iver of all Light; be such _prayer_ a spoken, articulate, or be it a
voiceless, inarticulate one? There is no other method. "Hypocrisy"? One
begins to be weary of all that. They who call it so, have no right to
speak on such matters. They never formed a purpose, what one can call
a purpose. They went about balancing expediencies, plausibilities;
gathering votes, advices; they never were alone with the _truth_ of a
thing at all.--Cromwell's prayers were likely to be "eloquent," and much
more than that. His 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 uninformed on that
matter; not, if you can