VII.

CALVINISM.

IN MODERN LIFE.

The Representative Element in History.

III.

(1) REPRESENTATIVE HISTORICAL

CHARACTER.

The visitor in Edinburgh, Scotland, is very sure to number among the objects of interest in one of the most interesting cities of the whole world, four ancient edifices, all upon what we may call one long street, although in various parts of its whole length called by different names. The street runs upward for much of the way along a gradual slope, this part of it having received its monkish name of Canongate fully seven centuries ago, while many of the quaint old houses, standing on either side of it, date back almost as far. As we reach the crown of the slope, the name of Canongate is appropriately changed to High street. Still keeping on, for the walk is a long one, we pass a network of cross-streets and come out into Castle street which runs steeply up to the height from which one looks down on every side upon the whole city lying at his feet, with the sea and its white sails and its smoking steamers in the far distance.

At the foot of the long slope up which the Canongate runs, is a palace. On that crowning height at which we finally arrive as we go up is a castle. Nearly midway between them is a church, and near the church a quaint old dwelling, built hundreds of years ago and preserved in all its quaintness as a relic of past times. Over the door, as you enter, you see the

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inscription, "Lufe God aboue all, and your neighbor as yourself."

Now, it is a fair question, in which of these four edifices there is most of real Scottish history-the Palace of Holyrood, Edinburgh Castle, the Church of St. Giles, or the house that was once the home of John Knox. Or rather, grouping them, in which do we find most of what is essential to a true philosoophy of Scottish history—the palace and the castle, or the oneurch and the parsonage? We suppose that for almost any mantic ere would be most of curious interest, of a certain romere storyterest, in the palace and next in the castle. The associations thathe Scottish annals is there, and it is there with re at first very thrilling. But we soon observe how silent and emptyle and palace now alike are, except for the visitors whom curiosity brings there; a type of much else that was once seemingly so momentous, yet is now like the fallen fabric of a vision. In the main hall, at Holyrood, where so many scenes of gay festivity have been wit nessed, and where matters of state affecting all Europe have so often been considered and decided, all one sees to remind him of what it was is the row of pictures on either side wall of Scottish Kings, 106 in number, assuming to reach from the time of Fergus, three hundred years before the Christian era, to James VII., or the Pretender, as England called him. As one studies these he is very soon struck with the fact that they all seem to have been painted by the same hand; the famir likeness is quite too real to be genuine;--every one of then with a nose, as Scott makes Crystal Croftangrie say, "like the knocker of a door." These suspicions are soon confirmed as it is ascertained that all of them anterior to and including that of Charles the Second were painted under the reign of that monarch. Yet these spurious portraits of Kings-how much they resemble a great part of what we read of in history!—a great part, in fact, of that in history which most interests us! At the castle, again, you are shown the Scottish regalia, carefully preserved in a room set apart for this purpose, -a crown, a sceptre, a sword of state, and a silver rod of office, once the

symbol of some high function, perhaps that of the Lord Treasurer. There is a picture of Queen Mary in another room, as there is of her ill-fated husband, Darnley, at the palace, and on the ramparts you find the big cannon, four hundred years old, once the pride of the castle, but now for two hundred years standing there, with a hole near the breech, where the excess of loyal powder fired off in honor of a visit of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., burst through. Of all which palace or castle represents, in Scottish history, we may fairly ask, how much remains in the Scotland of today? Would you not far sooner select the homely old church and the homely old parsonage, as symbols of that in Scottish history which made Scotland what it is? Will not a time come when any fair-minded historian will do the same thing?

A visitor in London, or Paris, might make similar observations and be stimulated to similar reflections in either of those cities. There is a history back of what we call history that is, after all, the real history; and we have not learned what we most of all need to know, till we have worked our way through to that. In what we have now immediately in hand, we confine ourselves chiefly to a notice of certain types of historical character as representative of the element in history to which we are now referring, and to the manner in which such character has made itself felt in the shaping of modern life in society, in manners and morals, in laws, in national institutions, in the blessings and guarantees of freedom in general.

Character.

It is noticeable how much the tone of Types of Historical historical and other writers has changed of late years, in their allusions to such types of character as we have in the Scottish Covenanters, the English and American Puritans, the Calvinists of Holland, of France, and of Geneva. Some writers, like Bancroft, have come very near to doing full justice to these. Some essayists, like Macaulay, have made the Puritans, especially, the subject of brilliant eulogy. A still later historian, Mr. Green, has swept away whole clouds of misrepresentation and slander, as applied more particularly to the Puritans of Cromwell's

time; while years ago Carlyle put all English readers in a way of arriving at correct results as to the character and deeds of Cromwell himself.

Cromwell.

But we have not yet done hearing the word "Puritan " employed as synonymous with a sour and narrow fanaticism; while the extreme type of Calvinistic rigor in Covenanter or in Huguenot is by multitudes of people still held to be the true one. What Macaulay's biographer said of English readers sixty years ago, the time when the essay on Milton was written, while it was almost universally true then, is still too much so even yet. At that time, says Mr. Trevelyan, "the great body of English readers had been accustomed to draw their information" on these subjects, "from Hume's history, and their sentiments from Scott's novels." Hume was not only an infidel, but he was a partisan of the House of Stuart; while Scott was a churchman and a Tory. In 1825, when Macaulay's essay on Milton was published, such a passage as that in Hume, where he comments upon the prayer to which Cromwell was heard to give utterance a day or two before his death, would probably pass for history. Hume says (we quote it as a sample of the style in which this whole subject was once treated by writers supposed to tell the truth): himself [Cromwell] was overheard offering up his addresses to heaven; and so far had the illusions of fanaticism prevailed over the plainest dictates of natural morality, that he assumed more the character of a mediator interceding for his people, than that of a criminal whose atrocious violations of social duty had, from every tribunal, human and divine, merited the severest vengeance." Now, what was this prayer, breathing thus the spirit of hypocrisy and fanaticism: remember that it was offered in private, without knowledge that it was heard by any human ear, and least of all that the words of it were to become historical. This was the prayer:

1

"He

"Lord, though I am a miserable and wretched creature, I am in covenant with thee through grace. And I may, I will,

1 "History of England," vol. v., p. 413.

come to thee for thy people. Thou hast made me, though very unworthy, a mean instrument to do them some good, and thee service; and many of them have set too high a value upon me, though others wish and would be glad of my death. Lord, however thou do dispose of me, continue and go on to do good for them. Give them consistency of judgment, one heart, and mutual love; and go on to deliver them, and with the work of reformation; and make the name of Christ glorious in the world. Teach those who look too much on thy instrument to depend more on thyself. Pardon such as desire to trample upon the dust of a poor worm, for they are thy people too. And pardon the folly of this short prayer, even for Christ's sake. And give us a good night, if it be thy pleasure. Amen."

This was, indeed, an intercessory prayer, as Hume says; but must not a man's sense of justice be utterly beclouded by his prejudices when he calls it the utterance of a fanatic or a hypocrite? If ever a dying patriot prayed for his country in all humility, sincerity, and overmastering love, with forgiveness of his enemies, Cromwell did so on that night as he lay at death's door.

We suppose that now most intelligent people do justice to this great, though singular man. He had faults which were partly those personal to him as a man of strong nature and marked individuality, and partly the fault of his time. But if ever a man was raised up for a great crisis, Cromwell was; if ever a man, with resolute purpose, put his shoulder under a great burden because recognizing it as a burden which was for his own shoulders, Cromwell did it. What he was as a ruler every government in Europe testified in its eagerness to be on terms of alliance with him; and the poor people of Piedmont could also testify when just a letter of stern menace to their persecutor, the Duke of Savoy, secured for them, so long as Cromwell lived, safe homes amidst their mountains, and the privilege of worship under their vine and fig-tree unmolested. He delivered England from anarchy, and in eight short years made her the foremost power in Europe. And