"This was that arch hypocrite, that most abandoned murderer, who having by shameful slaughter put out of the way the most pious King, Charles the First, grasped the very throne, and for the space of nearly five years under the title of Protector harassed three kingdoms with inflexible tyranny." Rather, as we stand in the College Hall and gaze up at the stern features, as depicted by Cooper,[93] in that best of all the Cromwell portraits, shall we not commemorate this greatest of Sidney men, in Lowell's words, as-- "One of the few who have a right to rank With the true makers: for his spirit wrought Order from chaos; proved that Right divine Dwelt only in the excellence of Truth: And far within old darkness' hostile lines Advanced and pitched the shining tents of Light. Nor shall the grateful Muse forget to tell That--not the least among his many claims To deathless honour--he was Milton's friend." Thomas Fuller, too, who was neither Republican nor Royalist, but loyal to the good men of both parties in the State, is a name of which Sidney College may well be proud. No one can read any of his books, full as they are of imagination, pathos, and an exuberant, often extravagant, but never ineffective wit, without heartily endorsing Coleridge's saying: "God bless thee, dear old man!" and recognising the truth of his panegyric, "Next to Shakespeare, I am not certain whether Thomas Fuller, beyond all other writers, does not excite in me the sense and emulation of the marvellous.... He was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced great man in an age that boasted of a galaxy of great men." And with Fuller's name, indeed with Fuller's own words, in that benediction which, after eight years of residence, he gave to Sidney College, and which he himself calls his "Child's Prayer to His Mother," I may appropriately end this chapter. "Now though it be only the place of the parent, and proper to him (as the greater) to bless his child, yet it is of the duty of the child to pray for his parent, in which relation my best desires are due to this foundation, my mother (for the last eight years) in this University. May her lamp never lack light for oil, or oil for the light thereof. Zoar, is it not a little one? Yet who shall despise the day of small things? May the foot of sacrilege, if once offering to enter the gates thereof, stumble and rise no more. The Lord bless the labours of all the students therein, that they may tend and end at his glory, their own salvation, the profit and honour of the Church and Commonwealth."