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Passages Selected From the Writings of Thomas Carlyle, With a Biogr. Memoir by T. Ballantyne
Passages Selected From the Writings of Thomas Carlyle With a Biogr Memoir by T Ballantyne Author:Thomas Carlyle General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1860 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: CROMWELL. CROMWELL'S BIRTHPLACE. Huntingdon itself lies pleasantly along the left bank of the Ouse, sloping pleasantly upwards from Ouse Bridge, which connects it with the old village of Godmanchester; the Town itself consisting mainly of one fair street, which towards the north end of it opens into a kind of irregular market-place, and then contracting again soon terminates. The two churches of All-Saints' and St. John's, as you walk up northward from the Bridge, appear successively on your left; the church-yards flanked with shops or other houses. The Ouse, which is of very circular course in this quarter, winding as if reluctant to. enter the Fen-country, -- says one topographer, has still a respectable drab-colour gathered from the clays of Bedfordshire, has not yet the Stygian black which in a few miles further it assumes for good. Huntingdon, as it were, looks over into the Fens ; Godmanchester, just across the rive. r, already stands on black bog. The country to the East is all Fen (mostly unreclaimed in Oliver's time, and still of a very dropsical character); to the West it is hard green ground, agreeably broken into little heights, duly fringed with wood, and bearing marks of comfortable long-continued cultivation. Here, on the edge of the firm green land, and looking over into the black marshes with their alder-trees and willow-trees, did Oliver Cromwell pass his young years. Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, vol. i., p. 34. COINCIDENCES. While Oliver Cromwell was entering himself of Sidney- Sussex College, William Shakspeare was taking his farewell of this world. Oliver's Father had, mo...« less