Note O — THE LAY OF THE MINSTREL'S HEART.

The farm of St. Ives, where Cromwell spent three years, which he afterwards recalled with regret—though not unafflicted with dark hypochondria and sullen discontent. Here, as Mr. Forster impressively observes, "in the tenants that rented from him, in the labourers that served under him, he sought to sow the seeds of his after troop of Ironsides.... All the famous doctrines of his later and more celebrated years were tried and tested in the little farm of St. Ives.... Before going to their field-work in the morning, they (his servants) knelt down with their master in the touching equality of prayer; in the evening they shared with him again the comfort and exaltation of divine precepts."—Forster's Cromwell.