choose substantial yeomen, whose heart was in the work, to be soldiers for
them: this is advice by a man who _saw_. Fact answers, if you see into

Fact! Cromwell's _Ironsides_ were the embodiment of this insight of his;
men fearing God; and without any other fear. No more conclusively genuine

set of fighters ever trod the soil of England, or of any other land.
Neither will we blame greatly that word of Cromwell's to them; which was so

blamed: "If the King should meet me in battle, I would kill the King."
Why not? These words were spoken to men who stood as before a Higher than

Kings. They had set more than their own lives on the cast. The Parliament
may call it, in official language, a fighting "_for_ the King;" but we, for

our share, cannot understand that. To us it is no dilettante work, no
sleek officiality; it is sheer rough death and earnest. They have brought

it to the calling-forth of War; horrid internecine fight, man grappling
with man in fire-eyed rage,--the _infernal_ element in man called forth, to

try it by that! _Do_ that therefore; since that is the thing to be
done.--The successes of Cromwell seem to me a very natural thing! Since he

was not shot in battle, they were an inevitable thing. That such a man,
with the eye to see, with the heart to dare, should advance, from post to

post, from victory to victory, till the Huntingdon Farmer became, by
whatever name you might call him, the acknowledged Strongest Man in

England, virtually the King of England, requires no magic to explain it!--
Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, to fall into

Scepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity; not to know Sincerity when they
see it. For this world, and for all worlds, what curse is so fatal? The

heart lying dead, the eye cannot see. What intellect remains is merely the
_vulpine_ intellect. That a true _King_ be sent them is of small use; they

do not know him when sent. They say scornfully, Is this your King? The
Hero wastes his heroicfaculty in bootless contradiction from the unworthy;

and can accomplish little. For himself he does accomplish a heroic life,
which is much, which is all; but for the world he accomplishes

comparatively nothing. The wild rude Sincerity, direct from Nature, is not
glib in answering from the witness-box: in your small-debt _pie-powder_

court, he is scouted as a counterfeit. The vulpine intellect "detects"
him. For being a man worth any thousand men, the response your Knox, your

Cromwell gets, is an argument for two centuries whether he was a man at
all. God's greatest gift to this Earth is sneeringly flung away. The

miraculous talisman is a paltry plated coin, not fit to pass in the shops
as a common guinea.

Lamentable this! I say, this must be remedied. Till this be remedied in
some measure, there is nothing remedied. "Detect quacks"? Yes do, for

Heaven's sake; but know withal the men that are to be trusted! Till we
know that, what is all our knowledge; how shall we even so much as

"detect"? For the vulpine sharpness, which considers itself to be
knowledge, and "detects" in that fashion, is far mistaken. Dupes indeed

are many: but, of all _dupes_, there is none so fatally situated as he who
lives in undue terror of being duped. The world does exist; the world has

truth in it, or it would not exist! First recognize what is true, we shall
_then_ discern what is false; and properly never till then.

"Know the men that are to be trusted:" alas, this is yet, in these days,
very far from us. The sincere alone can recognize sincerity. Not a Hero

only is needed, but a world fit for him; a world not of _Valets_;--the Hero
comes almost in vain to it otherwise! Yes, it is far from us: but it must

come; thank God, it is visibly coming. Till it do come, what have we?
Ballot-boxes, suffrages, French Revolutions:--if we are as Valets, and do

not know the Hero when we see him, what good are all these? A heroic
Cromwell comes; and for a hundred and fifty years he cannot have a vote

from us. Why, the insincere, unbelieving world is the _natural property_
of the Quack, and of the Father of quacks and quackeries! Misery,

confusion, unveracity are alone possible there. By ballot-boxes we alter
the _figure_ of our Quack; but the substance of him continues. The

Valet-World _has_ to be governed by the Sham-Hero, by the King merely
_dressed_ in King-gear. It is his; he is its! In brief, one of two

things: We shall either learn to know a Hero, a true Governor and Captain,
somewhat better, when we see him; or else go on to be forever governed by

the Unheroic;--had we ballot-boxes clattering at every street-corner, there
were no remedy in these.

Poor Cromwell,--great Cromwell! The inarticulate Prophet; Prophet who
could not _speak_. Rude, confused, struggling to utter himself, with his

savage depth, with his wild sincerity; and he looked so strange, among the
elegant Euphemisms, dainty little Falklands, didactic Chillingworths,

diplomatic Clarendons! Consider him. An outer hull of chaotic confusion,
visions of the Devil, nervous dreams, almost semi-madness; and yet such a

clear determinate man's-energy working in the heart of that. A kind of
chaotic man. The ray as of pure starlight and fire, working in such an

element of boundless hypochondria, unformed black of darkness! And yet
withal this hypochondria, what was it but the very greatness of the man?

The depth and tenderness of his wild affections: the quantity of
_sympathy_ he had with things,--the quantity of insight he would yet get

into the heart of things, the mastery he would yet get over things: this
was his hypochondria. The man's misery, as man's misery always does, came

of his greatness. Samuel Johnson too is that kind of man.
Sorrow-stricken, half-distracted; the wide element of mournful _black_

enveloping him,--wide as the world. It is the character of a prophetic
man; a man with his whole soul _seeing_, and struggling to see.

On this ground, too, I explain to myself Cromwell's reputed confusion of
speech. To himself the internal meaning was sun-clear; but the material

with which he was to clothe it in utterance was not there. He had _lived_
silent; a great unnamed sea of Thought round him all his days; and in his

way of life little call to attempt _naming_ or uttering that. With his
sharp power of vision, resolute power of action, I doubt not he could have

learned to write Books withal, and speak fluently enough;--he did harder
things than writing of Books. This kind of man is precisely he who is fit

for doing manfully all things you will set him on doing. Intellect is not
speaking and logicizing; it is seeing and ascertaining. Virtue, Virtues,

manhood, _hero_hood, is not fair-spokenimmaculate regularity; it is first
of all, what the Germans well name it, _Tugend_ (_Taugend_, _dow_-ing or

_Dough_-tinesS), Courage and the Faculty to _do_. This basis of the matter
Cromwell had in him.

One understands moreover how, though he could not speak in Parliament, he
might _preach_, rhapsodic preaching; above all, how he might be great in

extempore prayer. These are the free outpouring utterances of what is in
the heart: method is not required in them; warmth, depth, sincerity are

all that is required. Cromwell's habit of prayer is a notable feature of
him. All his great enterprises were commenced with prayer. In dark

inextricable-looking difficulties, his Officers and he used to assemble,
and pray alternately, for hours, for days, till some definite resolution

rose among them, some "door of hope," as they would name it, disclosed
itself. Consider that. In tears, in fervent prayers, and cries to the

great God, to have pity on them, to make His light shine before them.
They, armed Soldiers of Christ, as they felt themselves to be; a little

band of Christian Brothers, who had drawn the sword against a great black
devouring world not Christian, but Mammonish, Devilish,--they cried to God

in their straits, in their extreme need, not to forsake the Cause that was
His. The light which now rose upon them,--how could a human soul, by any

means at all, get better light? Was not the purpose so formed like to be
precisely the best, wisest, the one to be followed without hesitation any

more? To them it was as the shining of Heaven's own Splendor in the
waste-howling darkness; the Pillar of Fire by night, that was to guide them

on their desolateperilous way. _Was_ it not such? Can a man's soul, to
this hour, get guidance by any other method than intrinsically by that

same,--devout prostration of the earnest struggling soul before the
Highest, the Giver 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