Whose powers will work more gently, and compose
The imperfect thoughts you labour to reclaim;
More winning, than enforcing the consent.”
The first bishop sent from Iona for the Northumbrian Church was Corman, a man described by Dean Milman as of austere and inflexible character, who, finding more resistance than he expected to his doctrines, in a full assembly of the nation sternly reproached the Northumbrians for their obstinacy, and declared that he would no longer waste his labours on so irreclaimable a race. A gentle voice was heard: “Brother, have you not been too harsh with your unlearned hearers? Should you not, like the apostles, have fed them with the milk of Christian doctrine, till they could receive the full feast of our sublimer truths?” All eyes, it is added, were turned on Aidan, a humble but devout monk; and by general acclamation that discreet and gentle teacher was saluted as bishop. The same historian describes Aldhelm of Malmesbury, in minstrel’s garb, arresting the careless crowd of church-goers on a bridge they must pass, and having fully enthralled their attention by the sweetness of his song, anon introducing into it some of the solemn truths of religion; thus succeeding in winning to the faith many hearts, which he would have attempted in vain to move by severer language, or even by the awful excommunication of the Church.[6] When Fénélon was intrusted by Lewis the Fourteenth with a mission to Poitou, to convert the Protestants, he refused the aid of dragoons, and resorted to suavity of persuasion alone as an instrument of conversion. Of the Protestant missions in the west of Ireland, complaint has been made of their being conducted too offensively, like raids upon heathendom: the Romanist, who might possibly open his bosom to the warm rays of charity, only folds the cloak of his hereditary faith more closely round him, when assailed by the bitter wind of a propagandism which seeks its way to the heart by violence and insult.[7]
It is at once, on the one part pleasant, on the other painful, to find the Lord Treasurer Burleigh, who had ever been the fast friend of Whitgift, frequently expressing his disapprobation of the primate’s severity against non-conformists, and his wish “that the spirit of gentleness might win, rather than severity.” And being here on Elizabethan ground, let us note Mr. Froude’s reference to the diverse procedure of Cecil and Throgmorton in their several dealings with the queen,—she being one of the many strong-willed people, on whom menaces and reproaches operate only as a spur. Cecil understood best Elizabeth’s disposition. “By ‘practices,’ by ‘bye-ways,’ as he afterwards described it, by affecting to humour what he was passionately anxious to prevent, he was holding his mistress under delicate control; and he dreaded lest his light leading-strings should be broken by a ruder touch.” As with the queen, so with her people. When Catherine de Medici expressed astonishment to Sir Thomas Smith, at a certain deference paid by his sovereign to the nation she ruled, “Madam,” he replied, “her people be not like your people; they must be trained by douceur and persuasion, not by rigour and violence.” The greatest of Russian empresses emulated in this respect the greatest of English queens. Indeed, her tendency to indulgence was imputed to Catharine II. as a fault, advantage being taken of her constant reluctance to punish. But how far greater things did she, on the whole, achieve with her subjects, exclaims Mr. Herman Merivale, “thus gently led, than those of her predecessors and successors who employed on them in such abundance the more forcible methods of government!”
Mr. Freeman, in the course of showing that Harold’s way of bringing in the proud Danes of the North to his obedience was not exactly the same as William’s way, describes him as determining, with that noble and generous daring which is sometimes the highest prudence, to trust himself in the hands of the people who refused to acknowledge him. “These his enemies, who would not that he should reign over them, instead of being brought and slain before him, were to be won over by the magic of his personal presence in their own land.” To apply what the Gaulish ambassador says of a great Roman in Jonson’s tragedy,
“This magistrate hath struck an awe into me,
And by his sweetness won a more regard
Unto his place, than all the boisterous moods
That ignorant greatness practiseth, to fill