164 A Century of /Science 



was natural* enough that Cromwell, whose stern 

 common sense discerned the practical need of the 

 moment and reluctantly fulfilled it, should cry, 

 " The Lord deliver me from Sir Harry Vane ! " 

 In spite of this antagonism at the supreme crisis, 

 however, the Protector recognized the worth of his 

 opponent, and seems to have borne him no deep- 

 seated ill will. There was no downright break 

 between them until the Healing Question came up, 

 in 1656. 



In Vane's last years there seemed to be some 

 good reasons for distrusting his judgment on prac- 

 tical questions. The element "of dreamy enthusi- 

 asm always present in him began to come into the 

 foreground as his more sober ideas and plans were 

 thwarted. Some of his latest utterances are like 

 the rhapsodies of the Fifth Monarchists. Herein 

 again appears his spiritual kinship with his friends 

 in Massachusetts. The theocratic ideal of the 

 founders of Massachusetts, as developed freely in 

 the American wilderness, was kept within rational 

 bounds ; but if hemmed in by such inexorable cir- 

 cumstances as checked the early growth of repub- 

 licanism in England, it would very likely have 

 flowered grotesquely enough in Fifth Monarchist 

 vagaries. From Edward Johnson, of Woburn, 

 author of the " Wonder- Working Providence," 



