to drag them to the river; often sought to drown their praying and preaching with fire-shovels and tin kettles. In these persecutions they were sometimes led on by the authorities; and constables wishing to ingratiate themselves with the upper classes laid information against these poor preachers as disturbers of the peace. On such a charge John Ride and Edward Bishop were cited before the magistrates of Winchester, in 1834. No breach of the law being proved against them, the magistrates offered to let them go if they would promise not to preach again at Micheldever. Refusing to do this, they were bound over to be tried at the Quarter Sessions, and during the twelve days they were finding bail, they were kept in the same prison in which the victims of 1830 had been confined. I do not suppose that they had any idea of the dignity of their martyrdom, or how really they were being associated with the sufferings of Christ. For we must not expect the thoughts of even the poorest among English evangelists to rise above the level of nineteenth-century Christianity. However, no one can preach the Gospel of the Kingdom or sincerely pray that that Kingdom may come without helping to bring about a revolution of the most radical description.
But if the religious awakening brought about by the instrumentality of such men gave the labourers energy enough to claim their rights, the public mind had itself been prepared to admit their demand by an awakening far more widespread and discernible.
A great earthquake had taken place; an angel had descended from heaven, and rolling back the stone, sat upon it. Yes, we in England saw only the pale aurora of that Resurrection-morn, and little believed its import. We fancied ourselves a peculiar people, to whom a European Sunrise was only a matter of curiosity. But who that remembers the literature and the movements of 1848 but must feel, even if he thinks only of England, that he lived in a true springtime, when buds were bursting, and birds were singing, and rocks gushing with living water?
The streams have mingled now and widened into a river, which rolls on sluggishly enough; but no dam will be made sufficiently strong to stop its progress. The light has fairly broken, and though the clouds keep gathering, they cannot hide the rising sun.
