I inferred from this inscription, and the names on the rock, that the spot is visited by some with very different feelings from those which it excited in me and my companions. Our valuable conductor, it is true, spoke of "the Judges" with as much reverence as so sturdy a republican would be likely to show to any dignity whatever; and really the honest fellow seemed to give us credit for more tenderness than we felt, and tried to express himself in such a manner, when telling of the misery of the exiles, as not to wound our sensibilities. But I fear his consideration was all lost; for, sad as it is to think of any fellow-man reduced to such extremity as to take up a lodging like this, we could only think how many of the noble and the lovely, and how many of the true and loyal poor, had been brought by Goffe and Whalley to greater miseries than theirs. I could not force myself, therefore, to the melting mood; it was enough that I thought of January 30, 1648, and said to myself, "Doubtless there is a God that judgeth in the earth." The lady recalled some facts from Lord Clarendon's History, and said that her interest in the spot was far from having anything to do with sympathy for the regicides. Her patronising protector expressed his surprise, and jokingly assured me that she regarded it as a Mecca, or he would not have given himself the trouble of waiting on her to a place he so little respected. She owned that she was hardly consistent with herself in feeling any interest at all in the memorial of regicides; but I reminded her that Lord Capel kissed the axe which completed the work of rebellion, and deprived his royal master of life;[24] and we agreed that even the intelligent instruments of that martyrdom acquired a sort of reliquary value from the blood with which they were crimsoned.