House of Commons was only a collection | gle. Wild theories were woven through of merchants or traders. They with the foggy archways of dreaming brains. their partisans had followed on the heels Say what we will of that Long Parliament, of the King, armed, and desirous, as they said, to fall to. It was the death-blow to his reign. The calm Roman faces he looked upon in that House were more terrible, did he but know it, than any that faced him on the field. When he left the House foiled, a voice cried, "To your tents, O Israel!" He fled from Whitehall, and only returned to mount the scaffold and to die.

it had exercised lately little power in governing the nation; a noisy, garrulous, chattering, self-opinionated old Parliament. Mr. Hallam, whose witness is so true that from his verdict there is seldom any appeal, has said: "It may be said, I think, with not greater severity than truth, that scarce two or three public acts of justice, humanity, or generosity, and very few of political wisdom or courage, are recorded of them from their quarrel with the King to their expulsion by Cromwell."

Cromwell was there he saw that out rage. He was not much known as yet to the nation at large, although upwards of Moments there assuredly are when the forty years of age. In his own county, destiny of the nation hangs on one strong indeed, he had made himself lately known, and supremely capable man; when a and had stepped forth from his obscurity. nation can no more be saved than a uniThere he was called the Lord of the Fens; verse can be governed by a Committee of for the King had desired to seize upon Ways and Means. Committees are a fine some vast extensive tracts of country expedient-a Parliament is only a large there, recently known as the Bedford national committee-but in moments of Level. Cromwell had tried that matter great exigency and danger a chief is wantas Hampden had tried the right of shipmoney, but with better success. Well was it he did so he alienated immense tracts of territory from the Crown; and his opposition to that continued draining arose from his determination to thwart the King. His name became known through his own county as a second Hereward. "He set well at the mark," said Hampden, defeated King and commissioners, acquired notice and fame, then sunk again into obscurity and silence, till called to take his place in the Long Parliament.

Passing over much else, there is one circumstance and scene in the life of Cromwell which has been ever surrounded with difficulty; his great Act of Usurpation when he assumed the power. We suppose that scene is one of the most memorable of any written upon our recollection from our early reading. The Long Parliament is associated with much that is most illustrious in the annals of those days; but we must remember that those achievements were associated with its very early annals. When Cromwell laid his hand so rudely on the symbols of power, Pym and Hampden were dead, and many besides, who, although less known, had given effect to its administrative character. The talk now held about the settlement of Government, the unending source of interminable talk, had degenerated into a mere Republican jan

ed. Looking through all England at that moment, you cannot find another man who could have been the great leader. Look round upon their ranks. There are men fiery in battle, and there are men with the calm and clear mind; but England needed at that time a man of instinct, and in Cromwell you behold such a man. He could not have written the Monarchy of Man with Sir John Eliot, nor the Science of Government of Algernon Sydney, nor the Meditations of Sir Harry Vane; but these men saw only in a straight line; they saw only their own idea; they were content to becomethey all did become-martyrs to their idea. Cromwell's eye swept the horizon, and he saw that England wanted equitable government, the rule of justice. He ruled not by the Presbyterian, or the Republican, or the independent theory of justice. He instinctively apprehended the wants of men; and hence, while he was, no doubt, in many directions hated-and perhaps few felt that his views exactly squared with theirs-all were compelled to feel that he alone was able to hold the restive horses along the dizzy and difficult crag; he alone was able to govern without a theory, and therefore justly.

It is something striking to contrast the two men going down to the same House. Charles was a King, and he went to arrest the members, and to assert that there was no law in England save his

will; but he went as King Nominal. | State; and Cromwell whispered him that Cromwell went with no royalty about he wished to speak to him. Cromwell him, yet he went as King Real; and he, was just on his way to Scotland, to that too, went for the still more amazing pur- sublime campaign of his in which occurred pose of daring that whole House, and the grand episode of Dunbar. He took turning it out into the streets. In- Ludlow into the Queen's Guard-room, and telligence reached him that morning that there he talked to him some time, decertainly might well fill him with alarm. nouncing the tortuous jungle of English It was the news of what would, if carried law; speaking of the great providences of out, materially increase the difficulties of God in England, and what might be done his position; and he determined on the by a good, brave man in particular, he venture. Therefore, in his plain suit of talked in a most unintelligible manner of black, with his gray worsted stockings, he the 110th Psalm. It is not unintelligible went down to the House, and took his to us now. ordinary seat. But why do we describe the scene which has been described so often? How restlessly he sat there. How he essayed several times to rise, and sunk back again on his seat. How, at last, as a motion was about to be put, he sprang from his place, threw off his hat, and began to speak; and how he began to speak in condemnation of the Parliament; then launched out in condemnation of their sins; then, with most memorable words, took the Speaker from the Chair, turned the members out, threw away the Mace, emptied the celebrated Chamber, locked the door, and walked away with the key in his pocket.

Well, he has, then, done the deed, call him what you will; he has ascended the throne. He did, no doubt, that which the best spirits of his own day did perceive to be wisest and best; but let no person see in this any inauguration of freedom, or homage to complete suffrage: it was homage to power. He took that place by the right of the ablest; and we may now follow him a few paces into the great acts of his government. We have called him the Protector. That word, you will perceive, does adequately represent what he was, and what he dared to be-the guardian genius of England's Commonwealth; the name as we believe most venerable for his age in the annals of civil and religious freedom; man of widest heart and shrewdest eye.

Some have compared him with Napoleon-Napoleon the First-to his disadvantage. But you will soon see the justice of that criticism which finds the greatness of Napoleon rather in that he did his work upon stilts; he performed his work in a large, ambitious manner, and strode to and fro in self-conscious exaggeration before the eyes of Europe. Cromwell performed his work on our own island; but he did not leave it. He humbled the proud empires of Europe by a glance. It took battles to raise himself to his place of Protector, but he became the Dictator of Europe by mesmerism. From his Council-chamber in Whitehall he dictated his own terms.

The inarticulateness of Cromwell has been commented upon. He speaks, but you cannot fathom all his meaning. Is not this the surest type and token of the master-man, be he statesman or any kind of man? Not even to himself surely was all his meaning revealed; how could it be to those to whom he spoke? Even to all the mightiest souls does thought lie deeper far than any speech. In all his words there is the heavy roll of a deep sea; but this, when the fit of inspiration was upon him, was especially the case. Then, while the bright forks of lightning pierced far and deep through his words, he yet used many unintelligible to those to whom he spoke. Nothing has been more commented on than the reserve of Cromwell, as certain slanderers choose to call it, his hypocrisy. Of course there was reserve; secretiveness, if the reader will; a poor Rightly to estimate the power of Cromstatesman he who has not this. Test of well, our readers must remember that at all power to command is the possibility of that time England had never been more intellectual reserve, in combination with than a third-rate power in Europe; and moral sympathy. A famous instance of the other nations were in the very hight that we have in an interview with Lud- and heat of their grandeur and fame. low; a memorable afternoon. It was Spain was the kingdom of the Inquisition, after there had been held a Council of the chief land of the Romish power; with

and praying for redress. Upon hearing the petition, the Protector told his council he would take that affair upon himself, and ordered the man to attend him next morning. He examined him strictly as to all the circumstances of his case, and finding by his answers that he was a plain, honest man, and that he had been concerned in no unlawful trade, he asked him if he would go to Paris with a letter? The man answered, he could. 'Well, then,' says the Protector, 'prepare for your journey, and come to me to-morrow morning.' Next morning he gave him a letter to Cardinal Mazarin, and told him he must stay but three days for an answer. The answer I mean,' says he, is the full value of what you might have made of your ship and cargo; and tell the Cardinal, tha if it is not paid you in three days, you have express orders from me to return home.' The honest, blunt Quaker, we may suppose, followed his instructions to a tittle; but the Cardinal, according to the manner of ministers when they are any way pressed, began to shuffle; therefore the Quaker returned, as he was bid. As soon as the Protector saw him, he asked:

her continents of golden isles in the West, her possessions of gold in her own country; haughty, defiant, and strong. Spain Cromwell determined to crush. France was powerful. Only recently had she know the monarchy of Henry of Navarre; the grand statesmanship of Richelieu. Her destinies were in that day guided by the wiliest man and most fox-like statesman in Europe. Him Cromwell treated as a valet or a footman; and his power lay humbled and stricken before the genius of the bluff farmer-statesman. Our readers may talk if they will about the craft and cunning of Cromwell, but his letters to Mazarin flew like transparent waves before the inky turbidity of that cuttle-fish, that sepia among statesmen, Mazarin. A dry humor, nay, sometimes a most droll humor, guides his dealings with him. Mazarin was, as we know, a miserable miser, a kind of griffin in threadbare wings, watching his heaps and cellars of gold. How well Cromwell knew him! He sent presents to Cromwell, we find, the richest and the stateliest presents of hangings, and pictures, and jewels. Whereupon Cromwell came out generously too, and sent the French-Well, friend, have you got your money?' man what he knew to his market-eye would be of more value than hangings, pictures, jewels, or books; he sent him some tons of British tin. Was it not characteristic of the shrewdness of the man? The supple Mazarin never found himself so perplexed.

Did our readers ever read the anecdote of Cromwell and the Quaker? It occurs in a speech made in the House of Commons in the early part of the eighteenth century, by Mr. Pulteny, in a debate on the complaints of the West-Indian merchants against Spain; and certainly it showed no ordinary bravery to introduce the example of Cromwell to the notice of kings and ministers in those days:

And upon the man's answering he had not, the Protector told him: Then leave your direction with my secretary, and you shall soon hear from me.' Upon this occasion that great man did not stay to negotiate, or to explain, by long tedious memorials, the reasonableness of his demand. No; though there was a French minister residing here, he did not so much as acquaint him with the story, but immediately sent a man-of-war or two to the Channel, with orders to seize every French ship they could meet with. Accordingly, they returned in a few days with two or three French prizes, which the Protector or dered to be immediately sold, and out of the produce he paid the Quaker what he "This was what Oliver Cromwell did demanded for the ship and cargo. Then in a like case, that happened during his he sent for the French Minister, gave him government, and in a case where a more an account of what had happened, and told powerful nation was concerned than ever him there was a balance, which, if he Spain could pretend to be. In the his- pleased, should be paid in to him, to the tories of his time we are told that an Eng-end that he might deliver it to those of lish merchant-ship was taken in the chops his countrymen who were the owners of of the Channel, carried into St. Malo, and the French ships that had been so taken there confiscated upon some groundless and sold." pretense. As soon as the master of the ship, who was an honest Quaker, got home, he presented a petition to the Protector in council, setting forth his case,

Cromwell never assumed the title of "Defender of the Faith," but, beyond all princes of Europe, he was the bulwark and barrier against the cruelties of Rome.

Cromwell sent his agent to the Duke of Savoy, a prince with whom he had no correspondence or commerce, and so engaged the Cardinal, and even terrified the Pope himself, without so much as doing any grace to the English Roman Catholics, (nothing being more usual than his saying

should visit Civita Vecchia, and that the sound of his cannon should be heard in Rome,") that the Duke of Savoy thought it necessary to restore all that he had taken from them, and did renew all those privileges they had formerly enjoyed and newly forfeited.

not conceal his sympathy with the efforts of the Duke of Savoy to coërce these Protestant rebels-declared his conviction, that, in truth, “the Vaudois had inflicted a hundred times worse cruelties on the Catholics than they had suffered from them;" and altogether took up a very high and haughty position. Crom-that his ships in the Mediterranean well remained unmoved. New protestations met with no better reception. He told his Majesty of France, in reply to his assurances of the impossibility of his interfering, that he had already allowed his own troops to be employed as the tools of the persecutors; which, though something very like giving his Christian Majesty the lie, was not without its effect. Cromwell would not move from the sacred duty he had assumed to himself, as the defender of the persecuted Protestants of Europe. The French ambassador applied for an audience to take his leave, and was made welcome to go. Louis and Mazarin had both to yield to his wishes, at last, and became the unwilling advocates of the heretics of the valleys.

Indeed, of the whole foreign policy of Cromwell, in which Milton bore so conspicuous a share, a very slight sketch may suffice. It is altogether such as every Englishman may be proud of. Not an iota of the honors due to a crowned head would he dispense with, when negotiating, as the Protector of England, with the proudest monarchs of Europe. Spain yielded with little hesitation to accord to him the same style as was claimed by her own haughty monarchs; but Louis of France sought, if possible, some compromise. His first letter was addressed to "His Most Serene Highness Oliver, Lord Protector," etc., but Cromwell refused to receive it. The more familiar title of "Cousin" was in like manner rejected, and Louis, and his crafty minister, the Cardinal Mazarin, were compelled to concede to him the wonted mode of address between sovereigns-"To our dear Brother Oliver." "What!" exclaimed Louis to his minister, "shall I call this base fellow my brother ?" "Ay," rejoined his astute adviser, "or your father, if it will gain your ends !"

When those of the Valley of Lucerne had unwarily rebelled against the Duke of Savoy, which gave occasion to the Pope, and the neighboring princes of Italy, to call and solicit for their extirpation, and their prince positively resolved upon it,

One

"Cromwell," says a celebrated writer, "would never suffer himself to be denied any thing he ever asked of the Cardinal, alleging, that the people would not be otherwise satisfied; which the Cardinal bore very heavily, and complained of to those with whom he would be free. day he visited Madame Turenne; and when he took his leave of her, she, according to her custom, besought him to continue gracious to the churches. Whereupon the Cardinal told her, that he knew not how to behave himself: if he advised the King to punish and suppress their insolence, Cromwell threatened him to join with the Spaniard; and if he showed any favor to them, at Rome they accounted him a heretic.'

The proceedings the Cardinal did adopt. leave no room to doubt the conclusion he finally arrived at, as to whether it was most advisable to attend to the threats of the Pope of Rome or of the Lord Protector of England.

The prince who bears the closest resemblance to Cromwell is Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden. He, too, was the lion of the Protestant cause, and his camp, like that of the great British farmer, was the scene of piety and extraordinary bravery. Like Cromwell, he was rapid, and irresistible as a mountain torrent, on the field. Like Cromwell, he alarmed the councils of the Roman Pontiff, and struck terror into the Imperialist cabinet. Far inferior to Cromwell-for who of all generals or statesmen equaled him?-yet both regarded themselves as set apart and consecrated for the defense of Protestantism against the encroachments and cruelties of Popery. This idea entered largely into the mind of the Protector; he saw the state of Europe; he felt for its wrung and lacerated condition. In his age he was the only Protest