were open." These expressions, it seems to us, convey the
highest eulogium on our great countryman. Reason and philosophy
did not teach the conqueror of Europe to command his passions, or
to pursue, as a first object, the happiness of his people. They
did not prevent him from risking his fame and his power in a
frantic contest against the principles of human nature and the
laws of the physical world, against the rage of the winter and
the liberty of the sea. They did not exempt him from the
influence of that most pernicious of superstitions, a
presumptuous fatalism. They did not preserve hint from the
inebriation of prosperity, or restrain him from indecent
querulousness in adversity. On the other hand, the fanaticism of
Cromwell never urged him on impracticable undertakings, or
confused his perception of the public good. Our countryman,
inferior to Bonaparte in invention, was far superior to him in
wisdom. The French Emperor is among conquerors what Voltaire is
among writers, a miraculous child. His splendid genius was
frequently clouded by fits of humour as absurdly perverse as
those of the pet of the nursery, who quarrels with his food, and
dashes his playthings to pieces. Cromwell was emphatically a man.
He possessed, in an eminent degree, that masculine and full-grown
robustness of mind, that equally diffused intellectual health,
which, if our national partiality does not mislead us, has
peculiarly characterised the great men of England. Never was any
ruler so conspicuously born for sovereignty. The cup which has
intoxicated almost all others, sobered him. His spirit, restless
from its own buoyancy in a lower sphere, reposed in majestic
placidity as soon as it had reached the level congenial to it. He
had nothing in common with that large class of men who
distinguish themselves in subordinate posts, and whose incapacity