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It will be seen that the Rospigliosi Aurora, Guido's one inspired work, has been here before the writer's memory.

The civil wars of the Barons, the Roses, and the Commonwealth.

Ranke's dispassionate summary of the attempted ‘arrest of five members,’ which has been always held one of the King's most arbitrary steps, as it was, perhaps, the most fatal, illustrates the view here taken: ‘The prerogative of the Crown, in the sense of the early kings’ (unconditional right of arrest, in cases of treason), ‘and the privilege of Parliament, in the sense of coming times, were directly contradictory to each other’: (viii: 10).

A sentence weighty with his judicial force may be here quoted from Hallam:—‘The desire of obtaining or retaining power, if it be ever sought as a means, is soon converted into an end.’ The career of the Long Parliament supports this judgment: of it ‘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 and courage, are recorded of them from their quarrel with the King to their expulsion by Cromwell’: (Const. Hist. ch. x: Part i).

Name for the white cloth in which babes were veiled immediately after Baptism.

See Ranke (viii: 5) for Pym's skilful use of a supposed plot, (the main element in which was known by himself to be untrue), in order to terrify the House and ensure the destruction of Strafford; and Hallam (ch. ix).—Admiration of Pym may be taken as a proof that a historian is ignorant of, or faithless to, the fundamental principles of the Constitution:—as the worship of Cromwell is decisive against any man's love of liberty, whatever his professions.

‘Cromwell, like so many other usurpers, felt his position too precarious, or his vanity ungratified, without the name which mankind have agreed to worship.’ The conversations recorded by Whitelock are conclusive on this point: ‘and, though compelled to decline the crown, he undoubtedly did not lose sight of the object for the short remainder of his life’ (Hallam).

‘A spiritual world,’ says a critic of deep insight, over and above this invisible one, is a most important addition to our idea of the universe; but it does not of itself touch our moral nature. . . . Its moral effect depends entirely upon what we make that world to be.’—Cromwell's religion, which may be profitably studied in his letters and speeches, (much better known of, than read) reveals itself there as the simple reflex of his personal views: it had great power to animate, little or none to regulate or control his impulses. He had, indeed, a most real and pervading ‘natural turn for the invisible; he thought of the invisible till he died; but the cloudy arch only canopied a field of human aim and will.’

‘He said on one occasion, He goes furthest who knows not whither he is going’: (Ranke: xii: 1).

Examples, (the tone of which justifies this phrase, and might deserve a severer), may be found by the curious in the frailties of poor human nature, passim, in Cromwell's ‘Letters and Speeches,’ for which, (although not always edited with precise accuracy), we are indebted to Mr. T. Carlyle. But the view which he takes of his ‘hero,’ whether in regard of many particular points alleged or ignored, or of his general estimate of Cromwell as a man,— as it appears to the author plainly untenable in face of proved historical facts, is here rejected.

The familiar figure of the Tyrant, too long known to the world,—with the iron, the clay, and the little gold often interfused also in the statue,— has been always easily recognisable by unbiassed eyes in Oliver Cromwell. His tyranny was substantially that of his kind, before his time and since, in its actions, its spirit, its result. Fanaticism and Paradox may come with their apparatus of rhetoric to blur, as they whitewash, the lineaments of their idol. Such eulogists may ‘paint an inch thick’: yet despots,—political, military, ecclesiastical,—will never be permanently acknowledged by the common sense of mankind as worthy the great name of Hero.

The Major-Generals, originally ten, (but the number varied), amongst whom, in 1655, the Commonwealth was divided. They displayed ‘a rapacity and oppression beyond their master's’ (Hallam): a phrase amply supported by the hardly-impeachable evidence of Ludlow.

The summary of Cromwell's conduct at Drogheda by a writer of so much research, impartiality, and philosophic liberality as Mr. Lecky deserves to be well considered.

‘The sieges of Drogheda and Wexford, and the massacres that accompanied them, deserve to rank in horror with the most atrocious exploits of Tilly and Wallenstein, and they made the name of Cromwell eternally hated in Ireland. It even now acts as a spell upon the Irish mind, and has a powerful and living influence in sustaining the hatred both of England and Protestantism. The massacre of Drogheda acquired a deeper horror and a special significance from the saintly professions and the religious phraseology of its perpetrators, and the town where it took place is, to the present day, distinguished in Ireland for the vehemence of its Catholicism:’ (Hist. of Eighteenth Cent. ch. vi).

‘In the ascent of this bold usurper to greatness . . . he had encouraged the levellers and persecuted them; he had flattered the Long Parliament and betrayed it; he had made use of the rectaries to crush the Commonwealth; he had spurned the sectaries in his last advance to power. These, with the Royalists and Presbyterians, forming in effect the whole people. . . were the perpetual, irreconcilable enemies of his administration’ (Hallam: ch. x).

See the curious regal imitations and adaptations of the Protector during his later years, in matters regarding his own and his family's titles and state, or the marriage of his daughters.

The ever-increasing unsuccess of Cromwell's career is forcibly set forth by Ranke (xii. 8). He had ‘crushed every enemy, —the Scottish and the Presbyterian system, the peers and the king, the Long Parliament and the Cavalier insurgents,—but to create . . an organization consistent with the authority which had fallen to his own lot, was beyond his power. Even among his old’ Anabaptist and Independent ‘friends, his comrades in the field, his colleagues in the establishment of the Commonwealth, he encountered the most obstinate resistance. . . . At no time were the prisons fuller; the number of political prisoners was estimated at 12,000 . . . The failure of his plans soured and distracted him.’ It was, in fact, wholly ‘beyond his power to consolidate a tolerably durable political constitution.’—To the disquiet caused by constant attempts against Cromwell's life, Ranke adds the death of his favourite daughter, Lady Claypole, whose last words of agony ‘were of the right of the king, ‘the blood that had been shed, the revenge to come.’