288 MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 



The following defence of the much-slandered Cromwell will not have beeu . 

 made in vain, if the reader shall experience any thing like the pleasure felt by 

 us in its perusal : 



" The passions of all parties were enlisted against his memory. Royalists 

 and presbyterians would revile him as a rebel and traitor ; republicans, as a 

 usurper and regenade. He was slandered in every trait of his character, and 

 every action of his life. But the supremacy of his talents has stood unques- 

 tioned and alone. He was acknowledged by all to have been a soldier of the 

 first order, and the greatest genius of his time in the art of government. 



" His early irregularites, greatly exaggerated, his melancholy imagination 

 and temperament in his youth, the former reformed, the latter strengthened 

 and brightened by religious enthusiasm as well as by reason and by the prin- 

 ciples of morality, have been alluded to in every notice of his life. A con- 

 temporary has recorded with graphic force his first appearance, sitting in the 

 house of commons : his slovenly dress ; his awkward sword ; his plain hat ; 

 his unpretending band, with the ominous red spot (imaginary or real) ; his 

 uncouth features ; his harsh tones j the rude energy and contagious fervour 

 of his elocution. The same writer, again as an eye-witness, has described 

 him at a more advanced period of his life and fortunes, supporting the cha- 

 racter and wearing the robes of sovereignty with majesty and comeliness of 

 deportment and countenance. It was the consequence and the proof of his 

 having been but raised to his proper place among men, his natural station in 

 the scale of human intelligence. Another eye-witness has described his 

 person and character with a friendly but not unfaithful hand : his frame com- 

 pact and vigorous ; his stature five feet ten inches ; ' his head so shaped that 

 you might see in it a storehouse of a vast treasury of natural parts ;' his 

 glance penetrating; his look, when he chosed, engaging and mild, or com- 

 manding and stern ; his temper fiery, but subdued by reason and discipline ; 

 his heart full of courage, but compassionate and tender as that of a woman ; 

 ' his soul so large as hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay/ Of his magna- 

 nimity the evidence is most decisive. Constantly menaced with assassination 

 by his enemies, and a murderous price set upon his life by Charles II. in a 

 proclamation, he yet disdained to avenge himself upon the forfeit-lives of 

 assassins within his power. The sentiment of vengeance seems to have 

 vanished in the fearless and superior grandeur of his views. How great his 

 force and generosity of soul who in the course of a life of constant peril from 

 the brave in the field, and the secret and greater danger from hating and 

 hireling private murderers, never lost his resolution or his humanity ! 



"But it is as a master of the art of government that the reputation of 

 Cromwell appears in its full glory. The proudest courts and the proudest 

 nations bowed before the supremacy of his genius and powers. It has been 

 remarked by English writers that his reputation was exaggerated abroad 

 because foreigners were not acquainted with the defects of his domestic 

 government. They naturally judged him by his foreign policy ; and that 

 policy which overcame every prejudice against a regicide and a usurper, 

 which raised the nation by a rapid movement from the lowest debasement to 

 the highest rank, must have been pre-eminent in wisdom and force. 



" The domestic government of Cromwell has been censured with some 

 reason. There is a want of that creative power, that legislative genius, which 

 calls into existence a political system capable of surviving its author. He 

 has been described as essentially a man of immediate action rather than of 

 grand prospective conceptions or comprehensive views. It is certain that in 

 governing three nations he seemed to rely wholly or too much upon his own 

 personal direction and control. Every impulse, movement, and restraint pro- 

 ceeded from his hand. His government wanted systematic order, and the 

 consequent inherent force. But had Cromwell time, with his most intractable 

 materials, to construct a great system of political government, which could be 

 brought to_act in his life-time, and survive him for the benefit of mankind ? 



