Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/500

480 be so used as no effusion. of blood may follow, and therewithal may be a surety of the King's Majesty and of the state of the realm.

Somerset had shown ability as a general, and his courage in the field was unimpeachable; but in social and political life his tendency was ever to confound the imaginary and the real; to be extreme alike in his hopes and fears, and to govern himself rather by momentary emotion than by serious thought. He was like a woman in noble enthusiasms—like a woman in passionate sensibility: but he had the infirmity both of men and women whom fortune has spoilt; he could endure no disappointment, and a molehill in his path became a mountain. Thus an amicable intention of remonstrance he had construed into a conspiracy against the King—thus he believed that the council desired to murder him—thus, when his appeal to the country was likely to fail, he sunk into the extreme of despondency and submission; and now, when his son returned with the letter from the army, which, after his resolution to resign, need not have affected him, he fell again into a hysterical panic. Nothing so keenly irritates nervous excitement as the cold language of truth, and in the emphatic condemnation of his conduct, which he must have known to be just, he saw again gleaming before him the axe of the executioner. On the Wednesday morning the council heard from Windsor that the yeomen of the guard