In this class three men stand pre-eminent, Caesar, Cromwell, and
Bonaparte. The highest place in this remarkable triumvirate
belongs undoubtedly to Caesar. He united the talents of Bonaparte
to those of Cromwell; and he possessed also, what neither
Cromwell nor Bonaparte possessed, learning, taste, wit,
eloquence, the sentiments and the manners of an accomplished
gentleman.

Between Cromwell and Napoleon Mr. Hallam has instituted a
parallel, scarcely less ingenious than that which Burke has drawn
between Richard Coeur de Lion and Charles the Twelfth of Sweden.
In this parallel, however, and indeed throughout his work, we
think that he hardly gives Cromwell fair measure. "Cromwell,"
says he, "far unlike his antitype, never showed any signs of a
legislative mind, or any desire to place his renown on that
noblest basis, the amelioration of social institutions." The
difference in this respect, we conceive, was not in the character
of the men, but in the character of the revolutions by means of
which they rose to power. The civil war in England had been
undertaken to defend and restore; the republicans of France set
themselves to destroy. In England, the principles of the common
law had never been disturbed, and most even of its forms had been
held sacred. In France, the law and its ministers had been swept
away together. In France, therefore, legislation necessarily
became the first business of the first settled government which
rose on the ruins of the old system. The admirers of Inigo Jones
have always maintained that his works are inferior to those of
Sir Christopher Wren, only because the great fire of London gave
Wren such a field for the display of his powers as no architect
in the history of the world ever possessed. Similar allowance