Page:Old Castles.djvu/52

44 the garrison here. His discourse was most likely delivered in the inner court of the castle, and it being the fourth year of the Protectorate, it is not improbable that some of Cromwell's soldiers might be intermixed with the troops, which may account for his favourable reception, for we find the soldiers on the morrow taking his part when he was arrested after preaching at the Market Cross. However this may be, his being here adds to the interest of these ancient walls, and to him who lingers lovingly over all their great past, imbibing not only the fact, but the spirit of the times out of which the fact grew, this one calm voice amid the multitudinous din of years will be precious indeed–precious as the augury of a new era, as the first receding wave of a many centuried strife-tide which, not here only, but throughout the whole world, had spread perpetual desolation and perpetual sorrow. It would be worth much now to many to annihilate the intervening years, and catch but for one brief minute the look and tone that pierced the hearts of that grotesque auditory on that special day in this castle court. So plain a man and yet so powerful, so courageous and yet so humble he rises on the imagination; and then his truth so great that it has yet to live on and refresh unknown generations–not yet fully apprehended, but finally to be both apprehended and honoured. No wonder that a preacher of such doctrines–a denouncer of routine and formula–should here, as every where, have found a prison. One of the most faithful and farseeing of the spiritualists of all times, his imagined presence still hallows these scenes; and though there is no authentic proof