nothing could make the river be
               So crystal pure but only she,--
               She, yet more pure, sweet, strait, and fair,
               Than gardens, woods, meals, rivers are
               Therefore, what first she on them spent
               They gratefully again present:
               The meadow carpets where to tread,
               The garden flowers to crown her head,
               And for a glass the limpid brook
               Where she may all her beauties look;
               But, since she would not have them seen,
               The wood about her draws a screen;
               For she, to higher beauty raised,
               Disdains to be for lesser praised;
               She counts her beauty to converse
               In all the languages as hers,
               Nor yet in those herself employs,
               But for the wisdom, not the noise,
               Nor yet that wisdom could affect,
               But as 't is Heaven's dialect."

It has been the fashion of a class of shallow Church and State defenders
to ridicule the great men of the Commonwealth, the sturdy republicans of
England, as sour-featured, hard-hearted ascetics, enemies of the fine
arts and polite literature.  The works of Milton and Marvell, the prose-
poem of Harrington, and the admirable discourses of Algernon Sydney are a
sufficient answer to this accusation.  To none has it less application
than to the subject of our sketch.  He was a genial, warmhearted man, an
elegant scholar, a finished gentleman at home, and the life of every
circle which he entered, whether that of the gay court of Charles II.,
amidst such men as Rochester and L'Estrange, or that of the republican
philosophers who assembled at Miles's Coffee House, where he discussed
plans of a free representative government with the author of Oceana, and
Cyriack Skinner, that friend of Milton, whom the bard has immortalized in
the sonnet which so pathetically, yet heroically, alludes to his own
blindness.  Men of all parties enjoyed his wit and graceful conversation.
His personal appearance was altogether in his favor.  A clear, dark,
Spanish complexion, long hair of jetty blackness falling in graceful
wreaths to his shoulders, dark eyes, full of expression and fire, a
finely chiselled chin, and a mouth whose soft voluptuousness scarcely
gave token of the steady purpose and firm will of the inflexible
statesman: these, added to the prestige of his genius, and the respect
which a lofty, self-sacrificing patriotism extorts even from those who
would fain corrupt and bribe it, gave him a ready passport to the
fashionable society of the metropolis.  He was one of the few who mingled
in that society, and escaped its contamination, and who,

              "Amidst the wavering days of sin,
               Kept himself icy chaste and pure."

The tone and temper of his mind may be most fitly expressed in his own
paraphrase of Horace:--

              "Climb at Court for me that will,
               Tottering Favor's pinnacle;
               All I seek is to lie still!
               Settled in some secret nest,
               In calm leisure let me rest;
               And, far off the public stage,
               Pass away my silent age.
               Thus, when, without noise, unknown,
               I have lived out all my span,
               I shall die without a groan,
               An old, honest countryman.
               Who, exposed to other's eyes,
               Into his own heart ne'er pries,
               Death's to him a strange surprise."

He died suddenly in 1678, while in attendance at a popular meeting of his
old constituents at Hull.  His health had previously been remarkably
good; and it was supposed by many that he was poisoned by some of his
political or clerical enemies.  His monument, erected by his grateful
constituency, bears the following inscription:--

     "Near this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esq., a man so
     endowed by Nature, so improved by Education, Study, and Travel, so
     consummated by Experience, that, joining the peculiar graces of Wit
     and Learning, with a singular penetration and strength of judgment;
     and exercising all these in the whole course of his life, with an
     unutterable steadiness in the ways of Virtue, he became the ornament
     and example of his age, beloved by good men, feared by bad, admired
     by all, though imitated by few; and scarce paralleled by any.  But a
     Tombstone can neither contain his character, nor is Marble necessary
     to transmit it to posterity; it is engraved in the minds of this
     generation, and will be always legible in his inimitable writings,
     nevertheless.  He having served twenty years successfully in
     Parliament, and that with such Wisdom, Dexterity, and Courage, as
     becomes a true Patriot, the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, from whence
     he was deputed to that Assembly, lamenting in his death the public
     loss, have erected this Monument of their Grief and their Gratitude,
     1688."

Thus lived and died Andrew Marvell.  His memory is the inheritance of
Americans as well as Englishmen.  His example commends itself in an
especial manner to the legislators of our Republic.  Integrity and
fidelity to principle are as greatly needed at this time in our halls of
Congress as in the Parliaments of the Restoration; men are required who
can feel, with Milton, that "it is high honor done them from God, and a
special mark of His favor, to have been selected to stand upright and
steadfast in His cause, dignified with the defence of Truth and public
liberty."





                              JOHN ROBERTS.

Thomas Carlyle, in his history of the stout and sagacious Monk of St.
Edmunds, has given us a fine picture of the actual life of Englishmen in
the middle centuries.  The dim cell-lamp of the somewhat apocryphal
Jocelin of Brakelond becomes in his hands a huge Drummond-light, shining
over the Dark Ages like the naphtha-fed cressets over Pandemonium,
proving, as he says in his own quaint way, that "England in the year 1200
was no dreamland, but a green, solid place, which grew corn and several
other things; the sun shone on it; the vicissitudes of seasons and human
fortunes were there; cloth was woven, ditches dug, fallow fields
ploughed, and houses built."  And if, as the writer just quoted insists,
it is a matter of no small importance to make it credible to the present
generation that the Past is not a confused dream of thrones and battle-
fields, creeds and constitutions, but a reality, substantial as hearth
and home, harvest-field and smith-shop, merry-making and death, could
make it, we shall not wholly waste our time and that of our readers in
inviting them to look with us at the rural life of England two centuries
ago, through the eyes of John Roberts and his worthy son, Daniel, yeomen,
of Siddington, near Cirencester.

_The Memoirs of John Roberts, alias Haywood, by his son, Daniel Roberts_,
(the second edition, printed verbatim from the original one, with its
picturesque array of italics and capital letters,) is to be found only in
a few of our old Quaker libraries.  It opens with some account of the
family.  The father of the elder Roberts "lived reputably, on a little
estate of his own," and it is mentioned as noteworthy that he married a
sister of a gentleman in the Commission of the Peace.  Coming of age
about the beginning of the civil wars, John and one of his young
neighbors enlisted in the service of Parliament.  Hearing that
Cirencester had been taken by the King's forces, they obtained leave of
absence to visit their friends, for whose safety they naturally felt
solicitous.  The following account of the reception they met with from
the drunken and ferocious troopers of Charles I., the "bravos of Alsatia
and the pages of Whitehall," throws a ghastly light upon the horrors of
civil war:--

"As they were passing by Cirencester, they were discovered, and pursued
by two soldiers of the King's party, then in possession of the town.
Seeing themselves pursued, they quitted their horses, and took to their
heels; but, by reason of their accoutrements, could make little speed.
They came up with my father first; and, though he begged for quarter,
none they would give him, but laid on him with their swords, cutting and
slashing his hands and arms, which he held up to save his head; as the
marks upon them did long after testify.  At length it pleased the
Almighty to put it into his mind to fall down on his face; which he did.
Hereupon the soldiers, being on horseback, cried to each other, _Alight,
and cut his throat_! but neither of them did; yet continued to strike and
prick him about the jaws, till they thought him dead.  Then they left
him, and pursued his neighbor, whom they presently overtook and killed.
Soon after they had left my father, it was said in his heart, _Rise, and
flee for thy life_! which call he obeyed; and, starting upon his feet,
his enemies espied him in motion, and pursued him again.  He ran down a
steep hill, and through a river which ran at the bottom of it; though
with exceeding difficulty, his boots filling with water, and his wounds
bleeding very much.  They followed him to the top of the hill; but,
seeing he had got over, pursued him no farther."

The surgeon who attended him was a Royalist, and bluntly told his
bleeding patient that if he had met him in the street he would have
killed him himself, but now he was willing to cure him.  On his recovery,
young Roberts again entered the army, and continued in it until the
overthrow, of the Monarchy.  On his return, he married "Lydia Tindall,
of the denomination of Puritans."  A majestic figure rises before us,
on reading the statement that Sir Matthew Hale, afterwards Lord Chief
Justice of England, the irreproachable jurist and judicial saint, was
"his wife's kinsman, and drew her marriage settlement."

No stronger testimony to the high-toned morality and austere virtue of
the Puritan yeomanry of England can be adduced than the fact that, of the
fifty thousand soldiers who were discharged on the accession of Charles
II., and left to shift for themselves, comparatively few, if any, became
chargeable to their parishes, although at that very time one out of six
of the English population were unable to support themselves.  They
carried into their farm-fields and workshops the strict habits of
Cromwell's discipline; and, in toiling to repair their wasted fortunes,
they manifested the same heroic fortitude and self-denial which in war
had made them such formidable and efficient "Soldiers of the Lord."  With
few exceptions, they remained steadfast in their uncompromising non-
conformity, abhorring Prelacy and Popery, and entertaining no very
orthodox notions with respect to the divine right of Kings.  From them
the Quakers drew their most zealous champions; men who, in renouncing the
"carnal weapons" of their old service, found employment for habitual
combativeness in hot and wordy sectarian warfare.  To this day the
vocabulary of Quakerism abounds in the military phrases and figures which
were in use in the Commonwealth's time.  Their old force and significance
are now in a great measure lost; but one can well imagine that, in the
assemblies of the primitive Quakers, such stirring battle-cries and
warlike tropes, even when employed in enforcing or illustrating the
doctrines of peace, must have made many a stout heart' to beat quicker,
tinder its drab coloring, with recollections of Naseby and Preston;
transporting many a listener from the benches of his place of worship to
the ranks of Ireton and Lambert, and causing him to hear, in the place of
the solemn and nasal tones of the preacher, the blast of Rupert's bugles,
and the answering shout of Cromwell's pikemen: "Let God arise, and let
his enemies be scattered!"

Of this class was John Roberts.  He threw off his knapsack, and went back
to his small homestead, contented with the privilege of supporting
himself and family by daily toil, and grumbling in concert with his old
campaign brothers at the new order of things in Church and State.  To his
apprehension, the Golden Days of England ended with the parade on
Blackheath to receive the restored King.  He manifested no reverence for
Bishops and Lords, for he felt none.  For the Presbyterians he had no
good will; they had brought in the King, and they denied the liberty of
prophesying.  John Milton has expressed the feeling of the Independents
and Anabaptists towards this latter class, in that famous line in which
he defines Presbyter as "old priest writ large."  Roberts was by no means
a gloomy fanatic; he had a great deal of shrewdness and humor, loved a
quiet joke; and every gambling priest and swearing magistrate in the
neighborhood stood in fear of his sharp wit.  It was quite in course for
such a man to fall in with the Quakers, and he appears to have done so at
the first opportunity.

In the year 1665, "it pleased the Lord to send two women Friends out of
the North to Cirencester," who, inquiring after such as feared God, were
directed to the house of John Roberts.  He received them kindly, and,
inviting in some of his neighbors, sat down with them, whereupon "the
Friends spake a few words, which had a good effect."  After the meeting
was over, he was induced to visit a "Friend" then confined in Banbury
jail, whom he found preaching through the grates of his cell to the
people in the street.  On seeing Roberts he called to mind the story of
Zaccheus, and declared that the word was now to all who were seeking
Christ by climbing the tree of knowledge, "Come down, come down; for that
which is to be known of God is manifested within."  Returning home, he
went soon after to the parish meeting-house, and, entering with his hat
on, the priest noticed him, and, stopping short in his discourse,
declared that he could not go on while one of the congregation wore his
hat.  He was thereupon led out of the house, and a rude fellow, stealing
up behind, struck him on the back with a heavy stone.  "Take that for
God's sake," said the ruffian.  "So I do," answered Roberts, without
looking back to see his assailant, who the next day came and asked his
forgiveness for the injury, as he could not sleep in consequence of it.

We next find him attending the Quarter Sessions, where three "Friends"
were arraigned for entering Cirencester Church with their hats on.
Venturing to utter a word of remonstrance against the summary proceedings
of the Court, Justice Stephens demanded his name, and, on being told,
exclaimed, in the very tone and temper of Jeffreys:

I 've heard of you.  I'm glad I have you here.  You deserve a stone
doublet.  There's many an honester man than you hanged."

"It may be so," said Roberts, "but what becomes of such as hang honest
men?"

The Justice snatched a ball of wax and hurled it at the quiet questioner.
"I 'll send you to prison," said he; "and if any insurrection or tumult
occurs, I 'll come and cut your throat with my own sword."  A warrant was
made out, and he was forthwith sent to the jail.  In the evening, Justice
Sollis, his uncle, released him, on condition of his promise to appear at
the next Sessions.  He returned to his home, but in the night following
be was impressed with a belief that it was his duty to visit Justice
Stephens.  Early in the morning, with a heavy heart, without eating or
drinking, he mounted his horse and rode towards the residence of his
enemy.  When he came in sight of the house, he felt strong misgivings
that his uncle, Justice Sollis, who had so kindly released him, and his
neighbors generally, would condemn him for voluntarily running into
danger, and drawing down trouble upon himself and family.  He alighted
from his horse, and sat on the ground in great doubt and sorrow, when a
voice seemed to speak within him, "Go, and I will go with thee."  The
Justice met him at the door.  "I am come," said Roberts, "in the fear
and dread of Heaven, to warn thee to repent of thy wickedness with speed,
lest the Lord send thee to the pit that is bottomless!"  This terrible
summons awed the Justice; he made Roberts sit down on his couch beside
him, declaring that he received the message from God, and asked
forgiveness for the wrong he had done him.

The parish vicar of Siddington at this time was George Bull, afterwards
Bishop of St. David's, whom Macaulay speaks of as the only rural parish
priest who, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, was noted
as a theologian, or Who possessed a respectable library.  Roberts refused
to pay the vicar his tithes, and the vicar sent him to prison.  It was
the priest's "Short Method with Dissenters."  While the sturdy Non-
conformist lay in prison, he was visited by the great woman of the
neighborhood, Lady Dunch, of Down Amney.  "What do you lie in jail for?"
inquired the lady.  Roberts replied that it was because he could not put
bread into the mouth of a hireling priest.  The lady suggested that he
might let somebody else satisfy the demands of the priest; and that she
had a mind to do this herself, as she wished to talk with him on
religious subjects.  To this Roberts objected; there were poor people who
needed her charities, which would be wasted on such devourers as the
priests, who, like Pharaoh's lean kine, were eating up the fat and the
goodly, without looking a whit the better.  But the lady, who seems to
have been pleased and amused by the obstinate prisoner, paid the tithe
and the jail fees, and set him at liberty, making him fix a day when he
would visit her.  At the time appointed he went to Down Amney, and was
overtaken on the way by the priest of Cirencester, who had been sent for
to meet the Quaker.  They found the lady ill in bed; but she had them
brought to her chamber, being determined not to lose the amusement of
hearing a theological discussion, to which she at once urged them,
declaring that it would divert her and do her good.  The parson began by
accusing the Quakers of holding Popish doctrines.  The Quaker retorted
by telling him that if he would prove the Quakers like the Papists in one
thing, by the help of God, he would prove him like them in ten.  After a
brief and sharp dispute, the priest, finding his adversary's wit too keen
for his comfort, hastily took his leave.

The next we hear of Roberts he is in Gloucester Castle, subjected to the
brutal usage of a jailer, who took a malicious satisfaction in thrusting
decent and respectable Dissenters, imprisoned for matters of conscience,
among felons and thieves.  A poor vagabond tinker was hired to play at
night on his hautboy, and prevent their sleeping; but Roberts spoke to
him in such a manner that the instrument fell from his hand; and he told
the jailer that he would play no more, though he should hang him up at
the door for it.

How he was released from jail does not appear; but the narrative tells us
that some time after an apparitor came to cite him to the Bishop's Court
at Gloucester.  When he was brought before the Court, Bishop Nicholson, a
kind-hearted and easy-natured prelate, asked him the number of his
children, and how many of them had been _bishoped_?

"None, that I know of," said Roberts.

"What reason," asked the Bishop, "do you give for this?"

"A very good one," said the Quaker: "most of my children were born in
Oliver's days, when Bishops were out of fashion."

The Bishop and the Court laughed at this sally, and proceeded to question
him touching his views of baptism.  Roberts admitted that John had a
Divine commission to baptize with water, but that he never heard of
anybody else that had.  The Bishop reminded him that Christ's disciples
baptized.  "What 's that to me?" responded Roberts.  "Paul says he was
not sent to baptize, but to preach the Gospel.  And if he was not sent,
who required it at his hands?  Perhaps he had as little thanks for his
labor as thou hast for thine; and I would willingly know who sent thee to
baptize?"

The Bishop evaded this home question, and told him he was there to answer
for not coming to church.  Roberts denied the charge; sometimes he went
to church, and sometimes it came to him.  "I don't call that a church
which you do, which is made of wood and stone."

"What do you call it?"  asked the Bishop.

"It might be properly called a mass-house," was the reply; "for it was
built for that purpose."  The Bishop here told him he might go for the
present; he would take another opportunity to convince him of his errors.

The next person called was a Baptist minister, who, seeing that Roberts
refused to put off his hat, kept on his also.  The Bishop sternly
reminded him that he stood before the King's Court, and the
representative of the majesty of England; and that, while some regard
might be had to the scruples of men who made a conscience of putting off
the hat, such contempt could not be tolerated on the part of one who
could put it off to every mechanic be met.  The Baptist pulled off his
hat, and apologized, on the ground of illness.

We find Roberts next following George Fox on a visit to Bristol.  On his
return, reaching his house late in the evening, he saw a man standing in
the moonlight at his door, and knew him to be a bailiff.

"Hast thou anything against me?" asked Roberts.

"No," said the bailiff, "I've wronged you enough, God forgive me!  Those
who lie in wait for you are my Lord Bishop's bailiffs; they are merciless
rogues.  Ever, my master, while you live, please a knave, for an honest
man won't hurt you."

The next morning, having, as he thought, been warned by a dream to do so,
he went to the Bishop's house at Cleave, near Gloucester.  Confronting
the Bishop in his own hall, he told him that he had come to know why he
was hunting after him with his bailiffs, and why he was his adversary.
"The King is your adversary," said the Bishop; "you have broken the
King's law."  Roberts ventured to deny the justice of the law.  "What!"
cried the Bishop, "do such men as you find fault with the laws?"  "Yes,"
replied the other, stoutly; "and I tell thee plainly to thy face, it is
high time wiser men were chosen, to make better laws."

The discourse turning upon the Book of Common Prayer, Roberts asked the
Bishop if the sin of idolatry did not consist in worshipping the work of
men's hands.  The Bishop admitted it, as in the case of Nebuchadnezzar's
image.

"Then," said Roberts, "whose hands made your Prayer Book?  It could not
make itself."

"Do you compare our Prayer Book to Nebuchadnezzar's image?" cried the
Bishop.

"Yes," returned Roberts, "that was his image; this is thine.  I no more
dare bow to thy Common-Prayer Book than the Three Children to
Nebuchadnezzar's image."

"Yours is a strange upstart religion," said the Bishop.

Roberts told him it was older than his by several hundred years.  At this
claim of antiquity the prelate was greatly amused, and told Roberts that
if he would make out his case, he should speed the better for it.

"Let me ask thee," said Roberts, "where thy religion was in Oliver's
days, when thy Common-Prayer Book was as little regarded as an old
almanac, and your priests, with a few honest exceptions, turned with the
tide, and if Oliver had put mass in their mouths would have conformed to
it for the sake of their bellies."

"What would you have us do?"  asked the Bishop.  "Would you have had
Oliver cut our throats?"

"No," said Roberts; "but what sort of religion was that which you were
afraid to venture your throats for?"

The Bishop interrupted him to say, that in Oliver's days he had never
owned any other religion than his own, although he did not dare to openly
maintain it as he then did.

"Well," continued Roberts, "if thou didst not think thy religion worth
venturing thy throat for then, I desire thee to consider that it is not
worth the cutting of other men's throats now for not conforming to it."

"You are right," responded the frank Bishop.  "I hope we shall have a
care how we cut men's throats."

The following colloquy throws some light on the condition and character
of the rural clergy at this period, and goes far to confirm the
statements of Macaulay, which many have supposed exaggerated.  Baxter's
early religious teachers were more exceptionable than even the maudlin
mummer whom Roberts speaks of, one of them being "the excellentest stage-
player in all the country, and a good gamester and goodfellow, who,
having received Holy Orders, forged the like for a neighbor's son, who on
the strength of that title officiated at the desk and altar; and after
him came an attorney's clerk, who had tippled himself into so great
poverty that he had no other way to live than to preach."

J. ROBERTS.  I was bred up under a Common-Prayer Priest; and a poor
drunken old Man he was.  Sometimes he was so drunk he could not say his
Prayers, and at best he could but say them; though I think he was by far
a better Man than he that is Priest there now.

BISHOP.  Who is your Minister now?

J. ROBERTS.  My Minister is Christ Jesus, the Minister of the everlasting
Covenant; but the present Priest of the Parish is George Bull.

BISHOP.  Do you say that drunken old Man was better than Mr. Bull?  I
tell you, I account Mr. Bull as sound, able, and orthodox a Divine as any
we have among us.

J. ROBERT.  I am sorry for that; for if he be one of the best of you, I
believe the Lord will not suffer you long; for he is a proud, ambitious,
ungodly Man: he hath often sued me at Law, and brought his Servants to
swear against me wrongfully.  His Servants themselves have confessed to
my Servants, that I might have their Ears; for their Master made them
drunk, and then told them they were set down in the List as Witnesses
against me, and they must swear to it: And so they did, and brought
treble Damages.  They likewise owned they took Tithes from my Servants,
threshed them out, and sold them for their Master.  They have also
several Times took my Cattle out of my Grounds, drove them to Fairs and
Markets, and sold them, without giving me any Account.

BISHOP.  I do assure you I will inform Mr. Bull of what you say.

J. ROBERTS.  Very well.  And if thou pleasest to send for me to face him,
I shall make much more appear to his Face than I'll say behind his Back.

After much more discourse, Roberts told the Bishop that if it would do
him any good to have him in jail, he would voluntarily go and deliver
himself up to the keeper of Gloucester Castle.  The good-natured prelate
relented at this, and said he should not be molested or injured, and
further manifested his good will by ordering refreshments.  One of the
Bishop's friends who was present was highly offended by the freedom of
Roberts with his Lordship, and undertook to rebuke him, but was so
readily answered that he flew into a rage.  "If all the Quakers in
England," said he, "are not hanged in a month's time, I 'll be hanged for
them."  "Prithee, friend," quoth Roberts, "remember and be as good as thy
word!"

Good old Bishop Nicholson, it would seem, really liked his incorrigible
Quaker neighbor, and could enjoy heartily his wit and humor, even when
exercised at the expense of his own ecclesiastical dignity.  He admired
his blunt honesty and courage.  Surrounded by flatterers and self-
seekers, he found satisfaction in the company and conversation of one
who, setting aside all conventionalisms, saw only in my Lord Bishop a
poor fellow-probationer, and addressed him on terms of conscious
equality.  The indulgence which he extended to him naturally enough
provoked many of the inferior clergy, who had been sorely annoyed by the
sturdy Dissenter's irreverent witticisms and unsparing ridicule.  Vicar
Bull, of Siddington, and Priest Careless, of Cirencester, in particular,
urged the Bishop to deal sharply with him.  The former accused him of
dealing in the Black Art, and filled the Bishop's ear with certain
marvellous stories of his preternatural sagacity and discernment in
discovering cattle which were lost.  The Bishop took occasion to inquire
into these stories; and was told by Roberts that, except in a single
instance, the discoveries were the result of his acquaintance with the
habits of animals and his knowledge of the localities where they were
lost.  The circumstance alluded to, as an exception, will be best related
in his own words.

"I had a poor Neighbor, who had a Wife and six Children, and whom the
chief men about us permitted to keep six or seven Cows upon the Waste,
which were the principal Support of the Family, and preserved them from
becoming chargeable to the Parish.  One very stormy night the Cattle were
left in the Yard as usual, but could not be found in the morning.  The
Man and his Sons had sought them to no purpose; and, after they had been
lost four days, his Wife came to me, and, in a great deal of grief,
cried, 'O Lord!  Master Hayward, we are undone!  My Husband and I must go
a begging in our old age!  We have lost all our Cows.  My Husband and the
Boys have been round the country, and can hear nothing of them.  I'll
down on my bare knees, if you'll stand our Friend!'  I desired she would
not be in such an agony, and told her she should not down on her knees to
me; but I would gladly help them in what I could.  'I know,' said she,
'you are a good Man, and God will hear your Prayers.'  I desire thee,
said I, to be still and quiet in thy mind; perhaps thy Husband or Sons
may hear of them to-day; if not, let thy Husband get a horse, and come to
me to-morrow morning as soon as he will; and I think, if it please God,
to go with him to seek then.  The Woman seemed transported with joy,
crying, 'Then we shall have our Cows again.'  Her Faith being so strong,
brought the greater Exercise on me, with strong cries to the Lord, that
he would be pleased to make me instrumental in his Hand, for the help of
the poor Family.  In the Morning early comes the old Man.  In the Name of
God, says he, which way shall we go to seek them?  I, being deeply
concerned in my Mind, did not answer him till he had thrice repeated it;
and then I answered, In the Name of God, I would go to seek them; and
said (before I was well aware) we will go to Malmsbury, and at the Horse-
Fair we shall find them.  When I had spoken the Words, I was much
troubled lest they should not prove true.  It was very early, and the
first Man we saw, I asked him if he had seen any stray Milch Cows
thereabouts.  What manner of Cattle are they?  said he.  And the old Man
describing their Mark and Number, he told us there were some stood
chewing their Cuds in the Horse-Fair; but thinking they belonged to some
in the Neighborhood, he did not take particular Notice of them.  When we
came to the Place, the old Man found them to be his; but suffered his
Transports of Joy to rise so high, that I was ashamed of his behavior;
for he fell a hallooing, and threw up his Montier Cap in the Air several
times, till he raised the Neighbors out of their Beds to see what was the
Matter.  'O!' said he, 'I had lost my Cows four or five days ago, and
thought I should never see them again; and this honest Neighbor of mine
told me this Morning, by his own Fire's Side, nine Miles off, that here
I should find them, and here I have them!'  Then up goes his Cap again.
I begged of the poor Man to be quiet, and take his Cows home, and be
thankful; as indeed I was, being reverently bowed in my Spirit before the
Lord, in that he was pleased to put the words of Truth into my mouth.
And the Man drove his Cattle home, to the great Joy of his Family."

Not long after the interview with the Bishop at his own palace, which has
been related, that dignitary, with the Lord Chancellor, in their coaches,
and about twenty clergymen on horseback, made a call at the humble
dwelling of Roberts, on their way to Tedbury, where the Bishop was to
hold a Visitation.  "I could not go out of the country without seeing
you," said the prelate, as the farmer came to his coach door and pressed
him to alight.

"John," asked Priest Evans, the Bishop's kinsman, "is your house free to
entertain such men as we are?"

"Yes, George," said Roberts; "I entertain honest men, and sometimes
others."

"My Lord," said Evans, turning to the Bishop, "John's friends are the
honest men, and we are the others."

The Bishop told Roberts that they could not then alight, but would gladly
drink with him; whereupon the good wife brought out her best beer.
"I commend you, John," quoth the Bishop, as he paused from his hearty
draught; "you keep a cup of good beer in your house.  I have not drank
any that has pleased me better since I left home."  The cup passed next
to the Chancellor, and finally came to Priest Bull, who thrust it aside,
declaring that it was full of hops and heresy.  As to hops, Roberts
replied, he could not say, but as for heresy, he bade the priest take
note that the Lord Bishop had drank of it, and had found no heresy in the
cup.

The Bishop leaned over his coach door and whispered: "John, I advise you
to take care you don't offend against the higher Powers.  I have heard
great complaints against you, that you are the Ringleader of the Quakers
in this Country; and that, if you are not suppressed, all will signify
nothing.  Therefore, pray, John, take care, for the future, you don't
offend any more."

"I like thy Counsel very well," answered Roberts, "and intend to take it.
But thou knowest God is the higher Power; and you mortal Men, however
advanced in this World, are but the lower Power; and it is only because I
endeavor to be obedient to the will of the higher Powers, that the lower
Powers are angry with me.  But I hope, with the assistance of God, to
take thy Counsel, and be subject to the higher Powers, let the lower
Powers do with me as it may please God to suffer them."

The Bishop then said he would like to talk with him further, and
requested him to meet him at Tedbury the next day.  At the time
appointed, Roberts went to the inn where the Bishop lodged, and was
invited to dine with him.  After dinner was over, the prelate told him
that he must go to church, and leave off holding conventicles at his
house, of which great complaint was made.  This he flatly refused to do;
and the Bishop, losing patience, ordered the constable to be sent for.
Roberts told him that if, after coming to his house under the guise of
friendship, he should betray him and send him to prison, he, who had
hitherto commended him for his moderation, would put his name in print,
and cause it to stink before all sober people.  It was the priests, he
told him, who set him on; but, instead of hearkening to them, he should
commend them to some honest vocation, and not suffer them to rob their
honest neighbors, and feed on the fruits of other men's toil, like
caterpillars.

"Whom do you call caterpillars?" cried Priest Rich, of North Surrey.

"We farmers," said Roberts, "call those so who live on other men's
fields, and by the sweat of other men's brows; and if thou dost so, thou
mayst be one of them."

This reply so enraged the Bishop's attendants that they could only be
appeased by an order for the constable to take him to jail.  In fact,
there was some ground for complaint of a lack of courtesy on the part of
the blunt farmer; and the Christian virtue of forbearance, even in
Bishops, has its limits.

The constable, obeying the summons, came to the inn, at the door of which
the landlady met him.  "What do you here!" cried the good woman, "when
honest John is going to be sent to prison?  Here, come along with me."
The constable, nothing loath, followed her into a private room, where she
concealed him.  Word was sent to the Bishop, that the constable was not
to be found; and the prelate, telling Roberts he could send him to jail
in the afternoon, dismissed him until evening.  At the hour appointed,
the latter waited upon the Bishop, and found with him only one priest and
a lay gentleman.  The priest begged the Bishop to be allowed to discourse
with the prisoner; and, leave being granted, he began by telling Roberts
that the knowledge of the Scriptures had made him mad, and that it was a
great pity he had ever seen them.

"Thou art an unworthy man," said the Quaker, "and I 'll not dispute with
thee.  If the knowledge of the Scriptures has made me mad, the knowledge
of the sack-pot hath almost made thee mad; and if we two madmen should
dispute about religion, we should make mad work of it."

"An 't please you, my Lord," said the scandalized priest, "he says I 'm
drunk."

The Bishop asked Roberts to repeat his words; and, instead of
reprimanding him, as the priest expected, was so much amused that he held
up his hands and laughed; whereupon the offended inferior took a hasty
leave.  The Bishop, who was evidently glad to be rid of him, now turned
to Roberts, and complained that he had dealt hardly with him, in telling
him, before so many gentlemen, that he had sought to betray him by
professions of friendship, in order to send him to prison; and that,
if he had not done as he did, people would have reported him as an
encourager of the Quakers.  "But now, John," said the good prelate, "I'll
burn the warrant against you before your face."  "You know, Mr. Burnet,"
he continued, addressing his attendant, "that a Ring of Bells may be made
of excellent metal, but they may be out of tune; so we may say of John:
he is a man of as good metal as I ever met with, but quite out of tune."

"Thou mayst well say so," quoth Roberts, "for I can't tune after thy
pipe."

The inferior clergy were by no means so lenient as the Bishop.  They
regarded Roberts as the ringleader of Dissent, an impracticable,
obstinate, contumacious heretic, not only refusing to pay them tithes
himself, but encouraging others to the same course.  Hence, they thought
it necessary to visit upon him the full rigor of the law.  His crops were
taken from his field, and his cattle from his yard.  He was often
committed to the jail, where, on one occasion, he was kept, with many
others, for a long time, through the malice of the jailer, who refused to
put the names of his prisoners in the Calendar, that they might have a
hearing.  But the spirit of the old Commonwealth's man remained
steadfast.  When Justice George, at the Ram in Cirencester, told him he
must conform, and go to church, or suffer the penalty of the law, he
replied that he had heard indeed that some were formerly whipped out of
the Temple, but he had never heard of any being whipped in.  The Justice,
pointing, through the open window of the inn, at the church tower, asked
him what that was.  "Thou mayst call it a daw-house," answered the
incorrigible Quaker.  "Dost thou not see how the jackdaws flock about
it?"

Sometimes it happened that the clergyman was also a magistrate, and
united in his own person the authority of the State and the zeal of the
Church.  Justice Parsons, of Gloucester, was a functionary of this sort.
He wielded the sword of the Spirit on the Sabbath against Dissenters, and
on week days belabored them with the arm of flesh and the constable's
staff.  At one time he had between forty and fifty of them locked up in
Gloucester Castle, among them Roberts and his sons, on the charge of
attending conventicles.  But the troublesome prisoners baffled his
vigilance, and turned their prison into a meeting-house, and held their
conventicles in defiance of him.  The Reverend Justice pounced upon them
on one occasion, with his attendants.  An old, gray-haired man, formerly
a strolling fencing-master, was preaching when he came in.  The Justice
laid hold of him by his white locks, and strove to pull him down, but the
tall fencing-raster stood firm and spoke on; he then tried to gag him,
but failed in that also.  He demanded the names of the prisoners, but no
one answered him.  A voice (we fancy it was that of our old friend
Roberts) called out: "The Devil must be hard put to it to have his
drudgery done, when the Priests must leave their pulpits to turn
informers against poor prisoners."  The Justice obtained a list of the
names of the prisoners, made out on their commitment, and, taking it for
granted that all were still present, issued warrants for the collection
of fines by levies upon their estates.  Among the names was that of a
poor widow, who had been discharged, and was living, at the time the
clerical magistrate swore she was at the meeting, twenty miles distant
from the prison.

Soon after this event, our old friend fell sick.  He had been discharged
from prison, but his sons were still confined.  The eldest had leave,
however, to attend him in his illness, and he bears his testimony that
the Lord was pleased to favor his father with His living presence in his
last moments.  In keeping with the sturdy Non-conformist's life, he was
interred at the foot of his own orchard, in Siddington, a spot he had
selected for a burial-ground long before, where neither the foot of a
priest nor the shadow of a steeple-house could rest upon his grave.

In closing our notice of this pleasant old narrative, we may remark that
the light it sheds upon the antagonistic religious parties of the time is
calculated to dissipate prejudices and correct misapprehensions, common
alike to Churchmen and Dissenters.  The genial humor, sound sense, and
sterling virtues of the Quaker farmer should teach the one class that
poor James Nayler, in his craziness and folly, was not a fair
representative of his sect; while the kind nature, the hearty
appreciation of goodness, and the generosity and candor of Bishop
Nicholson should convince the other class that a prelate is not
necessarily, and by virtue of his mitre, a Laud or a Bonner.  The
Dissenters of the seventeenth century may well be forgiven for the
asperity of their language; men whose ears had been cropped because they
would not recognize Charles I. as a blessed martyr, and his scandalous
son as the head of the Church, could scarcely be expected to make
discriminations, or suggest palliating circumstances, favorable to any
class of their adversaries.  To use the homely but apt simile of
McFingal,

         "The will's confirmed by treatment horrid,
          As hides grow harder when they're curried."

They were wronged, and they told the world of it.  Unlike Shakespeare's
cardinal, they did not die without a sign.  They branded, by their fierce
epithets, the foreheads of their persecutors more deeply than the
sheriff's hot iron did their own.  If they lost their ears, they enjoyed
the satisfaction of making those of their oppressors tingle.  Knowing
their persecutors to be in the wrong, they did not always inquire whether
they themselves had been entirely right, and had done no unrequired works
of supererogation by the way of "testimony" against their neighbors' mode
cf worship.  And so from pillory and whipping-post, from prison and
scaffold, they sent forth their wail and execration, their miserere and
anathema, and the sound thereof has reached down to our day.  May it
never wholly die away until, the world over, the forcing of conscience is
regarded as a crime against humanity and a usurpation of God's
prerogative.  But abhorring, as we must, persecution under whatever
pretext it is employed, we are not, therefore, to conclude that all
persecutors were bad and unfeeling men.  Many of their severities, upon
which we now look back with horror, were, beyond a question, the result
of an intense anxiety for the well-being of immortal souls, endangered by
the poison which, in their view, heresy was casting into the waters of
life.  Coleridge, in one of the moods of a mind which traversed in
imagination the vast circle of human experience, reaches this point in
his Table-Talk.  "It would require," says he, "stronger arguments than
any I have seen to convince me that men in authority have not a right,
involved in an imperative duty, to deter those under their control from
teaching or countenancing doctrines which they believe to be damnable,
and even to punish with death those who violate such prohibition."  It
would not be very difficult for us to imagine a tender-hearted Inquisitor
of this stamp, stifling his weak compassion for the shrieking wretch
under bodily torment by his strong pity for souls in danger of perdition
from the sufferer's heresy.  We all know with what satisfaction the
gentle-spirited Melanethon heard of the burning of Servetus, and with
what zeal he defended it.  The truth is, the notion that an intellectual
recognition of certain dogmas is the essential condition of salvation
lies at the bottom of all intolerance in matters of religion.  Under this
impression, men are too apt to forget that the great end of Christianity
is love, and that charity is its crowning virtue; they overlook the
beautiful significance of the parable of the heretic Samaritan and the
orthodox Pharisee: and thus, by suffering their speculative opinions of
the next world to make them uncharitable and cruel in this, they are
really the worse for them, even admitting them to be true.






                             SAMUEL HOPKINS.

Three quarters of a century ago, the name of Samuel Hopkins was as
familiar as a household word throughout New England.  It was a spell
wherewith to raise at once a storm of theological controversy.  The
venerable minister who bore it had his thousands of ardent young
disciples, as well as defenders and followers of mature age and
acknowledged talent; a hundred pulpits propagated the dogmas which he had
engrafted on the stock of Calvinism.  Nor did he lack numerous and
powerful antagonists.  The sledge ecclesiastic, with more or less effect,
was unceasingly plied upon the strong-linked chain of argument which he
slowly and painfully elaborated in the seclusion of his parish.  The
press groaned under large volumes of theological, metaphysical, and
psychological disquisition, the very thought of which is now "a weariness
to the flesh;" in rapid succession pamphlet encountered pamphlet, horned,
beaked, and sharp of talon, grappling with each other in mid-air, like
Milton's angels.  That loud controversy, the sound whereof went over
Christendom, awakening responses from beyond the Atlantic, has now died
away; its watchwords no longer stir the blood of belligerent sermonizers;
its very terms and definitions have well-nigh become obsolete and
unintelligible.  The hands which wrote and the tongues which spoke in
that day are now all cold and silent; even Emmons, the brave old
intellectual athlete of Franklin, now sleeps with his fathers,--the last
of the giants.  Their fame is still in all the churches; effeminate
clerical dandyism still affects to do homage to their memories; the
earnest young theologian, exploring with awe the mountainous debris of
their controversial lore, ponders over the colossal thoughts entombed
therein, as he would over the gigantic fossils of an early creation, and
endeavors in vain to recall to the skeleton abstractions before him the
warm and vigorous life wherewith they were once clothed; but
Hopkinsianism, as a distinct and living school of philosophy, theology,
and metaphysics, no longer exists.  It has no living oracles left; and
its memory survives only in the doctrinal treatises of the elder and
younger Edwards, Hopkins, Bellamy, and Emmons.

It is no part of our present purpose to discuss the merits of the system
in question.  Indeed, looking at the great controversy which divided New
England Calvinism in the eighteenth century, from a point of view which
secures our impartiality and freedom from prejudice, we find it
exceedingly difficult to get a precise idea of what was actually at
issue.  To our poor comprehension, much of the dispute hinges upon names
rather than things; on the manner of reaching conclusions quite as much
as upon the conclusions themselves.  Its origin may be traced to the
great religious awakening of the middle of the past century, when the
dogmas of the Calvinistic faith were subjected to the inquiry of acute
and earnest minds, roused up from the incurious ease and passive
indifference of nominal orthodoxy.  Without intending it, it broke down
some of the barriers which separated Arminianism and Calvinism; its
product, Hopkinsianism, while it pushed the doctrine of the Genevan
reformer on the subject of the Divine decrees and agency to that extreme
point where it well-nigh loses itself in Pantheism, held at the same time
that guilt could not be hereditary; that man, being responsible for his
sinful acts, and not for his sinful nature, can only be justified by a
personal holiness, consisting not so much in legal obedience as in that
disinterested benevolence which prefers the glory of God and the welfare
of universal being above the happiness of self.  It had the merit,
whatever it may be, of reducing the doctrines of the Reformation to an
ingenious and scholastic form of theology; of bringing them boldly to the
test of reason and philosophy.  Its leading advocates were not mere
heartless reasoners and closet speculators.  They taught that sin was
selfishness, and holiness self-denying benevolence, and they endeavored
to practise accordingly.  Their lives recommended their doctrines.  They
were bold and faithful in the discharge of what they regarded as duty.
In the midst of slave-holders, and in an age of comparative darkness on
the subject of human rights, Hopkins and the younger Edwards lifted up
their voices for the slave.  And twelve years ago, when Abolitionism was
everywhere spoken against, and the whole land was convulsed with mobs to
suppress it, the venerable Emmons, burdened with the weight of ninety
years, made a journey to New York, to attend a meeting of the Anti-
Slavery Society.  Let those who condemn the creed of these men see to
it that they do not fall behind them in practical righteousness and
faithfulness to the convictions of duty.

Samuel Hopkins, who gave his name to the religious system in question,
was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1721.  In his fifteenth year he
was placed under the care of a neighboring clergyman, preparatory for
college, which he entered about a year after.  In 1740, the celebrated
Whitefield visited New Haven, and awakened there, as elsewhere, serious
inquiry on religious subjects.  He was followed the succeeding spring by
Gilbert Tennent, the New Jersey revivalist, a stirring and powerful
preacher.  A great change took place in the college.  All the phenomena
which President Edwards has described in his account of the Northampton
awakening were reproduced among the students.  The excellent David
Brainard, then a member of the college, visited Hopkins in his apartment,
and, by a few plain and earnest words, convinced him that he was a
stranger to vital Christianity.  In his autobiographical sketch, he
describes in simple and affecting language the dark and desolate state of
his mind at this period, and the particular exercise which finally
afforded him some degree of relief, and which he afterwards appears to
have regarded as his conversion from spiritual death to life.  When he
first heard Tennent, regarding him as the greatest as well as the best of
men, he made up his mind to study theology with him; but just before the
commencement at which he was to take his degree, the elder Edwards
preached at New Haven.  Struck by the power of the great theologian, he
at once resolved to make him his spiritual father.  In the winter
following, he left his father's house on horseback, on a journey of
eighty miles to Northampton.  Arriving at the house of President Edwards,
he was disappointed by hearing that he was absent on a preaching tour.
But he was kindly received by the gifted and accomplished lady of the
mansion, and encouraged to remain during the winter.  Still doubtful in
respect to his own spiritual state, he was, he says, "very gloomy, and
retired most of the time in his chamber."  The kind heart of his amiable
hostess was touched by his evident affliction.  After some days she came
to his chamber, and, with the gentleness and delicacy of a true woman,
inquired into the cause of his unhappiness.  The young student disclosed
to her, without reserve, the state of his feelings and the extent of his
fears.  "She told me," says the Doctor, "that she had had peculiar
exercises respecting me since I had been in the family; that she trusted
I should receive light and comfort, and doubted not that God intended yet
to do great things by me."

After pursuing his studies for some months with the Puritan philosopher,
young Hopkins commenced preaching, and, in 1743, was ordained at
Sheffield, (now Great Barrington') in the western part of Massachusetts.
There were at the time only about thirty families in the town.  He says
it was a matter of great regret to him to be obliged to settle so far
from his spiritual guide and tutor but seven years after he was relieved
and gratified by the removal of Edwards to Stockbridge, as the Indian
missionary at that station, seven miles only from his own residence; and
for several years the great metaphysician and his favorite pupil enjoyed
the privilege of familiar intercourse with each other.  The removal of
the former in 1758 to Princeton, New Jersey, and his death, which soon
followed, are mentioned in the diary of Hopkins as sore trials and
afflictive dispensations.

Obtaining a dismissal from his society in Great Barrington in 1769,
he was installed at Newport the next year, as minister of the first
Congregational church in that place.  Newport, at this period, was, in
size, wealth, and commercial importance, the second town in New England.
It was the great slave mart of the North.  Vessels loaded with stolen men
and women and children, consigned to its merchant princes, lay at its
wharves; immortal beings were sold daily in its market, like cattle at a
fair.  The soul of Hopkins was moved by the appalling spectacle.  A
strong conviction of the great wrong of slavery, and of its utter
incompatibility with the Christian profession, seized upon his mind.
While at Great Barrington, he had himself owned a slave, whom he had sold
on leaving the place, without compunction or suspicion in regard to the
rightfulness of the transaction.  He now saw the origin of the system in
its true light; he heard the seamen engaged in the African trade tell of
the horrible scenes of fire and blood which they had witnessed, and in
which they had been actors; he saw the half-suffocated wretches brought
up from their noisome and narrow prison, their squalid countenances and
skeleton forms bearing fearful evidence of the suffering attendant upon
the transportation from their native homes.  The demoralizing effects of
slaveholding everywhere fo

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