themselves, almost too sufficiently, by putting on their own private hat, with some spoken or speechless, “God enable me to be King of what lies under this! For Eternities lie under it, and Infinities, and Heaven also and Hell. And it is as big as the Universe, this Kingdom; and I am to conquer it, or be for ever conquered by it, now while it is called To-day !" "The love of "power," if thou understand what to the manful heart "power" signifies, is a very noble and indispensable love. And here and there, in the outer world, too, there is a due throne for the noble man ;-which let him see well that he seize, and valiantly defend against all men and things. God gives it him; let no Devil take it away. Thou also art called by the God's-message: This, if thou canst read the Heavenly omens and dare do them, this work is thine. Voiceless, or with no articulate voice, Occasion, god-sent, rushes storming on, amid the world's events; swift, perilous; like a whirlwind, like a fleet lightning-steed: manfully thou shalt clutch it by the mane, and vault into thy seat on it, and ride and guide there, thou! Wreck and ignominious overthrow, if thou have dared when the Occasion was not thine: everlasting scorn to thee if thou dare not when it is ;-if the cackling of Roman geese and Constitutional ganders, if the clack of human tongues and leading articles, if the steel of armies and the crack of Doom deter thee, when the voice was God's!—Yes, this too is in the law for a man, my poor quack-ridden, bewildered Constitutional friends; and we ought to remember this withal. Thou shalt is written upon Life in characters as terrible as Thou shalt not,―though poor Dryasdust reads almost nothing but the latter hitherto.' And so we close Part Seventh; and proceed to trace with all piety, what faint authentic vestiges of Oliver's Protectorate .he envious Stupidities have not yet obliterated for us. LETTERS CXXX.-CXXXIII. THE 3d of September, ever since Worcester Battle, has been kept as a Day of Thanksgiving; commemorative of the mercy at Dunbar in 1650, and of the crowning-mercy which followed next year; —a memorable day for the Commonwealth of England. By Article Seventh of the Instrument of Government, it is now farther provided that a Parliament shall meet on that auspicious Anniversary when it next comes round. September 3d, 1654, then shall the First Protectorate Parliament meet; successive Parliaments, one at least every Three years, are to follow, but this shall be the First. Not to be dissolved or prorogued for at least Five months. Free Parliament of Four-hundred; for England Three-hundred-and-forty, for Scotland Thirty, for Ireland Thirty; fairly chosen by election of the People, according to rules anxiously constitutional, laid down in that same Instrument, —which we do not dwell upon here. Smaller Boroughs are excluded; among Counties and larger Boroughs is a mere equable division of representatives according to their population; nobody to vote that has not some clearly visible property to the value of Two-hundred Pounds; all others to vote, or to be voted for,except, of course, all such as have appeared against the Parljament in any of these Wars since the First of January, 1642,' and 'not since given signal testimony' of their repenting that step. To appearance, a very reasonable Reform Bill;-understood to be substantially the same with that invaluable measure once nearly completed by the Rump: only with this essential difference, That the Rump Members are not now to sit by nature and without election; not now to decide, they, in case of extremity, Thou shalt sit, Thou shalt not sit; others than they will now de. cide that, in cases of extremity. How this Parliament, in its Five. months' Session, will welcome the new Protector and Protectorate is naturally the grand question during those Nine or Ten Months that intervene. A question for all Englishmen ; and most of all for Oliver Protector;-who, however, as we can perceive, does not allow it to overawe him very much; but diligently doing this day the day's duties, hopes he may find, as God has often favored him to do, some good solution for the morrow, whatever the morrow please to be. A man much apt to be overawed by any question that is smaller than Eternity, or by any danger that is lower than God's Displeasure, would not suit well in Oliver's place at present! Perhaps no more perilous place, that I know clearly of, was ever deliberately accepted by a man. 'The post of honor,'-the post of terror and of danger and forlornhope; this man has all along been used to occupy such. To see a little what kind of England it was, and what kind of incipient Protectorate it was, take, as usual, the following small and few fractions of Authenticity, of various complexion, fished from the doubtful slumber-lakes and dust vortexes, and hang them out at their places in the void night of things. They are not very luminous; but if they were well let alone, and the positively tenebrific were well forgotten, they might assist our imaginations in some slight measure. Sunday, 18th December, 1653. A certain loud-tongued, loudminded Mr. Feak, of Anabaptist-Leveller persuasion, with a Colleague, seemingly Welsh, named Powel, have a Preaching Esta blishment, this good while past, in Blackfriars; a PreachingEstablishment every Sunday, which on Monday Evening becomes a National-Charter Convention, as we should now call it: there Feak, Powel and Company are in the habit of vomiting forth from their own inner man, into other inner men greedy of such pabulum, a very flamy fuliginous set of doctrines, such as the human mind, superadding Anabaptistry to Sansculottism, can make some attempt to conceive. Sunday, the 18th, which is two days after the Lord Protector's Installation, this Feak-Powel meeting was unusually large; the Feak-Powel inner-man unusually charged. Elements of soot and fire really copious; fuliginous flamy in a very high degree! At a time, too, when all Doctrine does not satisfy itself with spouting, but longs to become instant Action. 'Go and tell your Protector,' said the Anabaptist Prophet, That he has deceived the Lord's People; 'that he is a perjured villain,' -will not reign long,' or I am deceived; 'will end worse than |
