nearer to being led to Bedlam than to being chosen to command armies.

He was brave without a doubt; so are wolves; there are even monkeys as
fierce as tigers. From being a fanatic he became an adroit politician,
that is to say that from a wolf he became fox, climbed by imposture from
the first steps where the infuriated enthusiasm of the times had placed
him, right to the pinnacle of greatness; and the impostor walked on the
heads of the prostrated fanatics. He reigned, but he lived in the
horrors of anxiety. He knew neither serene days nor tranquil nights. The
consolations of friendship and society never approached him; he died
before his time, more worthy, without a doubt, of execution than the
king whom he had conducted from a window of his own palace to the
scaffold.

Richard Cromwell, on the contrary, born with a gentle, wise spirit,
refused to keep his father's crown at the price of the blood of two or
three rebels whom he could sacrifice to his ambition. He preferred to be
reduced to private life rather than be an omnipotent assassin. He left
the protectorate without regret to live as a citizen. Free and tranquil
in the country, he enjoyed health there, and there did he possess his
soul in peace for eighty-six years, loved by his neighbours, to whom he
was arbiter and father.

Readers, give your verdict. If you had to choose between the destiny of
the father and that of the son, which would you take?




_CUSTOMS_