bread. But since it is our chief food, corn has become one of the great
objects of trade and politics. So much has been written on this subject,
that if a husbandman sowed as much corn as the weight of the volumes we
have about this commodity, he might hope for the amplest harvest, and
become richer than those who in their gilded and lacquered drawing-rooms
ignore his exceeding labour and wretchedness.




_CROMWELL_


SECTION I

Cromwell is painted as a man who was an impostor all his life. I have
difficulty in believing it. I think that first of all he was an
enthusiast, and that later he made even his fanaticism serve his
greatness. A novice who is fervent at the age of twenty often becomes a
skilful rogue at forty. In the great game of human life one begins by
being a dupe, and one finishes by being a rogue. A statesman takes as
almoner a monk steeped in the pettinesses of his monastery, devout,
credulous, clumsy, quite new to the world: the monk learns, forms
himself, intrigues, and supplants his master.

Cromwell did not know at first whether he would be an ecclesiastic or a
soldier. He was both. In 1622 he served a campaign in the army of
Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange, a great man, brother of two great
men; and when he returned to England, he went into the service of Bishop
Williams, and was his grace's theologian, while his grace passed as his