But, after all, these men had higher and harder work on hand than thinking and writing as scholars, and work which the world could less easily spare. Those exiles in Holland, by their toil and their suffering, were nursing and training that spirit which created the American Republic, and which rules it still. The world probably wanted that work just then more than the rarest scholarship; though intellectual power was at a low ebb at that particular crisis in the Anglican Church. And the world found what it supremely wanted, the simplest, purest, toughest, noblest band of colonists ever sent forth from any country. In the rude, rough times which succeeded, the leaders of the great action which settled on a sure basis for ever the liberties of our country, were of the Nonconformist Schools. The men who did such work for England as the conduct of that long and tremendous struggle to its glorious issue, might well be pardoned if their culture were of a poorer type than that of their antagonists. But it is really marvellous how, during the storm of the Civil War, Nonconformist learning and intellectual ability flourished. Lord Brook and Peter Sterry, leading spirits among the Independents, were deeply tinctured with Platonic learning; they drew their large and liberal ideas from a deeper than an Arminian spring. In John Howe strong traces of the same Platonic element may be discovered. There seems to have been a certain native affinity between this young Independency and the thoughts of the great master of ideal philosophy in the ancient world. At the time of the Restoration, probably the most many-sided, variously-accomplished, and masterly man was Richard Baxter. His position in relation to the Church and Nonconformity through the most active part of his career, was not unlike the position which Erasmus held during the Reformation between Protestantism and Rome. But most certainly, despite his views 'on National Churches,' it was mainly from the Nonconformist springs that his life was nourished, and the weight of his influence was thrown practically into the Nonconformist scale.