though to praise him would long have been a punishable crime,
truth and merit at last prevail. Cowards who had trembled at the
very sound of his name, tools of office, who, like Downing, had
been proud of the honour of lacqueying his coach, might insult
him in loyal speeches and addresses. Venal poets might transfer
to the king the same eulogies little the worse for wear, which
they had bestowed on the Protector. A fickle multitude might
crowd to shout and scoff round the gibbeted remains of the
greatest Prince and Soldier of the age. But when the Dutch cannon
startled an effeminate tyrant in his own palace, when the
conquests which had been won by the armies of Cromwell were sold
to pamper the harlots of Charles, when Englishmen were sent to
fight under foreign banners, against the independence of Europe
and the Protestant religion, many honest hearts swelled in secret
at the thought of one who had never suffered his country to be
ill-used by any but himself. It must indeed have been difficult
for any Englishman to see the salaried viceroy of France, at the
most important crisis of his fate, sauntering through his haram,
yawning and talking nonsense over a despatch, or beslobbering his
brother and his courtiers in a fit of maudlin affection, without
a respectful and tender remembrance of him before whose genius
the young pride of Louis and the veteran craft of Mazarine had
stood rebuked, who had humbled Spain on the land and Holland on
the sea, and whose imperial voice had arrested the sails of the
Libyan pirates and the persecuting fires of Rome. Even to the
present day his character, though constantly attacked, and
scarcely ever defended, is popular with the great body of our
countrymen.

The most blameable act of his life was the execution of Charles.