ese fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen years in
this nation. It was a shame, it was a reproach to a man; and the badge
of Puritan was put upon it!" But the shame and reproach were now rolled
away. The Puritan was master in the land. All government was in the
hands of godly men. Piety was as needful for an officer in the army, for
a magistrate, for a petty constable, as for a minister of religion. The
aim of the Protector was that England should be ruled and administered
by "the best," by men ruling and administering in the fear of God. In
Church as in State all that such men had longed to do could now be done.
Superstitious usages were driven from the churches. No minister wore a
surplice. No child was signed in baptism with a cross. The very pastimes
of the world had to conform themselves to the law of God. The theatres
were closed. Sunday sports were summarily abolished. There were no more
races, no more bull-baitings, no more cock-fighting, no more dances
under the Maypole. Christmas had to pass without its junketings, or
mummers, or mince-pies.

[Sidenote: Its failure.]

To the eyes of mere zealots the work of Puritanism seemed done. But
Cromwell was no mere zealot. Strangely mingled with the enthusiasm of
his temper was a cool, passionless faculty of seeing things as they
actually were about him; and he saw that in its very hour of triumph the
cause he loved was losing ground. From this effort to turn England into
a kingdom of God England itself stood aloof. Its traditional instincts
were outraged by the wreck of its institutions, its good sense by the
effort to enforce godliness by civil penalties, its self-respect by the
rule of the sword. Never had England shown a truer nobleness than when
it refused to be tempted from the path of freedom even by the genius of
Cromwell, never a truer wisdom than when it refused to be lured from its
tradition of practical politics by the dazzling seductions of the
Puritan ideal. And not only did the nation stand aloof from Cromwell's
work, but its opposition grew hourly stronger. The very forces which
seemed to have been annihilated by the Civil War drew a fresh life from
the national ill-will to their conquerors. Men forgot the despotism of
the Monarchy when the Monarchy and the Parliament lay wrecked in a
common ruin. They forgot the tyranny of Laud when the Church was
trampled under foot by men who trampled under foot the constitution. By
a strange turn of fortune the restoration