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Without wanting sentiment, there is such a bracing air about them as breathes from the higher levels and strong-holds of the soul. They show that self-possession which can alone reserve to love the power of new self-surrender, of never cloying, because never wholly possessed.
Essex suppressed all outward expressions of violence and anger; became thoughtful, moody, and sullen; held secret consultations with desperate intriguers, and finally formed a scheme to organize a rebellion, to bring King James's troops to England to support it, to take possession of the Tower and of the strong-holds about London, to seize the palace of the queen, overturn her government, and compel her both to acknowledge James's right to the succession and to restore Essex himself to power.
But he bemoans what the end of it may be, the King being ruled by these men, as he hath been all along since his coming; to the razing all the strong-holds in Scotland, and giving liberty to the Irish in Ireland, whom Cromwell had settled all in one corner; who are now able, and it is feared everyday a massacre again among them.
"The fact is," said he, "that many of the people in the villages among the mountains are robbers, or rather the robbers find perfect asylum among them. They range over a vast extent of wild impracticable country, along the chain of Apennines, bordering on different states; they know all the difficult passes, the short cuts and strong-holds.
Yet again they fear the Burgers yet more, because they have beaten some of the very foes of Higham, to wit, the Westland Barons; for they have taken from them some of their strong-holds, and are deemed to be gathering force." Ralph pondered a while, and then he said: "Brother, hast thou any tidings of Upmeads, or that these Burgers have gone down thither?" "God forbid!" said Hugh.
Caesar having had intimation of this, and seeing the Germans lie still, thought it expedient to attack them whilst they were under these apprehensions, rather than sit still and wait their time. Accordingly he made his approaches to the strong-holds and hills on which they lay encamped, and so galled and fretted them, that at last they came down with great fury to engage.
Here also it may either be intended, that the affections are misplaced in Religion, generally, or that our blessed Saviour is not the proper object of them. This notion of the affections being out of place in Religion, is indeed an opinion which appears to be generally prevalent. The affections are regarded as the strong-holds of enthusiasm.
For they are, of course, and must needs be, the strong-holds of the past those ancient and venerable seats of learning, 'the fountains and nurseries of all the humanities, as a Cambridge Professor calls them, in a letter addressed to Raleigh. The principle of these larger wholes is, of course, instinctively conservative. Their business is to know nothing of the new.
Yet the good and zealous men whose lot it was to be thus set upon by a depraved, infuriate rabble, the foremost of them active in direct assault, and the rest venting their ferocious delight in a hideous blending of ribaldry and execration, of joking and cursing, were taxed with a canting hypocrisy, or a fanatical madness, for speaking of the prevailing ignorance and barbarism in terms equivalent to our sentence from the Prophet, "The people are destroyed for lack of knowledge," and for deploring the hopelessness of any revolution in this empire of darkness by means of the existing institutions, which seemed indeed to have become themselves its strong-holds.
The Duke of Montpensier was spokesman of the assembly, and, in an harangue carefully prepared for the occasion, made an elaborate proposition to the king that the provinces, districts, cities, castles; and other strong-holds throughout the kingdom should now be formally bestowed upon the actual governors and commandants thereof in perpetuity, and as hereditary property, on condition of rendering a certain military service to the king and his descendants.
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