some large beams were discovered in a cave by the crusaders; a wood near Sichem, the enchanted grove of Tasso, was cut down; the necessary timber was transported to the camp by the vigor and dexterity of Tancred; and the engines were framed by some Genoese artists, who had fortunately landed in the harbor of Jaffa. 6 Two movable turrets were constructed at the expense and in the stations of the Duke of Lorraine and the Count of Toulouse, and rolled forward with devout labor, not to the most accessible, but to the most neglected parts of the fortification. Raymond's tower was reduced to ashes by the fire of the besieged, but his colleague was more vigilant and successful; the enemies were driven by his archers from the ramparts; the drawbridge was let down ; and on a Friday, at three in the afternoon, the day and hour of the Passion, Godfrey of Bouillon stood victorious on the walls of Jerusalem. His example was followed on every side by the emulation of valor; and about four hundred and sixty years after the conquest of Omar, the 7holy city was rescued from the Mohammedan yoke. In the pillage of public and private wealth, the adventurers had agreed to respect the exclusive property of the first occupant; and the spoils of the great mosque-seventy lamps and massy vases of gold and silver-rewarded the diligence and displayed the generosity of Tancred. A bloody sacrifice was offered by his mistaken votaries to the God of the Christians: resistance might provoke, but neither age nor sex could mollify, their implacable rage; they indulged themselves three days in a promiscuous massacre, and the infection of the dead bodies produced an epidemical disease. After seventy thousand Moslems had been put to the sword, and the harmless Jews had been burned in their synagogue, they could still reserve a multitude of captives whom interest or lassitude per

suaded them to spare. Of these savage heroes of the 8 cross, Tancred alone betrayed some sentiments of compassion; yet we may praise the more selfish lenity of Raymond, who granted a capitulation and safe-conduct to the garrison of the citadel. The holy sepulcher was now free; and the bloody victors prepared to accomplish their Bareheaded and barefoot, with contrite hearts, and in a humble posture, they ascended the hill of Calvary, amidst the loud anthems of the clergy; kissed the stone which had covered the Saviour of the world, and bedewed with tears of joy and penitence the monument of their redemption.

Vow.

OLIVER CROMWELL.-HIS LAST DAYS.-ESTIMATE OF HIS CHARACTER.

VON RANKE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND." PRINCIPALLY IN THE

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

We have elsewhere commented upon the difficulty of estimating the character of Oliver Cromwell properly. This description of Von Ranke's is marked by fine discrimination, and clearness of judgment in apprehending and exhibiting the salient points in the character of this remarkable man. Von Ranke commends himself to every earnest student of history by his wonderful grasp of the subject, his caution, his original research, and the amazing labor bestowed upon his work. The variety of his historical compositions is astonishing, and though now past eighty, he still labors with unabated energy and diligence.

NOTHING is more misleading than to search for the 1 psychological causes connected with the death of great men, and to attribute to them a decisive influence. One of Cromwell's confidential attendants ventures to assert that the attempt to carry on an unparliamentary govern

ment had exhausted his vital powers. And certain it is that the failure of his plans soured and disturbed him. In his own family circle, from which he used never to be absent at breakfast and dinner, for he was an excellent father, he was latterly never seen for weeks together. The discovery of constantly renewed attempts upon his life filled him with disquiet. It is said that he took opium, which could not fail to increase his agitation. To this was added the illness and death of his favorite daughter, Lady Claypole, whose last ravings were of the religious and political controversies which harassed her father-the right of the king, the blood that had been shed, the revenge to come. The Independent ministers 2 again found access to him. When his growing indisposition was succeeded by fever, and assumed a dangerous character, they still assured him that he would yet live, for God had need of him. Meantime he grew worse and worse. We all know how the mental feelings and the bodily organs react upon each other. Cromwell suffered from excessive fullness of the vessels of the brain and an internal corruption of the bile. They attempted to check the disease by a panacea, which gave him some relief, and brought him back from Hampton Court to Westminster, to the palace of the old kings at Whitehall. There he died immediately, on the 3d of September, the anniversary of his victories of Dunbar and Worcester, which had 3 gained him this lodging. The people declared that he was snatched away amid the tumult of a fearful storm, a proof that he was in league with Satanic powers. Others saw in it the sympathy of nature with the death of the first man in the world. But gales and storms follow their own laws-in reality, the storm had raged the night before. It was not till the afternoon that Cromwell died. But this belief was not confined to the common people.

The next generation execrated Cromwell as a monster of wickedness, while posterity has pronounced him one of the greatest of the human race.

To him was granted the marvelous distinction of 4 breaking through the charmed circle which among the European nations hems in the private man. Invested with sovereign authority, and needing no higher sanction -for he was not compelled, like Richelieu, to convince his king by argument, or to pry into cabinet intrigueshe forced his way into the history of the world. The king who reckoned a hundred ancestors in Scotland, and held the throne of England by that hereditary right, on which most other states rested, was overthrown mainly by the armed force which he created, and was then succeeded by him.

Yet Cromwell had the self-restraint to refuse the crown itself; that which he was, the general of the victorious army, invested with the highest civil authority, that he resolved to remain.

For when once Parliament had stripped the monarchy 5 of the military authority, the army displayed a tendency to submit no longer even to Parliament. The civil authority became dependent upon the military. Cromwell took it in hand and resolved to uphold it against all opposition. Above all, he was forced to suppress those institutions which were most nearly allied with the old order of things. The aristocracy or the episcopacy could not be suffered to exist any more than the monarchy itself. Political and religious opposition to all these elements were for Cromwell the end of his existence. In this he 6 discerned the welfare of the country, the advancement of religion and morality, but also his own justification, if in promoting his own cause he went so far as to resist those opponents who sprang from the very

heart of his party. He deemed it essential to bring all the active forces in the country into obedience to his will. Thus it was that he established a power which has no parallel and no appropriate name. It is true that the noble sentiments which flowed from his lips were also the levers of his power, and he did not allow them to interfere with it; but no less true is it that the supreme authority in itself was not his aim. It was to aid him in realizing those ideas of religious liberty, and of civil order and national independence, which filled his whole soul. These ideas he regarded not as merely satisfactory to himself, but as actually and objectively 7 necessary. Cromwell's was in fact a nature of deep impulses, restless originality, and wide comprehensiveness, at once slow and impatient, trustworthy and faithless, destructive and conservative, ever pressing on to the untrodden way in front; before it all obstacles must give way or be crushed.

8

If we ask what of Cromwell's work survived him, we shall not find the answer in particular institutions of the state and the constitution. We are never certain whether he contemplated the continuance of the power which he possessed himself: neither his House of Lords nor his Commons was destined to endure; nor yet the army of which he was the founder, nor the separatist movements with which he started. Time has swept all this away. Yet he exercised, nevertheless, an influence rich in im portant results.

We have seen how the germs of the great struggle are to be found in the historical and natural conditions of the three countries of Britain, and we have traced the part played by the republican system in subjecting to England the two other members of the British commonwealth. But it was Cromwell's victories which made this