CHARLES AND HIS SUBJECTS. 341 



In this forlorn condition of the country, it was reserved for that 

 cold-hearted speculative genius, Cromwell to pursue and obtain an 

 elevation alike formidable and dreaded abroad, as it was effective 

 and energetic at home. Whatever opinion may be entertained upon 

 the means by which Cromwell made his way to the fearful height of 

 supreme power, the praise of an equitable administration of the 

 laws, and a bold and fearless exercise of the functions of the first 

 magistrate of a free people, have always constituted the character- 

 istic of his short rule as an epoch of English ascendency : a conclu- 

 sion which may be justly said to arise, not less from the firmness 

 and vigour (Cromwell was a soldier be it recollected) of the public 

 acts of his government, than from deplorable contrasts supplied by 

 the profligate habits of Charles II. in the last years of his reign. 



The unsubstantial unsubstantial, because wicked and unjust 

 fabric reared by Cromwell soon fell into shivers after the death of 

 its chief. His son, although destitute of the talents needed on such 

 emergencies, had magnanimity enough to vacate a post for which he 

 felt his utter incapacity, and taking from choice of his own free 

 will, the path of retirement and seclusion from the world, he sup- 

 plied no proper materials for history : he seems, in short, to have 

 been supremely happy to have learned the truth of real contentment 

 and peace, which his progenitor, who had been accounted " great," 

 but ultimately the opposite of great little. 



After this unprecedented and solemn mockery of a change from a 

 bad to a good government of which the gallant and patient Britons, 

 who had been, as it were, expatriated from their rights and liberties 

 the nation, roused like the *' lion" when he sees, only in the distance, 

 food with which to satisfy his calamitous and frightful appetite si- 

 multaneously welcomed back old institutions and the regal sceptre 

 under the "sacred shadow" of which Great Britain, through every 

 storm of faction and of public wars, has grown up, like a giant, after 

 having given birth to dignity and power. The MONARCHY crowns 

 the long line of British ancestorial administrations, which, bit by bit, 

 has framed the body politic, by an almost perfect, if not beautiful, 

 process. The greatest among many extraordinary men, who have 

 contributed to this national and constitutional blessing I need not 

 say is the patriotic, the humane, the exalted, but enduring, Lord 

 Melbourne His Majesty's Prime Minister. I shall not, in this 

 place, endeavour to say what I think of this truly great but unam- 

 bitious Minister as he now is surrounded by a halo of national 

 veneration which renders eulogium superfluous, and examination a 

 work of supererrogation. 



FROM SCHILLER. 



Deep in the earth the golden seed is laid, 



And spring shall yield young bud and waving blade, 



In Time's fast-closing furrow what shall bloom ? 



Burst the dull Earth, and spring from thy forgotten tomb ? 



AUCEPS. 

 M.M. No. 10. 2 X 



