"Prayers public and private:" they are worth imagining to ourselves. Meetings of Preachers, Chaplains, and Godly Persons; "Owen, Goodwin, Sterry, with a company of others, in an adjoining room"; in Whitehall, and elsewhere over religious London and England, fervent outpourings of many a loyal heart. For there were hearts to whom the nobleness of this man was known; and his worth to the Puritan Cause was evident. Prayers,--strange enough to us; in a dialect fallen obsolete, forgotten now. Authentic wrestlings of ancient Human Souls,--who were alive then, with their affections, awestruck pieties; with their Human Wishes, risen to be _transcendent_, hoping to prevail with the Inexorable. All swallowed now in the depths of dark Time; which is full of such, since the beginning!--Truly it is a great scene of World-History, this in old Whitehall: Oliver Cromwell drawing nigh to his end. The exit of Oliver Cromwell and of English Puritanism; a great Light, one of our few authentic Solar Luminaries, going down now amid the clouds of Death. Like the setting of a great victorious Summer Sun; its course now finished. "_So stirbt ein Held_," says Schiller, "So dies a Hero! Sight worthy to be worshipped!"--He died, this Hero Oliver, in Resignation to God; as the Brave have all done. "We could not be more desirous he should abide," says the pious Harvey, "than he was content and willing to be gone." The struggle lasted, amid hope and fear, for ten days.... On Monday August 30th, there roared and howled all day a mighty storm of wind.... It was on this stormy Monday, while rocking winds, heard in the sickroom and everywhere, were piping aloud, that Thurloe and an Official person entered to enquire, Who, in case of the worst, was to be his Highness's Successor? The Successor is named in a sealed Paper already drawn-up, above a year ago, at Hampton Court; now lying in such and such a place. The Paper was sent for, searched for; it could never be found. Richard's is the name understood to have been written in that Paper: not a good name; but in fact one does not know. In ten years' time, had ten years more been granted, Richard might have become a fitter man; might have been cancelled, if palpably unfit. Or perhaps it was Fleetwood's name,--and the Paper, by certain parties, was stolen? None knows. On the Thursday night following, "and not till then," his Highness is understood to have formally named "Richard",--or perhaps it might only be some heavy-laden "Yes, yes!" spoken, out of the thick death-slumbers, in answer to Thurloe's _question_ "Richard?" The thing is a little uncertain. It was, once more, a matter of much moment;--giving color probably to all the subsequent Centuries of England, this answer!--...