I have just been reading, in order to relieve my weariness, Sir Walter Scott’s _Woodstock_, not surely one of his best, but one of his most serious novels, in which he has endeavored to be something of the philosopher, as well as the unrivalled romancer. Poor man! wizard of the north, as he has been called, his magician’s wand fails him here. How was he, with the shallow philosophy of the eighteenth century, to explain such a phenomenon as Cromwell and his Major Generals, those furious Berserkirs, true descendants of the old Vikings of the North? To say that Oliver and the Independents were mere long-faced, psalm-singing hypocrites, moved only by the ordinary motives and passions of human beings, is a libel on history. Long-faced, sanctimonious, and long-winded, famous for their dark cloaks and steeple-crowned hats, their psalm-singing, their Biblical phraseology, their speaking through the nose, and turning up the white of the eye, they certainly were; but whoso supposes they were so by virtue of subtle, calculating hypocrisy, knows them not. Whatever else Cromwell and the Puritans were, they were no hypocrites; their manners, their dress, and address, however objectionable we may choose to regard them, were not affected to cloak conscious vice or iniquity, or to deceive either their friends or their enemies. Never were men more serious, more deeply in earnest; and it was in obedience to what they held to be the voice of God that they preached, fasted, sung psalms, prayed, and—kept their powder dry. It was not by their snivel, their nasal twang, their Biblical phraseology, nor by an affectation of piety and dependence on the Lord, nor by any form of hypocrisy or cant, that they made mincemeat of the drinking, swearing rakehell, but brave and loyal cavaliers at Marston Moor, Edgehill, and Worcester. A chorus of spirits, black or white, joined in their psalm-singing, and invisible powers sped their balls to the hearts of their enemies, and gave force to the well-aimed strokes of their swords.