ESTIMATES OF THE ENGLISH KINGS.

XXV.—OLIVER, LORD PROTECTOR.

WE offer no apology for preferring fact to pedantic prejudice, and inserting the name of the Lord Protector, Oliver, among the Sovereigns of England, though he did not bear the title of King, and reached the supreme government of this country by a very different process from the ordinary rule of hereditary succession.

Great as have been the diversities in the moral estimates of

Oliver Cromwell. put forth from time to time by authors of standard authority, and by orators of established reputation, the national sentiment respecting him has never quite acquiesced in the reprobation which has been the predominant feature of these moral judgments, but has insisted on retaining, notwithstanding all that was alleged against him on other grounds, a more or less covert admiration for him as one who raised England to a high position among the nations of Europe. The memory of this achievement, revived and strengthened by the ignominious events of the period succeeding the Restoration of the Stuarts, has stood the reputation of Oliver in good stead against the calumnies of a period of triumphant reaction, and has almost proved a match, in its purely traditionary form, for the worst depreciations of party prejudice and ecclesiastical rancour. Wherever the sentimental conception of the character of Charles I. has not been paramount, there has always been a certain sympathy for his most determined opponent ; but it was not till the present century that anything like a critical attempt was made to ascertain the real character of the man whose reputation had up to that time been a strange mixture of traditionary respect and profound horror. Much still remains to be done, so far as concerns explanatory details, but the broad features of the character can now be traced with tolerable certainty, and the theories which are irreconcilable with estab- lished facts can now be indicated with some assurance.

"I called not myself to this place," Oliver declared to his first

Parliament, "I say again, I called not myself to this place ! of that God is witness ; and I have many witnesses who, I do believe, could lay down their lives bearing witness to the truth of that,— namely, that I called not myself to this place. And being in it, I bear not witness to myself, but God and the people of these nations have also borne testimony to it. If my calling be from God, and my testimony from the people, God and the people shall take it from me, else I will not part with it. I should be false to the trust that God hath placed in me, and to the interest of the people of these Nations, if I did." With this emphatic declaration he prefaces a brief but interesting statement, in his impressive though unpremeditated and inartistic style of speaking, full of earnest and solemn appeals to the corroborative knowledge of many of his hearers, and of an omniscient God, as to the successive steps by which he had risen to the position of Protector, in vindi- cation of the motives of his actions, and the basis of his authority. According to the truth or falsehood of this declaration, then, and to his own actual belief in its truth, the character of the Protector must in a great measure stand or fall, and our decision between the conflicting reputations of him as an ambitious and designing hypocrite and a true-hearted and honest man must be really determined. Although, therefore, the scale on which our Estimates are framed does not admit of our inserting this exposi- tory statement itself, we shall carefully keep it in mind in our attempt to analyze the man from whose lips it proceeded.

Oliver Cromwell, as is now well known, was the son of a gentleman living in the quiet little town of Huntingdon, and who was the younger son of the head of a county family of con- siderable landed possessions, obtained from the favour of Henry VIII. Whether Oliver's father added to a moderate income by the proceeds of a brewing business in Huntingdon is more than doubtful, but in any case he not only took a leading part in the municipal affairs of the town, but lived close to the principal seat of his family, and was on friendly terms with his elder brother. Allthe connections, collaterally or by marriage, of Oliver's family,

were also with county and landed families, so that he is fully justi- fied in the first words of his statement just referred to,—" I was by birth a Gentleman, living neither in any considerable height, nor yet in obscurity." The life and daily influences of a small borough, then, modified and supplemented by close connection and frequent association with the life of landed proprietors, constituted the social atmosphere in which the character of Oliver was deve- loped during his earlier years. Such a combination of social in- fluences would tend in any case towards breadth of social vision, and immunity from the narrower prejudices of both country and town. From the first his station rested on the two principal bases on which English society is built up, and he was thus natu- rally qualified, should his capacity be equal to his opportunities, to become an interpreter of each of these classes to the other, and the intelligent moderator and ruler of both. The education of a borough grammar-school was supplemented, in his case, by the collegiate and probably the legal studies of a member of the gentry class. He went to school with the future corporation and townsmen of Huntingdon, he mixed at Cambridge with the future landed proprietors and legislators of all England, and in London came into contact with the living heart of the age. "When he returned to his native town, and settled down there in the character of a young husband and householder, his social and civic training was already a more than usually complete one, and he soon afterwards fell under a religious influence still more powerful and significant. At what period exactly his character was first affected in this last direction we have no means of ascertaining. The stories which have long been inserted in ordinary biographies respecting his early debauchery and ruinous extravagance are quite inconsistent with each other, and with the chronology of the established facts of his early life, and the strong and remorseful language in which he himself refers to his former religious indifference, and which has been supposed to corroborate these stories, does not by any means necessarily bear this interpretation. All that we need infer is that up to a certain epoch Oliver paid little attention to the deeper and more serious questions which are connected with the relations between God and man, and which are inseparable from all real self-knowledge and knowledge of other men, and an acquaintance with which is the spring of all the higher impulses of human action. His higher nature remained stagnant and undeveloped, his morality was merely conventional, and his actions, if blameless in them- selves, were guided only by secondary and external considerations. He accepted his morality and his religions creed from his family and neighbours, and he conformed his actions to the ordinary and customary standards of the society in which he lived. The well-springs of his own nature had never been drawn from, and his own life had in fact not yet commenced. How the change did commence—whether the self-evolution was convulsive but gradual, as his own expressions rather seem to indicate, and like the struggles into consciousness and renewed life of a man recover- ing from drowning, or whether it was a sudden revelation of unstirred forces, and unrecognized responsibilities ; whether the dawning to the perfect day was slow, and often dimmed by the mists and vapours of departing night, or whether the gleam of light from above which disclosed the truth, and the conviction of that truth were simultaneous—we can only conjecture. All that we know is that the revolution seriously affected his bodily health, and for a time seemed to threaten the subversion of the intellect itself. The depths and capabilities of the nature thus aroused were, in- deed, so great that the mind of the man himself reeled under this new-birth. Dr. Simcott, of Huntingdon, and Sir Theodore Mayerne, the Court physician in London, both prescribed for him as a hypochondriac. Gradually, however, his mind became clearer and more composed. The exaggerated and overwhelming sense of past alienation from God gradually gave way to an earnest reliance on the active assistance and guardianship of Divine Love, which he never again lost in all the trials of his subsequent career. His bodily constitution, though perhaps never fundamentally strong, and undermined by the unhealthy air of the Fens, became outwardly robust, and capable, under the influence of a powerful will, of undergoing a great amount of physical exertion.

One of those who had been attached to his household when he was Lord Protector, Mr. John Maidston, writing to Governor Winthrop, in New England, at the end of March, 1660, when the Presbyterian Members had resumed their seats in the Long Par- liament, under the authority of Monk, and the Restoration was no longer doubtful, has given a most striking delinea- tion of Oliver, as he knew him, or as he appeared to him "His body," he says, "was well-compact and strong, his stature under six foot (I believe about two inches), his head so shaped as you might see it a storehouse and shop both of a vast treasury of ;natural parts." The Royalist, Sir Philip Warwick, recalling in later years his recollection of the first thne when he saw Oliver, at the commencement of the Long Parliament, speaks of his -" stature" as "of a good size, his countenance swollen and reddish, his voice sharp and untuneable, and his eloquence full of fervour," and complains that he was "very much hearkened unto." The portrait painted by Sir Peter Lely towards the close of Oliver's riife, which appears to us to correspond best to our conception of the real man, is quite in harmony with Maidston's description, and lends strength to the theory as to the original from whom Milton drew his portrait of Adam : —

"His fair large front and eye sublime declar'd

Absolute rule ; and hyacinthine locks Round from his parted forelock manly hung Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad."

The massive breadth of the forehead, and the large, roughly-cut -nose give an impression of intellectual ability and natural leader- ship, which is confirmed and yet modified in its character by the ether features of the countenance. The eyes, full of composed and deep thoughtfulness, yet concentrated and imperative in their almost threatening look of searching scrutiny, seem to intimate the same poise of the intellect and the emotions which is expressed by the full, firm, nervous mouth and powerfully rounded chin, in which, with all their strength, there is not a touch of sinister hard- iness or insolent brutality. The impression left by the face as a Whole is well-ordered though passionate force of character, and the feeling it is calculated to inspire is not that of terrified aversion, but of deep and overpowering awe. To such a man as this picture seems to portray, it would be very difficult to say sio, but there is that in the face which appears also to ,convey the conviction that moral courage would be the safest and readiest road to its sympathy and protection. It is the face of one with whom absolute authority was an incident of his nature, rather than an impulse of personal will, who was an instinctive rather than a voluntary autocrat. That this instinct of command was a leading characteristic of Oliver, of the existence of which 'he was himself from time to time even painfully conscious, and from the opportunities and necessity of which he often struggled to escape as from a temptation, no one who has studied his actions at all deeply can entertain a doubt. An unfriendly writer testifies to the earnestness with which he endeavoured to dissuade Fairfax 'from his obstinate resolution to surrender the chief command of the army on the breach with the Scotch Covenanters when they proclaimed the King of Scots. And we believe that his own declaration to his first Protectoral Parliament as to his conduct .after the crowning victory at Worcester is quite true :—" I say to gou, I hoped to have had leave to retire to a private life. I begged to be dismissed of my charge ; I begged it again and again ; and God be Judge between me and all men, if I lie in this matter. That I lie not in matter of fact, is known to very many ; but whether I tell a lie in my heart, as labouring to represent to you what was not upon my heart, I say, the Lord be Judge ! Let uncharitable men, who measure others by themselves, judge as they please ! But I could not obtain what my soul longed for." He affirms—and, we believe, with equal truth—the same desire to have been a main cause of his summoning the "Little Parliament" after the dissolution of the Long Parliament. 'A chief end to myself was to lay down the power which was in my hands. I say to you again, in the presence of that God who hath blessed and been with me in all my adversities and successes, that was as to myself my greatest end ! A desire, perhaps, I am afraid sinful enough, to be quit of the power God had most clearly by his Providence put into my hands, before he called me to lay it down, before these honest ends of our fighting -were attained and settled ! I say the authority I had in my hand, 'being so boundless as it was. By.Act of Parliament I was Lord General of all the Forces in the three nations of England, Scot- land, and Ireland . . . . in which unlimited condition I did not desire to live a day." His answer to a letter from Cardinal Mazarin, written at this crisis, testifies curiously how fruitlessly he endeavoured to reduce himself in his own eyes to the position of a simple private individual, and to hold back his hand from the guiding helm of State.

But although he retained, as a rule, the control over his autocratic inclination, or by convulsive efforts sought to re- lieve himself from its temptations, in all probability the decisions and actions of his life were more or less affected by it, and at times were, under its influence, warped from the standard of justice and right. Passing over the doubtful case of his forcible dissolution of the Long Parliament, in which he acted, no doubt, whether justifiably or not, on the impulse of the moment, and without any clearly premeditated design, and the terrible scene at Drogheda, as to which his own despatch to the Speaker shows evident moral misgivings, we seem to trace the occasional predominance of the impatient spirit of conscious ability in some of these arbitrary acts during his Protectorate, in which he sacrificed the privileges of his Parliaments and the liberties of in- dividuals, to the professed necessities of the situation. A good deal may be urged with plausibility in defence of these question- able proceedings, and in proof that the necessity was real and urgent ; but they nevertheless leave behind on the mind of an impartial observer a suspicion that their real explanation lies in the autocratic and passionate nature of the Protector himself, which sometimes broke through the restraints of his better judgment, and sometimes created the very necessity which in his self-deception he alleged as his excuse. To such cases, and similar backslidings on other points from the moral standard by which he professed to be actuated, and to which, we believe, his actions were generally conformed, the remark applies with which Maidston concludes his discriminating estimate already alluded to :—" He lived and died in comfortable communion with God, as judicious persona near him well observed. He was that Mordecai that sought the welfare of his people and spake peace to his seed. Yet were his temptations such, as it appeared frequently that he that had grace enough for many men, may have too little for himself, the treasure he had being but in an earthen vessel, and that equally defiled with original sin as any other man's nature is." The exact proportion between the temptations resisted and the temptations yielded to in the case of Oliver Cromwell can, of course, never be satisfactorily determined, nor do we pretend to draw either a perfect ruler or a perfect man, but it is important to observe that one who saw the failures had no doubt at the same time as to the general bias of the character. "His temper was exceeding fiery," Alaidston himself says, "as I have known, but the flame of it kept down, for the most part, or soon allayed with those moral endow- ments he had. He was naturally compassionate towards objects in distress, even to an effeminate measure ; though God had made him a heart wherein was left little room for any fear but what was due to himself, of which there was a large proportion, yet did he exceed in tenderness towards sufferers. A larger soul, I think, bath seldom dwelt in a house of clay than his was. I do believe, if his story were impartially transmitted, and the unprejudiced world well possessed with it, she would add him to her nine worthies, and make up that number a Deconviri." The temptations of a period of revolution to a man who is conscious of the capacity to goverh are so great, that no one who has not examined into the credibility of the evidence which is often thought to afford convincing proof of the designing and selfish ambition of Oliver, and has seen it again and again disappear on an application of the ordinary tests of truth and falsehood, can acquire that con- fidence in the general rectitude and anxious disinterestedness of his conduct which can entitle him to regard the deviations from right as the marked exception to the general rule, and to pro- nounce'a favourable moral verdict on the character of the man as a whole. Such a verdict, however, may, we believe, be safely given in the ease of Oliver Cromwell. In contrast with the almost single case of apparent cruelty and bloodthirstiness at the capture of Drogheda, stand not only repeated acts of clemency and compas- sion, but the testimony of his most prejudiced opponents as to his general aversion to cruelty and to blood-shedding, and his habitual magnanimity. Those only will render the decision doubtful as to his moral estimation who insist on attributing to him an ideal character of pure faultlessness, at the expense of the reputation of all the great men with whom he came into political collision, and of the dictates of justice and humanity.

This general predominance of self-restraint and moderation in the conduct of Oliver was greatly aided by another quality of his natural disposition, which those have lost sight of who rest his claims to admiration on the commanding influences of a strong will. Though his imperial capacity might sometimes make him impatient of opposition and mismanagement, he possessed also in a large measure the moderation and the patience which spring from a wide and far-sighted perception of the situation in all its aspects. The same power which enabled him to apprehend so quickly and so justly the true ends to be pursued, and the beet ways to those ends, gave him also a sympathetic insight into the different light in which the same questions might present them-

selves to the minds and feelings of other men equally conscienti- ous and equally eager to achieve the same substantial end.

Seldom, if ever, has so emotional a nature, so strong a will, and so consciously superior an intellect been so tolerant of the weakness and

hesitations of others. A natural insight into character,

slightly weakened, perhaps, by a leaning towards the most charitable construction of doubtful features, gave him a power of appealing to common feelings and aspirations in those whose outward action was most inharmonious with his own. Strong in himself, he preferred to disarm rather than to crush opposition. The prominence of the few occasions on which he overcame his opponents by an appeal to force has misled readers of history into the idea that this was his habitual mode of action—and many eloquent words have been wasted both on his supposed heroic contempt for formularies and shams, and on the baseness of the triumph in his success of brute force over thoughtful conscientious- ness. But, in fact, with the capacity and natural impulses of an autocrat, Oliver possessed the truest appreciation of the inferiority intellectually as well as morally of Force to Reason. A resort to the former he always regarded as a confession of weakness, as mortifying to his own intellectual pride as it was distasteful to his keen moral perceptions, and which, if resorted to through supposed necessity, was to be renounced at the earliest opportunity. No one would have sympathized more heartily with the exclamation attributed to the great Italian statesman of this century, in his last moments :—" I will have no state of siege, [i.e. martial law]. Any fool can govern with that ! " Writers on his- tory, while dwelling on his violent and arbitrary acts, have forgotten to observe the numberless cases in which he eschewed the violence, and shrank from the absolutism. To him who studies history in its processes as well as in its results, a close consideration of the events of the period from the King's flight from Oxford in the spring of 1646, to the fatal scene at White- hall in January, 1649, or again, from Worcester fight, to the violent scene at Westminster, will reveal in Oliver Cromwell an amount of wise patience and self-denying forbearance unequalled in the case of any man similarly placed. Or, turning to the very point on which his character as a statesman as well as a lover of con- stitutional freedom may be most easily assailed—his treatment of his own Parliaments—do we not recognize in the very existence of those successive Parliaments the strongest indication of the spirit of a constitutional statesman? If he failed, or rather, had not at the time of his death succeeded in his attempts to create a Representative assembly of the nation, which might share and not monopolise the seats of legislature and judicature, and which, on the other hand might secure the founda- tions of society in a different spirit than that of a blind supporter of old abuses or of a religious persecutor, we ought not to ignore the wisdom and foresight which saw in his own absolete authority only a transitional necessity, which never ceased to seek expedients by which it might be safely resigned, and preferred the notifications and immediate dangers of his reiterated ex- periments to the immediate security and the already assured popularity of an uncontrolled personal government. It is this voluntary preference of mixed and limited government to absolut- ism, under any name, however specious, that constitutes the specific characteristic of Oliver as a Civil Ruler, and which preserves the moral identity of the man who opposed and overthrew the selfish and ineradicable despotism of Charles I., with the man who himself subsequently dissolved and decimated Parliaments, and violated the personal freedom of the subject. It was a certain perception of this identity which rendered Oliver's most arbitrary proceedings endurable, and even not distasteful to the great body of the English nation, and created that general confidence in his purposes as well as his ability which justified him in basing his authority on the will of the People as well as the special call of God.

But the moderating influence which, probably more than any- thing else, kept in check the strong will and conscious capacity for government of Oliver Cromwell was the conviction which he entertained that he was only an instrument in the hand of God, and that it was even more a crime to anticipate the leadings of Providence than it was to wilfully disregard them. He was fully impressed with the belief that it was the duty of the ablest man to wait patiently for the manifestation of the occasion for his especial work in this world, while his equally strong belief that, should he engage in any merely selfish and uninvited undertaking, the protecting power of God would be withdrawn from him, operated to a great extent to restrain any natural tendency to interpret as a call from Heaven the mere promptings of his own ambition. A character which is actuated by guiding ideas such as these requires indeed the background and substratum of a strong understanding, a clear head, and an extensive knowledge of men and things, to prevent it from degenerating into that of a Fanatic. But in Oliver the Puritan ideal of a practical faith realized in the alb= of ordinary life was so entirely paramount, that it was impossible for him to dissociate the lessons of worldly wisdom of that school in which he was being daily taught from the higher principles and impulses of his spiritual life. Both blended in every judgment he formed; and in what is considered to be the contrariety of the natural tendencies of each lay the strength, and security of the conclusions which he drew from their com- bination.

The same width of view and discernment of the realities of things which harmonized his worldly wisdom and his higher promptings in the greater affairs of life, gave him also a true per- ception of the relations of what are called worldly pleasures to the- higher nature of man, and raised him as much above the asceticism, of a religious enthusiast as above the careless licentiousness of the jovial Cavalier. His advice to his son Richard, in a letter to Richard's. wife, is to "be above the pleasures of this life, and outward busi- ness, and then you shall have the true use and comfort of them, and not otherwise," and by this rule he regulated his own social habits. He had naturally a strong sense of humour. "Oliver loves an innocent jest," says one of his soldiers, and his daily life, as. well as his letters, breathe a spirit of manly cheerfulness. He had received a good education, and he maintained and carried out the studies to which he had been thus introduced. He directs the attention of hisson Richard to the study of history and mathematics- and "cosmography," and he recommends in particular Raleigh's. "History of the World," as being "a body of history," and there-- fore more instructive than mere fragments. These pursuits, he adds, "fit for public services, for which a man is born." Contem- poraries tell us of the "noble library" that he formed, and one- who was present bears testimony that Oliver was more than a match for the Scotch Commissioners at their own dialectic arguments. from Mariana and Buchanan. He was a warm friend to the two- older Universities, and the planner of a new one at Durham for the northern counties. He sought out and he was the generous- patron or considerate friend of the best scholars and most cul- tivated men of the age, independently of party or personal preju- dice. The arts of painting and music were both appreciated and patronized by him, and of the latter he was so fond that it might almost seem as if here we had something of the blood of the Welsh.. Williams, from whom he was said to be descended. He could dis- criminate between the use and abuse of dramatic representations, and Davenant received especial permission to perform his comedies. under his protection. In the aid which he gave to the publication. of Walton's Polyglot Bible he showed that, with all his devotiom to the words of Scripture, he was superior to the weak misgivings. of some of the most eminent of the Puritan divines as to the unsettlement of the text. His tastes and his appreciations were- as broad as his sympathies, and as a consequence he drew around his person the best men, and from their ranks filled his councils, and the general administration of the three kingdoms. The breadth of mind which was the source of Oliver's. wonderful patience and consideration for others made hint. also incapable of retaining resentment to those who had been his personal opponents, and even induced him to re- gard with kindly tolerance those who were most opposed to him in political matters, as soon as the crisis was passed. which rendered a hostile attitude towards them necessary on his. part. He not only acted in the spirit of that piece of worldly advice, always to treat your enemy of to-day as if he might become your- friend of to-morrow, but could go further, and regard with com- placency the continued spirit of hostility as long as it did not force. itself on his notice in the shape of acts of aggression ; and even. then his endurance was great if the motives of the aggressor, though. mistaken, were disinterested. Among all the charges which have been brought against him there is none of revengeful implacability. He knew too well the force of early circumstances, and of the bias of natural character, ever to pass the same condemnation on the men themselves that he pronounced on their principles and the cause they espoused. As soon as they ceased to be immediately dangerous, they ceased also with him to be objects of any personal. dislike. The one great idea of pursuing the work to which he- believed he had been specially called was with him so overmaster- ing, that what was personal to himself seemed transitory and. unimportant. It was observed by an attendant on his last hours. that he was then so carried away by solicitude for the future wel- fare of the nation, whose highest interests he believed had been entrusted to his care, that he seemed in his prayers to forget- entirely his own family. And this was the case with a man whose domestic affections were, it is universally admitted, strong in no- ordinary degree.

It is scarcely necessary for us more than simply to advert to- that religious toleration which found in Oliver Cromwell, from that,

4:mule largeness of mind and sympathies, one of its most deter- mined and consistent advocates. He had that rare faculty in a strong believer of recognizing the right of others to believe -differently from himself, and he not only by this principle guided all his earlier career, but made it the foundation of his subsequent :government, and the key-stone of his foreign policy. As he him- self said, "God give us hearts and spirits to keep things equal ! which truly, I must profess to you, hath been my temper. I have had some boxes and rebukes on the one hand, and on the • other, some censuring me for Presbytery, others as an inletter to all the sects and heresies of the nation. I have borne my reproach, but I have, through God's mercy, not been unhappy in hindering -any one religion to impose upon another." Even in the case of Roman Catholics, where the strongest prejudices of his early *raining and the complication of ultramontane pretensions -embarrassed the question, and suggested doubts of the appli- %cability of this great principle, the progress of time and the lessons of an enlarged experience taught him much, and in his -own words to Cardinal Mazarin, "I have of some, and those very many, had compassion, making a difference. Truly I have made a -difference and, as Jude speaks, 'snatched many out of the fire,' the .raging fire of persecution, which did tyrannize over their consciences, -and encroached by an arbitrariness of power upon their estates. And herein it is my purpose, as soon as I can remove impedi- anents and some weights that press me down, to make some 'further progress."

Of the general government of the Lord Proteator it is not %necessary to say much. Its merits have been recognized even by the strongest political opponents, and those who were most preju- diced against his character have acknowledged that it only wanted -the stamp of legitimacy to entitle it to nearly unmixed praise. 'There is scarcely a subject, indeed, to which modern legislation has been applied, to which the hand or the eye of the Protector will not be found to have been directed, and on which the prin- ciples laid down and partly carried into practice by him, have not now been adopted. He was wise before his age, but he was also wise with a fall consideration of the feelings and requirements of his age. He might anticipate like a philosopher, but he acted as a practical though far-seeing statesman. At home many men might detest the foundations of his authority, but they felt .confidence in the justice and wisdom of his administration, while .abroad he was feared and respected by all. Had he lived a little longer, there seems every probability that the wise eclecticism which he had adopted alike in his advocacy of principles and in his choice of men, would have consolidated around his throne a party, bound together by sympathies more enduring than the transient ties of party and dogmatic antecedents, and corn- .prising within its ranks the representative elements of what was most influential and sterling in the national character, which, under his guiding mind, would have commanded more and more entirely 'the national confidence. For such an administration, whatever its .shortcomings might have been in practice, the animating principle laid down by their great chief must have secured a certain eleva- tion of spirit and a certain depth of root. "A thing I am .confident our liberty and prosperity depend upon—Reformation. Make it a shame to see men hold in sin and profaneness, and God will bless you. You will be a blessing to the nation ; and by this will be more repairers of breaches than by anything in the world. 'Truly, these things do respect the souls of men, and the spirits— which are the men. The mind is the man. If that be kept pure, a man signifies somewhat ; if not, I would very fain see what -difference there is between him and a beast. He hath only some activity to do some more mischief."