CHAPTER VI.

A SHORT CHAPTER.

-THE AUTHOR'S PERQUISITE

FOR DOING HIS THINKING IN.

T is strange,-indeed, there are so many passing strange things in this world, that there would not be room

even to name, much less to analyse them, had one as many books as there are in the British Museum, to write down the mere catalogue in, but it is strange, the great distinction that is made in the estimate of things in which, in reality, there is no difference, except the grammatical one of singular and plural—the singular being always the scapegoat, and the plural the hero, suffocated under laurels and honours. For instance, as we all know, to kill one person is murder, and is punished accordingly; whereas, to slaughter our fellow-creatures wholesale-though they have never done us any harm, or we have never seen their faces till we are called upon to "do them to death "-this is called "glory." Just as shooting a man dead in a duel for some slight, real, or even imaginary

offence used to be, and still is, in many places called honor! Again, if a chemist sells a pennyworth of arsenic, or strychnine, and it has been purchased to commit a solitary murder, or suicide, said chemist is severely reprimanded, if not punished; whereas, had he sold the same poison by the ton, he would only have been "a wholesale druggist." And the same ratio in the estimate of things is extended to the bad passions, vices, and crimes of mankind;-when these said bad passions, vices, and crimes, are exercised by individuals against individuals, the person so exercising them does so under great difficulties, having, as the ticket-of-leave gentlemen phrase it, to "keep it dark," in order to prevent their incurring the execration of society. Yet the very same treachery, falsehood, and utter unscrupulousness in princes, and, still more, in usurpers -exercised not against ONE, but against millions

-are precisely the qualities which constitute the world's "great men." Now, the difference between Sir Allen Broderick and Oliver Cromwell was merely the world's usual guage of quantity. Cromwell, it is true, even in the historical estimate of him, is said to "have dug a trench round the country with crime," but it was quickly added that “he filled it up with glory "—and that, of course, is a sort of quick lime that neutralises all corruption. Now, the worst men, and

their very worst deeds, will always not only have plenty of defenders, but even of partisans, more especially in the present day, when the "heroworship" of great authors for bad men and women of the past, and their mania, in the teeth of facts, for white-washing and gilding them, can only be compared to the ancient Egyptian worship of monsters; but, without having recourse to modern "cleaners and decorators," it is curious to compare the different estimates of Cromwell nearer his own times.

"He was a tyrant," was the brief but concrete summing up of Algernon Sydney. "The greatest personage and instrument of happiness, not only our own, but indeed any age ever produced,” according to Lord Fauconberg. One of the nine worthies, vide Maidstone. "A man miraculously raised up by God, and endowed with extraordinary wisdom and courage," says Morland. "A dexterous villain, an intrepid commander, a bloody usurper, and a sovereign that knew the art of governing," incises Voltaire. Next Bossuet gives us a more full-length and more accurately finished portrait as to detail. "A man," says he, "arose of a depth of mind truly incredible, as subtile and refined a hypocrite, as he was an able and transcendent politician; capable of enterprising everything, and of concealing every enterprise.

In peace and in war, equally active and indefatigable, he left to fortune nothing of which he could deprive her by wisdom and by foresight, and yet, vigilant and prompt, he never lost an opportunity which she offered to him. In fine, he was one of those bold and restless spirits that seem created to change the destinies of the world." Then comes Wicquefort's "brief chronicle." "If ever," are his words, "there appeared in any state a chief who was at the same time both tyrant and usurper, Oliver Cromwell was such." "His method of treating his enemies was mild and generous, for Cromwell by nature was generous and humane, kind and compassionate," says Harris. (I wonder what Mrs. Harris said?) "A fortunate fool," quoth Cardinal Mazarine. (Was his egotistical eminence thinking of himself?) "He was a coward," slanders Lord Holles. -N.B. Does Mr. Eöthen Kinglake, author of "The Crimean War," happen to be a descendant of my Lord Holles? for as experts of cowardice, they seem both to have derived their knowledge from the same peculiar source. Then one John Milton, late of Barbican, now of the Temple of Fame, who had a patent for creating devils of great calibre, asserts that Cromwell was-

"A person raised

With strength sufficient, and command from Heaven,
To free his country."

But there are lords, and lords, and like doctors, they occasionally differ. So Lord Clarendon, differing from "his noble friend," Lord Holles, calls the Protector "a brave, wicked man ;" and Brandenburgh, following suit, describes him as

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a bold, cunning, ambitious man, but unjust, violent, and void of virtue; a man, in short, who had great qualities, but never a good one." Then Sir Roger Manley splits the difference with Lord Holles, and says of Cromwell that "with all his faults, although he was a coward at first, he was of great courage and vastness of mind after, since he raised himself up from a private gentleman to the supreme height of the empire; not altogether unworthy of the degree he attained to, if he had not acquired it by ill means."

Then last, and perhaps least, comes the cartoon of "Hudibras in Prose, 1682"

"His face was natural buff, and his skin may furnish him with a coat of mail. You would think he had been christened in a lime pit, and tanned alive, but that his countenance still continues mangy. We may cry out against superstition, and yet worship a piece of wainscoat and idolise a blanched almond. Certainly 'tis no human visage, but the emblem of a mandrake, one scarcely handsome enough to have been the progeny of Hecuba, had she whelped him when she was a dog. His soul, too, was as ugly as