"Alas! they whose ancestors in the darkest times excommunicated the
breakers of Magna Charta do now by themselves, and their adherents, both
write, preach, plot, and act against it, by encouraging Dr. Beale, by
preferring Dr. Mainwaring, appearing forward for monopolies and ship-
money, and if any were slow and backward to comply, blasting both them
and their preferment with the utmost expression of their hatred--the
title of Puritans."
These words may help to make Mr. Arnold aware, when he mows down the
Puritan party with some trenchant epithet, how wide the sweep of his
scythe is, and the same thing will be still more distinctively brought
before him by a perusal (if he has not already perused it) of the
chapter on the subject in Mr. Sandford's "Studies and Illustrations of
the Great Rebellion." It can hardly be necessary to remind him, or any
one else, of the portrait of one who was a most undoubted Puritan, drawn
by Lucy Hutchinson. If this portrait betrays the hand of a wife,
Clarendon's portrait of Falkland betrays the hand of a friend, and even
a beloved husband is not more likely to be the object of exaggerated,
though sincere praise, than the social head and the habitual host of a
circle of literary men. At all events Lucy Hutchinson is painting what
she thought a perfect Puritan would be; and her picture presents to us,
not a coarse, crop-eared, and snuffling fanatic, but a highly
accomplished, refined, gallant, and most "amiable," though religious and
seriously-minded gentleman. The Spencerian school of sentiment seems to
Mr. Arnold very lovely compared with the men of the New Model Army and
their ways. In the general of the New Model Army, Sir Thomas Fairfax, he
has a distinct, and we venture to say very worthy, pupil of that school.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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