was the heart of a man who _could_ pray.

But indeed his actual Speeches, I apprehend, were not nearly so
ineloquent, incondite, as they look. We find he was, what all speakers
aim to be, an impressive speaker, even in Parliament; one who, from
the first, had weight. With that rude passionate voice of his, he was
always understood to _mean_ something, and men wished to know what.
He disregarded eloquence, nay despised and disliked it; spoke always
without premeditation of the words he was to use. The Reporters, too,
in those days seem to have been singularly candid; and to have given
the Printer precisely what they found on their own note-paper. And
withal, what a strange proof is it of Cromwell's being the
premeditative ever-calculating hypocrite, acting a play before the
world, that to the last he took no more charge of his Speeches! How
came he not to study his words a little, before flinging them out to
the public? If the words were true words, they could be left to shift
for themselves.

But with regard to Cromwell's "lying," we will make one remark. This,
I suppose, or something like this, to have been the nature of it. All
parties found themselves deceived in him; each party understood him to
be meaning _this_, heard him even say so, and behold he turns-out to
have been meaning _that_! He was, cry they, the chief of liars. But
now, intrinsically, is not all this the inevitable fortune, not of a
false man in such times, but simply of a superior man? Such a man must
have _reticences_ in him. If he walk wearing his heart upon his sleeve
for daws to peck at, his journey will not extend far! There is no use
for any man's taking-up his abode in a house built of glass. A man
always is to be himself the judge how much of his mind he will show to
other men; even to those he would have work along with him. There are
impertinent inquiries made: your rule is, to leave the inquirer
_un_informed on that matter; not, if you can help it, _mis_informed,
but precisely as dark as he was!

This, could one hit the right phrase of response, is what the wise and
faithful man would aim to answer in such a case.

Cromwell, no doubt of it, spoke often in the dialect of small
subaltern parties; uttered to them a _part_ of his mind. Each little
party thought him all its own. Hence their rage, one and all, to find
him not of their party, but of his own party! Was it his blame? At all
seasons of his history he must have felt, among such p