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quetiers, and did as good as force them out."* A few days after, General Lambert, in the name of THE ARMY and the three nations, invested Cromwell with the title and dignities of Lord-Protector of the Commonwealth, and published an instrument of government-how sanctioned or by whom written, was best known to Cromwell himself. Such was the natural sequel to the forcible dissolution of the Long Parliament, and such the manner in which Cromwell usurped the supreme power. This step once taken, his whole subsequent career is explained-he stood before the world confessedly an usurper, holding his power by the sword, and the might of the omnipotent dictator made the right when he forced a portion of one of his Parliaments to sign a pledge of fidelity to his person and government-when he dissolved another at his own pleasure before its time-when he turned an hundred of its members out of doors-when he threw Vane, and Marten, and Bradshaw, into prison, and when he quartered his military governors and their satellites over all England. The wisdom of his civil administration, the genius displayed in his foreign policy, the glories of his government at home and abroad, cannot conceal these things, nor convince us that Oliver Cromwell did not prove untrue to the great trust which the battles of Dunbar and Worcester placed in his hands, and did not sacritice the liberties of his country to unholy ambition. It is in this view of the case that we coincide with Mr. Forster, who has so clearly and distinctly traced Cromwell's political career step by step, and whose judicious inferences seem to be so fairly warranted by the facts.

We do not mean to say, however, that we fully approve all Mr. Forster's inferences, or coincide in all his conclusions. We have not been able to get rid of the impression that this portion of his work is written with too much of a partisan spirit, and that his feelings, (call them, if you please, prejudices,) which are clearly and decisively enlisted with the Independents and Republicans of the Long Parliament, may have led him to speak with undue harshness, and in terms of a too acrimonious severity, not only of Cromwell, but of others opposed to the republican interest. Thus, in speaking of two of the distinguished Presbyterian leaders in Parliament, he calls them the "venomous Prynce and the mean-spirited Holles," forgetting, perhaps, that these men were the constant friends of civil liberty, though in their ideas of religious toleration they had not reached Vane's noble and elevated principles.† So, too, of some acts of Cromwell during the Protectorate, which, despite the monstrous origin of his usurped power, really evinced a liberal and enlightened spirit in his administration, and a desire to protect the liberties of the subject, so far as he judged them consistent with the safety of his government and the stability of his own power-acts which were in themselves just and wise, Mr. Forster seems either to disregard or to undervalue. We think, too, that when he endorses as "a terrible and indisputable truth," Walter Savage Landor's biting sarcasm upon Cromwell, that he lived a hypocrite and died a traitor," Mr. Forster approves a

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From the letter of Mansel, one of the members, and an eye-witness. Mr. Forster also cites as his authorities for this account, Ludlow's Memoirs," the "Exact Rela tion" and the New Narrative of the Dissolution."

+ Prynne twice suffered the punishment of having his ears cut off for sedition-quite enough, one would suppose, to make a man venomous. Holles was one of the iminortal five, with Pym and Hampden, whom Charles I. attempted in person to arrest in their seats in Parliament.

phrase in which something of propriety is sacrificed to epigrammatic point. Mr. Landor may say "finer things in better English than any other writer of our time," but these fine things are sometimes a little overstrained. Cromwell did not die a traitor, unless in that exceedingly limited and qualified sense which Mr Forster perhaps means to convey, namely, that he betrayed the republican Commonwealth, and sacrificed popular liberty to his ambition. We are equally unable to see the appropriateness of the phrase hypocrite, as applied to Cromwell. We have already noted our own judgment upon the sincerity of his religious professions, and it is not necessary here to repeat it. We think this theory of religious hypocrisy, as applied to Cromwell, wholly untenable. Nor do we understand Mr. Forster himself, as utterly denying the sincerity of his earlier professions of religious enthusiasm, to which he returned again in his last days, as the scenes of his death-bed bear abundant witness. But Mr. Forster believes Cromwell to have become a man wholly destitute of truth-and that this was the rooted curse which lay in his nature, implanted there by some early scheme of fatal ambition. He appears to think his whole public life a trick, and his professions a sham, designed to dupe his friends and cheat the world. This is, at least, as strong a representation of the case against Cromwell as it will bear; we think it a little too strong. Like every crafty and ambitious statesman, Cromwell was not a stranger to diplomacy and intrigue. Sometimes he found it necessary to avail himself of the arts of dissimulation, in which he was a profound adept. He habitually concealed his well-laid plans, but generally endeavored to give a plausible explanation of his actions. Nor were his explanations, at all times, true ones. All this, however, may be reconciled, without the assumption that he acted throughout upon a plan of systematic hypocrisy; for there will be found running through these explanations, tedious and verbose as they are, a subtle and plausible logic, that may well have imposed upon his own mind as it did on others, and have silenced, if it did not entirely satisfy, his scruples. Cromwell, doubtless, carried his arts of dissimulation too far, as we have already noticed. Occasionally, too, he forgot his religion, so far as to descend to falsehood, in his eagerness to justify his conduct, and prove the purity of his motives. If this is all Mr. Forster means, when he says that Cromwell died a hypocrite, it may, in such a qualified sense, be true. But to say that his whole public career was but the manifestation of a preconcerted system of hollow-hearted duplicity and falsehood, is ascribing a littleness to the character of this really great man, which, we think, the facts of history do not warrant.

Mr. Forster attributed much of the success of the Protector in his foreign policy, and the brilliant triumphs of his navy, to the wise and energetic measures of the Long Parliament. This hypothesis is certainly not necessary to the fame of that renowned body of statesmen, neither is it quite just to Cromwell. The Parliament, it is true, made the name of England respected all over the world, and Vane, while at the head of the naval department, laid the foundation for the splendid successes of his countrymen on the ocean. But that government which the Long Parliament so wisely administered, lost not a whit of its resistless energy, when it passed into the hands of the Protector. Not for a moment, from the time of Cromwell's accession to the supreme authority, to the day of his death, did England cease to rise in the scale of European politics; not for a moment did she pause in her splendid career,

until Cromwell nearly realized his proud boast, that he would make the name of Englishman as much honored as ever that of Roman had been. This, of itself, proves his genius for government-that he was no vulgar usurper-but, like Napoleon Bonaparte, was a man endowed with that vigor of intellect and strength of character, which enabled him to wield despotic authority for the glory and advantage of his country.

We have been tempted to pursue this subject further than was originally designed. It is a fruitful one for comment and criticism. Mr. Forster's book alone, which we have merely glanced at, would furnish the text for an elaborate essay. We have scarcely attempted to speak of its merits, and have done little more than point out what we regard as its blemishes or defects. These, however, even if our own view of the subject be strictly correct, are but slight-more slight in comparison, when found in a work like this, distinguished for its erudition, its fullness of material, its richness of illustration, its generally sound and judicious judgment upon the character of the men and events of the age, and above all, by its liberal tone, and manly and elevated thought. No republican who desires to comprehend the true spirit of the English Revolution—no student, who wishes to gain a clearer insight into that remarkable character, Oliver Cromwell, will fail to give it something more than a mere casual perusal.

LINES

WRITTEN AT SEA.

I STOOD an exile on the Fingal's deck;
The moon was silv'ry, and my Thought was pale,
And sickened, when it looked back on the wreck
Of Hope and Genius o'er a nation's wail.

Aye, e'en this bark, whose canvass refuge gave
From Erin's enemies, awakes Erin's shame;
Like me, it flies o'er ocean's stormy wave,

From the lov'd sireland whose greatness gave it name.

Th' Atlantic smiles beneath the moon's chaste ray,
As tho' its hungry waters never knew,

That oft it fill'd its greed with human clay,
Or foam'd in rapture o'er a wave-wrapt crew.

Beneath its mild and seeming buoyant smile,
What rav'nous myriads of evils lie!
Danger sports mask'd beneath each diamond isle
That moves in fancy to each surgy sigh.

Here dance around me bright phosphoric waves,
Freeborn. but treacherous, in their giddy race;
Roaring aloud, to spake me, they're not slaves,

That bears my young heart to some resting-place.

Waves-in your freedom I forgive you all

The treachery in your immortal days;
Spirits of might, like thine, needs must have gall,
Or sweet existence would lose half its praise.

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.*

ANOTHER History of the United States-and why another? The author must have believed that it was needful, or at least well for us to have another, or he would not have given us this voluminous work. Every able and honest man's motives are best elucidated by himselfand, therefore, we quote a passage explanatory, from Mr. Hildreth's advertisement to the Ist volume of his history.

"Of centennial sermons and Fourth-of-July orations, whether professedly such, or in the guise of history, there are more than enough. It is due to our fathers, and ourselves; it is due to Truth and Philosophy, to present for once, on the historic page, the founders of our American nation, unbedaubed with patriotic rouge-wrapped up in no fine-spun cloaks of excuses and apologywithout stilts, buskins, tinsel, or bedizenment-in their own proper persons, often rude, hard, narrow, superstitious and mistaken; but always earnest, downright, manly, and sincere. The result of their labors is eulogy enough; their best apology is to tell their story exactly as it was.

"We have, accordingly, in this book, an attempt to set forth the personages of our colonial and revolutionary history, such as they really were in their own day and generation, living and breathing men, their faults as well as their virtues, their weaknesses as well as their strength-for to know men, we must know them in both aspects; and endeavor to trace our institutions-religious, social, and political, from their embryo state; to show, in fine, from what beginnings, by what influences, and through what changes the United States of America are what they are."

Americans have nearly reached that point in individual and national development, where they can relish plain prose. An acknowledged lady can wear a poor dress, without remark-one that would edify all the gossips, if the lady were a woman, whose fortune was yet to make, and whose style and tournure were yet to be achieved. In a new country, where the people live in log houses, and have a plentiful lack of rockingchairs, carriages, cheese-presses, and other comforts and elegancies of a refined civilization, we are sure to find a rage for idealism. Fourth-ofJuly orations are in demand the year round, and are repeated every Sunday, on Thanksgiving and Fast days, and at camp-meetings, with a fantasia of variations to suit the different occasions Children say "I

don't care," when they care most, and men assert themselves most, when not quite assured of their merits. Our self-glorifications are a set of idealisms that have grown, probably as much out of a sense of want, as a sense of fulness-as much out of what we have not, as what we haveand just in proportion as we are individually and nationally perfected, we shall be contented with being, instead of asserting-with plain unimaginative truth, instead of florid fancy-we shall be contented each to fight on his own hook, instead of joining "A Mutual Admiration Society," in the vain hope of compensating ourselves for the contempt of England, the only country for whose respect we really care a straw. But the glancing, gilded wings of our glorious Fourth-of-July orations are

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History of the United States. By R. Hildreth. Harper Brothers.

very charming as they disappear in the receding past, albeit they are comewhat of the mixed metaphor order, and have feathers on the back and wool on the belly. In Hildreth's history we have no profusion of legitimate, or illegitimate oratory, or ornament. He has been accused of being as cold as ice; but, if so, he has the merit of being as clear as the best ice ever frozen. The transparency of truth has in it a recommendation, of which we are quite too matter-of-fact to complain; at the same time we must confess to a partiality to the beautiful poetry of one whose work is placed in a seeming competition with that of Mr. Hildreth. There is in reality no competition between Lancroft and Hildreth. It would be folly to say that the commonest act of life has not many phases-how much more then the grand drama of the new world's history. Many good and true pictures of Napoleon have been painted-the severe, and truthful, and almost colorless grandeur of Delaroche's picture of Napoleon crossing the Alps, does not render these of no value-but we feel, when we look on this picture, that the simple, naked truth is the wildest and most glowing poem.

It was a beautiful saying of Bancroft, that "Columbus started for the new world with a faith that would have created it if he had not found it." The poetic beauty, and the enchanting music of this sentence, had flashed before our eyes, and rung in our ears for years; and the vision and melody were first disturbed by the first sentence in Hildreth's history. Read it, and judge how we could forgive him.

"When Columbus undertook his first voyage across the Atlantic, the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope was as yet unknown. The fabulous wealth of the regions of the East, especially as set forth by the Venetian, Marco Polo, fired the bold imagination of that great navigater, sustained his hopes, and prompted his persevering efforts. In the newly invented astrolabe, the predecessor of the quadrant, he possessed an instrument to ascertain his latitude, and in the compass a guide across the sea. With scientific heroism, relying on the theory of the earth's rotundity, while the prevailing under estimate as to its size, diminished to his ardent mind the dangers of an untried voyage, first of men, he dared to hope to reach Asia by a western passage. He thought he had done so; the new land he had found he called the West Indies; and he zealously persisted, and died in the belief, that those new lands were a part of Cathay, or farther India.

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Amerigo Vespucci, following presently in the track of Columbus, seems first to have perceived in those western regions a NEW WORLD. As such he early announced it in his famous letter to Lorenzo de Medici, and to that remarkable announcement, adding, as it did, a fourth quarter to the globe, and soon confirmed by subsequent discoveries, ought we not to ascribe the name of AMERICA? not, as Spanish historians, jealous for the fame of Columbus, would have it, to an alleged successful fraud on the part of Vespucci, in passing himself off as having first seen the western continent.

That continent, in fact, was first seen, neither by Columbus or Vespucci. It has even been conjectured, on the strength of an old Icelandic ballad, that five centuries before the time of those great navigators, the North American coasts were reached by Danish adventurers from Iceland. Greenland they certainly discovered and colonized; but their alleged visit to North America, though not without warm advocates, rests on evidence of too mythic a character to find a place in authentic history. To the Cabots, at the head of an English expedition, the historical honor belongs of having, first of Europeans, seen the main land of the western continent."

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