gone forward. For when we came down to breakfast, a huge basket stood laden with provisions for the way, substantial and dainty, with special reference to Maidie's tastes; little tender preparations which often brought tears to my eyes on the journey, as I found them out one by one, and thought of the self-repressed rigour of the dear old rock from which those springs of kindness flowed.

Yet all the while we were at breakfast together at the great table in the kitchen, every slightest want watched and anticipated by Aunt Dorothy, I felt as if she were looking on every morsel as a coal of fire heaped on our heads; while the weight of the impending testimony hung over us.

At length it came.

"Nephew and niece, Leonard and Olive Antony," said she, as we were about to rise; "and thou, Annis Nye and Job Forster, I have somewhat to say to you."

And then she testified against us all, and also against Oliver Cromwell, the army, and the country; comparing us to the people who built Babel to make themselves a name, to Jeroboam who made priests of the lowest of the people, to Absalom, to Jezebel, to the evil angels who speak evil of dignities, and to the Laodiceans, in a way which made the blood rush to my face on behalf of my husband. Finally, turning to Annis Nye, she launched on her a separate denunciation; beginning with the devil who clothed himself as an angel of light, and ending with the Anabaptists of Münster, and the Jesuits, who, Mr. Baxter believed, hal emissaries among the Quakers.

I knew that the more tenderness Aunt Dorothy felt at heart for offenders, the more severe were her denunciations of their offences. But Annis could not be expected to be aware of this, and I trembled to see how she would bear it, lest it should drive her once more from us into the world, so hard on Quakers. The calm on her countenance, however, was not even ruffled. She kept her eyes, all the time, fully opened, fixed with an expression, not of defiance, but of wonder and compassion, on Aunt Dorothy, until Aunt Dorothy herself at length paused, apparently checked by the strength of her own language, held out her hand to Annis and added,―

"Now I have said what was on my mind. I did not mean to anger thee; but less, in conscience, I dared not say."

Annis took the hand offered to her with a tender compassion, as she might that of an aged sick person.

"Why should I be angered, friend?" said she in her softest voice. "Can thy words touch the truth? It was there when they began; and it is there when they end. And one day we shall all have to see it; whatever it is, wherever we be, thee, and Olive Antony and her husband, and all."

Aunt Dorothy had no further words to lavish on obduracy so hopeless. She only struck her palms together, shook her head slowly, and looked up in speechless dismay.

Job muttered under his breath, as he rose to saddle the horses,

"Poor souls! poor dear souls! They have got some what yet to learn. They have got to learn the lesson Oliver taught us on old Burford steeple!" But my husband only replied,

"Mistress Dorothy, you have been the truest of friends to me and mine. We cannot agree on all things, although I shall always honour you in my heart more than nine-tenths of the people I do agree with. But there is one admonition of Oliver Cromwell's which I should like to have engraved deep on the hearts of us all. It is one which he addressed last year, in a letter, to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland. 'I beseech you,' he wrote, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken'"

CHAPTER VII.

OLIVE'S RECOLLECTIONS.

HE last battle of the Civil Wars was fought. Or rather the battle-field was changed, and the long contest of the Commonwealth began, between Oliver governing and all the rest of parties and men who wished England otherwise governed, who wished it ungoverned, or who wished to govern it themselves.

The Royalists, Prelatical or Presbyterian, necessarily against him, the classical Republicans, the Anabaptist levellers, and, in their passive way, the Quakers. Indeed, it seemed as if all parties, as parties, were against him. The wonder was, that the arm which kept them all at bay should be strong enough at the same time to keep the world at bay, for England; and to keep England so ordered, that many of those who hated the Protector's rule confessed that the times-" by God's merciful sweetening (said they) of bitter waters "-had never been so prosperous as under it.

I confess that the change from Kidderminster to (240)

our home in London was in some measure a relief. It was like coming from a walled garden (admirably kept, indeed, and watered) into the open fields. It had not been my wont to live in a place so pervaded by one man as Kidderminster, or at least what I saw of it, was at that time by Mr. Baxter. He was so very active and self-denying and good, that do what I would whilst there, I could never get over the feeling of being, in some way, a transgressor if I happened to differ from him. His writings and sermons were certainly mainly directed against the great permanent evils of ungodliness and unrighteousness. But he wrote so many controversial books on every kind of ecclesiastical topic, and was so convinced that they were all convincing to all sound minds, that it was difficult, while in the Kidderminster world, to regard oneself, if not convinced, as having anything but a very sound mind.

So that it did feel like getting into a large room, to meet and converse again with people who did not think Mr. Baxter's judgment, moderate and wise as it doubtless was, the one final standard of truth in the universe. Not, certainly, that London at that time was a world free from debate and controversy of the fiercest kind. A Commonwealth in which, during the eleven years of its existence, thirty thousand controversial pamphlets of the fiercest and most contradictory kind were battering each other, each regarded by its author and his particular friends as absolutely convincing to all sound minds, was not likely to be that.