language of English writers, that Cromwell was a ferocious savage who
built his palace of human skulls and desolated his country. Meantime, he
was simply a strong-minded--rough-built Englishman, with a character
thoroughly English, and exceedingly good-natured. Gray valued himself upon
his critical knowledge of English history: yet how thoughtlessly does he
express the abstract of Cromwell's life in the line on the village
Cromwell--'Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood!' How was
Cromwell guilty of his country's blood? What blood did he cause to be
shed? A great deal was shed no doubt in the wars (though less, by the way,
than is imagined): but in those Cromwell was but a servant of the
parliament: and no one will allege that he had any hand in causing a
single war. After he attained the sovereign power, no more domestic wars
arose: and as to a few persons who were executed for plots and
conspiracies against his person, they were condemned upon evidence openly
given and by due course of law. With respect to the general character of
his government, it is evident that in the unsettled and revolutionary
state of things which follows a civil war some critical cases will arise
to demand an occasional 'vigor beyond the law'--such as the Roman
government allowed of in the dictatorial power. But in general, Cromwell's
government was limited by law: and no reign in that century, prior to the
revolution, furnishes fewer instances of attempts to tamper with the laws
--to overrule them--to twist them to private interpretations--or to
dispense with them. As to his major-generals of counties, who figure in
most histories of England as so many _Ali Pachas_ that impaled a few
prisoners every morning before breakfast--or rather as so many ogres that
ate up good Christian men, women and children alive, they were
disagreeable people who were disliked much in the same way as our
commissioners of the income-tax were disliked in the memory of us all; and
heartily they would have laughed at the romantic and bloody masquerade in
which they are made to figure in the English histories. What then was the