Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/71

1552.] the executioner. Dropping his cloak, he unbuckled his sword, which he presented to the Lieutenant of the Tower, and, after a few words with the Dean of Christ Church, who had attended him, he loosened his shirt-collar, and knelt quietly before the block. Three times he was heard to say, 'Lord Jesus, save me.' The headsman's arm rose, fell, and all was over.

The English public, often wildly wrong on general questions, are good judges, for the most part, of personal character; and so passionately was Somerset loved, that those who were nearest the scaffold started forward to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood. His errors were forgotten in the tragedy of his end; and the historian who in his life sees much to censure, who, had he recovered his Protectorate, would, perhaps, have been obliged to repeat the same story of authority unwisely caught at and unwisely used, can find but good words only for the victim of the treachery of Northumberland.

In revolutions the most excellent things are found ever in connection with the most base. The enthusiast for the improvement of mankind works side by side with the adventurer, to whom change is welcome, that he may better his fortune in the scramble: and thus it is that patriots and religious reformers show in fairest colours when their cause is ungained, when they are a struggling minority chiefly called upon to suffer. Gold and silver will not answer for the purposes of a currency till they are hardened with some interfusion of coarser metal; and truth and justice, when they have forced