Note B — Chapter LIV

The mind of each of the thirteen Gunpowder conspirators affords the intellectual philosopher and the moral philosopher rich food for thought. What a reflection from human nature is not the soul of these men, one and all — especially Catesby, Thomas Percy, Thomas Winter, Guy Fawkes, Ambrose Rookwood, and Christopher Wright. I would especially point out the strange superstition that Catesby exhibited in wishing to blow up the Parliament House, because it was there the iniquitous laws had been made against the Catholics. He primarily wished, like some pagan, to be revenged on the material object, which had been the unconscious and irresponsible instrument of his kinsfolk’s and friends’ hurt.

Moreover, how true to daily experience is the behaviour of Catesby in his last moments: of one who in his youth had been very wild, but who, on reaching maturer years, had grown to have a great devotion to her whom Wordsworth has so beautifully styled “our tainted nature’s solitary boast.”

Again; the dying soldier’s flying for protection to, and the kissing in his last agony, when the light of life was about to be quenched in his mortal eyes for ever, a picture of her who is “the Mother of Christ,” and whom millions hold to be likewise “the Refuge of sinners,” is startlingly true to human nature.

But — “Close up his eyes, and let us all to meditation.” For “In la sua volontade è nostra pace” — “Only in the Will of God is man’s peace.” And the essence of that Will is the Everlasting Moral Law.