broad for it, his cheeks the less ruddy for it? He wore his flaxen
hair of the same length that every one now wears theirs, instead of
letting it hang half-way to his waist in essenced curls; but was he
therefore the less of a true Viking's son, bold-hearted as his sea-
roving ancestors who won the Danelagh by Canute's side, and settled
there on Thoresby Rise, to grow wheat and breed horses, generation
succeeding generation, in the old moated grange? He carried a Bible
in his jack-boot: but did that prevent him, as Oliver rode past him
with an approving smile on Naseby field, thinking himself a very
handsome fellow, with his moustache and imperial, and bright red
coat, and cuirass well polished, in spite of many a dint, as he sate
his father's great black horse as gracefully and firmly as any long-
locked and essenced cavalier in front of him? Or did it prevent him
thinking, too, for a moment, with a throb of the heart, that sweet
Cousin Patience far away at home, could she but see him, might have
the same opinion of him as he had of himself? Was he the worse for
the thought? He was certainly not the worse for checking it the next
instant, with manly shame for letting such 'carnal vanities' rise in
his heart while he was 'doing the Lord's work' in the teeth of death
and hell: but was there no poetry in him then? No poetry in him,
five minutes later, as the long rapier swung round his head, redder
and redder at every sweep? We are befooled by names. Call him
Crusader instead of Roundhead, and he seems at once (granting him
only sincerity, which he had, and that of a right awful kind) as
complete a knight-errant as ever watched and prayed, ere putting on
his spurs, in fantastic Gothic chapel, beneath 'storied windows
richly dight.' Was there no poetry in him, either, half an hour
afterwards, as he lay bleeding across the corpse of the gallant
horse, waiting for his turn with the surgeon, and fumbled for the
Bible in his boot, and tried to hum a psalm, and thought of Cousin