CROMWELL. CROMWELL'S BIRTHPLACE. HUNTINGDON itself lies pleasantly along the left bank of the Ouse, sloping pleasantly upwards from Ouse Bridge, which connects it with the old village of Godmanchester; the Town itself consisting mainly of one fair street, which towards the north end of it opens into a kind of irregular market-place, and then contracting again soon terminates. The two churches of All-Saints' and St. John's, as you walk up northward from the Bridge, appear successively on your left; the church-yards flanked with shops or other houses. The Ouse, which is of very circular course in this quarter, winding as if reluctant to enter the Fen-country,-says one topographer, has still a respectable drab-colour gathered from the clays of Bedfordshire, has not yet the Stygian black which in a few miles further it assumes for good. Huntingdon, as it were, looks over into the Fens; Godmanchester, just across the river, already stands on black bog. The country to the East is all Fen (mostly unreclaimed in Oliver's time, and still of a very dropsical character); to the West it is hard green ground, agreeably broken into little heights, duly fringed with wood, and bearing marks of comfortable long-continued cultivation. Here, on the edge of the firm green land, and looking over into the black marshes with their alder-trees and willow-trees, did Oliver Cromwell pass his young years. Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 34. : COINCIDENCES. While Oliver Cromwell was entering himself of SidneySussex College, William Shakspeare was taking his farewell of this world. Oliver's Father had, most likely, come with him; it is but some fifteen miles from Huntingdon; you can go and come in a day. Oliver's Father saw Oliver write in the Album at Cambridge at Stratford, Shakspeare's Ann Hathaway was weeping over his bed. The first world-great thing that remains of English History, the Literature of Shakspeare, was ending; the second world-great thing that remains of English History, the armed Appeal of Puritanism to the Invisible God of Heaven against many very visible Devils, on Earth and Elsewhere, was, so to speak, beginning. They have their exits and their entrances. And one People, in its time, plays many parts. Chevalier Florian, in his "Life of Cervantes," has remarked that Shakspeare's death-day, 23rd April, 1616, was likewise that of Cervantes at Madrid. Twenty-third of April' is, sure enough, the authentic Spanish date: but Chevalier Florian has omitted to notice that the English twenty-third is of Old Style. The brave Miguel died ten days before Shakspeare; and already lay buried, smoothed right nobly into his long rest. The Historical Student can meditate on these things. Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 59. HIS CONVERSION. In those years it must be that Dr. Simcott, Physician in Huntingdon, had to do with Oliver's hypochondriac maladies. He told Sir Philip Warwick, unluckily specifying no date, or none that has survived, "he had often been sent for at midnight" Mr. Cromwell for many years was very "splenetic" (spleen-struck), often thought he was just about to die, and also "had fancies about the Town Cross." Brief intimation, of which the reflecting reader may make a great deal. Samuel Let Johnson, too, had hypochondrias; all great souls are apt to have,—and to be in thick darkness generally, till the eternal ways and the celestial guiding-stars disclose themselves, and the vague Abyss of Life knit itself up into Firmaments for them. Temptations in the wilderness, Choices of Hercules, and the like, in succinct or loose form, are appointed for every man that will assert a soul in himself and be a man. Oliver take comfort in his dark sorrows and melancholies. The quantity of sorrow he has, does it not mean withal the quantity of sympathy he has, the quantity of faculty and victory he shall yet have? Our sorrow is the inverted image of our nobleness. The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope. Black smoke as of Tophet filling all your universe, it can yet by true heartenergy become flame, and brilliancy of Heaven. Courage! It is therefore in these years, undated by History, that we must place Oliver's clear recognition of Calvinistic Christianity; what he, with unspeakable joy, would name his Conversionhis deliverance from the jaws of Eternal Death. Certainly a grand epoch for a man: properly the one epoch; the turningpoint which guides upwards, or guides downwards, him and his activity for evermore. Wilt thou join with the dragons; wilt thou join with the Gods? Of thee too the question is asked ; -whether by a man in Geneva gown, by a man in 'Four surplices at Allhallow-tide,' with words very imperfect; or by no man and no words, but only by the Silences, by the Eternities, by the Life everlasting and the Death everlasting. That the 'Sense of difference between Right and Wrong' had filled all Time and all Space for man, and bodied itself forth into a Heaven and Hell for him; this constitutes the grand feature of those Puritan, Old-Christian Ages; this is the element which stamps them as Heroic, and has rendered their works great, manlike, fruitful to all generations. It is by far the memorablest achievement of our Species; without that element in some form or other, nothing of Heroic had ever been among us. For many centuries Catholic Christianity—a fit embodiment of that divine Sense, had been current more or less, making |