d: the rigorous Hutchinson,
cased in his republican formula, sullenly goes his way.--And the man's
head now white; his strong arm growing weary with its long work! I
think always too of his poor Mother, now very old, living in that
Palace of his; a right brave woman: as indeed they lived all an honest
God-fearing Household there: if she heard a shot go off, she thought
it was her son killed. He had to come to her at least once a day, that
she might see with her own eyes that he was yet living. The poor old
Mother!----What had this man gained; what had he gained? He had a life
of sore strife and toil, to his last day. Fame, ambition, place in
History? His dead body was hung in chains; his 'place in
History,'--place in History forsooth!--has been a place of ignominy,
accusation, blackness and disgrace; and here, this day, who knows if
it is not rash in me to be among the first that ever ventured to
pronounce him not a knave and a liar, but a genuinely honest man!
Peace to him. Did he not, in spite of all, accomplish much for us?
_We_ walk smoothly over his great rough heroic life; step-over his
body sunk in the ditch there. We need not _spurn_ it, as we step on
it!--Let the Hero rest. It was not to _men's_ judgment that he
appealed; nor have men judged him very well.

* * * * *

Precisely a century and a year after this of Puritanism had got itself
hushed-up into decent composure, and its results made smooth in 1688,
there broke-out a far deeper explosion, much more difficult to
hush-up, known to all mortals, and like to be long known, by the name
of French Revolution. It is properly the third and final act of
Protestantism; the explosive confused return of Mankind to Reality and
Fact, now that they were perishing of Semblance and Sham. We call our
English Puritanism the second act: "Well then, the Bible is true; let
us go by the Bible!" "In Church," said Luther; "In Church and State,"
said Cromwell, "let us go by what actually is God's Truth." Men have
to return to reality; they cannot live on semblance. The French
Revolution, or third act, we may well call the final one; for lower
than that savage _Sansculottism_ men cannot go. They stand there on
the nakedest haggard Fact, undeniable in all seasons and
circumstances; and may and must begin again confidently to build-up
from that. The French explosion, like the English one, got its
King,--who had no Notary parchment to show for himself.