Beside him sat a good-looking, portly, middle-aged man, with a ruddy and healthful face. He belonged to another distinct class. Master Franklin had not the gift of originating or suggesting; but he had in an especial manner, in that docile, laborious, patient strength of his, the gift of carrying out. An unobtrusive, placid, humble man, he accomplished heaps of work unwittingly, and went on day by day in a series of dumb, unthought-of heroisms, appreciated by few men, least of all by himself; for there was little light, save the quiet radiance of goodness to set off his labor withal, and in the unfeigned humility of his honest heart, he himself would have been the first to repudiate the praise due to his constant devotion. The preacher, Vincent, had an individuality strikingly distinct from these. Prone to examine the depths of his own sensitive spirit, he had endured at the outset of his career a fiery ordeal akin to that of the famed dreamer of Bedford; and fighting through spiritual perils, like the pilgrim of that wondrous vision, had become at last a great master in all the subtle processes and unseen movements of the heart. “Cases of conscience,” such as formed no unimportant part of the ministerial labors of those zealous times, were referred to him from all places. In probing the wounds, disentangling the twisted threads of motive and design, elucidating the hidden working, and evolving the secret struggles of the soul, he was at home and strong; and joined with this peculiar gift was a melancholy bias of mind, a tendency to despondency and speculative grief, a mood akin to that of the preacher of old, who, as the conclusion of his experience, leaves the sorrowful record to us, that all is vanity. A certain melancholy vivacity of expression and overwhelming earnestness made him, as it makes his class still, an especially effective preacher, and in this time of singular distress the effect was proportionably increased. Caleb Field was less a man peculiar to that age than any of all these. No youthful cavalier in the gay court of Charles, had a more gladsome enjoyment of life than this sombre Puritan minister of doomed London. No tender-hearted maiden or loving mother had a sympathy more quick, a compassion more gentle than was his. So full of joyous congenial life with all that was true and honest, lovely and of good report, and withal in his strong vitality, having so great a fountain of deepest pathos within--a truly human man, akin to all who wear the wondrous garment of this mortality. And so it happened that this man’s influence was less subject to ebbs and flowings of popular appreciation than the rest. It was as perennial and constant as life itself, for, in all that pertains to life, many-sided and various, his warm humanity made itself a part.