and vigour, and symmetry, stood revealed in the men and women of the Elizabethan age:—
"To say," observes Dr Arnold, "that the Puritans were wanting in humility because they did not acquiesce in the state of things which they found around them, is a mere extravagance, arising out of a total misapprehension of the nature of humility, and of the merits of the feeling of veneration. All earnestness and depth of character is incompatible with such a notion of humility. A man deeply penetrated with some great truth, and compelled, as it were, to obey it, cannot listen to every one who may be indifferent to it, or opposed to it. There is a voice to which he already owes obedience, which he serves with the humblest devotion, which he worships with the most intense veneration. It is not that such feelings are dead in him, but that he has bestowed them on one object, and they are claimed for another. To which they are most due is a question of justice; he may be wrong in his decision, and his worship may be idolatrous; but so also may be the worship which his opponents call upon him to render. If, indeed, it can be shown that a man admires and reverences nothing, he may be justly taxed with want of humility; but this is at variance with the very notion of an earnest character; for its earnestness consists in its devotion to some one object, as opposed to a proud or contemptuous indifference. But if it be meant that reverence in itself is good, so that the more objects of veneration we have the better is our character, this is to confound the essential difference between veneration and love. The excellence of love is its universality; we are told that even the highest object of all cannot be loved if inferior objects are hated."
Opinions, in the meanwhile, not very favourable to established authority in the state, and marked by a rooted antipathy to ecclesiastical pretensions, were rapidly gaining proselytes in the nation, and even at the court. But the prudence and spirit of Elizabeth, and, still more, the great veneration and esteem for that magnanimous princess, which were for many years the ruling principle—we might almost say, the darling passion—of Englishmen, enabled her to keep at bay the dangerous animosities which her miserable successor had neither dexterity to conciliate nor vigour to subdue. In his time the cravings, moral and intellectual, of the English nation discovered themselves in forms not to be mistaken—some more, some less formidable to established government; but all announcing that the time was come when concession to them was inevitable. No matter whether it was the Puritan who complained of the rags of popery, or the judge who questioned the prerogative of the sovereign, or the patriot who bewailed the profligate expenditure of James's polluted court, or the pamphleteer whom one of our dramatists has described so admirably, or the hoarse murmur of the crowd execrating the pusillanimous murder of Raleigh—whosesoever the voice might be, whatever shape it might assume, petition, controversy, remonstrance, address, impeachment, libel, menace, insurrection, the language it spoke was uniform and unequivocal; it demanded for the people a share in the administration of their government, civil and ecclesiastical—it expressed their determination to make the House of Commons a reality.
The observations that follow are fraught with the most profound wisdom, and afford an admirable exemplification of the manner in which history should be read by those who wish to find in it something more than a mere register of facts and anecdotes:—
"Under these circumstances there were now working together in the same party many principles which, as we have seen, are sometimes perfectly distinct. For instance the popular principle, that the influence of many should not be overborne by that of one, was working side by side with the principle of movement, or the desire of carrying on the work of the Reformation to the furthest possible point, and not only the desire of completing the Reformation, but that of shaking off the manifold evils of the existing state of things, both political and moral. Yet it is remarkable that the spirit of intellectual movement stood as it were hesitating which party it ought to join: and as the contest went on, it seemed rather to incline to that party which was most opposed to the political movement. This is a point in the state of English party in the seventeenth century which is well worth noticing, and we must endeavour to comprehend it.
"We might think, a priori, that the spirit of political, and that of intellectual, and that of religious movement, would go on together, each favouring and encouraging the other. But the Spirit of intellectual movement differs from the other two in this, that it is comparatively one with which the mass of mankind have little sympathy. Political benefits all men can appreciate; and all good men, and a great many more than we might well dare to call good, can appreciate also the value, not of all, but of some religious truth which to them may seem all: the way to obtain God's favour and to worship Him aright, is a thing which great bodies of men can value, and be moved to the most determined efforts if they fancy that they are hindered from attaining to it. But intellectual movement in itself is a thing which few care for. Political truth may be dear to them, so far as it effects their common well-being; and religious truth so far as they may think it their duty to learn it; but truth abstractedly, and because it is truth, which is the object, I suppose, of the pure intellect, is to the mass of mankind a thing indifferent. Thus the workings of the intellect come even to be regarded with suspicion as unsettling: we have got, we say, what we want, and we are well contented with it; why should we be kept in perpetual restlessness, because you are searching after some new truths which, when found, will compel us to derange the state of our minds in order to make room for them. Thus the democracy of Athens was afraid of and hated Socrates; and the poet who satirized Cleon, knew that Cleon's partizans, no less than his own aristocratical friends, would sympathize with his satire when directed against the philosophers. But if this hold in political matters, much more does it hold religiously. The two great parties of the Christian world have each their own standard of truth, by which they try all things: Scripture on the one hand, the voice of the church on the other. To both, therefore, the pure intellectual movement is not only unwelcome, but they dislike it. It will question what they will not allow to be questioned; it may arrive at conclusions which they would regard as impious. And, therefore, in an age of religious movement particularly, the spirit of intellectual movement soon finds itself proscribed rather than countenanced."
In the extract which follows, the pure and tender morality of the sentiment vies with the atmosphere of fine writing that invests it. The passage is one which Plato might have envied, and which we should imagine the most hardened and successful of our modern apostates cannot read without some feeling like contrition and remorse. Fortunate indeed were the youth trained to virtue by such a monitor, and still more fortunate the country where such a duty was confided to such a man:—
"I have tried to analyze the popular party: I must now endeavour to do the same with the party opposed to it. Of course an anti-popular party varies exceedingly at different times; when it is in the ascendant, its vilest elements are sure to be uppermost: fair and moderate,—just men, wise men, noble-minded men,—then refuse to take part with it. But when it is humbled, and the opposite side begins to imitate its practices, then again many of the best and noblest spirits return to it, and share its defeat though they abhorred its victory. We must distinguish, therefore, very widely, between the anti-popular party in 1640, before the Long Parliament met, and the same party a few years, or even a few months, afterwards. Now, taking the best specimens of this party in its best state, we can scarcely admire them too highly. A man who leaves the popular cause when it is triumphant, and joins the party opposed to it, without really changing his principles and becoming a renegade, is one of the noblest characters in history. He may not have the clearest judgment, or the firmest wisdom; he may have been mistaken, but, as far as he is concerned personally, we cannot but admire him. But such a man changes his party not to conquer but to die. He does not allow the caresses of his new friends to make him forget that he is a sojourner with them, and not a citizen: his old friends may have used him ill, they may be dealing unjustly and cruelly: still their faults, though they may have driven him into exile, cannot banish from his mind the consciousness that with them is his true home: that their cause is habitually just and habitually the weaker, although now bewildered and led astray by an unwonted gleam of success. He protests so strongly against their evil that he chooses to die by their hands rather than in their company; but die he must, for there is no place left on earth where his sympathies can breathe freely; he is obliged to leave the country
