"Perhaps all our pomps and solemnities look poor and mean under the open sky. We had better keep them beneath roofs of our own making. The pomps we are used to under the open sky are the purple and crimson and gold of sunset and sunrise, great banners of storm-clouds flung across the sky. And the solemnities are the thunders, and the mighty winds, and the rushing of rivers, and the dashing of seas. "The things are grander, infinitely, than any words wherewith we can speak of them. "But when I said so to my Mother, she said, 'And yet, my child, one soul, and even one human voice, is grander, or more godlike than all the thunders. It is their significance, Lettice, which gives the grandeur to any solemnities of ours. If we heard those trumpets summon our countrymen by thousands to the battle, or saw that flag borne blood-stained from the field, we should not think the voice of the trumpet wanted terrible magnificence, or call the flag a common thing ever more.' "Perhaps, after all, it was only a little inward depression that made me feel this disappointment. For only three days before, Coventry had shut her gates in the king's face, and the Earl of Essex is at hand, they say, with a great army, and so few flocking loyally to the king. "But worst of all, I think, is this Prince Rupert. His mother's name, Elizabeth of Bohemia, has been like a sacred name in the country for years; a saint and a heroine in courage and patience. But this prince is so noisy and reckless, and takes so much upon himself, that he angers the older gentlemen and experienced soldiers sorely. My Father says he is little better than a petulant boy. Yet he has great weight with the king, his uncle, and takes the command into his own hands; so that the gallant old Earl of Lindsay deems his own command little better than nominal. And, meanwhile, the younger Cavaliers take their colour from him, and use that new low cant word of his, 'plunder,' quite as a jest, as if it meant some new sport or sword-exercise, instead of meaning, as it does, scouring all over the country, burning lonely farm-houses, robbing the inmates, and sometimes hanging the servants at the doors for refusing to betray their masters, sacking villages, and I know not what other wickednesses. In the fortnight he has been here, he has flown through Worcestershire, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, and Cheshire. And not a night but we have seen the sky aglow with the fires of burning villages and homesteads. I should fear to hear how the people along his line of march, coming back to their ruined homes, speak of the king. "Moreover, it is said, the rebel troops are strictly forbidden to take anything without paying for it, a contrast worth them much. "_August_ 24.--This morning, before I rose, my Mother's waiting gentlewoman brought dismal news. The royal standard, said she, has been blown down in the night, and lies a wreck along the hill.