Cromwell Author:Thomas Carlyle Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ness of darkness, with glances of the brightness of very Heaven; prayer, religious reading, and meditation ; household epochs, joys, arid cares : — we have a sol... more »id, substantial, inoffensive farmer of St. Ives, hoping to walk with integrity and humble, devout diligence through this world ; and, by his Maker's infinite mercy, to escape destruction, and find eternal salvation in wider divine worlds. This latter, this is the grand clause in his life, which dwarfs all other clauses. Much wider destinies than he anticipated were appointed him on earth; but that, in comparison to the alternative of heaven or hell to all eternity, was a mighty small matter. BATTLE OF NASEBY. HE old hamlet of Naseby stands yet on its old hill-top, very much as it did in Saxon days, on the northwestern border of Northamptonshire, some seven or eight miles from Market-Harborough in Leicestershire, nearly on a line and nearly midway, between that town and Daventry. A peaceable old hamlet, of some eight hundred souls ; clay cottages for laborers, but neatly thatched and swept ; smith's shop, saddler's shop, beer-shop, all in order ; forming a kind of square, which leads off southwards into two long streets : the old church, with its graves, stands in the centre, the truncated spire finishing itself with a strange old ball, held up by rods ; a " hollow copper ball, which came from Boulogne in Henry the Eighth's time," — which has, like Hudibras's breeches, " been at the Siege of Sullen." The ground is upland, moorland, through now growing corn ; was not enclosed till the last generation, and is still somewhat bare of wood. It stands nearly in the heart of England : gentle Dulness, taking a turn at etymology, sometimes derives it from Navel; " Navesby, quasi Navelsby, from being," etc. : Avon Well, the dis...« less