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' and when I came to him, he looked like a dead man.

After I ' had laid the Sufferings of Friends before him, and had warned ' him accordingly as I was moved to speak to him, he bade me come to his house. So I returned to Kingston; and, the next 'day, went up to Hampton Court to speak farther with him. ' But when I came, Harvey, who was one that waited on him, 'told me the Doctors were not willing that I should speak with ' him. So I passed away, and never saw him more.' Friday, the 20th of August, 1658, this was probably the day on which George Fox saw Oliver riding into Hampton Park with his Guards for the last time. That Friday, as we find, his Highness seemed much better: but on the morrow a sad change had taken place; feverish symptoms, for which the Doctors vigorously prescribed quiet. Saturday to Tuesday the symptoms continued ever worsening: a kind of tertian ague, 'bastard tertian' as the old Doctors name it; for which it was ordered that his Highness should return to Whitehall, as to a more favourable air in that complaint. On Tuesday accordingly he quitted Hampton Court ;-never to see it more.

'His time was come,' says Harvey, ' and neither prayers nor 'tears could prevail with God to lengthen out his life, and con'tinue him longer to us. Prayers abundantly and incessantly

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poured out on his behalf, both publicly and privately, as was ' observed, in a more than ordinary way. Besides many a secret sigh,-secret and unheard by men, yet like the cry of Moses,

more loud, and strongly laying hold on God, than many spoken supplications. All which,-the hearts of God's People 'being thus mightily stirred up,-did seem to beget confidence ' in some, and hopes in all; yea some thoughts in himself, that 'God would restore him.'

'Prayers public and private:' they are worth imagining to ourselves. Meetings of Preachers, Chaplains, and Godly Persons; 'Owen, Goodwin, Sterry, with a company of others, in an adjoining room;' in Whitehall, and elsewhere over religious London and England, fervent outpourings of many a loyal heart. For there were hearts to whom the nobleness of this man was known; and his worth to the Puritan Cause

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was evident. Prayers,-strange enough to us; in a dialect fallen obsolete, forgotten now. Authentic wrestlings of ancient Human Souls,-who were alive then, with their affections, awe-struck pieties; with their Human Wishes, risen to be transcendent, hoping to prevail with the Inexorable. All swallowed now in the depths of dark Time; which is full of such, since the beginning! Truly it is a great scene of World-History, this in old Whitehall: Oliver Cromwell drawing nigh to his end. The exit of Oliver Cromwell, and of English Puritanism; a great Light, one of our few authentic Solar Luminaries, going down now amid the clouds of Death. Like the setting of a great victorious summer Sun-its course now finished. 'So stirbt ein Held,' says Schiller; So dies a Hero! Sight worthy to be worshipped!' He died, this Hero Oliver, in Resignation to God, as the Brave have all done. 'We could not be more desirous he should abide,' says the pious Harvey, than he was content and willing to be gone.' The struggle lasted, amid hope and fear, for ten days. * * *

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On Monday, August 30th, there roared and howled all day a mighty storm of wind. Ludlow, coming up to Town from Essex, could not start in the morning for wind; tried it in the afternoon; still could not get along, in his coach, for headwind; had to stop at Epping. On the morrow, Fleetwood came to him in the Protector's name, to ask, What he wanted here?-Nothing of public concernment, only to see my motherin-law answered the solid man. For indeed he did not know that Oliver was dying; that the glorious hour of Disenthralment, and immortal Liberty' to plunge over precipices with one's self and one's Cause, was so nigh!-It came; and he took the precipices, like a strongboned resolute blind ginhorse, rejoicing in the breakage of its halter, in a very gallant constitutional manner. Adieu, my solid friend; if I go to Vevay, I will read thy Monument there, perhaps not without emotion, after all!

It was on this stormy Monday, while rocking-winds, heard in the sickroom and everywhere, were piping aloud, that Thurloe and an Official person entered to inquire, Who, in

case of the worst, was to be his Highness's Successor? The Successor is named in a sealed Paper already drawn up, above a year ago, at Hampton Court; now lying in such and such a place. The Paper was sent for, searched for; it could never be found. Richard's is the name understood to have been written in that Paper: not a good name; but in fact one does not know. In ten years' time, had ten years more been granted, Richard might have become a fitter man; might have been cancelled, if palpably unfit. Or perhaps it was Fleetwood's name, and the Paper by certain parties was stolen? None knows. On the Thursday night following, and not till then,' his Highness is understood to have formally named "Richard!"—or perhaps it might only be some heavy-laden "Yes, yes!" spoken out of the thick death-slumbers, in answer to Thurloe's question "Richard?" The thing is a little uncertain. It was, once more, a matter of much moment ;-giving colour probably to all the subsequent Centuries of England, this answer! * * *

Thursday night the writer of our old Pamphlet was himself in attendance on his Highness; and has preserved a trait or two; with which let us hasten to conclude. To-morrow is September Third, always kept as a Thanksgiving-day, since the Victories of Dunbar and Worcester. The wearied one, 'that 'very night before the Lord took him to his everlasting rest,' was heard thus, with oppressed voice, speaking:

was,

"Truly God is good; indeed, He is; He will not "’——— then his speech failed him, but, as I apprehended, it "He 'will not leave me." This saying, "God is good," he fre'quently used all along; and would speak it with much cheerfulness, and fervour of spirit, in the midst of his pains.-Again "he said: "I would be willing to live to be farther serviceable 'to God and His People: but my work is done. Yet God will 'be with His People."

'He was very restless most part of the night, speaking often 'to himself. And there being something to drink offered him, 'he was desired to take the same, and endeavour to sleep.'Unto which he answered: "It is not my desire to drink or

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sleep; but my design is, to make what haste I can to be 'gone."

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Afterwards, towards morning, he used divers holy expres'sions, implying much inward consolation and peace; among 'the rest he spake some exceeding self-debasing words, annihi'lating and judging himself. And truly it was observed, that ' a public spirit to God's Cause did breathe in him,—as in his 'lifetime, so now to his very last.'

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When the morrow's sun rose, Oliver was speechless; between three and four in the afternoon, he lay dead. Friday, 3rd September, 1658. "The consternation and astonishment of all 'people," writes Fauconberg, "are inexpressible; their hearts seem as if sunk within them. My poor Wife,-I know not 'what on earth to do with her. When seemingly quieted, she 'bursts out again into a passion that tears her very heart to 'pieces." Husht, poor weeping Mary! Here is a Life-battle right nobly done. Seest thou not,

The storm is changed into a calm,

At His command and will;

So that the waves which raged before,
Now quiet are and still!

Then are they glad,—because at rest

And quiet now they be :

So to the haven He them brings

Which they desired to see.

'Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord;' blessed are the valiant that have lived in the Lord. 'Amen, saith the Spirit,' Amen. They do rest from their labours, and their works follow them.'

'Their works follow them.' As, I think, this Oliver Cromwell's works have done, and are still doing? We have had our 'Revolutions of Eighty-eight,' officially called 'glorious;' and other Revolutions not yet called glorious, and somewhat has been gained for poor Mankind. Men's ears are not now slit off by rash Officiality; Officiality will, for long henceforth, be more cautious about men's ears. The tyrannous Star-chambers, branding-irons, chimerical

Kings and

Surplices at All-hallowtide, they are gone, or with immense velocity going, Oliver's works do follow him!-The works of a man, bury them under what guano-mountains and obscene owl-droppings you will, do not perish, cannot perish. What of Heroism, what of Eternal Light was in a Man and his Life, is with very great exactness added to the Eternities, remains for ever a new divine portion of the Sum of Things; and no owl's voice, this way or that, in the least avails in the matter. But we have to end here.

Oliver is gone; and with him England's Puritanism, laboriously built together by this man, and made a thing farshining miraculous to its own Century, and memorable to all the Centuries, soon goes. Puritanism, without its King, is kingless, anarchic; falls into dislocation, self-collision; staggers, plunges into ever deeper anarchy; King, Defender of the Puritan Faith there can none now be found;—and nothing is left but to recall the old disowned Defender with the remnants of his Four Surplices, and Two Centuries of Hypocrisis (or Play-acting not so-called), and put-up with all that, the best we may. The Genius of England no longer soars Sunward, world-defiant like an Eagle through the storms, 'mewing her mighty youth,' as John Milton saw her do: the Genius of England, much liker a greedy Ostrich intent on provender and a whole skin mainly, stands with its other extremity Sunward; with its Ostrich-head stuck into the readiest bush of old Church-tippets, King-cloaks, or what other 'sheltering Fallacy' there may be, and so awaits the issue. The issue has been slow; but it is now seen to have been inevitable. No Ostrich, intent on gross terrene provender, and sticking its head into Fallacies, but will be awakened one day,-in a terrible à posteriori manner, if not otherwise!Awake before it come to that; gods and men bid us awake! The Voices of our Fathers, with thousand-fold stern monition to one and all, bid us awake.

Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. iv., pp. 390, 393, 394, 398, 401.

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