all hearts, and its phraseology, as he expresses himself
elsewhere, "become mournful to him when spouted as frothy cant from
Exeter Hall." If Mr Carlyle would visit Exeter Hall, and carry there one
tithe of the determination to approve, that he exhibits in favour of the
Puritan, he would find a Christian piety as sincere, as genuine, and far
more humane, than his heroes of Naseby, or Dunbar, or Drogheda were
acquainted with. He would see the descendants of his Puritans, relieved,
at least we may say, from the necessity of raising their psalm on the
battle-field, indulging in none of the ferocities of our nature,
assembling in numerous but peaceful meetings, raising annually, by a
quiet but no contemptible sacrifice, their millions for the
dissemination of Gospel truth. But Mr Carlyle would call this cant; he
sees nothing good, or generous, or high-minded in any portion of the
world in which he lives; he reserves his sympathies for the past--for
the men of buckram and broad-sword, who, on a question of church
government, were always ready "to hew Agag to pieces," let Agag stand
for who, or what number it might.

If there is one spectacle more odious than another of all which history
presents to us, whether it take place amongst Mahometan or Christian,
Catholic or Protestant, it is this:--to see men practising all the
terrible brutalities of war, treading down their enemies, doing all that
rage and the worst passions prompt, and doing all amidst exclamations of
piety, devout acknowledgments of submission to Divine will, and
professions of gratitude to God. Other religious factions have committed
far greater atrocities than the Puritans, but nowhere in history is this
same spectacle exhibited with more distasteful and sickening
accompaniments. The Moslem thanked God upon his sword in at least a
somewhat soldierly manner; and the Catholic, by the very pomp with which
he chants his _Te Deum_, somewhat conceals the meaning of his act, and,
keeping God a little out of sight, makes his mass express the natural
feeling of a human triumph. But the sleek Puritan, at once grovelling
and presumptuous, mingles with his sanguinary mood all the morbid
sickly conceit, all the crawling affected humility of the conventicle.
All his bloodsheds are "mercies," and they are granted in answer to his
long and miserable prayers--prayers which, to a man of rational piety,
sound very much like blasphemies. He carries with him to the
battle-field,